Thomas Edison for Kids: His Life and Ideas, 21 Activities
Acknowledgments OO a I HAVE LOTS of appreciation for Cynthia Sherry and Curt and Linda Matthews at Chicago Review Press Every project we've done together has been a joy I can't thank them enough for being great people to work with Many thanks also to Lisa Reardon editor who has been attentive to detail and a pleasure to work with My thanks for research archive and photograph help extends to several people especially Jean Paul Agnard Edison Phonograph Museum Quebec Cana da David Burgevin National Museum of American History Photo Services Paul Israel Thomas A Edi son Papers Rutgers University Piscataway New Jer sey Kathy Hoke Ohio Historical Society Laurence
Russell Edison Birthplace Museum Milan Ohio Victoria B Scott Edison National Historic Site Hal Wallace National Museum of American History Electricity Collections Edward Wirth Edison National Historic Site Thanks to Ed Carlson for reading the manuscript and for finding the rusty old phonograph I never would have known what it once was And of course thanks to Tyler Carlson and Brian Bruegeman for their ideas and help with the
Introduction HOMAS EDISON was one of the most important Americans in the nation's history He was an inventor and a businessman and his products and ideas made the world cleaner safer and easier to live in Yet he never held public office wrote a book or taught a class His parents were ordinary people without much money and he didn't spend much time in school People often wonder why Edison was such a huge success As a child he got into trouble a lot and seemed unable to learn or so a teacher said As a teenager he drifted around working as a telegrapher without
earning much money or being able to settle down When he made his first invention the vote counting machine no one wanted it Later in his inventing career others sometimes copied and stole his ideas or sued him Some investors even pushed him out of his own company He spent years in court and plenty of money protecting his rights as an inventor He lost money on some projects and at times couldn't pay his workers because he had not been paid himself But he didn't give up So why did Edison succeed How was he able to take simple ideas and make them into machines that played music recorded voices or flickered real life images on a wall How did he become the most famous person of his day Thomas Edison was born at a time when technol ogy was changing rapidly when inventions were common and when people were eagerly applying new advances in steam engines telegraphy photogra phy and electricity Thomas Edison worked on inven tions in nearly every field He perfected many ideas that others had come up with turning them into products that could be manufactured and distributed to everyone His story is about the importance of learning experimenting and never giving up It's about how an ordinary boy grew up to change the way everyone lived and worked for the rest of the century There are hundreds of books about Thomas Edi
