Category: The Boy’s Life of Edison
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The Boy’s Life of Edison: Chapters 25 & 26
Audio EDISON HIMSELF Let us turn from what Edison has done to what Edison is. It is worth while to know “the man behind the guns.” Who and what is the personal Edison? Certainly there must be tremendous force in a personality which has been one of the most potent factors in bringing into existence…
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The Boy’s Life of Edison: Chapters 23 & 24
Audio EDISON’S METHOD IN INVENTING If one were allowed only two words with which to describe Edison it is doubtful whether a close examination of the entire dictionary would disclose any others more suitable than “experimenter-inventor.” These would express the overruling characteristics of his eventful career. His life as child, boy, and man has revealed…
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The Boy’s Life of Edison: Chapters 21 & 22
Audio EDISON INVENTS A NEW STORAGE BATTERY Many an invention has been made as the result of some happy thought or inspiration, but most inventions are made by men working along certain lines, who set out to accomplish a desired result. It is rarely, however, that man starts out deliberately, as Edison did, to invent…
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The Boy’s Life of Edison: Chapters 19 & 20
Audio EDISON MAKES PORTLAND CEMENT Long before Edison ever thought of going into the manufacture of cement he had very pronounced opinions of its value for building purposes. More than twenty-five years ago, during a discussion on ancient buildings, he remarked: “Wood will rot, stone will chip and crumble, bricks disintegrate, but a cement and…
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The Boy’s Life of Edison: Chapters 17 & 18
Audio EDISON’S ELECTRIC RAILWAY It is quite likely that many of our young readers have never seen a horse-car. This is not strange, for in a little over twenty years the victorious trolley has displaced the old-time street-cars drawn by one or two horses. Indeed, a horse-car is quite a curiosity in these modern days,…
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The Boy’s Life of Edison: Chapters 15 and 16
Beginning the Electric Light Business The close of the last two chapters found us attending the birth of an art that was then absolutely and entirely new—the art of electric lighting by incandescent lamps. It will now be interesting to take a brief glance at the way in which it was introduced to the world.…
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The Boy’s Life of Edison: Chapters 13 and 14
A New Light in the World In these modern times, an incandescent electric lamp is such an everyday affair as to be a familiar object even to a small child. But only a few years ago—a little over thirty—the man who proposed and invented it was derided in the newspapers, and called a mad-man and…
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The Boy’s Life of Edison: Chapters 11 & 12
The Telephone, Motograph, and Microphone It is well known that to Mr. Alexander Graham Bell belongs the credit for transmitting the articulate voice over an electric circuit by talking against a diaphragm placed in front of an electromagnet. But after Mr. Bell brought out the telephone Mr. Edison made some remarkable improvements. In the year…
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The Boy’s Life of Edison: Chapters 9 & 10
From Poverty to Independence Edison came first to New York in 1868, with his early stock printer, which he tried unsuccessfully to sell. He went back to Boston, and, quite undismayed, got up a duplex telegraph. “Toward the end of my stay in Boston,” he says, “I obtained a loan of money, amounting to eight…
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The Boy’s Life of Edison
“The Boys’ Life of Edison” by Wm. H. Meadowcroft describes Thomas Edison’s early life, emphasizing his curiosity, hard work, and exploratory spirit that shaped him as an inventor.