“My deafness has not been handicap, but a help to me,” he claimed. Yet he felt that his hearing problems gave him a career advantage: They made it easier for the inventor to concentrate on his work without aural distractions. “Earache came first, then deafness, and this deafness increased until at the theatre I could only hear a few words now and then,” Edison wrote. A childhood case of scarlet fever might have been the cause. Thomas Edison thought his poor hearing helped him concentrate.Īs he grew older, Edison became completely deaf in one ear and partly deaf in the other. However, politicians didn’t like the idea because, unlike the old system, it left no room for filibusters or last-minute deals. Instead of shouting “yea” or “nay” one by one, representatives could flip a switch and have their votes tallied electronically. When Edison patented his Electrographic Vote-Recorder machine in 1869, he thought it would speed up the voting process in American legislatures. Thomas Edison’s first patented invention was a vote-counting device. Not only did Edison set up a chemistry lab in the baggage car, but he also built a printing press for an original newspaper he created, The Grand Trunk Herald. When he was 12, Thomas Edison started selling candies and newspapers on the Grand Trunk Railroad, which carried passengers to and from Detroit. The Edison family relocated from Ohio to Port Huron, Michigan, in 1854. In his youth, Thomas Edison built a chemistry lab on a train. Rather than face legal consequences for his actions, he later fled to the United States, where his son, Thomas, was born. During this brief but violent period, Edison marched on Toronto. Nova Scotia native Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr.
In 18, pro-democracy rebels in Canada began protesting the British Crown’s administration of its North American territory. Thomas Edison’s dad joined a failed revolution in Canada. Here are 11 things you should know about the prolific inventor, manufacturer, and businessman. Born in Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847, he amassed 1093 patents by the time of his death in 1931. Thomas Alva Edison helped develop all three technologies. Want to make a movie? You’ll need quality light fixtures, sound recording equipment, and a good motion picture camera.