Thomas Alva Edison Edison, Thomas Alva. To no other man who ever lived does the term “born inventor” apply so aptly as to the “Wizard of Menlo Park.” Watt and Morse achieved invention by years of patient scientific investigation; Arkwright and Whitney had invention thrust upon them by circumstances; Fulton was an inventor by natural gift, but followed the profession of an artist up to the age of 40. But Edison lived and breathed in the atmosphere of creation from early boyhood, jeopardized his scant living for the pure joy of doing his own work, and was known as the boy-wonder in electricity on Wall Street, New York, soon after he cast his first ballot. It has been said of him that he “kept the path to the patent-office hot with his foot-steps.” The thing that impresses the reader of a life of Edison, first and last, is its joyousness. From babyhood he was the busiest, happiest, most intensely interested in life of any boy in the village of Milan, Ohio, where he was born on February 11, 1847. His father made shingles by hand, and Alva, as he was then called, haunted the shop. But he found the docks along the canal more dramatic, for sometimes as many as five hundred wagon-loads of wheat and corn would be brought in by farmers in one day and loaded on the grain-boats. He watched everything with his big gray eyes, and was not slow about asking questions. A sturdy little “sobersides,” his mother called him, too busy to play much with other boys. At home he was a voracious reader, and when the family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, he set himself seriously to work to reading all the books in the public library, a task he wisely abandoned. At 12 he became a business man, and had marked success as a train boy. He sold more newspapers, books and fruit than the other boys, and still had time to print a little newspaper and start a laboratory in one end of the smoking-car. In saving the life of a station-agent’s baby he won a friend who taught him the trade of telegraph-operator. He soon became skilful in sending and taking messages, but he had to know how the instrument worked and why, and experimented with an old battery in his father’s cellar until he understood it. At 15 Edison was in charge of the station at Stratford, Canada, where he was so busy doing his own work that he very nearly caused a wreck on the road and won his discharge. It must be said that he never worked well under orders. He lost positions by his inattention to duty almost as fast as he gained them by ability. His first invention was of a repeater, that would take down the dots and dashes as they came rushing over the wire, and repeat them as slowly as necessary for the operator to write out at his leisure. Then he began to experiment on the problem of sending more than one message at a time over the same wire. He dressed shabbily, and spent all he earned on books and apparatus. He was thought to be an impractical, dreamy fellow, and his employers were often impatient. Thus for five years he led a wandering life, often out of work that would bring in money, but working hard on his own ideas and leading a clean, straight life of the intellect. Pleasures never tempted him.