Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847. When he was young his family moved to Port Huron, Michigan where he attended school for three months – the only formal schooling he ever had. At school most of his teachers often thought him dumb because of all the questions he asked to their answers, as well as him having a very large head. His mother understood that he asked these questions to find out exactly how things worked, and encouraged him to do so. By the time he was 13 he had begun his own newspaper named the Herald.
His paper published local, national, and international events, and was sold on trains of the Grand Truck railroad which ran between Port Huron and Detroit, Michigan. Unfortunately, about the same time he began this, an accident occurred that left Edison deaf for the rest of his life. One day he struggled to climb the freight car while carrying stacks of newspapers. The conductor of the train saw him and grabbed him by both of his ears, lifting him into the car. From that day forward, Edison was deaf. But he said he did not mind.
Being deaf helped him to work on his inventions in quiet and without being disturbed. At sixteen, Edison became a telegraph operator. He learned the Morse code and spent his spare time taking apart and putting together telegraphs. He had many many jobs, but most of his employers became upset with his habit about forgetting about his job and working on his own experiments. At twenty one, he repaired a broken down stock ticker machine. A business named Laws than hired him. Soon after he was recruited, he put together a perfect stock ticker machine in his spare time.
For his work, he was paid $40,000. With all of this new money Edison bought many books and scientific equipment to create new inventions. Then, he bought a factory. Quickly he had three hundred employers, and business was booming. He held the factory until he became very sick at the age of thirty, and gave it up. When he regained his strength, he ounce again opened up a laboratory located in Melano Park, New Jersey. From the years 1876 to 1880, he devoted all of his time to working on inventions.
It was there where he created his most famous inventions. The light bulb, phonograph and motion picture projector. Because he spent so much time at his factory inventing, he became known world wide as the Wizard of Melano Park. Edison died on October 18, 1931. He was buried in Orange, New Jersey. At that time his twenty-one room home and his laboratory where he spent most of his life were designated a historical site. His laboratory as been preserved exactly as he left it, and includes his library, papers, and many early models of inventions.