It was not easy for the young Thomas Edison to get an education. In the fall of 1854, Little Al (as he was then known) was enrolled in the school of Reverend G. B. Engle, a strict disciplinarian who taught by rote. The easily distracted Al didn’t do well under such conditions, and ran away. The reverend’s wife called Edison “addled” and “dreamy,” neither of which was intended as a compliment. Furious, Edison’s strong-willed mother pulled him from the school and home-schooled him with a rigorous regimen studying a variety of subjects, reading literature, and memorizing. Above all else, Edison was a voracious reader. With his mother’s guidance, he read Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume’s History of England, Sears’ History of the World, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, and the Dictionary of Sciences.
Later, during a brief attendance at the Union School in Port Huron, Richard Green Parker’s A School Compendium of Natural and Experimental Philosophy fed his growing interest in science. Another favorite book was Carl Fresenius’ System of Instruction in Chemical Analyses. He tried to read Newton’s Principia, but later admitted he was stymied by the math, which was beyond his capability. With that exception, his excellent memory allowed him to retain virtually everything he read.
If ever there was a man who tore the heart out of books it is Edison, and what has been read by him is never forgotten if useful or worthy of submission to the test of experiment.
Early on Edison displayed a trait that would bode well for his chosen avocation: He questioned everything. Ironically, this led his father to wonder if he was a bit dim-witted. Little Al had to know everything, and he nearly drove his father to exhaustion with his incessant inquiries. One early biographer described young Edison as having “the inquisitiveness of a red squirrel.” He hung around shipbuilders and asked them question after question about building ships, steam power, sailing, and whatever else he could think of. To say he was a curious child would be an understatement.
Young Edison developed a profound interest in chemistry, building up a collection of some 200 bottles of chemicals in the family basement, duly labeled “Poison” to keep away prying eyes. Visits to local drug store proprietors, and his incessant inquisitiveness, made him knowledgeable about most chemicals. He began doing experiments from chemistry and physics books he got from the local library, and had “tested to his satisfaction many of the statements encountered in his scientific reading.” His experiments made him familiar with the workings of early electrical batteries and the production of current, knowledge that would come in handy in his life as an electrical wizard.
[Adapted from my book, Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World]
David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, now available. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
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Hi, David. Been following your writing for awhile (since the ‘olden’ days at Gather!). In any case, I’ve been hearing-impaired since childhood, and one of the things that I always latched onto with Edison was his reported hearing loss. I’m no expert on hearing disability, but I would reckon that went into some (like this Reverend’s wife you mention) acquaintances of his suggesting he was ‘dumb’ or dim-witted. Thank goodness, though he was no Nikola Tesla, he was able to prove the nay-sayers wrong; I consider it a kind of victory for us hearing-impaired [or deaf] people!
Indeed, Edison started losing his hearing at an early age but he managed to become the inventor he was anyway. One funny thing about him – when the phonograph started becoming popular he insisted that he should be the one to pick the music to be recorded. Because he was mostly deaf he would sit next to the piano as someone played it and hold onto it to feel the vibrations. He even supposedly would bite the instrument to feel vibrations.
Turns out his taste of music tended toward classical and other standards he felt people “should” be listening to while his competition (like the Victrola) was putting out the new dance music that the younger folks enjoyed. Eventually he was out-competed and he moved on to other things.
Thanks for following me. I do miss Gather and the platform it gave us all. I feel like my writing career really took off there. It certainly was one of the reasons I chose to leave my old career behind.
Thanks for the new (to me) information, David. I knew very little about Edison’s involvement with phonography-type technology, not to mention his disdain for the new (I’m guessing ragtime, etc.) music of his day. As we so often come to find, the people we’ve admired from the past definitely have flaws! Best wishes as you sally forth in your career!
Glad I was to offer something new. I’m enjoying my new career immensely.