Overcoming handicaps

One day a boy sat at his desk in an Ohio schoolhouse, trying hard, but not very successfully, to master his lessons. The boy was Thomas Alva Edison and from birth he had been in delicate health. He did not get on very well at school. He was generally at the foot of the class, and one day, when the inspector was present, he heard the teacher say that “Al” as he was generally called, was “addled,” and that it almost seemed a waste of time for his parents to keep him at school.

This remark hurt the lad’s feelings, and when he went home and told his mother about it, she was very much annoyed and decided that she would look after the boy’s education herself. She had once been a teacher in Ontario and she felt sure that her boy had it in him to make good if he only got a chance. Many years later Edison wrote of this incident: “My mother was the most enthusiastic champion that a boy ever had and I determined right then that I would be worthy of her and show that her confidence in me was not misplaced. My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt that I had some one to live for, some one that I must not disappoint.”

Under his mother’s tuition, Thomas Edison made good progress. He was constantly asking questions. He wanted to know the why and the wherefore of everything he saw. Sometimes he exhausted the patience of those around him but his mother seemed as eager to help him as he was to seek information, and although he missed some things by not being at school, he gained in other ways. One thing his mother especially taught him was to love good books and this passion for reading has remained with him all his life.

When he was eleven years old Thomas Edison became interested in chemistry. He read a book on physics and at once began to make experiments on his own. His chum and chief companion at this time was a Dutch boy named Michael Oates. He persuaded Michael that if he took a large enough quantity of Seidlitz powders the gases generated would enable him to fly. Michael tried the experiment with disastrous results. For a time he suffered agonies and his cries attracted much attention, and Thomas Edison’s mother found it necessary to use the “switch” on her son. But his interest in chemistry was very great. He used the cellar of the house to try his experiments and collected no less than two hundred bottles from various places. These bottles contained the chemicals with which he was constantly experimenting and he marked them all “poison,” so that no one else would touch them. Most of his spare time he spent in that cellar and whatever little pocket-money came his way he spent on purchasing chemicals from the local drug-store.

He felt keenly the need for money wherewith to buy chemicals and after much coaxing he succeeded in persuading his parents to allow him to sell newspapers and magazines on the train that ran between Port Huron and Detroit. The enterprise was his own and besides selling papers he sold bread, candy and fruit. Although only twelve years of age, he had an amazing amount of energy and enterprise and soon he made sufficient money to have all the cash needed for chemical experiments.

One day in 1862, the train on which young Edison was selling newspapers was doing some shunting at Mount Clemens station. On a track near he saw the little son of Mr. J. MacKenzie, the station agent, playing, and a car, without a brakeman, was rapidly approaching. Edison instantly dropped his papers and made a dash for the child. A few seconds later and rescue would have been impossible but as it was he saved the child and jumped from the tracks just as the wheel of the car struck his heel. As a reward for this, Mr. MacKenzie offered to teach Edison the art of telegraphy, something which the lad had long wanted to learn. He eagerly accepted the offer and while he still sold newspapers on the train, he spent every spare moment learning telegraphy.

At this time a seemingly unfortunate thing happened. His interest in chemical and electrical experiments was such that he had secured permission to use part of a car as a laboratory, and as the train journeys were long he spent many hours in that car. One day, a sudden jolting caused a stick of phosphorus to fall from the shelf to the floor where it burst into flames and set fire to the car. The conductor, who was a quick-tempered man, boxed Edison’s ears so soundly that the lad became deaf, an infirmity which has remained with him throughout life. The conductor was so enraged that he put the boy and his entire laboratory off at Mount Clemens station.

Edison’s delicate health and his slowness at school had seemed a severe handicap. Added to this now was a deafness which threatened to make his progress in life harder than ever.

His expulsion from the train was a humiliating experience for Edison but he was by no means discouraged. Once more he fitted up his laboratory at home and continued his experiments. There were many protests from some members of the family who feared chemical experiments but his mother had great faith in him and met objections by saying: “Al is all right. Nothing will happen to him. God is taking care of him.”

In 1863, when he was sixteen, Edison got a position as telegraph operator at Stratford Junction, Ontario, at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month. He soon found out that the most expert telegraph operators knew practically nothing about the science of telegraphy and how it worked. He followed his usual custom of asking all manner of questions but seldom got much satisfaction. One day an old man gave him this explanation of the telegraph. He said: “Suppose you had a dog like a dachshund, long enough to reach from Edinburgh to London. Well, then, if you pulled his tail in Edinburgh he would bark in London. The telegraph is like that.”

One night, while he was working at Port Huron, there was a very severe storm; the ice-jam broke the telegraph cable and there was no communication in the usual way for some considerable time. Edison’s inventive mind got to work and he used the steam whistle of a locomotive to give the long and short signals of the telegraph code. The operator on the other side of the river, three-quarters of a mile away, quickly caught on to the idea and thus messages were sent in wireless fashion across the ice-floes in the river.

Edison was constantly experimenting and learning new ways of doing things. Other young men were willing to work along, and as long as they secured results, did not investigate. Not so with him. He was always enquiring and making experiments and very soon he had a knowledge of telegraphy and the underlying principles of electricity, far beyond any of his workmates.

In 1868, when he was twenty-one years of age, Edison applied for his first patent for an invention. It was a vote recorder and while it never became extensively used it marked the beginning of that long list of inventions which has earned for him the title of “The Wizard of Invention.”

Soon after this Edison went to New York. When he arrived things did not look any too bright for him. He knew no one. He was penniless—in fact, he was in debt. Added to these handicaps was his affliction of deafness which in itself was sufficient to keep him out of most jobs. For several weeks he roamed the streets of New York with actual starvation staring him in the face. One day as he walked along Broadway he turned into Wall Street and entered the offices of the Law Gold Reporting Company. He found that the entire plant had just closed down because of an accident in the machinery which could not be located. The heads of the firm were annoyed and agitated when the shabbily dressed youth walked in. Edison was soon acquainted with what had happened and he mildly remarked that he thought he could put things right. Mr. Law told him to go ahead and try and young Edison immediately repaired the trouble, while the little army of repairers looked foolish. Mr. Law asked him to step into the office and after asking him a few questions he offered him a salary of three hundred dollars a month.

That was the turning-point in Edison’s career. After that he worked as hard, if not harder than ever, but he never knew poverty again. Soon after this he invented an improved stock printer for which he was handed a $40,000 check. Soon after his name was known all over the American continent and before long he was almost as well known in other parts of the world as in America.

Edison believes that his early struggles, severe as they were, did him a great deal of good and stiffened his backbone. He absolutely refuses to believe that even his deafness has been a handicap. About this trouble he once said: “This deafness has been a great advantage to me in many ways. When in a telegraph office I could hear only the instrument directly on the table at which I sat, and unlike the other operators I was not bothered by the other instruments.... Again, my nerves have been preserved intact. Broadway is as quiet to me as a country village is to a person with normal hearing.”

No man living has a greater list of inventions to his credit than Edison. Even to give a list of them would occupy several pages of a book. While one naturally thinks of such outstanding inventions as the phonograph yet he has made scores of other important discoveries all of a useful character.

He believes that his success is chiefly due to his ability to concentrate. When some one asked him what he considered was the secret of his success he replied: “The ability to apply physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.” He has often worked twenty hours a day for days at a time and has actually toiled at one problem for sixty consecutive hours.

Concentration may be one of the principal reasons for his success, but it does not account for everything. Edison, as a boy, faced difficulties and utterly refused to be discouraged. He made them stepping-stones to success. Any man who can believe that even deafness has been a help to him surely has the quality of courage which makes heroes.