2 1 2 HER OES OF INVENTION AND DISCO VER Y. 



THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 



fHOMAS ALVA EDISON was born at Milan in Erie 

 county, Ohio, nth February, 1847. It was, however, in 

 Port Huron, Michigan, a village perhaps equally obscure, that 

 the early youth of this wonderful genius was passed. His 

 father is of Dutch descent ; his mother was of Scotch parentage 

 and born in Massachusetts, was well educated, having been a 

 teacher in Canada, and from her Edison received instruction. 

 Two months was all the time passed at a regular school. His 

 father's occupation, or rather occupations, seem to have been 

 both many and varied ; by turns tailor, nurseryman, dealer in 

 grain, in timber, and in farm lands. Possibly the versatility 

 displayed by his distinguished son may be an inheritance from 

 this parent. No precocious sayings or doings of young Edison 

 are reported, but he was a great reader, devouring indiscrimi- 

 nately everything in the shape of a book that came in his way. 

 His first entrance into the world of work was made at the 

 early age of twelve. He started as train boy on the Grand 

 Trunk Railroad of Canada and Central Michigan. Here the 

 peculiar bent of his mind began to show itself; in a disused 

 corner of an old baggage car, where he kept his papers and 

 other wares, he gradually accumulated a quantity of bottles and 

 retort-stands, and, with the aid of "Fresenius's Qualitative 



