568 



Our Surroundings 



When 16 years of age, through the assistance of a station 

 master whose child he had rescued from danger, Edison secured 

 employment as a telegraph operator of the Western Union Tele- 

 graph Company. Even at this age he was more interested in 

 working out improvements on his telegraphic instrument than in 

 sending and receiving the messages that came to the office. 



After a time his increasing 

 skill in inventing led to the 

 establishment of his first la- 

 boratory at West Orange, 

 New Jersey. Here by degrees 

 he gathered together and 

 directed a body of experi- 

 menters. He made "experi- 

 menting to invent" an estab- 

 lished art. 



Edison himself has always 

 been a tireless worker. In all 

 probability he has made more 

 inventions than any other man 

 and very many of them have 

 added materially to our com- 

 fort and pleasure. We owe 

 to him the modern electric 

 light, on which he spent an 

 immense amount of labor, in- 

 volving endless experiments and world-wide searches for mate- 

 rials. We owe to him the phonograph, the motion picture ma- 

 chine, the storage battery, important improvements in the tele- 

 graph and telephone and typewriter, and the perfection of the 

 electric motor that runs our street cars. He died in 1931. 



Madame Curie. Most prominent among women who have 

 distinguished themselves in scientific research is Madame Curie. 

 She was born at Warsaw, Poland, in 1867. Her parents were 

 teachers in the secondary schools of the town. The family name 

 was Sklodowska. She was a very promising student and was 

 educated in her native town and at the Sorbonne in Paris, where 



Brown Brothers. 



THOMAS A. EDISON 



A great inventor in many fields. 



