Don Brown - A Wizard from the Start: The Incredible Boyhood & Amazing Inventions of Thomas Edison

DON BROWN

A Wizard from
the Start

The Incredible Boyhood & Amazing Inventions of

THOMAS EDISON

H OUGHTON M IFFLIN B OOKS FOR C HILDREN

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Boston New York 2010

For the Hill Family

Copyright 2010 by Don Brown

All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from
this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,
215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

Houghton Mifflin Books for Children is an imprint
of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

www.hmhbooks.com

The text of this book is set in Minister Light.
The illustrations are a combination of digital imagery and watercolor on paper.
Book design by Carol Goldenberg

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file.

ISBN 978-0-547-19487-5

Printed in Singapore
TWP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
4500202658

W HAT CAN YOU SEE from a hundred feet up?

In 1855, eight-year-old Tom Edison needed only to climb the tower next to his Port Huron, Michigan, home for the answer. The tower was the bright idea of his father, Samuel, who charged the curious twenty-five cents for a bird's-eye view.

Edison's tower earned Samuel a bit of local fame, but it didn't make the family rich. Neither did Samuel's lumber business, or his grain or grocery businesses.

Young Tom pitched in and helped plant the family truck garden. At harvest, he and his father loaded a horse and wagon with vegetables and sold them from door to door.

Still, the Edisons barely had enough to send Tom to school.

But his school days ended anyway when Tom's mother got wind of a teacher's cruel explanation for Tom's classroom daydreaming:

"Addled," the teacher saidanother way of calling Tom confused or stupid.

Tom said his mother was "the most enthusiastic champion a boy ever had.... [She] angrily told the teacher that he didn't know what he was talking about."

Afterward she schooled Tom herself at home.

"My mother taught me to read good books quickly and correctly, and ... this opened up a great world of literature," Tom said.

He read history and philosophy books. He read books on mechanics, electricity, and chemistry. They inspired Tom to make a laboratory in the Edisons' cellar. With a pal, he experimented with acids and chemicals.

Poor Mrs. Edison worried that they would "blow [their] heads off."

At twelve, Tom became a railroad "news butch," and rode the train back and forth to Detroit, selling newspapers, magazines, candy, and cigars to the commuters. He worked fourteen hours a day, and his business grew.

But Tom still found time on the train for chemistry experiments in the baggage car. After one experiment started a fire, an angry railroad worker boxed Tom's ear.

Most days, waiting in Detroit for the return ride home, Tom visited the public library. He'd start at the first book on a bottom shelf and read one after another until it was time to move to the next shelf.

Clever Tom also scavenged discarded equipment from Detroit's newspaper's print shop and used it to write and print his own newspaper on the train,