Yanni - Description of Thomas Edison

Thomas Baker Edison

Yanni Samios

Intro

This man is not who you think he is. He did not invent the lightbulb, he merely made it better, and for this you would think that he would be a great guy, but don’t forget he filmed someone dying in the electric chair, to show that other companies AC electricity was dangerous. Which he still regrets as he said when he came back from the grave. Here is the story of his life.

History

Thomas Baker Edison was born in Ohio Michigan on the year of 1847. he was the youngest of 7 children, you're probably thinking “Wow thats a lot of children”, but that was the average amount of children in a household at that time. When he went to school the teachers thought he was addled because he didn’t listen, so he got kicked out of school at the age of 5 Years and 3 months, thats only three months of actually being at school. But his mum, Nancy believed in him and taught him everything he knows, she would often say “if you can think it, you can do it”. As well as an interest in trains he liked sending messages with the telegraph.

Career

When Thomas moved to kentucky he got a small apartment and struggled to find a job. He tried selling newspapers and fruit but none of them seemed to work out for him, so he built a small chemistry lab in his apartment and severely injured the people living below him when one of his experiments went wrong and burnt through the floor. Through luck and friendship Franklin Pope let his friend use his upstairs apartment which let him continue his experiments to the creation of a longer lasting, and more efficient light bulb (The light bulb had already some 20 years before).

Challenges

One of the things that challenged Thomas, was that his company  used DC (Direct Flow) energy, it’s not as powerful as AC (Alternating Current) energy, but it’s much safer. Thomas thought that AC energy was quite dangerous and many households were using it, so he filmed a criminal getting electrocuted in an electric chair using AC energy and used it as one of his ads, unfortunately people still used AC energy and up until today we still use AC energy as common electricity. Thomas’ greatest fear was that he would fail but his mum continued to believe in him.

Inspiration

Thomas had lots of people who inspired him but the two people who inspired him the most was his good friend Franklin Pope, who lent Thomas his upstairs apartment for use as a chemistry lab, and his mum (Nancy if you don’t remember) who had absolute belief in him when he was a child and homeschooled him when he got kicked out of school. Thomas was very thankful of his family and friends because lots of people didn’t believe in him when he tried making the light bulb better.

Conclusion/Future

What Thomas Baker Edison did while he was alive affected the way we live today. If not for him we would still be using candles and light bulbs that wouldn’t last long. He inspired many people and the average light bulb that we use today is based on his original idea. He was a good man an he continued finding ways to make the light bulb better until he died in 1931.