Thomas Edison is a world-renowned inventor, responsible for over a thousand inventions, including the light bulb, phonograph, and movie camera.
However, due to his impoverished childhood, Edison only received a few years of formal schooling. At the age of twelve, he began selling newspapers on trains to make a living. Although he could not attend school, he never stopped learning; he made the most of his time selling papers by reading and conducting scientific experiments on his own.
Edison's father was a strict man who required the whole family to turn off the lights and go to bed by 11:30 PM. Because Edison often returned home late after selling newspapers, he had almost no time left for the experiments he loved so much. This was incredibly frustrating for a young man so eager to explore and experiment. After much thought, he finally came up with a clever way to gain his father's support for his nighttime experiments.
One day, Edison strung copper wires through the trees to connect his home to a friend's house, leaving the remaining newspapers and a telegraph machine at his friend's place. When he arrived home that evening, his father wanted to read the newspaper, but Edison told him they had all been sold. Initially, his father wasn't too concerned, but to pique his interest, Edison began describing the exciting news stories in vivid detail. Intrigued, his father asked if there was any way to get a copy. Edison suggested that he could use the telegraph to transmit the news from his friend's house, and his father readily agreed.
When Edison's father saw that the makeshift telegraph his son had built actually worked, he was delighted and thought to himself, "This child is truly remarkable!" From then on, he no longer prevented Edison from conducting his telegraph experiments at night. Through hard work and perseverance, Edison eventually became one of the world's greatest scientists.
