DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From "Misfit" Student to One of the Most Influential Figures of the Millenium

Imagine This: You're considered "stupid" and a "misfit" by your teacher and even your doctor thinks there might be something wrong with your brain. You're fired from four jobs in one year, your co-workers make jokes about you, and your employers don't think you'll ever amount to much.

 You're born in Milan, Ohio, in 1847, the youngest of seven children, and even as a young boy, your curiosity is always getting you into trouble. You always want to know "why!"

At age three, you fall into a grain elevator and almost drown in grain because you want to see how the elevator works. And, at age four, your father finds you squatting on some duck eggs in a cold barn to see if you can hatch the eggs instead of the mother duck.

You have very little formal education because your teachers think your constant questions are a sign of stupidity so, at age seven, your mother takes you out of school and teaches you at home.

Some of your neighbors call you "addled" because of your small body and unusually large head, and even the local doctor fears you may have "brain trouble."

You love to read chemistry books, and you try the experiments you read about to prove to yourself that the facts in the books are really true. At age ten, you set up a chemistry lab in your basement and, during one of the experiments, you set the basement on fire and nearly blow yourself up.

When you're twelve, you sell candy and newspapers on the local train to earn money to pay for the chemicals for your experiments. You set up a crude lab in the baggage car to do your experiments, but you're forced to stop your experiments when a stick of phosphorus starts a fire in the baggage car. The conductor throws you and all your equipment off the train at the next stop!

You're always experimenting and once you give a friend a triple dose of seidlitz powders, hoping that enough gas would be generated to enable him to fly. This results in terrible agonies for your friend and a whipping for you!

At sixteen, you're given the chance to learn how to be a telegraph operator and you become as fascinated by electricity as you had been by chemistry. Unfortunately, you're not a very dependable telegraph operator because your mind is usually more on the ideas in your head than on the work you're supposed to be doing. During your first year as a telegrapher, you're fired from four jobs because you spend so much of your time reading books, performing experiments, or catching up on your sleep.

In telegraphy circles, you become known as "The Looney" because you spend so much of your time reading and experimenting. The other telegraph operators laugh at you and make jokes about your shabby clothes and shaggy hair. And your employers consider you to be "an impractical dreamy young fellow who will probably never amount to much."

At age twenty-one, you change from experimenter to inventor and in 1876 you move to Menlo Park, New Jersey, where you establish your own research center. You gather together the best craftsmen and scientists you can find and put them to work in what you call your "idea factory."

A year later, you introduce your first great invention–the phonograph–and the rest, as they say, is history! In 1879, after 10,000 different unsuccessful experiments, you invent the incandescent light bulb which changes the way people live forever.

No other man does so much to apply scientific discovery to everyday life as you do with the inventions of the phonograph, the electric light bulb, the typewriter, the dictating machine, the electric dynamo, the motion picture camera, and so many others.

By the time you die in 1931 at age eighty-four, you have been granted more than a thousand separate patents and you're considered to be one of the greatest inventors the world has ever known.

"Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."

Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

 Excerpted from Dare to Dream!: 25 Extraordinary Lives by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

For More about Thomas Edison:

Giving Back:  Edison's goal was always to improve the well-being of the common man, and, through his inventions, he has probably brought more comfort and pleasure into our daily lives than any other inventor in history.

 Did you know that that Edison didn't learn to talk until he was almost four years of age?

Something to Think about: Why do you think Edison never got discouraged even after 10,000 unsuccessful experiments to invent the incandescent light bulb?

Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week's true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!