Unfortunately, they did think that or something along those lines.  His teachers and principles were ready to give up on him and put him in special classes.  His mother came to the rescue and said she would home school him because she believed he was just like the other kids, just with a bigger imagination. Luckily this unfairness didn't really influence his later life and if it did, I believe it made him try harder and achieve more.  Edison didn't go to college but still had a great life.  As his  mother expected, he turned out to be someone very important to this world, an inventor, and a very good one at that.
Edison invented the phonograph, a very helpful invention, but in 1868, while working as a telegrapher in Boston, he invented a vote-recording machine.  This was Edison's first real invention, and he patented it in 1869.

One invention Edison was working on in 1878 was a practical electric lamp/light bulb. Electrical lighting was not a new idea back then.  An earlier lighting system called an arc lamp (in which a current of electricity leaps across two carbon points) had been used to light some streets in Europe, but their light was too bright to be used in small spaces.  The race was on in the United States and Europe to invent an electrical light that could be used in homes and offices.  This was something Edison was determined to do.
Edison and his assistants worked without pause through the winter of 1879 using teamwork to try to find the right filament for the light bulb.  Copper, steel, metals and their alloys were cut and placed inside a glass bulb.  More than 1,500 different materials were tested in all.  Each time, Edison had to pump as much air out of the bulb as he could so that the oxygen would not speed up the burning of the filament.  But none of the materials he tested worked.

So many failures might have made anyone else give up, but Thomas Edison had two important characteristics, patience and perseverance that made it possible for him to carry on his work.  Each failure meant simply that what he was trying to do couldn't be done that particular way, and that he would have find some other way to do it. Thomas Edison finally figured out that carbonized cardboard would work better and last longer as a filament, but to do that he had to learn an important lesson, that to get through life you have to believe in yourself and persevere.

People definitely accepted the light bulb; in fact they had been waiting for this to be invented for years. Today we have light bulbs of all shapes and sizes, some lasting at least three years guaranteed. He made all this happen and I thank him for that. In those 80 years, America had become the most technologically advanced nation in the world. It's no accident that all these changes were made during Edison's lifetime. For it was those gears turning in Edison's head that created the electrical age. Edison's life was a perfect example of the American dream.  He was just a poor country boy who became a great success and helped people around the world live better.

              Research and Web Page by Amy


Works Cited:

"Thomas Alva Edison," New Book of Knowledge. 1996 ed.

Joesphson, Matthew. Thomas Edison, a Biography . John Wiley and Sons.

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