Tom was a man who never ran out of ideas. Although Tom was hard of hearing, he never lost his hearing completely. He didn’t let it become a problem, even when his hearing got worse as he got older. In fact, he said it was a good thing because he could ignore noise swirling around him. He could concentrate on what was important to him. At one point Tom was told that an operation might cure his deafness. He didn’t want it. And he was not interested in developing a hearing aid.
Tom found ways to work around his problem. He managed to “listen” to piano players trying out for his phonograph recordings by biting a metal plate attached to the piano. This allowed him to “hear” the music through the vibrations traveling through his jawbone. Was he “listening” through his teeth?
So much is known about Tom’s work because of the records he kept. Over his seventy years of inventing, he filled four thousand notebooks and wrote and drew over three million notes, letters, and sketches.
Not all of Tom’s ideas were successes. In 1891 he bought a mine in northwestern New Jersey. He wanted to find a way to produce low-grade iron ore by separating it from rock and sand. But after ten years he had to give up when rich deposits of high-grade iron ore were found in Minnesota. By this time Tom had lost millions of dollars.
Still, Tom’s experience with mining led him to another business—cement. He came up with a way to pour a cement house in just six hours using molds and machinery that he developed in his mining business. His cement was used to build New York’s Yankee Stadium and the Panama Canal.
Now it was the turn of the century. Automobiles were about to burst on the scene. Tom was convinced that an electric car would be the best car for the future. He set out to make a battery to run a car on electricity. He knew it would be cleaner than the gas that other inventors were trying. But he had to make a battery that would store enough electricity to run a car for a very long time. It also had to be cheap enough to make.
Tom finally came up with a good storage battery. But he was too late for cars. By 1903, Henry Ford was selling his gasoline-powered Model A to customers.
Tom’s storage battery became very useful, even though it didn’t power cars like Ford’s. The navy used it to light ships and to power torpedoes. The railroad lit cars and signal lights with it. Some delivery trucks were powered by it. So were the lights on coal miners’ helmets. Amazingly, the storage battery became his biggest moneymaker. Perhaps that surprised even Tom, who had once expected his phonograph “to grow up to be a big fellow and support me in my old age.”
With all of Tom’s successes, he was always ready to move on to the next idea. The same was true of his failures. He didn’t look back and complain, and he never gave up until he had tried every possibility. Tom once said, “You come across anything you don’t understand, you don’t rest until you run it down. Most fellers try a few things and then quit. I never quit until I find what I’m after.”
Tom worked in a time when many others were racing to think up and invent the next great idea. The world seemed alive with possibilities!
Tom understood work. He liked it. He once said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” Of genius he said, “Sticking to it is the genius!” In 1914 a fire raged through some of his West Orange buildings. But even that did not discourage Tom. He started rebuilding immediately.
But even Tom could be narrow-minded. He had nothing good to say about the radio. He was sure it wouldn’t last.
As Tom got older, he didn’t stop working. There are photographs of Tom in his seventies still going to West Orange. When he was sixty-five, he had a time clock installed. His workers punched in their cards to record the time they arrived and the time they left. So did Tom.
Over the years, Tom received many awards. In 1928 the U.S. Congress gave him a special medal for his lifetime of achievement. “I have accomplished all I promised,” he said.
During the last fifteen years of Tom’s life, he went on trips with old friends, among them Henry Ford, tire maker Harvey Firestone, and naturalist John Burroughs. They traveled to the Great Smoky Mountains, around New England, and to Michigan. They called their vacations together “camping trips.” But they were well taken care of by the helpers who pitched their tents, took care of their clothes, and cooked their meals.
Tom and Mina spent time at the vacation home Tom had built soon after their marriage. It was in Ft. Myers, Florida. Of course, it had a laboratory.
During the last two years of his life, Tom suffered from a number of ailments, among them diabetes and a stomach ulcer, and his health declined. In August 1931, he collapsed at Glenmont. He died on October 18 at the age of eighty-four. Mina lived another sixteen years.
Tom’s funeral, on Wednesday, October 21, was private. But that evening, at the request of President Herbert Hoover, Americans turned off their lights at ten in the evening. For one minute, all over the United States, there was darkness in honor of Thomas Alva Edison, the man who lit up the world.
HENRY FORD
HENRY FORD WAS THE FIRST TO MAKE A CAR CHEAP ENOUGH FOR MOST AMERICANS TO BUY. IN 1908, HIS MOST POPULAR CAR, THE MODEL T, COST FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS, AND HE HAD MORE ORDERS THAN HE COULD FILL. WITHIN TWO YEARS FORD CAME UP WITH HIS “ASSEMBLY LINE.” WORKERS ASSEMBLED, OR PUT TOGETHER, EACH CAR. EACH MAN WORKED ON ONE PART ONLY. AS THE CAR TRAVELED ALONG A MOVING BELT, WORKERS ON EITHER SIDE ADDED THE NEXT PARTS NEEDED. AT THE END OF THE LINE A COMPLETE MODEL T WAS DRIVEN OFF, READY FOR A CUSTOMER. FORD MADE MODEL T’S FOR NINETEEN YEARS. HE SOLD OVER 15.5 MILLION OF THEM IN AMERICA. |