爱迪生的简介 简短的 英文版

　　Thomas Alva Edison was a man of wonderful ability who

　　had the good luck to be born at a good time. In the period

　　just after the American Civil War the United States was

　　growing conditions were right for the talents of a man like

　　Edison.

　　The Edison family had come to the United States from Holland

　　in the early part of the l8th century． Thomas Alva the

　　youngest of Samuel’s seven children was born in 1847.

　　Thomas was an unusually curious child． Even at an early age

　　he loved to read and make experiments． Because he was so

　　dreamy and quiet a teacher once accused him of being stupid．

　　Thomas’s mother was so displeased by this remark that she took

　　her son out of school and never sent him back. She took charge

　　of his education herself and taught him reading history

　　science and philosophy． Edison was a very quick reader and he

　　remembered everything． Once he got the idea of starting at the

　　first shelf of a large library and reading everything in it．

　　But after reading through fifteen feet of books he gave up

　　this ambition.

　　In order to earn money for books and for his scientific

　　experiments Thomas sold vegetables from the family garden.

　　This work did not bring in enough money and so he began to

　　sell newspapers and candy on a train that ran between Port

　　HuronMichigan and Detroit． Because people were so eager for

　　the latest news about the CiviI War which was then at its

　　height Thomas decided in February 1862 when he was fifteen

　　years old to print a newspaper of his own the Weekly Herald,

　　in a baggage car of the train where he worked．In four years he

　　earned two thousand dollars from thisbusiness.

　　While he worked on the train young Edison continued to

　　experiment setting up a laboratory in the baggage car. One day

　　a stick of phosphorus feIl to the floor and set thecar on

　　fire． The conductor of the train as so angry that he threw Tom

　　and all his equipment off the train at the next station； he

　　also struck Tom causing a permanent injury which later made

　　him deaf in the right ear.

　　One day not long after he had started his newspaper, EdiSon

　　saw a child playing on the tracks in front of a train. He

　　jumped off the station platform and snatched the child from

　　the wheels of the train. The father who happened to be the

　　stationmaster was so grateful that he offered to teach Tom to

　　become a telegraph operator．He gave him lessons four days a

　　week after the station had closed for the nightand in three

　　weeks Edison was a better telegrapher than his teacher.

　　Edison was sober and independent for his age, but hen was

　　restless and very careless in his dress． He began to wander

　　from city to city and from job to job． Because his ideas were

　　too strange to please the men who hired him,they often asked

　　him to leave． During this time, he worked in Indianapolis,

　　Cincinnati, Memphis, and Louisville．

　　Edison went to Boston's where he had been promised work as

　　adegraph operator, mainly because of the neat handwriting in

　　his letter of application, When heappeared in that city, he

　　looked so untidy and strange that the superintendent asked him

　　to return later in the day to take a test in telegraphy, with

　　ihe idea of making ihe test so diffcult that the young man

　　could not possibly pass it, As the rapid message came in,

　　Edison realized clerks in the station were playing a joke on

　　him. They had arranged for the new York operator to send him a

　　message, faster and faster,in an effort to make Edison admit

　　that he could not write it down at such a rapid pace, But

　　Edison was not discouraged. He decided to outwit these

　　fellows, and he began to send a message himself. He said to

　　the New York operator,“Come on, don’t go to sleep．Get busy!

　　That ended the joke, and Edison won his job, as weil as the

　　title of fastest telegraph operator in the Western Union

　　Company.

　　In 1869 he borrowed some money and went to New York． During

　　the first three years he spent there, he nearly died of

　　starvation. He slept in a room belonging to a company that

　　sent information on stock prices to the business houses of New

　　York． One day the machine that printed news about gold

　　stopped． Six hundred banks and business houses were without

　　information about what was being bought and sold that day.

　　Edison succeeded in repairing the machine, and he was then

　　offered a job as manager for $300 a month． He was soon hard at

　　work making improvements in the machine and inventing new

　　parts． His Universal Printer, invented at this time, printed

　　full information about gold prices, instead of showing them

　　only by a few letters and numbers． This was his first big

　　success． GeneraI Marshall Lefferts, president of the Gold and

　　Stock Telegraph Company, bought this and several other

　　inventions of Edison's for forty thousand dollars.

　　Edison then put his new money to work． He opened a factory

　　in Newark,New Jersey． Soon he had over one hundred and fifty

　　men building machines to record stock prices, while he himself

　　continued to work on new ideas. At one time, he had forty-five

　　separate inventions in his laboratory, including several

　　important improvements of the telegrilph. He invented a way of

　　sending two messages at the same time in opposite directions,

　　and then a way of sending two messages at the same time in the

　　same direction,In 1874 he invented and sold to Western Union a

　　system by which four messages could be sent over one wire at

　　the same time, two in each direction. He also perfected a new

　　system for sending telegrams. These inventions saved Western

　　Union milhons of dollars in the cost of wires and telegraph

　　poles alone.

　　Western Union then suggested to Edison that he try to

　　develop a commercially useful telephone, Alexander Graham Bell

　　had already patented the te1ephone, but Bell's telephone could

　　be heard only over short distances． Edison added several

　　improvements, which were adopted, and are still used in the

　　telephone today． Western Union paid Edison one hundred

　　thousand dollars for his inventions.

　　In l876 he built a workshop and laboratory in Menlo Park,

　　New Jersey． He was known after that as he Wizard of Menlo

　　Park,because of the wonderful discoveries he made there, He

　　began to study the attempts of other men to invent an

　　incandescent electric light． He tried over and over again to

　　make a soft light that would be suitab1e for use in private

　　houses． He tested over two thousand materials before

　　discovering one that would work． He needed something that

　　would become hot and give off light when electricity passed

　　through it in a glass container from which the air had been

　　removed． He spent a hundred thousand dollars searching for the

　　best material． Men were sent to India, China, Brazil, and

　　finally, Japan, where a material was finally found.

　　In Jalluary,1880, the electric light was patented. Edison

　　then built a factory for the production of his light in Menlo

　　Park, and an electric power station in New York City. But it

　　was fourteen years before the public really accepted the

　　electric light． After that, the electric light business grew

　　So great that Edison was able to sell his share in the

　　electric light for more than one million dollars.

　　Edison patented over one thousand separate inventions during

　　his life, He never stopped trying to learn more about science

　　and what it could do for man, His discoveries probably

　　increased the wealth of the world more than those of any other

　　single man in history.

　　On October l8,1931,Edison died at the age of eighiy-four at

　　his home in Orange, New Jersey． Several days later, the whole

　　United States turned off its electric lights for one minute,

　　in honor of the man whose discoveries had so changed and

　　improved the life of people everywhere.