The inventor Thomas Alva Edison had a major effect on the lives of people around the world . Thomas Edison is remembered most for the electric light , his phonograph , and his work with motion pictures .
Edison was born on February 11 , 1847 , in Milan , Ohio . He was mostly self -taught . His mother taught him reading , writing , and mathematics . He learned from books , and he experimented .
At the age of 10 , he experimented with chemicals and electricity . He built a telegraph machine and , at the age of 16 , he went to work as a telegraph operator .
He continued his work with electricity , making improved telegraph machines , and he invented an electrical voting machine .
Edison earned enough money from his early inventions to start his own company in 1871 . Instead of working alone , he worked with a group of employees on many different projects at one time . They asked the United States government for patents to protect more than one hundred devices or inventions each year . He was an extremely busy man .
In 1913 , a popular magazine at the time called Thomas Edison the most useful man in America .
He almost never slept more than four or five hours a night . He usually worked 18 hours each day because he enjoyed what he was doing .
A reporter asked Edison in 1917 which of his many inventions he enjoyed the most . He answered , the phonograph was really the most interesting . The hardest invention to develop , he said , was the electric light . He said that it was the most difficult and the most important . He also invented the modern motion picture film .
In 1928 , he received a special medal of honor from the Congress of the United States . Thomas Edison died on January 6 , 1931 . People worldwide have had easier and more enjoyable lives because of his inventions .
I’m John Russell .
Paul Thompson reported this story for VOA’s People in America program. Jill Robbins adapted it for Learning English.
phonograph – n. device to play records
telegraph – n. an old-fashioned system of sending messages over long distances by using wires and electrical signals
patent – n. an official document that gives a person or company the right to be the only one that makes or sells a product for a certain period of time
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