he earned on supplies for his laboratory. During the year he was there he got permission to move his lab to a baggage car. This let him work on his experiments during the five-hour layover. One day the train moved slightly spilling his chemicals. The laboratory caught fire and the conductor threw him off the train (www.minot.k12.nd.us/mps/edison.html).Edison had ear problems throughout his childhood. He had scarlet fever when he was young which damaged his hearing significantly. When he was fifteen a freak accident caused him to go deaf. When he tried to jump on a moving train the conductor grabbed him by the ear to help pull him up. He said he felt something pop inside his head. His deafness could have been cured by an operation but he refused. He said being deaf helped him concentrate. He also said, “Deafness probably drove me to reading”. He was one of the first people to use the Detroit Free Library. He went through the library reading as many books as he could. He spent much of his time reading books on electricity, mechanics, chemical analysis, manufacturing, and technology (www.minot.k12.nd.us/mps/edison.html). While Edison was at the train station he learned to use the telegraph from one the station officials. He used scrap metal to build a telegraph set and practiced Morse code. When he was sixteen he moved to Toronto, Canada, to become a telegraph assistant. His job was to report in every hour by telegraph signal. Edison thought that this was a waste of time, so he invented an automatic telegraph. Thomas moved back to the U. S. and worked as a roaming telegrapher. During this time he experimented with the telegraph and became an expert on it. He took it apart and reassembled it until he knew exactly how it worked. When he was twenty-one he got a job in Boston as a night telegraph operator. He worked to improve the telegraph so that it would send many messages at one time. He soon borrowed ...
