we can start our experiments with a clean slate” (Compton’s Encyclopedia 75). In World War One, Edison was the head of the Naval Consulting Board for the government. He directed research on torpedoes and antisubmarine devices. In 1920, Congress established the first Naval Research Laboratory (Compton’s Encyclopedia 76). During Edison’s life he had two wives. He married his first wife, Mary G. Stillwell, in 1871. He met her while she was working in his laboratory. He had hoped that she would be his partner in inventing but he said that she could not invent anything. While they were married they had three children, Marion, Thomas, and William. Thomas nicknamed his first two children “Dot” and “Dash”. Mary Stillwell died in 1884. Edison remarried in 1886 to Mina Miller. Mina and Thomas also had three children, Madeline, Charles, and Theodore. When Charles became older he became the governor of New Jersey. Mina and the children did not see Thomas much because and nineteen hours a day. He worked so much that he hardly knew if it was night or day. He only slept when he was tired and ate when he was hungry. Edison’s firm work theories helped him accomplish many things throughout his lifetime (Josephson 396).As Edison grew older, he never quit learning our experimenting. His hands were permanently stained from the chemicals he had used over the years. He still rushed into his research, doing experiments as fast as they came to him. Edison became very controlling of his inventions in his later years. He learned that people would turn up the speed on the phonograph to make the music faster than normal. This angered Edison so he made his manufacturing department put a speed on controls on the phonograph to keep this from happening. Thomas Alva Edison died when he was eighty-four years old, on Sunday, October 18, 1931. He was still experimenting until...
