Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio, the youngest of seven children born to Samuel and Nancy Elliott Edison. He began to lose his hearing after having scarlet fever as a young child. As he grew older his deafness increased until finally he was totally deaf in his left year and had only 10% hearing in his right ear. Edison did not consider this a "handicap" and said that it was rather an advantage as it gave him more time to think because he did not have to listen to foolish "small talk." By 1862 young "Al," as his father called him, was printing, publishing and selling The Weekly Herald on a train of the Grand Trunk Railroad out of Port Huron, Michigan. This was the first newspaper printed on a moving train. Later he learned to be a telegraph operator and worked at that trade throughout the Central Western states as well as Canada, always studying and experimenting to improve the equipment. In 1868 Edison made his first patented invention, the Electrical Vote Recorder. Congress was apparently not interested in purchasing this as it counted votes too quickly. Edison vowed he would never again invent anything unless there was a "commercial demand" for it. at age 23 Edison sold his first invention, a Universal Stock Ticker, to General Lefferts, the head of the Gold and Stock Telegraph Co. Edison had decided that the invention was worth $5,000 but was ready to accept $3,000 when Lefferts said, "How would $40,000 strike you? In later years ...
