Edison became a telegraph operator after he
saved three-year-old Jimmie MacKenzie from
being struck by a runaway train. Jimmie's
father, station agent J.U. MacKenzie of Mount
Clemens, Michigan , was so grateful that he
trained Edison as a telegraph operator.
Edison's first telegraphy job away from Port
Huron was at Stratford Junction, Ontario , on
the Grand Trunk Railway . [17]
In 1866, at the age of 19, Edison moved to
Louisville, Kentucky, where, as an employee
of Western Union , he worked the Associated
Press bureau news wire. Edison requested the
night shift, which allowed him plenty of time
to spend at his two favorite pastimes—reading
and experimenting. Eventually, the latter pre-
occupation cost him his job. One night in
1867, he was working with a lead–acid
battery when he spilled sulfuric acid onto the
floor. It ran between the floorboards and onto
his boss's desk below. The next morning
Edison was fired. [18]
One of his mentors during those early years
was a fellow telegrapher and inventor named
Franklin Leonard Pope , who allowed the
impoverished youth to live and work in the
basement of his Elizabeth, New Jersey, home.
Some of Edison's earliest inventions were
related to telegraphy, including a stock ticker.
His first patent was for the electric vote
recorder, (U.S. Patent 90,646), [19] which was
granted on June 1, 1869. [20]
Marriages and children
On December 25, 1871, Edison married 16-
year-old Mary Stilwell (1855–1884), whom he
had met two months earlier; she was an
employee at one of his shops. They had three
children:
Marion Estelle Edison (1873–1965),
nicknamed "Dot" [21]
Thomas Alva Edison, Jr. (1876–1935),
nicknamed "Dash" [22]
William Leslie Edison (1878–1937) Inventor,
graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School at
Yale, 1900. [23]
Mary Edison died at age 29 on August 9,
1884, of unknown causes: possibly from a
brain tumor [24] or a morphine overdose .
Doctors frequently prescribed morphine to
women in those years to treat a variety of
causes, and researchers believe that some of
her symptoms sounded as if they were
associated with morphine poisoning. [25]
Mina Edison in 1906
On February 24, 1886, at the age of thirty-
nine, Edison married the 20-year-old Mina
Miller (1866–1947) in Akron, Ohio .[26] She
was the daughter of the inventor Lewis Miller ,
co-founder of the Chautauqua Institution and
a benefactor of Methodist charities. They also
had three children together:
Madeleine Edison (1888–1979), who
married John Eyre Sloane. [27][28]
Charles Edison (1890–1969), Governor of
New Jersey (1941 – 1944), and took over his
father's company and experimental
laboratories upon his father's death. [29]
Theodore Edison (1898–1992), (MIT Physics
1923), credited with more than 80 patents.
Mina outlived Thomas Edison, dying on
August 24, 1947. [30][31]
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