Thomas Edison: The Boy His Teacher Called Slow Who Lit Up the World

Key takeaways

• Edison went to school for only about three months; by his own account a teacher called him muddled, and his mother Nancy, a former teacher, taught him at home.
• In October 1879 a bulb with a carbonized cotton thread burned for about 13.5 hours; later, bamboo from near Kyoto, Japan made bulbs last for thousands of hours.
• The bulb alone was not enough: on 4 September 1882 his Pearl Street station in New York started selling electricity, from 59 customers to more than 500 within about two years.
• Edison lost the war of the currents: AC from Westinghouse and Tesla could travel far, and most homes still use AC today; many historians see his campaign against AC as his darkest chapter.
• After the December 1914 fire destroyed much of his West Orange plant, Edison, then 67, said he would start again the next day; he held 1,093 US patents when he died on 18 October 1931.