Tuesday 1 July 2014

Lessons from the life of HEROES from the past 1: Thomas Edison "The great inventor"



What was his pursuit and his inspirations that made him accomplish so much?
“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration.” Thomas Alva Edison, Harper’s Monthly (September 1932 edition).
Having gone through the biography of Thomas Edison, it made realize so much about life, challenges, handling difficulties and pursuing your greatest passion. Edison was a business man as well as an inventor who had so little to begin life with.
He was born on the 11th day of February, 1847. Milan, Ohio, U.S. and he died heroically on the 18th day of October, 1931 in West Orange, New Jersey, U.S. (aged 84). His father ran away from his family for a disclosed reason. He was American with a reported Dutch ancestry.
He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the PHONOGRAPH, the MOTION PICTURE CAMERA, and the first long-lasting, practical electric light bulb which lasted for 13.5 hours. He is so prolific in his inventions that he holds 1,093 US patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

His education life was not so buoyant, as he was downed by his teacher because he has a wandering mind which prompted him (the reverend Engle) to call him “addled”. This ended Edison’s three months of official schooling. He recalled later, and said, “My mother is the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint.” His mother taught him at home. Much of his education came from reading R.G. parker’s school of Natural Philosophy and The cooper Union. HE MADE THE BEST OF HIS INABILITY TO COMPLETE NORMAL SCHOOL PROCESS.
He developed hearing problem when he was thrown off a moving train along with his apparatus when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire in the train in Smiths Creek, Michigan.
When his family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, his life there was a living hell. Edison was young; he sold candy and newspaper on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, and sold vegetables to supplement his income. He was able to struggle and studied qualitative analysis, and conducted chemical experiments on the train until an accident halted further work of that kind.


Edison then obtained the official right to sell newspaper on the road, where he began a type and print publication called the Grand Trunk Herald, which he sold with his other papers. This was how his entrepreneurial ventures began, as e discovered his talents in business. These talents eventually led him to found 14 companies, including General Electric, which is still one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world today.
I hope you can get inspired by how determined he was even to the extent that  he had to sell stuffs just to survive and make ends meet in his journey of life. Of course, he was successful in doing it all. I will be sharing more of his inventions with you in my next week publication. Nothing is going to happen to that your vision except you do something about it. Am so inspired right now, I wish you could be too.

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I remain your humble professional life coach, mentor /counselor, inspired by the holy-spirit.
Samuel C.A. James                  

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