Page 163 - Green Butterfly Book 2

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Under the telegraph rooms was an elegant bank and one day, while experimenting, he spilled a great bottle of acid. This acid went through the floor into the bank below. Of course it spoiled the ceiling, handsome carpets, and furniture.
So the unfortunate inventor had to leave Louisville. He finally gave up trying to be a telegraph operator and opened a little shop.
He invented many things, and kept on thinking. He could not make his inventions successful, for he had little money. He thought so hard that he forgot everything else.
Once he was asked to speak before a company. He forgot all about it. They sent for him, and found him at the top of a house putting up a telegraph line. He went in his working clothes to make his speech. He felt queer when he found a room full of elegant ladies. But he made a good speech.
Thomas Alva Edison
Fourteen-year-old
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Then he went to New York. There he walked the streets three weeks, looking for work. Nobody wanted a man who experimented.
By chance, he one day went into an office where the telegraph instrument was out of repair. He offered to fix it. They laughed at him, but let him try. He succeeded in fixing it, so they gave him a job.
From this time on there were better times for him.
After this the world soon sang his praises; and, in the next ten years, Fortune poured into his lap half a million dollars.
This was the result of his thinking.
The man who was in charge of the United States Patent Office called him “the young man who keeps the pathway to the Patent Office hot with his footsteps.”
Mr. Edison believed that two messages could be sent over the same wire at the same time. Of course the world laughed at the idea. But soon our inventor managed to send four messages over the same wire at the same time. Then the world stopped laughing.
People said, “This young man is the greatest inventor of his age, and a discoverer as well.” The Grand Trunk train-boy had proved a genius.
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