The life of Thomas Edison Learn English through story level 3

thomas edison the man who invented the

electric

light bulb

[Music]

one day i was poor the next

i was rich i brought light to cities

and invented lots of new things

how did i do it i worked hard

but i also had good luck

i met the right people at the right time

[Music]

i was born in the united states

i went to school for only three months

because my teacher thought that i

caused trouble in the classroom

in fact i spoke in a loud voice

because i couldn’t hear very well

when i left school i was only seven

years

old my mother became my teacher

at home my parents had seven

children and i was the youngest

we didn’t have much money so when i was

12 years old

all my brothers and sisters worked

i decided to work too i got a job

on the railways and i sold food and

drinks

on trains one day i was at mount

clemons station when i saw a little boy

on the railway

there was a train coming and i ran to

save him

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the boy was the station master’s

three-year-old son

he wanted to thank me for saving his son

and taught me how to use the telegraph

i could get a better job now

from 1863 to 1867

i worked as a telegraph operator

i liked machines and i sometimes did

experiments

when i was 19 i had a job at the western

union company

in louisville one day

i was trying an experiment when i

spilled

acid in the office and lost my job

i moved to boston and invented a machine

to record votes no one was interested in

it

so when i was 22 years old i decided to

go to new york to make a new start

i knew one person in new york so i went

to see him

i haven’t got a job and i need some

money

could i borrow some from you i asked

he was surprised i can only

lend you a dollar he said

i took the dollar and promised to give

it back

this dollar changed my life

i was hungry and weak so i used the

dollar to buy a meal

i felt much stronger after my meal and i

went

out to look for a job i talked to a few

people

one of them was franklin pope

he worked for the gold indicator company

and he

showed me the company’s building i

stayed in the battery room that night

the next day i studied the company’s

machines

the third day was my lucky day

there was a machine that sent important

information

to the gold exchange suddenly

it stopped working

the people in the company didn’t know

what to do

but i knew what to do i repaired the

machine

dr samuel laws from the gold exchange

heard of my work he offered to pay me

three hundred dollars a month to repair

their machines

i was able to pay the dollar back

soon the president of the gold and stock

telegraph company

also heard of my work can you repair

the machines in our company he asked me

three thousand dollars or five thousand

dollars a year

was good pay for the job but he

offered me forty thousand dollars

i was lucky once again

this was the start of my career as a

businessman

and inventor i moved to new jersey

and i opened several telegraph companies

with franklin pope in 1870

mary stillwell got a job in one of my

companies

we got married the next year and had

three

children i was happy to have a family

but i didn’t have much time to be at

home

i had a lot of ideas for new inventions

in 1876 i built a research

laboratory at menlo park

formed a team and invented the

phonograph

a machine to play music and many other

things

my most important invention came next

every day when the sun set everything

was

dark we had electricity

but we had no electric light

after a lot of experiments and hours of

hard work at the laboratory

we invented the electric light bulb

the round glass object that produces

light

in 1882 i helped to put

400 lights in the streets of manhattan

new york got a new name the city that

never

sleeps i brought light to homes

hospitals offices factories

and schools it was the beginning of the

24

7 lifestyle 24 hours of light

seven days a week then

a sad day arrived in my life in 1885

my wife became ill and died

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but two years later i got married to

meena miller

and had three children

at work it was a time of success

i started more companies and invented

more things

i got one patent every 10 days

there were 1093 in total

then hard times came again in 1913

a big fire destroyed 13 of our buildings

the next year the first world war

started in europe

the government asked me to work on

inventions to find

guns and submarines i couldn’t work on

my

inventions anymore

during my life i started a lot of

companies

and invented many things one day

i was asked how did you do it

my answer was one percent inspiration

and 99 perspiration

hard work was the key