Independent Minds — Edison
Discovering History’s Formula For Learning And Development
Our first installment of Independent Minds focused on Ben Franklin. Ben brought extra meaning to the term — independent. But Thomas Edison’s story is no less impressive. His impact on history is no less either. Edison’s education and process should make for a powerful second installment.
Edison spent a total of 12 weeks in the public school system. He was a ‘difficult’ student. His mother, a teacher, opted to try home schooling. It began a process that would serve him for a lifetime. By the age of 12, he had already gone to work, starting a lifelong interest in entrepreneurship and experimentation.
Home Schooling
Edison was the son of a Canadian exile. His family was poor. While his mother had some experience teaching, Edison would be her first real challenge. Her dedicated and unusual approach was probably the greatest gift a mother could give her son. She shared with him her love for great books, reading him works by Shakespeare, Dickens, and Hume. Her patience and skill for reading caught the attention of an otherwise unfocused youth.
Edison’s mother also introduced young Edison to the realm of science, again through books. But this time she also indulged his need for hands-on learning and experimentation. Like many young scientists, Edison took to spending large amounts of time in his family’s basement. He became so obsessed that his father began offering to pay him to read more. Edison read Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason for the robust payment of a single penny.
Self-Education
As noted, Edison’s home schooling may have lasted longer than his time in public school, but by age 12 he was off to earn an income. Chemistry supplies were expensive and a penny per book would only take him so far. Edison began following his entrepreneurial spirit. He would rely on self-education for the remainder of his life.
Edison would continue to be a voracious reader. His interests remained varied with such loves as Les Miserables— but works on chemistry and electricity were now ever present. Not everything was easy. Struggles with more theoretical topics soon made him realize that his was a more practical mind. As with many great scholars, he learned to make the most of both successes and failures.
Opportunity
Edison lived at a time when many people lived their entire life in just one town. He was the exception being constantly on the move. He would live in dozens of town and states throughout his teens and early adulthood. Throughout that time, he would also struggle financially. He was often left to chose between education and clothing… He chose education and suffered the consequences.
Edison made better use of his free time by exploiting opportunity. His early work, selling newspapers on the train, left him with a 5 hour layover in Detroit. Edison was able to store his basement chemistry equipment in an unused baggage car to create a mobile laboratory. He made frequent use of the Detroit Free Library. He seized on any opportunity he could find to advance his knowledge and leverage what life presented him.
Analysis
When Edison began working for the Telegraph at age 20, he would add a new skill to his education repertoire — analysis. He developed a penchant for buying old equipment. He would take it home and tear it apart. He was able to analyze the components and study their connections. This education built on reverse engineering would lead to his first patent in 1869. Many more would follow.
Edison’s use of analysis led to many more patents. Each was an iterative improvement on existing technology. Analysis allowed Edison to begin making a mark in his industry. His improvements were quickly adopted as industry standards and his skills and knowledge were soon sought after by new industries eager to make use of telegraph technology.
Experimentation
Edison would earn over 1000 patents. They weren’t all small improvements. His love of experimentation, that began in his parent’s basement, was still going strong. Edison’s fame would be build on dozens of laboratory accidents that would lead to breakthroughs in sound, film, and electricity. These laboratory events were not all dramatic. They were accidents in the sense that Edison found wholly unintended insight.
For example — his first patents for the ‘phonograph’, a completely new technology, came from an observation that a telegraph stylus with too much voltage passing through it, created noise. The ever practical Edison reasoned that this unintended noise could be controlled. History was made.
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