Reading and writing fill in the blanks
Matthew Josephson does an excellent job of covering the life and works of Thomas Alva Edison. The author of the book covered every aspect of Thomas Edisons life from the time his grandparents lived in the original Thirteen colonies to the point where he was born in Milan, Ohio and later up to the point where he died in 1931. Thomas Alva Edison was both a scientist and an inventor. When he was born in 1847, Edison would see change take place in his lifetime. He was also to be responsible for making many of those changes occur. When Edison was born, society still thought of electricity as a , a fad. By the time he died, entire cities were lit by electricity.
Much of the credit for that progress goes to Edison. In his lifetime, Edison patented 1,093 inventions, earning him the nickname "The Wizard of Menlo Park." The most famous of his inventions was the incandescent light bulb. Besides the light bulb, Edison developed the phonograph and the "kinetoscope," a small box for viewing moving films. He also upon the original design of the stock ticker, the telegraph, and Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. He believed in hard work, sometimes working twenty hours a day or more, depending upon the situation. Edison was quoted as saying, "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." In to this important American, electric lights in the United States were dimmed for one minute on October 21, 1931, a few days after his death.