Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison's First Patent

Young Thomas Edison was home schooled by his mother in Milan, Ohio. He developed a hearing problem at an early age, this was most likely from a childhood illness like scarlet fever or a common untreated ear infection. Thomas's family was forced to move when something happened to the railroad near their home. The family moved to Michigan where Thomas found a job selling candy, newspapers, and vegetables on a train. His talent as a business man was now discovered. With all this business skill, he went on to found fourteen different companies, including General Electric, which is still one of the largest electric companies in the world, and is fully running. He found a new job working at a telegraphy business, but he was fired when he spilled sulfuric acid on his boss's desk. Now that Thomas had no money and no job, then he had no house and no work place for him to experiment. But luckily a man named Franklin Leonard Pope who also worked at the telegraphy business and later in life died of electrocution, allowed Thomas to stay in his house and continue experimenting. All of Thomas's free time lead to his first popular invention, the improved stock ticker. He showed this to Franklin who was very pleased with it. It just so happened that Franklin was a U.S. patent attorney. Thomas once again showed Franklin his second invention and got his first patent on the electric voter.After this Thomas never stopped experimenting and inventing, he patented 1,093 U.S. patents in his name, not including the patents he had in the U.K., France, and Germany. Thomas's most famous invention was the light bulb.

Rachel Carson

Rachel Carson's Book

When Rachel Carson was a young girl she loved to write stories. Her favorite stories were about nature and the ocean. She studied hard in high school in order to move on to Pennsylvania College for Women, where she studied Zoology and biology. At her first job she worked as a half student and half assistant in a laboratory, where she earned money for school bills. Her writing skills helped her a lot in her work. She researched marine life in the Chesapeake Bay and gave away bits and pieces to local news papers and magazines. Rachel now had degree in zoology and a job at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries. At this job, her writing skills greatly improved her status among all of the men at the bureau. Her manager loved her writing so much that she became the second woman to be hired for a full time job at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries,(by this time known as the Fish and Wildlife Service), as a Junior Aquatic Biologist. Rachel's writing career took a sudden turn when a book publisher asked her to expand a recently written news paper column that she submitted to a news paper. She named the book,"Under the Sea-Wind".It was well reviewed but sold poorly. So Rachel continued working and submitting news paper columns. But a few years later, another publisher asked her the same thing. Only this time Rachel took herself much more seriously. She called this book,"The Sea Around Us." This book was such a great seller that Rachel was allowed to retire from her job at the Fish and Wildlife Service and write all she wanted for the rest of her life.