Thomas Alva Edison was a very successful inventor, scientist, and businessman born on February 11, 1847 in Mila, Ohio. He was the youngest out of seven children ("In Search of the Heroes"). Edison was determined to be the best at everything he did, which he was. 15 of his inventions have changed how we live our day to day lives. He was an inventor that changed modern societal life dramatically.
School was rough for Edison while growing up because his teachers thought he was “too stupid to learn anything” because he would always be daydreaming and did not focus, so his mom decided to homeschool him ("In Search of the Heroes"). He learned just about everything from reading several books about many different things. Growing up he did not speak of religion or anything of its nature, because he did not believe in god. He did believe strongly in environmental values and preservation as well as humanitarian values. As a young adult he had many different jobs to pay for supplies to do experiments. Once, he caught a train car on fire when he was a newsboy while doing an experiment. But failing did not stop Edison because he believed that through failure came success (“All The Information About Thomas Edison").
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But his career as an inventor did not start until 1868, when Edison gained his first patent for his electrical vote recorder. He is most famous for inventing the lightbulb in 1879; without this invention the world would be a different place. Edison also made many inventions better, like in 1891; he perfected the motion picture camera. He had a long-standing interest in the battery so in 1901 he decided to improve it. He also conducted special experiments on more than 40 major war problems for the Navy Department. In all his life he accumulated 1,093