Although he was the last of seven children, Thomas Alva Edison was born into a largely empty household. February 11, 1847, was a cold, snowy night in the tiny village of Milan, Ohio, not far from the shores of Lake Erie. Edison’s mother, Nancy, who seemed always to be wrapped in black mourning garb, was eager to have more children to replace those who had not survived. One son, Carlile, died in 1842, when he was only 6 years old. A second son, 3-year-old Samuel Ogden, perished a year later while Nancy was pregnant with daughter Eliza. Eliza also lived only three years, passing away in late 1847, when Thomas was still an infant.
The arrival of “Little Al,” as he was known in his youth, was a welcome sight. Frail and burdened with an unusually large (though “well-shaped”) head, Edison struggled to survive a sickly childhood. The doctors feared he had something they called “brain fever.” Mostly he struggled alone; his eldest sister, Marion, often his only real companion, was already an adult when he was born. In 1849, when she was 20 and he just 2 years old, she married and moved away. Edison never forgave her new husband for taking Marion from him. His older brother William Pitt (named for the English statesman) and sister Harriet Ann moved out of the house not long after. Little Al was essentially raised as an only child.
His older siblings were born in Vienna, Ontario, a mirror of Milan on the northern shore of Lake Erie. Edison’s great-grandfather John, who lived to be a feisty 102 years old, was a Tory fighting on the British side in the American Revolution before barely escaping into Canada ahead of the noose. Edison’s father, Samuel, continued the family tradition of rebellion, this time against the Canadian government. Many years later, Edison remarked that his father had “always been a rebel, a regular red-hot copperhead Democrat, and [had] General Jackson as his hero.” Samuel Edison’s actions once again made emigration a necessary, and rather sudden, option for survival. He had joined with the losing side of the short-lived Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837 and escaped Canada on the run, stopping off briefly in Michigan before settling in Milan. John’s family soon joined him. With new children on the way, Samuel began the next phase of his life. Little Al—named Alva in honor of Captain Alva Bradley, a family friend and ship owner on the Great Lakes who had helped the family escape Canada—was the only one of the Milan-born children to survive.
[Adapted from my book, Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World.]
Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.
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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
Most people of heard of Doris Kearns Goodwin from her bestselling book, Team of Rivals, about Abraham Lincoln picking many of his political rivals to key cabinet positions. Initially well sold, it got a huge boost after then-candidate Barack Obama was seen carrying it on the campaign trail prior to his 2008 election, then again when Obama picked his rival Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State, much like Lincoln put William Seward in that position. Another boost came from Steven Spielberg’s movie, Lincoln, which was based on a tiny part of Goodwin’s book.
A close relative of the somewhat larger and more famous Komodo Dragon, all monitor lizards belong to the genus Varanus, a word derived from the Arabic meaning “dragon” or my favorite, “lizard beast.” And what a beast he was (but in a good way).
George Balch, a local farmer and poet who knew Thomas and Sarah Lincoln, wrote a poem years later to bring public attention to the neglected condition of the grave. A portion graces the waymarker sign; the following presents the entire poem.
One of the many thrills from my most recent 
During his illustrious scientific career, Nikola Tesla developed many inventions that changed the world, including his unique design for a rotating magnetic field motor that enabled the use of alternating current on a commercial basis, wireless communication across vast distances, and even early “shadowgraphs,” precursors to X-rays. He also made forays into areas that, while he did not succeed in commercializing, set the stage for future developments, including wireless remote control of boats and other devices (robotics). Tesla did make some grandiose claims that did not come to fruition, the biggest of which included the wireless transmission of power through the Earth, plus a directed energy weapon. He also claimed to have communicated with intelligent beings from the planet Venus or Mars.
I was traveling. That’s my excuse for being a bit tardy on this wrap of the year in science traveling, 2018. And what a year of traveling it was, with 8 new countries visited, plus a lot of domestic travel. Click on the links for stories about some of the stops.
The end of June put me on a 
Three days later we flew out to 
The year 2018 in a writer’s life was good. Well, kind of up and down, really. Okay, let’s just call it a year of transition. And that is actually a good thing.
