The long way round to a Thomas Edison biography

"Electrifying"-Galvani

Taking the long way home here… I was often sickly as a boy and spent days in my room – much of it reading the encyclopedia randomly. That, and listening to the radio. They had radio story tellers back then, in effect something like the podcast today. For example, a properly erudite fellow in Chicago on WBBM (35000W) – I cant imagine his name – [was it Taking the long way home here… I was often sicky as a boy and spent days in my room – much of it reading the encyclopedia randomly. That, and listening to the radio. They had radio story tellers back then, in effect something like the podcast today. For example, a properly erudite fellow in Chicago on WBBM – I cant imagine his name – was it Mal Bellairs? - Paul Gibson?- would come on at lunch time for 15 minutes and recount an event or person’s life – maybe a figure from this day in history. And I found his stories often mesmerizing.

I vaguely recall a life of Charlemagne. I pretty distinctly recall a telling of the story of Disraeli ( you would find out at the end, the subjects name). Most vivid still is the story the radio man told about Thomas Edison. Of the boy in the Civil War days who rode the  Grand Track rail from Port Huron to Detroit, selling papers, even writing them and publishing them from a baggage car. And when he’d get to Detroit, waiting for the evening train back, he’d go to the Detroit Library. And read. He’d pick books beyond his ken.  And a librarian asked how he selected the tomes. Turns out he started on the top shelf on the left and was working his way in sequence through the whole collection. That resonated for me. The story with some different details appears in Edison by Edmund Morris, which I read during the Year of the COVID-19. The bio is linked to here on my Progressive Gauge blog. It’s also on my AmAzon Reviews page. – Jack Vaughan

Edison had a history in Boston. It is kind of where he got his first real start - tho he was in New York in a few months [~] more or less. Some of his co's were HQ'd here. I think that is the case with Edison Electric Illuminating Company which still has its residue - as seen in this sign on an old power plant on Boylston St, just west of the Buckminster Hotel and Kenmore Sq and Northwest of Fenway Park near the Pike and remnant railroad yards I use to climb through on my way to work at BU. Pretty sure I had a cosmic moment meditating upon this power plant one night in time.