Thomas Alva Edison

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For me to be a hero is to be smart, to be perseverant, to take challenges, to overcome obstacles to be someone special. That is a hero.

I chose Thomas Alva Edison for my hero essay, because he covers all these qualities. He was born on February 11, 1847 in Ohio, Milan and raised up in Port Huron in Michigan. He is the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison Jr. (1804-1896) and Nancy Matthews Edison nee Elliot (1810-1871) who were of Dutch origin.

Thomas Edison was a very curious child. He was always asking how everything works, from where they came from. His teacher Reverend Engle who call him “addled” had expelled him from school. Then the mother of Thomas, Nancy, claimed the reverend and shouted at him that Thomas was even smarter than him. She home school him. He read Reading School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union which were the base of his education.

Years later, from an infection in his ears and a scarlet fever, Edison got deaf and he continued working at his lab. His lab was located in a wagon of a train. This was because he worked on a train station. He patented 1039 inventions and there are more, but someone had already patented them before him. The light bulb, his most famous invention, revolutionized everyone’s life. He got the title of “Wizard of Menlo”. Because of that and more inventions he didn't only change my life, he changed the lives of many people.

I consider him a hero because someone who has created so many inventions and also with a lot of creativity and imagination, has to be a HERO.