First, the Inspiration

When I read a biography as I am doing now, Edison by Matthew Josephson, I am most interested about the beginnings of the person's life, where they came from and what sorts of early experiences they had. I like to see how thinking and behaviors take shape and form patterns. The Edisons could be described as a free-spirited, adventurous family, and "Al" was his mother's baby, her seventh child, born when she was middle aged, according to the bio. He had only three months of official schooling and was taught primarily at home by his mother, which was a good thing as she saw his imaginative bent and allowed him to follow it. By the age of ten, he was all about chemistry and absorbed in the experiments he performed in his own lab in the basement of their Michigan home. Josephson wrote ". . . his mother had accomplished that which all truly great teachers do for their pupils: she brought him to the stage of learning things for himself, learning that which most amused and interested him, and she encouraged him to go on in that path."

Edison was passionate about his interests, but more than that, he was a diligent, studious scientist, hence his famous quote, "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration....I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident. They came by work." But he first was encouraged and supported by a loving and wise mother.