Page 38 - Viva Real English 4 : Ebook

One day the train was running fast over a piece of poorly laid track. As the

train jolted violently, a stick of phosphorous was jarred from its shelf, fell to the
floor and burst into flame. The compartment was on fire. The boy tried hard to
quench the blaze. The train conductor quickly rushed in with water and saved the
compartment. At the next station, Edison, along with his equipment and papers,
was thrown out of the train. The train moved off leaving him on the platform with
tearful eyes amidst his broken articles.

After the accident the furious train conductor had boxed Edison in the ear so

severely that he started growing deaf. But he did not see his deafness as a handicap.
He said that it helped him concentrate, shutting out the distracting sounds from
the surroundings while he conducted his experiments.

Edison’s next career was as a telegraph operator. As a newsboy on a train he had
once saved the child of a station agent from being hit by a boxcar. As a reward, the
station agent taught him the art of telegraphy and made him an operator.

Edison never stopped experimenting and building new machines.

Many years later he set up a factory of inventions. He employed
hundreds of men, all busy with inventions. He worked as hard as his
employees, often eighteen out of twenty-four hours of the day. Once
a great fire destroyed many of his factory buildings. His answer to the
wild, leaping flames was, ‘We will begin rebuilding tomorrow.’

Edison’s factory turned out hundreds of inventions. The most
valuable of his inventions are the electric light, the phonograph

and the moving picture. The electric light became part of people’s
everyday life. The phonograph, or the sound recorder, made it
possible to distribute music recorded on wax disks. The moving
pictures led to the development of movies. Perhaps no other inventor has enriched
our daily lives as much as Thomas Alva Edison.

jolted : jerked handicap : disability

quench the blaze : stop the fire from concentrate : to give all your attention
burning distracting : taking your attention
boxed in the ear : hit somebody on the away from what you are doing
side of their head with hand as boxcar : a closed railway coach for
a punishment carrying goods

28