The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1921-02-11

Little Lamb" It is as vital a part of his progress to discard many accept was always af6aid od things that l worked the first time'' he says. When he had made more than 10000 experi-
 ments on the storage battery without a cond oling friend: NO results? Why, man, I've gotten lot of re-
 suits. I've found several thousand things that won't work"
 As for the boys regular schooling well, the less said the better ex-
 pressed. About five weeks was the limit The teacher frankly said he was added Anyway, as boy he was "a bad egg and he can't deny it, famous, successful and circumspect as he has become Fortunately, his mother had been an excellent school teacher herself when she took him in hand. The birch stick that hung be hind her Seth Thomas clock was kept we'll polished by merited whippings. His father, on the other hand, worked system of awards for good conduct which was no heavy tax upon him. self until he began to pay the boy a small sum for every book he read; l then it counted, for the boy promptly l learned to sense a line at a glance | and read three books a night with out missing any meaning, and he so | reads still.
 Foot of His Glass;
 Only five weeks of schooling and always at the foot of his class; but | today the greatest experiment - in- | ventor the world has ever knownt It
 rather upsets our fond notions of the | high value of common education = what? When it comes to that, MT.
 Edison would like to kneW what has | become of the StudiouS fellows who
 always stood at the heads of their
 classes and promised most masterful | achievement when they should get 1 whack at life? AS a rule their bril- | | rocket in the comm encement thesis ! and only a stick lands somewhere si- ! lent1y.
 l The Edison rule is the exact reverse | of that of common education. He | accepts nothing true until tested | and proved to his own senses. The | schools have to do with the wisdom | of the past, which Is not all wisdom; i he delves into the undreamed mys- l terieS of the flu ture and the undiScOv- Il cred forces. Learned lumber fixes
 limitations. In the biography of Ed l ison, written by William H. Meadow croft, his secretary. which is work | of genius commemorating genius, it is i related that one of the most learned Il specialists Edison ever employed,
 when he had worked out three pro-
 cesses to attain a certain result in II the concentration of magnetic ore.
 and all failed. said it could not be
 done. Edison took it up himself and
 in two days worked out AS processes,
 and one of them worked.
 Though the boy diSgraced the foot
 of his class for his five weeks in
 school, his eagerness for knowledge was literally unsuitable. Before he was twelve he had read all of Gfb- bon's Decline of the Roman Em- pire," IIume's History of England,'' 9 Sears History of the World,'' Bur tons Anatomy of Melancholy and the Dictionary of Sciences" Get ting hold of Parker's Physics he tried every experiment in it that he ] had not tried already. At last, at started in at one end of the shelves l to read every book, enc next another l and had read through several shelves a when he baked at Newton's "Prin' cipia-'' Today, as then, he detests ! and avoids mathematics. except sucf ! as he can do in his head.'' Easy to Hire Figure Men. Many of your problems must cal a for most complex math ematcS; hoy
 do you work them out"
 = 70, I always know plenty of math
 ematicians I can hire" he said. 'Fbu
 I never knew a mathematician wh'
 could hire me-
 Will the educators come forwart
 and explain this reversal of thei principles?
 From earliest boyhood he 1nstlnc
 lively gathered unto himself knowl
 edge and materials for his expert
 ments as the unknown but unerrini
 maeent attracts to itself congenia [. metals. In a corner of the home eel Il lar was his "laboratory.'' To thi T promised possible use-iron and bras s scraps, wires, tools, retorts, chemi n calls and books to the limit of hi T varied acquisitive powers which wa l, far beyond the limit of others pa a tience.