Edison on Innovation: 102 Lessons in Creativity for Business and Beyond

2.2. Lesson 3: Become a Boy of the Nineteenth Century

Twelve-year-old Tom Edison and his father were at the railroad station, waiting for the train to take them from Milan, Ohio, where they had been visiting family, to their home in Port Huron, Michigan. They waited among a pile of crates to be shipped home to Port Huron. As a boy—and things would not be very different when he grew up—Edison found it impossible to sit still and do nothing. Spying a paint pot and brush on the platform, he marked each crate for shipment to Port Huron. The station master was so impressed by the job that he immediately offered Edison $ 30 a month plus room and board to work as his factotum.

That should have been job enough for any ambitious boy, but Tom Edison had ...