FAMOUS INVENTOR'S CLEVER SON.

Northland Age, Volume VI, Issue 3, 6 September 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

FAMOUS INVENTOR'S CLEVER SON.

Mr. Thomas Alva Edison, perhaps the most celebrated inventor living to-dav anywhere—to whom the world is indebted for the phonograph and such a multitude of telegraphic and other electric marvels—has a wonderfully clever son of 12, Theodore, who bids fair to follow in the footsteps of his famous father. The boy, a bright-eyed, light-haired, lighthearted. always active lad, is Mr. Edison's constant companion when not at school. What better education could he ask ? It is a strange eantrast, this pair. One, the greyhaired inventior, poring over his test tulK*s and batteries and phials ; the other, the youth, not yet in his teens, standing beside him, never saying a word, but watching every move, every process. Few words are spoken. “Teddy" Edison knows better than that. For hours they remain together without a word, the boy watching every move of his father, drinking in the knowledge that books* could never give him. Mr. Edison may mix certain strange chemicals, set his wires, and then wait for the result. The boy is just as interested a s he. Sometimes he may offer a suggestion. The matured inventor, so apt in all the difficult technicalities of his work, may miss the simplest thing ; that is where the boy gets his chance to set him right, and in the noting of essential detail for the working out of his father's plans Theodore is never at fault. Should a wire be crossed or a pole not properly connected the boy will at once point the matter out. When his father is awrny from the works the boy gets into the laboratory. and experiments 0 n his own account. Numerous broken w T ax records and a couple of dismembered phonographs, the parts of which lie scattered about the laboratory, attest to this. The lad is always at liberty to enter the laboratory, and if he feels disposed may use anv of the costly chemicals, or if he wishes to start the electrical apparatus in operation he asks leave of no one depart menially in charge. His father and his father’s practical men in the factory nil th’ng highly of young F.di'On as a coming inventor.