Edison as I know him, by Henry Ford, in collaboration with Samuel Crowther.

EDISON As I KNOW HIM

out and taught him herself. Mrs. Edison, who
had been a teacher, saw him for what he was
and saved him from the bad effects of a too great
distaste for schools.
He quickly learned to read-and he has been
reading ever since. It is hardly possible to mention any book of major importance on any subject which he has not read. I found a copy of
"Natural and Experimental Philosophy" by
Richard Green Parker, published in i856, which
was the same text-book that I used in school, and
this, it turned out, was the first book on science
he had ever read. He wrote on the flyleaf:
"Parker's Philosophy was the first book in
science that I read when a boy nine years old. I
picked it out as the first I could understand."
That book had in it about all that was known
of science at the time. It covered everything from
steam engines to balloons and also all the chemistry that was known, together with hundreds of
different experiments. It was hardly a book for
a boy of nine, but it was the book that Edison
had been looking for. It gave to him his first view
of the world of science. And it seemed that his
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