When Edison was 7 years old, he was already enlightened by business.
In Edison's home in Port Huron, there is a 30-meter-high tower.
After the tower was built, his father handed over the management to Edison.
Edison charges 25 cents for each visitor who climbs the tower, and at its most, 600 people come to visit in a day.
Father was happy, and he was ready to use the money to send Edison's brother to school.
As time went on, fewer and fewer people visited, and Edison saw the situation and reduced the cost of climbing the tower to 10 cents.
But the results were not great, and Edison saw the situation and told his father: If we install a telescope on the top of the tower, there should still be someone to play.
Although it ultimately failed, it also activated Edison's passion for business.
By the time Edison was 12 years old, he was no longer satisfied with the knowledge in the textbook.
He pleaded with the conductor of the train from Port Huron to Detroit to allow him to sell newspapers on the train.
The conductor was overwhelmed and agreed to him.
However, Edison gave the work to his friends so that he could free up time to read and secretly experiment on the train.
His first job, in this way, became a small boss.
It's not so much about making money as he's leaving time for more important things, reading books and doing experiments.
When the Civil War began in 1861, Edison saw 25,000 killed on a billboard in Detroit.
He immediately said to the webmaster: Please immediately send a telegram to the various sites to publish this news. He promised to deliver a free newspaper to the webmaster every day.
Edison immediately ordered 1,000 newspapers and doubled the price of the newspapers, only to be sold out the next day.
From this incident, it reflects Edison's keen sense of business.
At the age of 15, he found that readers preferred to talk, so he ran his own newspaper and published lace news of some celebrities along the railway.
Unexpectedly, he was thrown into the river by the person concerned, and he knew that this was a very dangerous behavior.
When Edison invented the light bulb, he had $50,000 in support from Morgan, but the money was spent in 13 months, and the light bulb had not yet been researched.
Morgan said he was reluctant to put any more money in.
In the end, Edison had to pay millions of dollars himself, expand the factory, and sell the expensive bulbs to users at low prices.
Edison worked 17 hours a day, experimenting with more than 1,500 materials to make filaments inside the bulb, but all failed.
He even pulled off the old man's red beard to make a filament, but he still didn't succeed.
He finally made a filament of platinum, and immediately after his success, he applied for a patent in April 1879.
But it was also a failed product because it was very impractical.
When he was confused, he suddenly saw the carbon block next to the table.
At that time, people knew very well that carbon would burn into ashes immediately after it was energized.
Edison thought that if electricity had been applied in a vacuum, the carbon might not have burned out.
So, immediately after the experiment, it was successful, and the bulb went out 45 hours after powering on.
It was October 20, 1879.
By chance, he found that the charcoal filament baked from bamboo lasted 30 hours longer than bulbs made of other materials.
So he selected 20 teams of people and horses, spent $100,000, and went around the world to collect 6,000 kinds of bamboo for experiments.
On Chinese New Year's Eve night, Edison hung hundreds of light bulbs at the Menlo Park Institute, attracting a large number of people to visit.
After the invention of the light bulb, Edison's lighting company lost money year after year, because the production cost was too high, and in the fourth year, the cost was reduced and turned into a profit.
The invention of the battery, Edison took 10 years and cost $3 million. Finally invented the alkali battery.
Imagine if Edison had been just an inventor, many of his inventions would have been abandoned because he didn't have the money.
This is not the loss of Edison alone, but the loss of modern scientific and technological civilization.
Edison invented light bulbs and generators, but downtown New York would not allow wires to be installed, citing fear of them exploding.
The insurance company refused to insure a cruise ship because it was fitted with Edison's light bulbs, also on the grounds that the wires would explode.
Edison pinched a cold sweat, but the cruise ship finally returned safely.
He said to his wife: "It is a blessing that if the cruise ship hits the reef or encounters a storm, the final loss will still be counted on his head."
In order to eliminate people's misunderstandings, Edison let hundreds of workers walk on the streets in light-filled clothes, which became the most beautiful scenery at night.
The next day, the theater manager approached Edison to perform a light bulb dance in the theater. Later, the audience was full every day, and the manager made a big profit from it.
One year, Edison invented the phonograph, but was told by a priest to be a liar.
Because of the great influence of this pastor, Edison had no choice but to ask the priest to go to his factory for inspection.
When the pastor went, he read a few of the most difficult words of the Bible in the fastest language, and as a result, the phonograph played word for word, and the pastor was ashamed and immediately changed his opinion of Edison.
With more than 2,000 invention patents, Edison was undoubtedly the best of its time. Although most of his inventions are based on the experience of his predecessors, they will still be questioned and discredited.
It is often said that the minority obeys the majority, but the pioneers of the times are often a very small minority.
epilogue:
People think of Edison as a shrewd businessman.
Or, mock him with his touting of direct current and discrediting him.
But if he wasn't a businessman, it's hard to imagine that he could invent so many things and use them in people's lives.
Edison proved by practice that he was a businessman and the best inventor.
This is not a contradiction, take today, Ali, Huawei, are not all investing hundreds of millions of dollars to engage in research and development?
Edison has long told the world with actions that a good businessman is a good inventor.