Thomas Edison Trivia Quiz Questions
Who was Thomas Alva Edison?
A: Thomas Alva Edison was an American
inventor and businessman.
Where was Thomas Edison born?
A: In Milan, Ohio.
Where did Thomas grow up?
A: In Port Huron, Michigan.
He was the seventh and last child of whom?
A: Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. and Nancy Matthews Elliott.
His father had to escape from
Canada because he took part
in what?
A: The unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837.
In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his
teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him what?
A: "addled".
This ended Edison's what?
A: Three months of official schooling.
Edison's mother taught him at home, and much of his
education came from reading what?
A: R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union.
Edison developed what kind of health problems at an early
age?
A: hearing.
Edison's family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, after what?
A: The railroad bypassed Milan in 1854 and business declined.
Edison sold candy and
newspapers on trains running from
Port Huron to Detroit, and sold vegetables to what?
A: Supplement his income.
He also studied qualitative analysis, and conducted
chemical experiments on the
train until what happened?
A: An accident prohibited further work of the kind.
Edison, with the aid of four assistants, set in type and
printed what?
A: The Grand Trunk Herald.
This began Edison's long streak of what?
A: Entrepreneurial ventures, as he discovered his talents as a businessman.
These talents eventually led him to found how many
companies, including General Electric, which is still one of the largest
publicly traded companies in the world?
A: 14.
Edison became a telegraph operator after he did what?
A: He saved three-year-old Jimmie MacKenzie from being struck by a runaway
train.
Jimmie's father, station agent J.U. MacKenzie of Mount
Clemens, Michigan, was so grateful that he did what?
A: He trained Edison as a telegraph operator.
Edison's first telegraphy job away from Port Huron was
where?
A: At Stratford Junction, Ontario, on the Grand Trunk Railway.
At the age of 19, Edison moved to where?
A: Louisville, Kentucky.
As an employee of Western Union, he worked the Associated
Press bureau what?
A: News wire.
Edison requested the night shift, which allowed him plenty
of time to spend at his two favorite pastimes, which were what?
A: Reading and experimenting.
Eventually, the latter pre-occupation cost him what?
A: His job.
One night in 1867, he was working with a
lead–acid battery
when he spilled what?
A: Sulfuric acid onto the floor.
It ran between the floorboards and onto what?
A: His boss's desk below.
The next morning Edison was what?
A: Fired.
One of his mentors during those early years was a fellow
telegrapher and inventor with what name?
A: Franklin Leonard Pope.
Pope allowed the impoverished youth to live and work
where?
A: In the basement of his Elizabeth, New Jersey, home.
Some of Edison's earliest inventions were related to what?
A: Telegraphy, including a stock ticker.
His first patent was for a what?
A: An electric vote recorder, (U.S. Patent 90,646).
On December 25, 1871, who did Edison marry?
A: 16-year-old Mary Stilwell, whom he had met two months earlier.
She was an employee at what?
A: One of his shops.
How many children did they have?
A: Three.
What were the names of his three children?
A: Marion Estelle Edison, Thomas Alva Edison, and William Leslie Edison.
Mary Edison died at age 29 on August 9, 1884, of what?
A: Unknown causes: possibly from a
brain tumor or a morphine overdose.
On February 24, 1886, at the age of thirty-nine, Edison
married whom?
A: The 20-year-old Mina Miller in Akron, Ohio.
She was the daughter of whom?
A: The inventor Lewis Miller, co-founder of the Chautauqua Institution and a
benefactor of Methodist charities.
Edison and Mina had how many children together?
A: Three.
What were their names?
A: Madeleine Edison, Charles Edison, and Theodore Miller Edison.
Mina outlived Thomas Edison, dying on what date?
A: August 24, 1947.