When Thomas Edison was born in the small town of Milan, Ohio, in 1847,(1)_______________________________________.In his lifetime of eighty-four years,Edison shared the excitement of America’s growth into a modern nation.The time in which he lived was an age of invention,filled with human and scientific adventures,and Edison became the hero of that age.As a boy, Edison was not a good student.(2)___________________________________________________.When he was six, he set fire to his father’s barn “to see what would happen.”The barn burned down. When he was ten, Edison built his own chemistry laboratory.He sold sandwiches and newspapers on the trains in order to earn money to buy supplies for his laboratory.His parents became accustomed, more or less,to his experiments and the explosions which sometimes shook the house.Edison’s work as a sales boy with the railroad introduced him to the telegraph and,with a friend, he built his own telegraph set.Six years later, in 1869, Edison arrived in New York City, poor and in debt.He went to work with a telegraph company.(3)_____________________________________.From then on, he started his amazing life as the greatest inventor ever.
