Inventor. He was born in Milan, Ohio. His total formal school education was three months. His mother, a former school teacher, undertook his education. At the age of twelve, because he exhibited adult maturity, he convinced his parents to allow him to leave home and work as a newsboy aboard a train to Detroit. He published a weekly paper and sold it to passengers. Learning to operate a telegraph he gained employment. After a few years as a wandering operator, Edison settled in New York. Always, during employment, in his spare time, he worked on his inventions and experiments. Thomas Edison received $40,000 on ideas for improving the telegraph and telephone. He ventured out on his own, building a large work shop at West Orange, New Jersey. Here the invention of the phonograph was achieved. The electric light followed. Edison made over a thousand inventions from this laboratory. Some others were the moving-picture machine, the storage battery, the mimeograph, machines to help the iron and steel business. His inventions made possible our electric trains and streetcars. During the First World War, Edison was seventy. The government asked him to serve. He built a factory in eighteen days. Here he made many things which helped the army and navy. In his 80s, his health began to fail. He obtained his last (1,093rd) patent at age 83. In August 1931, Thomas Edison collapsed at Glenmont (His residence located on a 15 acre estate). From that point, he steadily declined in health and was housebound until 3:21 AM on October 18th, when the inventor died. A death mask was made. His body was placed in the Laboratory building on Lakeside, Avenue in West Orange and thousands of mourners paraded past. The evening of the day he was buried, countless individuals, communities and corporations throughout the world dimmed their lights, or briefly shut down their power in tribute. With First Lady Lou Hoover, Henry Ford, and Harvey Samuel Firestone in attendance, he was buried at Rosedale Cemetery, Orange, New Jersey, with Mina, his second wife was buried beside him upon her death. In 1963, the remains of both were exhumed from Rosedale Cemetery and reinterred at Edison's Glenmont estate. Edison's New Jersey Research Laboratory and Glenmont are today preserved as part of the Edison National Historical site.