There is, however, one modern marvel for which Edison is wholly responsible, both for the initial idea and for its practical working-out--the phonograph--but let us tell something of his early life, before we relate the achievements of his manhood. Born in a little village in Erie County, Ohio, in 1847, Edison was early introduced to the struggle for existence. His father was very poor, being, indeed, the village jack-of-all-trades, and living upon such odd jobs as he was able to procure. The boy, of course, was put to work as soon as he was old enough, and of regular schooling had only two months in all his life. At the age of twelve, he was a train-boy on the Michigan Central Railroad, selling books, papers, candy, and fruit to the passengers. He managed to get some type and an old press and issued a little paper called the "Grand Trunk Herald," containing the news of the railroad. One day, he snatched the little child of the station-master at Port Clements, Michigan, from under the wheels of a train, and in return the grateful father taught the boy telegraphy. It was the turning-point in his career, for it turned his attention to the study of electricity, with which he was soon fascinated. At eighteen, he was working as an operator at Indianapolis, but he was from the very first, more of an inventor than an operator, and his inventions sometimes got him into trouble. For instance, at one place where he had a night trick, he was required to report the word "six" every half-hour to the manager to show that he was awake and on duty. After a while, he rigged up a wheel to do it for him, and all went well until the manager happened to visit the office one night and found Edison sleeping calmly while his wheel was sending in the word "six." But he nevertheless developed into one of the swiftest operators in the country, all the time devising changes and improvements in the mechanism of telegraphy. His first great success came with the sale of an improvement in the instruments used to record stock quotations, which enabled these "tickers" to print the quotations legibly on paper tape, and this success enabled him to get some capitalists to finance his experiments with the electric light. The arrangement was that they were to pay the expense of the experiments and to share in such inventions as resulted. For the sake of quiet, he moved out to a little place in New Jersey called Menlo Park, and built himself a shop. Then began that remarkable series of experiments--one of the most remarkable in history--which resulted in the perfection of the incandescent lamp.