His greatest work, however, was in connection with the electric light. He worked on it a long time before he succeeded. The chief trouble was in securing a good non-conducting filament. He sent men to search in China, Japan, South America, and Ceylon for bamboo and other plants which would answer his purpose. Out of three thousand specimens of vegetable fiber, he found three or four which would do. In 1880 the light which is now used all over the world was perfected and exhibited.
Edison has made few, if any real scientific discoveries, but he has made many ingenious inventions, and has applied scientific principles to practical purposes so as to increase the comfort and economy of living.
Andrew Jackson
The Man of the People
While Washington, the aristocrat, was using his sword and Jefferson, the scholarly gentleman, was using his pen, to form in America a government of the people, there was growing up in a border settlement a youth who was to be a “man of the people” and bear rule over it.
Andrew Jackson was the son of a poor Irish emigrant, who spent the years after his coming to America in a brave fight for bread for his wife and children. Worn out by the struggle, he died, and the children were left to their mother’s care. Andrew was born at the Waxhaw settlement which is partly in North Carolina and partly in South Carolina, both of which states have been claimed as Jackson’s native place. In childhood he attended an “old field school” where he gained the rudiments of an education and at work and play held his own among his comrades.
“I could throw him three times out of four,” said an old schoolmate, in later days “but he never would stay throwed. He was dead game and never would give up.”
Neither then nor in later life was he handsome, with his pale, sharp-featured face, his sandy red hair, and his keen steel blue eyes.
Andrew’s elder brothers, mere lads at the time of the Revolution, served in the patriot forces and Andrew joined them when he was only thirteen. He was taken prisoner by the British and it was then that a well-known incident occurred.
A British officer ordered Andrew to black his boots and the lad refused.
“I am a prisoner of war,” he said, “and demand to be treated as such.”