Word: offing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Fortunately for him, America during the post-Civil War boom of the 1870s was famished for faster and more reliable ways of doing business. An improvement Edison made in the stock ticker eventually earned him $40,000, a considerable sum at the time. He used this windfall to set up...
(2 of 2)
Edison's tireless work habits took shape during his childhood in Port Huron, Mich. His formal education, according to most accounts, lasted only three months; he quit school after a teacher pronounced him "addled." His mother, herself a former teacher, educated him for a while at home, but the boy...
His first patent, for an electric vote recorder, taught him a lesson that would guide the rest of his career. There was no demand, at the time, for electric vote recorders, and his device earned him nothing. Edison vowed never again to invent something unless he could be sure it...
There was a sort of magic about Edison, although it had nothing to do with illusions or misdirections. An assistant once described the Wizard at work, "displaying cunning in the way he neutralizes or intensifies electromagnets, applying strong or weak currents, and commands either negative or positive directional currents to...