By Jim Hagarty
Thomas Edison used to live in my town.
The New Jersey inventor of the light bulb and many other modern devices stayed in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, for a while when he was about 18. He had a job with a railroad company as a nightwatchman in a railway station in the small, nearby town of St. Marys. His job was to alert incoming trains that they were approaching the town, giving their engineers the signal and time they needed to slow down before entering the built up area.
But Edison being Edison, he invented a device which he installed on the tracks a ways up from the station. That device was tripped by the incoming train and the appropriate signal would be set off. For his part, Edison dozed while his little robot did all the work.
Unfortunately, one night the device failed to trip the signal and the train roared through town without getting the chance to slow down. When investigators came to find out what had happened, the found no trace of Edison. He had taken off.
Thomas Edison lived in two locations in Stratford. He occupied a rented house (which still stands) just down the street from the elementary school my son and daughter attended. He also lived for a brief period in an upper storey of a downtown business block, a building also still there.
Edison was born in Ohio in 1847 and died in New Jersey in 1931.
