<P> Edison only attended school for a few months and was instead taught by his mother . Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art . </P> <P> Edison developed hearing problems at an early age . The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle - ear infections . Around the middle of his career, Edison attributed the hearing impairment to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire and he was thrown off the train in Smiths Creek, Michigan, along with his apparatus and chemicals . In his later years, he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears . </P> <P> Edison's family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, after the canal owners successfully kept the railroad out of Milan Ohio in 1854 and business declined . Edison sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, and sold vegetables . He briefly worked as a telegraph operator in 1863 for the Grand Trunk Railway at the railway station in Stratford, Ontario, at age 16 . He was held responsible for a near collision . He also studied qualitative analysis and conducted chemical experiments on the train until he left the job . </P> <P> Edison obtained the exclusive right to sell newspapers on the road, and, with the aid of four assistants, he set in type and printed the Grand Trunk Herald, which he sold with his other papers . This began Edison's long streak of entrepreneurial ventures, as he discovered his talents as a businessman . These talents eventually led him to found 14 companies, including General Electric, still one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world . </P>

Who invented the first light bulb and when