His first experiment, conducted when he was very young, was to try to duplicate the hatching of eggs. He observed the mother hens sitting on the eggs, so he confiscated several of them, put them in an empty nest and sat down on them, where he stayed there until his older sister found him. Instead of scolding him for foolishness, his sister encouraged him that someday he would experiment with something that would work.
Some of his next experiments involved fire--a fascinating force for most children. His laboratory was the family barn. One day the barn caught fire and burned down, and only heroic efforts of the fire department saved the house and other nearby buildings. Mr. Edison was not as understanding of this experimental effort, and he thrashed Thomas publicly in the town square.
The family moved in 1854 to Port Huron, Michigan. Thomas' entrance to school was delayed first by the timing of the move, and then by a bout with scarlet fever. It was not until 1855 that he began to attend school. Because he found it uninteresting, he got low grades. He asked the teacher too many questions, some for which the teacher did not know the answer. The standard replies to his questions became, "Don't be impertinent young man," and "If you think you know more than I do, come up here and teach the class."
After Thomas had been in school for about three months, the superintendent visited the school. The teacher told him that Thomas was "addled," to which the superintendent replied, "Perhaps there's nothing in his cranium."
As a result of this incident, Thomas' parents took him out of school, and Nancy, a former school teacher, began to teach him at home. She was used to his questions, and when she didn't know the answers, mother and son worked together to find the answers. Through this home-schooling, Thomas became a lifelong reader of great literature. His father aided this by offering a quarter for every good book Thomas read and reported on orally.
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