Edison

Patrick McDermott
Mrs. Rivard
English, Period 5
September 21, 2008

Edison

      For as long as I can remember, electronics and technology have fascinated me. Every time I see new technologies, I try to understand every aspect of how they work and usually try to find a way to study and use them.
      I have been this way all of my life and my proclivity for such things started at an early age. When I was four years old I was playing in the den of our house and began wondering how the television set worked. I had gotten hold of one of my father’s screwdrivers and began removing the casing of the television to get a look inside and see how it worked. Soon my father came into the room and found that I had nearly completely disassembled the entire set, and its components were scattered all over the floor in front of me. Needless to say he was upset! He decided to not try to fix it then, but would wait. In the meantime I tried to put it back together myself to try and make it up to him. When I had finished it Dad discovered that I had left out two or three components and doubted that the set would ever work again. To our surprise I plugged it in and turned it on and found that it worked almost as well as before.
      Since then I have spent much of my time experimenting with everything I could, most of which involved taking many of my parents’ household appliances apart which, needless to say, has not made them too happy. But they indulge me in much of this because they know that I learn from most of it.
      When I was much younger they had to watch me closely, especially when we went out, because I had developed a tendency to wander away from them whenever I saw something that sparked my curiosity, whether it was a copy machine or computer. One example of this was when I was five and we were visiting a Blockbuster video store. As soon as my mother turned her back I took the opportunity to find and ‘play’ with all of the VCRs they had on display. I simply...