8 Chapter 7 Always Inventing

Chapter 7 Always Inventing Tom was a man who never ran out of ideas. Although Tom was hard of hearing, he never lost his hearing completely. He didn't let it become a problem, even when his hearing got worse as he got older. In fact, he said it was a good thing because he could ignore noise swirling around him. He could concentrate on what was important to him. At one point Tom was told that an operation might cure his deafness. He didn't want it. And he was not interested in developing a hearing aid.

Tom found ways to work around his problem. He managed to "listen" to piano players trying out for his phonograph recordings by biting a metal plate attached to the piano. This allowed him to "hear" the music through the vibrations traveling through his jawbone. Was he "listening" through his teeth? So much is known about Tom's work because of the records he kept. Over his seventy years of inventing, he filled four thousand notebooks and wrote and drew over three million notes, letters, and sketches.

Not all of Tom's ideas were successes. In 1891 he bought a mine in northwestern New Jersey. He wanted to find a way to produce low-grade iron ore by separating it from rock and sand. But after ten years he had to give up when rich deposits of high-grade iron ore were found in Minnesota. By this time Tom had lost millions of dollars.

Still, Tom's experience with mining led him to another business—cement. He came up with a way to pour a cement house in just six hours using molds and machinery that he developed in his mining business. His cement was used to build New York's Yankee Stadium and the Panama Canal.

Now it was the turn of the century. Automobiles were about to burst on the scene. Tom was convinced that an electric car would be the best car for the future. He set out to make a battery to run a car on electricity. He knew it would be cleaner than the gas that other inventors were trying. But he had to make a battery that would store enough electricity to run a car for a very long time. It also had to be cheap enough to make. HENRY FORD

HENRY FORD WAS THE FIRST TO MAKE A CAR CHEAP ENOUGH FOR MOST AMERICANS TO BUY. IN 1908, HIS MOST POPULAR CAR, THE MODEL T, COST FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS, AND HE HAD MORE ORDERS THAN HE COULD FILL. WITHIN TWO YEARS FORD CAME UP WITH HIS "ASSEMBLY LINE." WORKERS ASSEMBLED, OR PUT TOGETHER, EACH CAR. EACH MAN WORKED ON ONE PART ONLY. AS THE CAR TRAVELED ALONG A MOVING