History Speaks - Volume 2

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· History Speaks Livre 2 · Listen & Live Audio · Lu par Amelia Earhart, Andrew Carnegie, Ellen Terry, James Whitcomb Riley, King George V, O. Henry, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, William Gillette et William Howard Taft
Livre audio
18 min
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Éligible
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À propos de ce livre audio

Along with historical narrative, hear rare recordings of some of the most people in history, including Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, William Howard Taft, James Whitcomb Riley, O. Henry, Arthur Conan Doyle, William Gillette, Theodore Roosevelt, Ellen Terry, King George V, and Amelia Earhart. Recording obtained and published by Rick Sheridan.

À propos de l'auteur

Thomas Alva Edison was the stereotypical all-American hero of the industrial system, a rags-to-riches entrepreneur and holder of over 1,000 patents who brought enormous improvements to the lives of millions of people. He was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847. At an early age, Edison became interested in telegraphy and worked as a freelance traveling telegraphist. By the time he was 22, he had made improvements to telegraphs for Western Union and to the stock ticker and stock printer for the New York Stock Exchange. From that point on, Edison had a very active career spanning more than 60 years. The invention that first gained him notice was the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park," New Jersey. Additional highlights of his career were the invention of the incandescent electric light bulb, which led to widespread domestic lighting, improvements to motion picture equipment and the telephone, and the discovery of the Edison effect, thermionic emission, the foundation of the electronics industry. To exploit his many inventions, Edison founded several companies, including the Edison Telephone Company and the Edison General Electric Company (which later merged to form General Electric). Edison also contributed both directly and indirectly to the growth of many other companies. While he was perhaps best known for his inventions, Edison's most significant innovation was the industrial science laboratory, the forerunner of today's science parks. His first small laboratory was set up in Newark, New Jersey, to develop his improvements in telegraphy and stock tickers and printers. In 1876 he moved to a new site at Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he established a much larger laboratory. From his Menlo Park laboratory came a stream of inventions, developments, and patents. Eventually, Edison moved to an even larger facility at West Orange, New Jersey; this laboratory is now a museum and contains the Edison archives. Idolized during his lifetime, Edison never took this adulation too seriously. He regarded himself as just a hard-working man, informed by a good understanding of scientific principles and possessed with a great determination to solve scientific and technical problems and to develop ways in which to apply his findings commercially. In this last he did not always succeed. Edison backed some remarkable flops, but the number of his profitable ventures far exceeded his failures. Profit was not his primary consideration, however. Edison's main goal was to explore the things that interested him and to turn his findings into something useful. he is famous for saying, "Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration." Edison died of complications of diabetes on October 18, 1931, in his home, "Glenmont" in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey. He is buried behind the home. Poet, lecturer, and journalist, Riley gained popularity with his series of poems in the Hoosier dialect written under the pseudonym "Benjamin F. Johnson, of Boone." These originally appeared in the Indianapolis Journal, where he worked from 1877 to 1885; in 1883 they were published as The Old Swimmin'-Hole and 'Leven More Poems. His most popular poems are "When the Frost is on the Punkin"' and "The Old Man and Jim." Riley went on numerous lecture tours, entertaining as an actor and humorist. Although best known for his dialect poetry---"comforting, familiar platitudes, restated in verse" (Richard Crowder)---Riley also wrote humorous sketches and other poems. He produced more than 90 volumes of popular poetry, some of which are available in reprinted editions. O. Henry is the pen name of William Sidney Porter, who was born on September 11, 1862 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Porter was a licensed pharmacist and worked on a sheep ranch in Texas. He was a draftsman for the General Land Office and a teller for the First National Bank of Texas. He was convicted of embezzlement and eventually served five years in prison. While in prison, he began writing short stories under his pseudonym and eventually wrote over 300. As O. Henry, Porter is one of America's best known writers, and his stories, such as "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Ransom of Red Chief", are still taught in schools. In 1918, the O. Henry Awards, an annual anthology of short stories, was established in his honor. Porter died on June 5, 1910. The most famous fictional detective in the world is Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. However, Doyle was, at best, ambivalent about his immensely successful literary creation and, at worst, resentful that his more "serious" fiction was relatively ignored. Born in Edinburgh, Doyle studied medicine from 1876 to 1881 and received his M.D. in 1885. He worked as a military physician in South Africa during the Boer War and was knighted in 1902 for his exceptional service. Doyle was drawn to writing at an early age. Although he attempted to enter private practice in Southsea, Portsmouth, in 1882, he soon turned to writing in his spare time; it eventually became his profession. As a Liberal Unionist, Doyle ran, unsuccessfully, for Parliament in 1903. During his later years, Doyle became an avowed spiritualist. Doyle sold his first story, "The Mystery of the Sasassa Valley," to Chambers' Journal in 1879. When Doyle published the novel, A Study in Scarlet in 1887, Sherlock Holmes was introduced to an avid public. Doyle is reputed to have used one of his medical professors, Dr. Joseph Bell, as a model for Holmes's character. Eventually, Doyle wrote three additional Holmes novels and five collections of Holmes short stories. A brilliant, though somewhat eccentric, detective, Holmes employs scientific methods of observation and deduction to solve the mysteries that he investigates. Although an "amateur" private detective, he is frequently called upon by Scotland Yard for assistance. Holmes's assistant, the faithful Dr. Watson, provides a striking contrast to Holmes's brilliant intellect and, in Doyle's day at least, serves as a character with whom the reader can readily identify. Having tired of Holmes's popularity, Doyle even tried to kill the great detective in "The Final Problem" but was forced by an outraged public to resurrect him in 1903. Although Holmes remained Doyle's most popular literary creation, Doyle wrote prolifically in other genres, including historical adventure, science fiction, and supernatural fiction. Despite Doyle's sometimes careless writing, he was a superb storyteller. His great skill as a popular author lay in his technique of involving readers in his highly entertaining adventures.

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