Thomas Edison was dyslexic, which would have made it difficult for him to succeed in an 1800s classroom. Research on dyslexia didn’t begin until the early 1900s, decades after Edison had left public schools, so little was known about it at the time. Thomas Edison’s struggles in school have been well documented over the years, as have his teacher’s view that Edison was “addled.” But the idea that Thomas Edison didn’t know that he’d been called addled is false. The Foundation for Economic Education reports that Edison was well aware of his teacher’s diagnosis, and that he was enraged by it: In 1854, Reverend G. B. Engle belittled one of his students, seven-year-old Thomas Alva Edison, as “addled.” This outraged the youngster, and he stormed out of the Port Huron, Michigan school, the first formal school he had ever attended. His mother, Nancy Edison, brought him back the next day to discuss the situation with Reverend Engle...
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