How did he lose his hearing? Was he really boxed on the ears as a child?
The movie Young Tom Edison shows Edison (played by Mickey Rooney) being boxed on the ears after he accidentally set fire to a train car with his experiments. But why, then, did Edison’s father and his son Charles also have the same hearing loss? It seems that hearing loss ran in the family. An illness might also have made Edison’s hearing worse. Another story, told by Edison himself, says that he was picked up by the ears to keep from falling out of a train. He said that he heard something “pop” inside his ears. Maybe Edison thought this had caused his hearing loss, but experts doubt it.
