Speech at the Unveiling of the Thomas Alva Edison Statue

THOMAS EDISON STATUE UNVEILING

Father Conroy, Chaplain Black, fellow Members of the Ohio Congressional delegation, Senator Brown, Senator Portman, Majority Leader McConnell, Leader Pelosi, Speaker Ryan, and all assembled here today: what an honor it is to celebrate the legacy of Thomas Alva Edison, a native Ohioan, as we unveil his statue in the United States Capitol.

Please let me extend a Buckeye welcome to the Ohioans joining us, as well as profound thanks to all the many dear individuals whose efforts bring us to this moment.

Considered one of America’s greatest inventors, the life and legacy of Thomas Edison lives large among us today.

Edison believed “What you are will show in what you do.”

Thomas Edison was the youngest of seven children, born in a small brick home with a white picket fence in 1847 in Milan, Ohio – a small town then in Northern Ohio that I have had the privilege of representing as does Rep. Jim Jordan now.

Edison’s early life was not the storybook character you might envision. Edison faced early hardships -- his teachers said he was "too stupid to learn anything.” In fact, he had a hearing problem resulting from a bout of scarlet fever.

Thus, he was largely homeschooled by his mother Nancy. Later, he failed his first college entrance exam, and became essentially self-taught. Edison was fired from his first two jobs for being "non-productive.”

Yet this genius of a human being managed to achieve 1,093 patents to his name.

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work,” Edison once observed.

And work he did. He founded 14 companies, including General Electric, still one of the largest publicly-traded companies worldwide.

America’s greatest inventor introduced the world to the lightbulb, power utilities, sound recording, motion pictures – all of which established new industries worldwide.

Other breakthroughs included the phonograph, the telegraph, and storage batteries. Still more inventions including the stock ticker, a battery for an electric car, cement, the tattoo gun, the magnetic iron ore separator.

Thomas Edison even invented the first version of the electronic-vote counter for legislative bodies like Congress.

Edison declared: “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time”.

How inspiring those words of Thomas Edison’s remain today.

America never succeeded by thinking small. America never thrived by giving up. Thomas Alva Edison always thought big, delivered big, and he always tried just one more time. His genius moved America forward as the oldest democratic republic on earth despite being a young nation as nations go, and still the largest and most dynamic economy in the world.

Let us follow his example.