The Great Wizard of Oddity Trivia Quiz

Answer: sleep

Being an ambitious person, Edison was not all that fond of the idea of sleep. He felt that sleep was a waste of time and would sleep as little as he could get away with, often three or four hours per day. His erratic schedule would often lead to him being in his laboratory at all hours of the day and night.

Incidentally, Edison's development of the light bulb and artificial light is thought to have greatly reduced the amount of sleep that modern people get.

Answer: Dot and Dash

Edison had three children by his first wife Mary: Marion, Thomas Jr, and William. Edison's career had taken off when he became a telegraph operator, and he took to calling his first two children Dot and Dash. When Mary died, Edison married Mina Miller, proposing to her in Morse code. They had three more children: Madeleine, Charles, and Theodore; at one point, Charles became the governor of New Jersey.

Being a child of Edison was not always easy. At one point, Edison had a legal battle with Thomas Jr over the use of the Edison name to promote what were essentially quack products.

Answer: ghosts

Long before the Ghostbusters saved New York from the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, Edison singlehandedly attempted to create his own machine that could attract and capture spirits from beyond. While Edison did not particularly believe in spirits the way most believers do, he thought that human life consisted of numerous entities that were indestructible. Edison was secretive about this machine and how it was supposed to work; no blueprints of it were left, and there is no evidence that it ever got past the planning stage to begin with.

Answer: electric chair

The War of Currents was conducted between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison, and was a struggle between the promotions of alternating current (Westinghouse) and direct current (Edison) as forms of electricity. At the time, direct current was common in the United States, and alternating current was common in Europe.

In an attempt to discredit alternating current as dangerous, Edison started a campaign where he used it to electrocute animals, including an elephant. But that wasn't enough: Edison actually helped fund the invention of the electric chair to "prove" that alternating current was so terribly dangerous. Edison was personally opposed to the death penalty, but even more opposed to not making money!

Answer: boxing match between cats

Times were simpler back in 1894. Back then, one of the earliest to be filmed was a boxing match between two cats. Two cats with cat-sized boxing gloves strapped to their paws were made to fight each other for the amusement of people; this in turn became one of the world's first movies.

Though filmed as an Edison movie, the cats were a part of Professor Harry Welton's Trained Cat Circus, a circus that trained cats to do all sorts of unusual things you wouldn't necessarily expect a cat to do.

Answer: Hollywood

As the inventor of the kinetoscope, Edison had a large role in developing early movies. He had a large stake in the Motion Picture Patents Company, a monopolistic trust that quickly developed a stranglehold on the entire movie-making process.

However, some people were not fond of the MPPC, and moved west to escape the MPPC's lawsuits. In doing so, these so-called Independent Outlaws found that moving west had numerous other benefits, such as better weather for filming, and a greater variety of scenery. Ultimately, they were what established the movie industry around a community called Hollywood -- a happening that was actually catalyzed by Edison.

Answer: "you don't understand our American humor"

Upon arriving in America, Tesla found work at Edison Machine Works, where he was paid $18 per week. When Tesla suggested he could improve some of Edison's inefficient designs, Edison promised him a $50,000 reward. Tesla made good on his promise, but Edison did not, instead saying "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor." Tesla ended up resigning from the company.

Edison was well-known to be miserly with the wages of his employees.

Answer: "an invention of Satan"

As much as Edison enjoyed money, he hated banks and gold. His views on both were published in "The New York Times" on December 6, 1921. He claimed that gold is "intrinsically of less utility than most metals" and predicted that it would one day become cheaper than steel. We're still waiting for that to happen.

His views on interest stemmed from his disdain for the banking industry. Edison noted that bankers could easily become rich simply by charging interest on borrowed money, without so much as moving a single shovelful of dirt. It's easy to see how a go-getter like Edison would not be enamored of this situation.

Answer: last breath

The Henry Ford Museum houses a glass vial purported to contain Edison's last breath. Henry Ford supposedly asked Edison's son Charles to keep a glass vial by Edison's side as he lay dying in 1931. The vial was then sealed with wax and eventually made its way to the museum.

Though the "last breath" part is probably somewhat exaggerated, the connection to Henry Ford is quite real and well-known. Edison and Ford were good friends while alive, going to clubs and even living next to each other for a time as well.

Answer: genetically enhanced semi-immortal supermen

Molecular genetics was not really a thing until after the discovery of the double-helix structure in the 1950s, decades after Edison's death. Regardless, how did he do with his predictions?

Edison claimed that we would fly through the air at 200 miles per hour, and that trains would be driven by electricity. Those are, of course, great underestimates of the supersonic jets and maglev trains that came to exist before 2011. They're still a remarkable prediction coming from 1911 though. He also suggested that society would become steel-based (somewhat true), while gold will become common and cheap (definitely false).

The predictions on the advancement of knowledge were far more intriguing. According to Edison, one-pound books with pages made of nickel would hold the information of the Encyclopedia Britannica. That never came to pass, yet in many ways, cell phones and tablets have created even more remarkable feats.