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#1 Mervin Kelly, the boy who would become the author's grandfather, was a striver. He was both class president and valedictorian in high school, and people in Gallatin noticed that he was intent on being in charge.

#2 In the early 1900s, when Kelly was going to school, few Americans recognized the differences between a scientist, an engineer, and an inventor. The public was far more impressed by new technology than the knowledge that created the technology.

#3 Edison was a genius in making new inventions work, but he was not a genius in theory. He scorned talk about scientific theory, and he knew little about electricity. He relied on assistants trained in math and science to investigate the principles of his inventions.

#4 The idea that scientists trained in subjects like physics could do interesting and important work was gaining legitimacy. Americans still knew very little about the sciences, but they were beginning to hear about a stream of revelations, all European in origin, regarding the hidden but fundamental structure of the visible world.