Edison

I am cleaning out some files on my computer and sticking them on my blogs and this was interesting but I don't know where it came from:

Sketching a fuller picture of Thomas Edison than the usual sanitized version, Gardner sums up his appraisal of the national hero by stating that his "beliefs and habits were those of a crackpot and a bum. Rats lived happy and undisturbed in his laboratory; he often slept in his clothes, because he believed that changing or taking them off induced insomnia; he thought that Richard Wagner was Jewish; he was a disastrous husband and father; he all but starved himself to death because he believed that food poisons the intestines; his own company in Europe coined the cable name 'Dungyard' for him."