I do not find it so easy to talk about my Father….I have yet to find a biography of him that satisfies me as a picture of the whole man. The emphasis is so much on what he did that few people know what he was.

I have been astonished at times to find the general impression is that he was a sort of superhuman lightning rod, pulling down inventions from heaven at will—a miraculous robot who never got tired—a disembodied brain whose success, bringing fabulous riches, was effortless and assured, in spite of a background of abject poverty, almost total lack of education, and no personal life at all. I may say that the picture is not quite accurate.

—MADELEINE EDISON SLOANE