The Boyhood of an Inventor - Early Television Foundation

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The largest walnut tree in Indiana
most wonderful and
varied collection of
industrially valuable
timber ever found
anywhere. Majestic
oaks, elms, beech,
maple, ash, hickory,
and walnut, walnut
that now would almost
"bring its
weight in gold"; and
these great trees in
prodigal waste were
cut down, piled in
great pyramids and
burned to get rid of
them. Neighbors
came long distances to assist in these log-rollings,
and in turn to be assisted in their own forest-clearing
operations, coming on horseback, often with a girl
wife on behind.
It was in the hollow of one of those great walnut
trees, standing in the line fence, that "flat foot
Black Tom" hid the ham he had stolen out of the
smoke house. It was said of him that his feet were
so flat that "the hollow of his foot made a dent in the
ground," and that by
this means the stealing
of the ham was traced
to him, by men to
whom tracking was al
most an instinctive gift.
The boy well remem
bers that old smoke
house where the meat
hung for curing, for
later, when he was big
enough, he put wood in
the fire pot in the middle
of the floor. He would
The sun-dial used to tell time as early as 500 B.C.