Description:  Stirring accounts of four of America's greatest inventors: Robert Fulton, Eli Whitney, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Thomas Edison. Emphasis is placed on their formative years and how the skills they acquired then enabled them to meet the challenges they faced later, both in developing and manufacturing their inventions and in achieving widespread public acceptance of them.

Additional information:

1. A Boy with Ideas

2. Working Out Some of the Ideas

3. The Young Artist

4. The Artist Becomes an Engineer

5. Experiments

6. Making the Steamboat

7. The Trial Voyage

8. Success

9. Steamboats on the Hudson

10. Other Interests

11. His Work Ended

12. Childhood

13. Youth

14. At Yale

15. In Georgia

16. The Opportunity

17. Making the Cotton Gin

18. Great Expectations

19. Misfortunes

20. In the Courts

21. Making Arms

22. Last Years

23. The Parsonage

24. Early Influences

25. College Life

26. Life in London

27. Painting

28. Abroad Again

29. An Important Voyage

30. Years of Struggle

31. Encouragement

32. Waiting at Last Rewarded

33. The Telegraph

34. The Cable

35. The Inventor at Home

36. Early Years

37. Youthful Business Ventures

38. Study

39. A Change of Business

40. The Boy Telegraph Operator

41. Telegrapher and Inventor

42. In Boston

43. Recognized as an Electrician

44. Inventor and Manufacturer

45. "The Wizard of Menlo Park"

46. Inventions

47. At Orange, New Jersey