At the age of twelve he became a train-boy, or vendor of candy, fruit, and journals to the passengers on the Grand Trunk Railway, between Port Huron and Detroit. The post enabled him to sleep at home, and to extend his reading by the public library at Detroit. Like the boy Ampere, he proposed, it is said, to master the whole collection, shelf by shelf, and worked his way through fifteen feet of the bottom one before he began to select his fare.英文原著 · 《Heroes of the Telegraph》
Even the PRINCIPIA of Newton never daunted him; and if he did not understand the problems which have puzzled some of the greatest minds, he read them religiously, and pressed on. Burton's ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, Ure's DICTIONARY OF CHEMISTRY, did not come amiss; but in Victor Hugo's LES MISERABLES and THE TOILERS OF THE SEA he found a treasure after his own heart. Like Ampere, too, he was noted for a memory which retained many of the facts thus impressed upon it, as the sounds are printed on a phonogram.英文原著 · 《Heroes of the Telegraph》
Franklin's important discoveries are outlined in the first chapter of this book. He found out, as we have seen, that electricity and lightning are one and the same, and in the lightning rod he made the first practical application of electricity. Afterwards Cavendish of England, Coulomb of France, Galvani of Italy, all brought new bricks to the pile. Following them came a group of master builders, among whom may be mentioned: Volta of Italy, Oersted of Denmark, Ampere of France, Ohm of Germany, Faraday of England, and Joseph Henry of America.英文原著 · 《The Age of Invention》
Election of M. Ampere. This is an improvement upon the last. A slow improvement. But Academies, like old people, go slowly.英文原著 · 《The Memoirs of Victor Hugo》