Young Tom Edison is a 1940 biographical film about the early life of inventor Thomas Edison, with Mickey Rooney in the title role. The movie follows the imaginative boy Tom as he continually gets into mischief and causes accidents locally with his chemical experiments. The townspeople regard him as a troublemaker. As the Civil War breaks out, Tom starts a business enterprise peddling food and snacks on board trains, and later composing and handing out news sheets to passengers.