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THOMAS ALVA EDISON 
 
 THE TELEGRAPH-BOY 
 WHO BECAME A GREAT INVENTOR 
 
 BY 
 
 E. C. KENYON 
 
 AUTHOR OF ' BRAVE BOYS AND Gt^^S*' * THE LITTLE KNIGHT,' ETC. 
 
 NEW YOEK 
 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER 
 
 2 J±?XT> 3 BIBLE HOUSE 
 
 1 
 
T-/< 
 
 O'NEILL LIBRAE «Jef 9tt88 
 BOSTON COLLEGE 
 
Chapter Page 
 
 I. FIRST WORK AS A NEWSBOY 7 
 
 II. THE YOUNG NEWSPAPER EDITOR 15 
 
 III. LEARNING THE TELEGRAPH l8 
 
 IV. EARLY INVENTIONS 27 
 
 V. AT LOUISVILLE 30 
 
 VI. BOSTON EXPERIENCES 34 
 
 VII. QUADRUPLEX TELEGRAPHY 40 
 
 VIII. FROM POVERTY TO RICHES „ 43 
 
 IX. NEWARK LABORATORY AND FACTORY 47 
 
 X. MARRIAGE 5 1 
 
 XI. DIVERS INVENTIONS 53 
 
 XII. THE PHONOGRAPH 65 
 
 XIII. ELECTRIC RAILROADING 77 
 
 XIV. ELECTRIC LIGHT 80 
 
 XV. EDISON AS A WORKER AND EMPLOYER 94 
 
 XVI. THE ORANGE LABORATORY 102 
 
 XVII. THE KINETOSCOPE AND KINETOGRAPH 108 
 
 XVIII. ORE-MILLING, ETC II3 
 
 XIX. CONCLUSION — EDISON'S PRESENT SURROUNDINGS 120 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Edison in his Library Frontispiece 
 
 Edison with his Phonograph 67 
 
 Transmitting Cornet Solo in the Phonograph 72 
 
 Transmitting Piano Solo in the Phonograph. 73 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FIRST WORK AS A NEWSBOY. 
 
 HOMAS ALVA EDISON, the world's greatest 
 living inventor and electrician, was born at Milan, 
 a dull little canal town in Erie County, Ohio, on 
 the nth of February 1847. On his father's side he was 
 descended from an excellent family of Dutch millers, who 
 emigrated Yrom Amsterdam to America about the year 
 1737. They were men who lived long lives — Edison's 
 great-grandfather lived to the age of one hundred and two 
 years, and his grandfather one hundred and three— and 
 from them he inherited the great physical powers of 
 strength and endurance which have marked his wonder- 
 ful and chequered career. Edison's father, Samuel Edison, 
 was a nurseryman, dealer in grain, in lumber, and in 
 farm lands, and later, a produce merchant. 
 
 Edison's mother's maiden name was Nancy Elliot. She 
 was by birth a Scotchwoman, and she had been brought 
 up and educated in Canada. She had a sweet yet 
 strong individuality, and having received a good solid 
 
8 FIRST WORK AS A NEWSBOY. 
 
 education in the Canadian High Schools, she became a 
 teacher there, in which capacity she displayed great ability, 
 before marrying Samuel Edison. 
 
 It is said that there was a very special love between 
 Mrs Edison and her son Thomas. She loved his very 
 presence, and partly for that reason, and partly because 
 of the poverty which came upon them before long, she 
 kept the boy at home, and, except for two months' school- 
 ing, taught him entirely herself. With her he learned not 
 only reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also the great 
 object of learning. For she implanted in his mind a 
 love of learning, a hunger for knowledge, which is the end 
 of all true education. To her young Edison owed the 
 early teaching and training which gave his mind its strong 
 bent towards invention and enterprise. His father, too, 
 was so interested in the boy's education, that, by way of 
 encouraging him to read, whilst reading was for Tom a 
 toilsome and difficult matter, he paid him for every 
 book he perused. Happy boy, to have such parents ! 
 Their intelligent sympathy, and the tuition of the mother, 
 caused him to become a great reader, and then practically 
 he took his education into his own hands, and read every- 
 thing he came across. 
 
 An amusing story of his early childhood is given to us 
 on the authority of his only sister. When he was only six 
 years old, he found that a goose belonging to the family 
 was sitting, and, a little later, saw the astonishing result 
 in some goslings. He studied this wonderful occurrence 
 in his little mind. Then one day he was missing. He 
 was sought everywhere, but no one could find him, until 
 at length his father discovered him curled up in a sort of 
 nest he had made for himself in the barn, and filled with 
 goose and hen eggs. He was keeping them as warm as 
 
FIRST WORK AS A NEWSBOY. 9 
 
 he could ; in fact, the little boy was sitting on the eggs and 
 trying to hatch them ! 
 
 He was an ingenious little fellow, and, even when he 
 was at play, showed the mechanical turn of his mind by 
 building plank roads, digging caves, and exploring the 
 banks of the canal. But the play had to be soon 
 exchanged for hard work, for, when he was only seven 
 years old, a wide-spread depression in commercial affairs 
 caused his father to become poorer, and in consequence 
 of this he left his picturesque home in Milan, and took his 
 family to live in the town of Port Huron, Michigan. 
 Here the boy was early set to work to earn his own living, 
 but still he devoted every moment he could to the 
 improvement of his mind. 
 
 ' I 'm a bushel of wheat ! I weigh eighty pounds,' he 
 said, thoughtfully, to his mother one day when he was 
 only twelve years old. And the observation showed that 
 he had already begun to compare things with each other in 
 an old-fashioned, business-like manner. 
 
 Soon after that he became a newsboy on the Grand 
 Trunk Railway running into Detroit. It was a busy life. 
 The American newsboys not only show themselves and 
 their wares at the railway stations, but accompany the 
 trains. In American trains there is an outside passage 
 from one carriage to another, upon which people can 
 walk up and down. As soon as passengers have taken 
 their seats and have comfortably ensconced themselves 
 amongst their wraps and rugs, they naturally begin to 
 wonder with what they shall beguile the tedious time of 
 travelling. Then the newsboy, passing from one carriage 
 to another, stands at their elbow, with his tempting display 
 of papers. Whilst the passenger is reading his newspaper, 
 a little later on, he perhaps feels thirsty, and looking 
 
10 FIRST WORK AS A NEWSBOY. 
 
 round, lo ! there stands the newsboy again before him, 
 this time with a tray or basket of fruits and sweets, which 
 they call candies. Edison, with his bright smiling face 
 and business manner, made a capital little newsboy. 
 
 When talking of these young days of his, he was once 
 asked, ' Were you one of the kind of train-boys who sell 
 figs in boxes with bottoms half an inch thick?' 
 
 To which question he replied, with a merry twinkle of 
 his shrewd gray eyes, 'If I recollect right, the bottoms 
 of my boxes were a good inch/ 
 
 At the stations at which the train stopped, the young 
 newsboy would spring on the platform, and sell his wares 
 to any one who would buy. He had secured the exclusive 
 right as news-agent upon that line. 
 
 At Detroit he obtained access to the Free Library, and 
 was so delighted with the sight of unlimited numbers of 
 bcoks that he conceived the idea of reading the entire 
 library, taking the books as they came. He stuck at 
 nothing, reading straight on, and had actually read through 
 fifteen feet of books before his friends discovered what he 
 was about and checked his proceedings. Amongst the 
 books he read were Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy ; 
 Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Hume's 
 History of England ; History of the Reformation; Ure's 
 Dictionary of the Sciences ; the Penny Cyclopcedia; and 
 Newton's Principia — which last, however, he could not 
 understand. Like a wise lad, therefore, he inquired of 
 one who did, and a comparatively uneducated man gave 
 him a simple and satisfactory explanation. ' This man/ 
 said Edison afterwards, ' explained the problem to me by 
 the use of very simple language, and without the employ- 
 ment of mathematics. I at once came to the conclusion 
 that Newton could have dispensed his knowledge in a 
 
FIRST WORK AS A NEWSBOY. II 
 
 much wider field had he known less about figures.' This, 
 he went on to say, gave him a distaste for mathematics 
 from which he never recovered. 
 
 Meanwhile, his interest in chemistry continued. He 
 managed to become the proud possessor of retorts 
 and other apparatus, and obtaining the use of an old 
 baggage-car, turned it into a laboratory. In this place he 
 spent much of his spare time in experiments which caused 
 him both wonder and delight. 
 
 Al, as young Edison was called by his fellow-workers 
 on the railroad, was a good son to his parents, and 
 delighted to take home to them as much of his earnings 
 as possible. He also wanted money with which to buy 
 the chemicals to make his experiments. Having no 
 friends who could assist him pecuniarily, he knew that 
 he must depend upon his own exertions. Early and 
 late, therefore, he worked upon the train, and in the 
 stations, at selling his newspapers. But at first he 
 did not earn much money by it. He had to be 
 very careful that he did not buy more papers than he 
 could sell in his very limited sphere of operations ; and 
 yet he could not afford to take too few, as they would have 
 been all sold before reaching the end of the trip. This 
 set the boy thinking. It was plain that, to insure a good 
 sale of newspapers, something must be done to arouse the 
 attention of his little public. The time was favourable for 
 making a sensation. The Civil War between the Northern 
 and Southern States was at its height, and the press was 
 full to overflowing with exciting news. He is clever who 
 knows how to seize an opportunity and make use of it. 
 Edison quickly formed, and proceeded to carry out, a 
 capital plan. 
 
 Making a friend of one of the compositors in the Free 
 
12 FIRST WORK AS A NEWSBOY. 
 
 Press office, he persuaded the man to show him every day 
 a first proof of the most important news article. Then, 
 from a study of its headlines, he soon learned to gauge the 
 value of the news and its selling capacity, so as to be 
 able to form a pretty correct idea of the number of papers 
 he would need. Generally he could only dispose of about 
 two hundred, unless there was any special news from the 
 seat of war, when he found he could sell about three 
 hundred. 
 
 One day, the friendly compositor showed him a proof 
 slip containing a huge headline. It was the first report of 
 the battle of Pittsburgh Landing, and it gave the number of 
 killed and wounded as fifty thousand. 
 
 Grasping the situation at once, Edison saw that there 
 would be a chance of enormous sales of his newspapers, if 
 only he could get the people along the line acquainted 
 with what had happened. How could he let them know ? 
 By what means could he create in them an intense eager- 
 ness to get his newspapers? The idea of telegraphing 
 the news before he followed with the papers flashed across 
 his mind. 
 
 Instantly running over to a telegraph operator, he made 
 a bargain with him. He was to wire to each of the 
 principal stations on the line, asking the station-master to 
 chalk on the blackboard, upon which was usually notified 
 the times of the departure and arrival of trains, the tidings 
 of the great battle, with its enormous loss of life. In 
 exchange for this favour, young Edison agreed to supply 
 the operator with a Harper's Weekly, a Harper's Monthly, 
 and a daily evening paper for six months from that date. 
 
 This bargain made, and the telegraph operator instructed 
 to do his part immediately, Edison turned to the next 
 point, which was to gain possession of all the papers he 
 
FIRST WORK AS A NEWSBOY. 1 3 
 
 required for his great effort. This was a matter of no 
 small difficulty, for he had very little money, and who was 
 likely to trust a poor lad like him ? However, he boldly 
 went to the superintendent of the delivery department, 
 and asked for one thousand copies of the Free Press, to be 
 paid for after they were sold. 
 
 The request was curtly and promptly refused. 
 
 Edison's need was great; he saw a small fortune in 
 prospect if he could but get the papers. At last, therefore, 
 he took courage to go up-stairs to the office of the pro- 
 prietor of the Free Press, Mr Wilbur F. Storey. 
 
 1 1 told him who I was/ said Edison, when he after- 
 wards related the story, ' and that I wanted fifteen hundred 
 copies of the paper on credit. The tall, thin, ascetic- 
 looking man stared at me for a moment, and then 
 scratched a few words on a slip of paper. " Take that 
 down-stairs," he said, " and you will get what you want." 
 And so I did. Then I felt happier than I have ever felt 
 in my life since.' 
 
 Taking his fifteen hundred newspapers away in triumph, 
 Edison got three lads to help him to fold them. Then 
 he went to his train with his newspapers, in great 
 delight ; and only anxious on one point, and that was 
 whether his friendly telegraph operator had kept his 
 promise. 
 
 At Utica, about twelve miles off, where the train stopped 
 first, he usually sold two papers at five cents (twopence 
 halfpenny) each. But now, as the train ran into the 
 station, upon looking eagerly out, he thought he saw 
 an excursion party, for the platform was crowded with 
 people. As soon as they perceived him with some of 
 his newspapers in his hands, they began to gesticulate 
 and shout, and he saw they were clamouring for papers. 
 
14 FIRST WORK AS A NEWSBOY. 
 
 Seizing an armful, he jumped out, and very soon sold 
 forty. 
 
 The next station was Mount Clemens. Here he thought 
 a riot must be going on, for the platform was crowded 
 with a howling mob. But he soon found that what they 
 wanted was news of the battle of Pittsburgh Landing. 
 Those who had friends or relations fighting there were 
 in a state of the utmost suspense and anxiety. Doubling 
 the price of his newspaper, Edison speedily sold a hundred 
 and fifty copies. 
 
 At other stations these scenes were repeated. But the 
 climax was reached when he arrived at Port Huron. The 
 station there was a mile from the town, towards which he 
 at once proceeded with his remaining stock of newspapers. 
 When half-way there, he met a crowd of people hurrying 
 towards the station, and recognised at once that they 
 were wanting newspapers. He therefore raised the price 
 of his newspaper to a quarter of a dollar (about a shilling) 
 a copy, and reaped quite a small fortune. On passing a 
 church where service was going on, the whole congregation 
 turned out, and bid against each other for the precious 
 papers. 
 
 ' You can understand,' said Edison, long afterwards, 
 • why it struck me then that the telegraph must be about 
 the best thing going, for it was the telegraphic notices 
 on the bulletin boards that had done the trick. I deter- 
 mined at once to become a telegraph operator. But if 
 it hadn't been for Wilbur F. Storey I should never have 
 fully appreciated the wonders of electrical science.' 
 
 Thus it was that the boy's mind, hitherto inclined to 
 chemistry, was turned, in admiration and delight, in the 
 direction in which so many of his great inventions were 
 to lie. 
 
THE YOUNG NEWSPAPER EDITOR. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE YOUNG NEWSPAPER EDITOR. 
 
 HE great success of his newspaper enterprises 
 encouraged Edison to make yet another venture. 
 This was nothing less than to start a three-cent 
 (three-halfpence) newspaper of his own, to be called the 
 Grand Trunk Herald. 
 
 Accordingly he procured a disused set of old type and 
 stereos, which had been in the possession of the Detroit 
 Free Press, and, making use of the little knowledge of 
 printing gained by watching what was going on in the 
 works when buying his papers, he began to set up and 
 print his small newspaper in his old luggage-car, which 
 he made his office and workshop. Patiently and per- 
 severingly he worked, until at last he could proudly look 
 upon the newspaper of which he was both editor, printer, 
 and publisher. 
 
 The journal was very tiny, only twelve by sixteen inches 
 in size. It was filled with railway gossip, changes, and 
 general information which was likely to be of interest to 
 travellers. The news was contributed by the railway men, 
 who took immense interest in the novel enterprise, and 
 by the observant young editor and his assistants — for, 
 with his extended newspaper-selling business, and his new 
 editorial and publishing duties, young Edison now found 
 himself obliged to employ three or four boys. 
 
 ' My news,' said Edison, one day, to Mr Lathrop, when 
 speaking of this, the first and last newspaper that was 
 
1 6 THE YOUNG NEWSPAPER EDITOR. 
 
 ever published on a train — ' my news was so purely local, 
 that outside the cars and the shops I don't suppose it 
 interested a solitary human being. But I was very proud 
 of my bantling, and looked upon myself as a Simon-pure 
 literary man. My items used to run like this : " John 
 Robinson, baggage-master at James's Creek Station, fell 
 off the platform yesterday and hurt his leg. The boys 
 are sorry for John." Or it might be, "No. 3 Burlington 
 engine has gone into the shed for repairs." ' 
 
 A facsimile of the small sheet of the little newspaper 
 has been recently published. It is very amusing, and 
 shows how many items can be found, even in such a 
 limited space as a single line of railway, to interest those 
 who travel upon it. And also we perceive the crudity 
 of the young editor's professional powers. One leading 
 article reads as follows : 
 
 1 Premiums. — We believe that the Grand Trunk Railway 
 give premiums every six months to their engineers who 
 use the least wood and coal running the usual journey. 
 Now, we have rode with Mr E. L. Northrop, one of their 
 engineers, and we do not believe you could fall in with 
 another engineer more careful or attentive to his engine, 
 being the most steady driver that we have ever rode 
 behind (and we consider ourselves some judge, having 
 been railway-riding for over two years constantly), always 
 kind and obliging, and ever at his post. His engine, we 
 understand, does not cost one-fourth for repairs what the 
 other engines do. We would respectfully recommend him 
 to the kindest consideration of the G. T. R. Offices.' 
 
 Another leading article is about a clever porter who 
 does the work of two. One item concerns somebody's 
 lost luggage, another the daily stage which meets the train 
 at a particular place. The prices of provisions at some 
 
THE YOUNG NEWSPAPER EDITOR. 1 7 
 
 important town are mentioned. Also anecdotes and 
 epigrams fill up spare columns and odd corners. 
 
 The paper became quite popular up and down the line, 
 and reached a circulation of about four hundred. Its 
 fame reached England, and the Times gave it a com- 
 mendatory notice, whilst Robert Stephenson, the great 
 engineer, once ordered a special edition of it for himself. 
 
 Money began to flow into the pockets of the boy-editor 
 from this source, and from the increased sale of his Detroit 
 Free Press newspapers. He was able to give his parents 
 as much as five hundred dollars in a year. But, alas ! this 
 pecuniary prosperity was not to last. 
 
 Encouraged by the success of the Grand Trunk Herald, 
 Edison, in conjunction with another lad who had worked 
 for the Port Huron Commercial, began to publish a larger 
 and finer journal, entitled Paul Pry. 
 
 This last paper was really superior to the other, but 
 a boyish love of fun caused the young editors to be a 
 little too personal in their remarks about individuals. 
 This provoked animosity, and one day a contributed 
 article in Paul Pry so offended a subscriber that, when 
 he met young Edison on the banks of the St Clair River, 
 he picked him up and threw him in. Being a good 
 swimmer, the boy soon got out again, but now he felt 
 heartily tired of such dangerous editorial pursuits, and so 
 the paper, Paul Pry, came to an untimely end. 
 
 The same year Edison's beloved travelling workshop, 
 the old luggage- car, was taken from him. It happened 
 in this way. One day, when he was hard at work, the 
 jolting of the car, which had no springs, upset a bottle 
 of phosphorus and hurled it violently to the floor, setting 
 fire to the car. In a moment all was in a state of 
 confusion. 
 
 b 
 
1 8 THE YOUNG NEWSPAPER EDITOR. 
 
 It was not difficult to extinguish the flames, but the 
 conductor, who had long been displeased with the horrid 
 smells and terrifying noises which proceeded from Edison's 
 car, thought it a good opportunity for turning him out 
 of the train. In a very short time indeed the poor lad 
 was deposited on the platform, with his type, chemicals, 
 and other property thrown after him. The worst of it 
 was, that the brutal conductor, in his rage, gave him, 
 before he descended, such a severe box on the ear, that 
 the delicate organ of hearing was injured for life by 
 the act : though the finest surgical skill was afterwards 
 employed, it was of no avail. 
 
 Left alone and desolate amongst the fragments of his 
 poor belongings, ill dressed and ill fed, poor young Edison 
 stood looking after his beloved laboratory and workshop 
 disappearing in the distance. He felt stunned and miser- 
 ably disappointed. Was this the end of his joyous labours 
 and successful experiments ? 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LEARNING THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 OUNG Edison had too brave a heart to be 
 crushed by his misfortunes, heavy and unmerited 
 as they were; so, presently, picking up what 
 remained to him of his property, he set off towards his 
 home. 
 
 He had not lost his place as news-boy, but only the 
 privilege of using the old luggage-car as his laboratory 
 or workshop ; and he valued that very much. However, 
 on his arrival at home, his good mother consoled him 
 
LEARNING THE TELEGRAPH. I 9 
 
 immensely, by allowing him the use of the basement, 
 or cellar kitchen, belonging to the house, which he forth- 
 with proceeded to fill with all kinds of rubbish. 
 
 Mrs Edison had great faith in her son, and when a 
 neighbour expostulated with her upon allowing him to 
 bring so much rubbish home with him, she calmly replied, 
 ' The world will hear of him yet.' Her faith in him has 
 been splendidly justified by subsequent events. 
 
 And now the boy's mind, released from its editorial 
 duties, turned with more longing than ever to the desire 
 of mastering the wonderful art of telegraphy. Besides 
 buying and reading a good work on electricity, in the 
 cellar in which he now worked he began to make experi- 
 ments, together with his friend James Ward. 
 
 The two boys actually set up a line between their 
 homes, made of an ordinary stove-pipe wire, insulated with 
 bottles, and crossed under a busy street by means of an 
 old cable fished up from the bed of a river. A piece 
 of spring brass furnished the key, and the magnets were 
 wound with wire wrapped in old rags. 
 
 But what were the boys to do for a current? Their 
 first attempt to make one was by means of a couple of big 
 cats. Attaching a wire to their legs, they rubbed them 
 vigorously at each end of the line. This device, however, 
 proved to be a failure; the cats, as Edison's biographers 
 remark, refused to lend themselves to the pursuits of 
 science, and the test resulted in their running away. But, 
 we are told, ' the experiment was not without success ; a 
 tremendous local current and perfect electric arc were 
 produced, but it would not work the line, and was 
 abandoned.' 
 
 Undaunted by failures, however, Edison continued 
 making his experiments, and bringing home to his cellar 
 
20 LEARNING THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 everything which he fancied might be useful for them. 
 Of money to buy necessary chemicals he had little, but, 
 by denying himself everything but the barest necessaries 
 of life, he found means to buy a number of old instru- 
 ments and other materials. In his working hours he still 
 went on with his former employment of newspaper-selling 
 on the Port Huron train, running from Port Huron to 
 Detroit, and returning daily, except on Sundays. He was 
 still successful with his newspapers, and made a point of 
 leaving at least one dollar of his day's earnings with his 
 parents before setting off again in the morning. 
 
 He was a kind-hearted lad, ever ready to help another, 
 and by this time he had many friends amongst the station- 
 agents, operators, and their families all along the line. 
 At Mount Clemens station, where his train usually stayed 
 about thirty minutes, as it did the freight-work and shunted 
 there, he knew several people very well. The station- 
 master, Mr J. U. Mackenzie, had a nice little boy of 
 about two years and a half old, called Jemmy, and, in 
 the intervals of selling his papers, young Edison would 
 play with the child. 
 
 One lovely summer morning, in the year 1862, about 
 half-past ten, an occurrence took place which was of much 
 importance to the ambitious and hard-working newspaper- 
 boy. His train had arrived at Mount Clemens. Letting 
 its passenger and luggage car stand on the north end of 
 the station platform, the pin having been pulled between 
 the luggage and first box car, the train of some twelve or 
 fifteen luggage-cars went forward, and then backing in 
 upon the freight-house siding, took out a box car (con- 
 taining ten tons of material), and pushed it so that its 
 momentum would enable it to reach the luggage-car with- 
 out any brakesman controlling it. 
 
LEARNING THE TELEGRAPH. 21 
 
 It happened that, exactly at that moment, Edison, who 
 had been standing watching the fowls in the station-master's 
 poultry yard, turned round and perceived, to his horror, 
 that little Jemmy Mackenzie was on the main line. The 
 little fellow was playing in the sunshine, and throwing 
 pebbles over his head, quite ignorant of the awful danger 
 he was in from the rapidly approaching car. 
 
 Dashing his newspapers to the ground, together with his 
 cap, Edison quickly sprang forward to rescue his little 
 friend, at the risk of his own life. 
 
 On came the car, but Edison was just able to throw 
 himself and the child out of its way. They fell together, 
 face downwards, and with such force as to drive the 
 particles of gravel into their flesh, but happily just out of 
 reach of the car as it came up. An eye-witness declared 
 that, if Edison had been a second later, he would have 
 lost a foot or have been killed. Indeed the car struck 
 the heel of his boot. The station-master was in his ticket- 
 office ; but, on hearing a shriek, he came out of it in time 
 to see the railway-men carrying the two boys to the plat- 
 form. 
 
 Ah, how grateful the poor father was ! He was a poor 
 man, living, as so many railway employees do, above his 
 means, and usually spending his salary before he received 
 it from his paymaster. He had no money to offer the 
 brave rescuer of his little boy, but quickly thought of a 
 way of proving his gratitude. 
 
 He could teach the poor newspaper-lad the art of tele- 
 graphy,^and put him in the way of earning a good salary 
 as a telegraph operator. Much to Edison's delight — for 
 this was just the kind of help that he wanted — he at 
 once proposed to do so. 
 
 Edison gratefully accepted the welcome offer. Ah, 
 
2 2 LEARNING THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 how hard he worked now ! After plying his business all 
 day, each night, on coming home to Port Huron, he 
 returned on the luggage train to Mount Clemens to learn 
 his new work. 
 
 For about ten days this arrangement was carried on very 
 satisfactorily; then Edison did not turn up at Mount 
 Clemens for his telegraph lessons for several days. When 
 he did come, however, he brought with him a complete 
 set of working telegraph instruments, so small that they 
 would not cover an ordinary envelope in size. They were 
 perfect in their way, and had all been made by the boy 
 with his own hands, in the gun-shop of Messrs Fisher & 
 Long in Detroit. 
 
 Mrs Mackenzie's brother, Rowland Benner, was also 
 learning telegraphy at the same time, and he and Edison 
 vied with each other in their efforts to excel. 
 
 Benner assisted Edison with his first speculation. This 
 was nothing less than to try and work a little private 
 telegraph line between the station and the town. The 
 boys made their telegraph office in a drug store in the 
 town, using the instruments Edison had made, upon a line 
 made of annealed stove-pipe wire, upon the stakes of a 
 rail fence, insulated with common nails. 
 
 In dry weather this line worked well enough, but on 
 damp, wet days there was no tick to be heard. The young 
 partners fixed a tariff of twelve and a half cents (about 
 sixpence halfpenny), and, during the first months, they 
 took in the munificent sum of thirty-seven and a half cents 
 (rather more than eighteenpence), after which they found 
 it necessary to close the works, as Edison was then about 
 to take more remunerative work. 
 
 Others besides the station-master at Mount Clemens 
 assisted Edison in his telegraphic education, and in three 
 
LEARNING THE TELEGRAPH. 2$ 
 
 months he understood the art of telegraphy quite well. 
 He used to frequent the Western Union Telegraphic Office 
 in Port Huron, where he learned much ; and it was then 
 that he duplexed the workings on the Grand Trunk Cable 
 between Port Huron and Sarnia. This was considered a 
 very wonderful feat, and was a great convenience to the 
 Grand Trunk Railroad, as it made their business much 
 easier to work. It is not known, however, whether Edison 
 was ever paid for doing this. 
 
 Three months he remained at Port Huron, working hard 
 and proving his ability; then the greediness and dis- 
 honesty of the Western Union agent so disgusted him that 
 he would work no more for him. 
 
 The following incident led to this determination on his 
 part. The Press happened to be all eagerness to obtain 
 an exact account of the Presidential address to Congress. 
 It accordingly offered the Western Union agent sixty 
 dollars if he would obtain it. He set Edison to receive it, 
 promising him a reward of twenty dollars (rather more 
 than four pounds). This was a large sum to the young 
 telegraphist, and he was delighted to think of earning it. 
 What, then, was his dismay when, upon his finishing the 
 work, his chief repudiated the bargain and would not pay 
 the money ! Nay, more than that, he would not admit 
 any claim for extra work. 
 
 Leaving his service at once, Edison obtained, through 
 the help of his friend Mr Mackenzie, a situation as night 
 telegraph operator on the Grand Trunk Railway, with a 
 salary of twenty-five dollars a month. 
 
 Here the work was very hard, for the manager under 
 whom Edison worked was exceedingly exacting. One 
 of his regulations was very irksome to the youth. 
 This was, that during the night, as a precaution against 
 
24 Learning the telegraph. 
 
 drowsiness, the operators were required to report the word 
 six every half-hour. 
 
 Now Edison liked to ramble about Stratford, its neigh- 
 bourhood, and the railway stations, when he was not 
 actually at work. Whilst doing this, of course, he could 
 not report the word six every half-hour. Not liking, how- 
 ever, to give up his beloved rambles, he tried to think 
 how he could combine duty with pleasure. Then it was 
 that he conceived the brilliant idea of making the clock 
 act as a substitute for himself. 
 
 After a little puzzling over the matter, he made a wheel 
 with notches cut in it at its outer edge, fixed this wheel to 
 the clock, and then connected it by wires with the chief 
 line circuit, so that it would regularly give every half-hour 
 the word six. 
 
 At first all went well; but, after a little time, it was 
 noticed that the letters sf could never be raised immedi- 
 ately after six. A detective operator was deputed to find 
 out the cause of this, with the result that Edison's labour- 
 saving device was discovered. 
 
 We may say here that that device is the District Tele- 
 graph of to-day, for, later, it was patented, and sold to the 
 American District Telegraph Company. 
 
 The next time Edison evaded his duty by a device he 
 was promptly found out. The telegraph clerks had some- 
 times the order to stop certain trains, and then give infor- 
 mation to the train-despatcher of their arrival. Not 
 knowing what a very small space of time he had at his 
 disposal, upon one occasion, Edison reversed the order, 
 and sent word to the train-despatcher before signalling for 
 the train to stop. The consequence was that the train 
 passed the station without stopping, and was nearly out of 
 sight when he returned. 
 
LEARNING THE TELEGRAPH. 25 
 
 Too late young Edison realised the danger of the situa- 
 tion, and tried to get to a certain luggage depot, where 
 trains often stopped, hoping that there he would be able 
 to stop the progress of the train. 
 
 The night, however, was dark, the way was full of 
 obstructions, and he was much too frightened to see 
 clearly. In the end he fell into a sort of open drain, and 
 bruised himself severely, and, before he could get out, the 
 train had passed out of sight. 
 
 Wounded and breathless, in terrible alarm, he tore 
 across to the telegraph office, where word was instantly 
 despatched, although it was not in time to prevent the 
 dreaded collision, which would have taken place had it not 
 been for the exceeding vigilance of both engineers. As it 
 was, no harm was done to the train. 
 
 Edison's fault, however, was of too grave a nature to be 
 allowed to go unpunished. In dire displeasure the general 
 manager, Mr W. J. Spicer, sent for the culprit. 
 
 ' Young man,' said Mr Spicer, ' this offence of yours is 
 a very serious one, and I think I shall make an example 
 of you. I can send you to the penitentiary for five 
 years ' 
 
 Fortunately for Edison, just at that moment two English 
 gentlemen of some importance came in, and Mr Spicer 
 rose, with great affability, to greet them. 
 
 Whilst he was taken up with talking to these strangers, 
 Edison perceived that he was not noticed just then, and 
 so slipped quietly away and made off for the luggage 
 depot, where he found a train just on the point of starting 
 for Sarnia. 
 
 Knowing the conductor of this train, Edison told him 
 he would like to take a trip up the line with him as far as 
 Sarnia. 
 
26 LEARNING THE TELEGRAPH. . 
 
 Thereupon the man good-humouredly bade him 'jump 
 aboard/ and in a few minutes Edison and the train were 
 out of sight of any one at Stratford. 
 
 \ My pulse,' said Edison afterwards, ' didn't get down to 
 normal work until the ferry-boat between Sarnia and Port 
 Huron had landed us in the latter town.' 
 
 Of course he lost the wages due to him, but that was a 
 small matter compared with the danger he had escaped. 
 
 Once more at Port Huron, Edison found himself able 
 to be of signal service to the telegraph-operators there. 
 The winter having been exceedingly severe, the masses of 
 ice had formed to such an extent and with such force as to 
 sever the cable between Port Huron and the city of Sarnia. 
 The river, which was a mile and a half wide at that point, 
 was totally impassable, and all telegraphic communications 
 were prevented. But Edison was not to be daunted by 
 such difficulties. His inventive mind soon thought of a 
 remedy. He would make short and long sounds express 
 the dots and dashes of telegraphy, and jumping on a 
 locomotive, he made the whistle sound the message. 
 
 ' Halloo, Sarnia ! ' he said in this way, ' Sarnia, do you 
 hear what I say ? ' 
 
 At first there was no response from the Sarnian operator. 
 
 Again and again the short and long toots shaped them- 
 selves into the dots and dashes of telegraphy. 
 
 The spectators on the bank watched with immense 
 excitement. And at length the answer came. It was 
 perfectly intelligible, and the connection between the two 
 towns was once more open. 
 
 Now, young Edison began to be talked about, and his 
 wonderful abilities were recognised, so that he found no 
 difficulty in obtaining employment. 
 
EARLY INVENTIONS. 27 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EARLY INVENTIONS. 
 
 DISON next worked as a telegraph operator at 
 Adrian, Michigan, and then at Fort Wayne and 
 Indianapolis, gaining considerable credit, although 
 his love of fun and love of experimenting often caused 
 him to break the rules made for the knights of the key, 
 as those who used the Morse alphabet have been called. 
 
 At Indianapolis he got into serious trouble on that 
 account, but it was there his inventive faculty developed 
 rapidly, to his exceeding satisfaction. How hard he 
 worked ! At an age when food and sleep are so necessary 
 to the growth and well-being of the young, he robbed 
 himself of both, that he might toil at disentangling the 
 wonderful discoveries which followed one another in suc- 
 cession as he bent his active mind to look for them. 
 
 He has himself described the invention of his automatic 
 recorder in a conversation with Mr Lathrop. ' I worked 
 a " plug circuit " in the day-time at Indianapolis,' he said, 
 ' and got a small salary for doing it. But at night, with 
 another operator called Parmley, I used to receive news- 
 paper reports just for the practice. The regular operator 
 was a man named Williams ; and, as he was given to 
 copious libations, he was glad enough to sleep off the 
 effects while we did his work for him as well as we could. 
 I would sit down for ten minutes, and " take " as much as 
 I could from the instrument, carrying the rest in my 
 
28 EARLY INVENTIONS. 
 
 memory. Then while I wrote out, Parmley would serve 
 his turn at " taking," and so on. This worked well until 
 they put a new man on at the Cincinnati end. He was 
 one of the quickest despatchers in the business, and we 
 soon found it was hopeless to try to keep up with him. 
 Then it was that I worked out my first invention, and 
 necessity was certainly the mother of it. 
 
 * I got two old Morse registers, and arranged them in 
 such a way that, by running a strip of paper through them, 
 the dots and dashes were recorded on it by the first instru- 
 ment as fast as they were delivered from the Cincinnati end, 
 and were transmitted to us through the other instrument at 
 any desired rate of speed or slowness. They would come 
 in on one instrument at the rate of forty words a minute, 
 and we would grind them out of the other at the rate of 
 twenty-five. Then weren't we proud ? Our copy used to 
 be so clean and beautiful that we hung it up on exhibition ; 
 and our manager used to come and gaze at it silently, 
 with a puzzled expression. Then he would depart, shaking 
 his head in a troubled sort of way. He could not under- 
 stand it, neither could any of the other operators ; for we 
 used to drag off my impromptu automatic recorder and 
 hide it when our toil was over. But the crash came when 
 there was a big night's work — a Presidential vote, I think 
 it was — and copy kept pouring in at the top rate of speed, 
 until we fell an hour and a half or two hours behind. The 
 newspapers sent in frantic complaints, an investigation was 
 made, and our little scheme was discovered. We couldn't 
 use it any more.' 
 
 This early and comparatively rude contrivance, which 
 was only meant to serve a temporary and very practical 
 purpose, was the germ whence sprang, later on, Edison's 
 greatest invention, the phonograph, and was also the 
 
EARLY INVENTIONS. 2Q 
 
 source of his first finished invention, 'the automatic 
 repeating telegraph.' 
 
 The immediate result of Edison's using his automatic 
 recorder at Indianapolis, however, was that, when his device 
 was discovered, he was dismissed by the indiscriminate 
 manager. 
 
 At Cincinnati, however, Edison soon obtained another 
 engagement as day operator, with a salary of sixty dollars 
 a month. Whilst he was there he worked at night practice 
 whenever he could obtain the use of the wire. 
 
 Several Cleveland operators came to the Cincinnati 
 telegraph office one day, bent upon founding a local branch 
 of the telegraphists' union. This occasioned the telegraph 
 operators to try to promote brotherly feeling between the 
 strangers and themselves that night, by the mistaken yet 
 old-fashioned plan of drinking together. Edison had no 
 mind for such revels, so he returned alone to the office, 
 where no one was to be seen but the office-boy. The 
 Cleveland wire was demanding a report, but at first Edison 
 did not like to take upon himself the duty of supplying it. 
 After a while, however, he resolved to do so, and manipu- 
 lated the wire with his usual ability. 
 
 Long he worked during the silent hours of the night, and 
 the next morning, by eight o'clock, he was in his accus- 
 tomed place as day operator. He intended, with his usual 
 kindness of heart, to keep the conduct of his fellow- 
 telegraphists secret, but the office-boy told what had 
 happened. Thereupon Edison's employers, being much 
 pleased with his behaviour, gave him an increased salary of 
 one hundred and five dollars, and placed the important 
 Louisville wire in his hands. This wire carried all the 
 southern reports, and required the skill of an expert. 
 Edison entered into brisk competition with Mr Robert 
 
30 EARLY INVENTIONS. 
 
 Martin, a gentleman renowned for his telegraphing ability, 
 and this was for Edison a very advantageous partnership. 
 
 Memphis, Tennessee, was the next place to which young 
 Edison moved. Here he received one hundred and 
 twenty-five dollars a month, as well as rations. But he 
 did not remain long at this place, for his wonderful clever- 
 ness, which excited admiration in those who were just and 
 generous, exposed him here, as elsewhere, to the jealousy 
 and distrust of a narrow-minded and selfish master. 
 
 It happened that, when Edison arrived, the manager 
 was trying in vain to make a repeater of his own invention 
 more perfect Edison at once began to make experiments, 
 which were so successful that the result was that Louisville 
 and New Orleans were connected for the first time by 
 telegraphy. Enraged at Edison's great success in a matter 
 in which he had failed, the mean-spirited manager brought 
 a false charge against the youth, which led to his dismissal. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 AT LOUISVILLE. 
 
 WILL walk to Louisville,' thought penniless, 
 sore-hearted Edison, who was still only seven- 
 teen years of age, and forthwith set out to 
 tramp a hundred miles, and then obtain free conveyance 
 for the remainder of the way. 
 
 His dismissal had come at a bad time for him. As 
 much of his salary as he had not sent home was spent in 
 books and instruments, and his dress was in a truly 
 dilapidated condition. His health, too, was suffering from 
 
AT LOUISVILLE. 3 1 
 
 the strain of much labour and sleepless nights. But his 
 indomitable spirit sustained him. 
 
 On the way a young operator, named William Foley, 
 joined him at Nashville, and the two went on their journey 
 together until they reached Louisville. 
 
 It was a cold and cheerless morning in the beginning of 
 winter when the two lads entered the great city with its 
 ice-bound streets. A church-bell was clanging the hour of 
 six. Faint with cold and hunger, weary with walking, 
 disheartened by ill-treatment, in broken shoes and torn 
 clothing, Edison presented himself at the telegraph office 
 and asked for work. His appearance was against him, and 
 he was naturally regarded with distrust, if not contempt. 
 However, his bright and earnest manner made them listen 
 to him, and the tests of skill which he proceeded to give 
 the manager were so good that he was forthwith engaged 
 as operator. 
 
 His new fellow-workers being vulgar and unprincipled, 
 were inclined to ridicule one so poor and rustic-looking, but 
 in time his unfailing kindness and studious hard-working 
 habits won their respect and liking. 
 
 Edison continued in that situation two years. One 
 little break in that time was, however, caused by his giving 
 credence to rumours that came to the city of the wonderful 
 resources of Southern America, which made him start off 
 for that country with two friends. At New Orleans, how- 
 ever, he met an old and experienced traveller, who persuaded 
 him to return home, saying that he would not find a better 
 government, climate, or people anywhere than in the 
 United States. After a short interval, therefore, he 
 resumed work at Louisville, and here he soon had a 
 laboratory, printing office, and machine shop in which he 
 could work. He went to second-hand book stores, and 
 
32 AT LOUISVILLE. 
 
 collected quite a library of books. He took press reports; 
 on one occasion taking the Presidential message and veto 
 of the District of Columbia Bill by Andrew Johnson at 
 one sitting, which lasted from 3.30 p.m. to 4.30 a.m. Then 
 he paragraphed the matter received over the lines, so that 
 each printer had three lines to do, and a column could be 
 set up in two or three minutes. For this the Louisville 
 press gave him a dinner, and he was accorded several 
 privileges. 
 
 Once, when a new man knocked him down for trying 
 to limit his indulgence in strong drink, Edison's fellow- 
 operators fell upon the man, and thrashed him so severely 
 that he had to go to the hospital for three weeks. 
 
 As soon as Edison got a little better off as regards 
 money, his kindly disposition made him so generous to 
 others that he was sometimes not a little sponged upon. 
 The demoralisation caused by the war led many telegraphists 
 to tramp from city to city in search of work, which their 
 unsteady habits soon caused them to lose again. Mindful 
 of his own ' tramp ' in search of employment, Edison would 
 offer food and lodging to such poor fellows. And it was 
 they who oftenest imposed upon his good nature. 
 
 One day he bought fifty volumes of the North American 
 Review at an auction sale, placed them in his room, and 
 went out again to his work. During his absence six 
 telegraph operators, whom he was sheltering at the time, 
 thought they would make use of his new purchase. Accord- 
 ingly, they carried the books to a pawn-shop and procured 
 drink with the money raised upon them. History does not 
 describe Edison's feelings when he found himself thus 
 wronged, or the way in which he treated the rascals for 
 abusing his hospitality. 
 
 Another time, on coming home from a night's work, he 
 
AT LOUISVILLE. 33 
 
 found the furniture in his room absolutely wrecked, and 
 two of his visitors in bed with their boots on. 
 
 Edison pulled them out, and left them to cool upon the 
 floor. 
 
 Once when he was returning in the night from an auction 
 sale, with a load of books upon his shoulders, a policeman 
 took him for a burglar, and shouted to him to stop. Being 
 deaf, Edison did not hear him, and consequently took no 
 notice of the shout, whereupon the policeman fired a pistol 
 shot. Then, coming up to Edison, he recognised him, and 
 allowed him to pass on. 
 
 Whilst Edison was at Louisville he published his first 
 electrical treatise, and learned a very rapid style of pen- 
 manship, which enabled him to write clearly and legibly 
 forty-five words a minute. 
 
 After a while the old telegraph office was exchanged for 
 a spacious building, well fitted up with every kind of 
 appliance. But with these improvements came more 
 stringent regulations. The instruments and chemicals 
 were required to be kept strictly in their places. As often 
 before, Edison, whilst intent upon inventing, disregarded 
 these regulations. One night he went into the battery- 
 room to obtain some sulphuric acid for an experiment he 
 was making. In getting the acid, he unfortunately upset it. 
 The consequences were truly alarming. In his own words, 
 'the acid in the carboy tipped over, ate the floor, and 
 went down to the manager's room below, ate up his desk 
 and all the carpet.' 
 
 The next morning Edison was dismissed. The Board 
 before which he was summoned said witheringly that they 
 wanted telegraph operators, not experimenters. 
 
34 BOSTON EXPERIENCES. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 BOSTON EXPERIENCES. 
 
 DISON'S next situation as telegraph operator was 
 at Cincinnati. There a machine-shed belonging 
 to the railway company was so near the telegraph 
 office that the temptation to experiment with an engine, 
 and study its mechanism and capability, proved irresistible. 
 One night, when the engine-driver and fireman had fallen 
 asleep, Edison borrowed one of the larger engines, and 
 drove it a certain distance along the line and back again. 
 Perhaps he would not have been discovered had not 
 inexperience caused him to over-fill the boiler, so that 
 it sent out a discharge of dirty water and soot, which 
 afterwards betrayed him. But he obtained valuable 
 knowledge in this and other ways, which eventually 
 led to his invention of electrical railroading. 
 
 After a while he went to Port Huron for eighteen 
 months, where, in a situation as telegraph clerk, he con- 
 tinued experimenting and making inventive schemes, at 
 the same time reading as much as he could from books 
 supplied by the local library. 
 
 Sometimes Edison has been spoken of as a discoverer, 
 but he did not like that word applied to himself. * Dis- 
 covery is not invention,' he said. And again, c A discovery 
 is more or less the nature of an accident;' adding, ' It is 
 too much the fashion to attribute all inventions to accident, 
 and a great deal of nonsense is talked on that score. In 
 
BOSTON EXPERIENCES. 35 
 
 my own case but few, and those the least of my inventions, 
 owed anything to accident. Most of them have been 
 hammered out after long and patient labour, and are the 
 result of countless experiments, all directed towards attain- 
 ing some well-defined object.' Thus we see that the crude 
 experiments of his early youth were often the germs whence 
 sprang, later on, the wonderful world-helping inventions 
 which have made him without question the greatest living 
 inventor. 
 
 Whilst at Port Huron, Edison made a clever device 
 whereby a submarine cable could be used for two circuits, 
 this causing a considerable monetary saving. The Grand 
 Trunk Railway adopted this invention, and gave him a free 
 pass to Boston, where Mr Milton Adams, his good friend, 
 procured him a situation in the Franklin office. 
 
 As usual Edison, now twenty-one years old, was very 
 short of money, the home claims upon him, his generosity 
 to others, and the cost of his scientific appliances, having 
 absorbed all his earnings. His appearance, therefore, 
 upon arriving at Boston in his old, well-worn clothes, after 
 a four days' journey, was anything but prepossessing. 
 
 'When shall you be ready to begin work?' asked the 
 manager, when he arrived at the telegraph office. 
 
 1 Now,' replied the young man. 
 
 He was then told to return at 5.50 p.m. 
 
 Accordingly he did so, and, after having been introduced 
 to the night manager, made the acquaintance of the night 
 staff with whom he was to work. These men were much 
 amused at his shabby appearance, and, dubbing him 
 ' a jay from the woolly West,' thought that they would have 
 a joke at his expense. After consulting together, they 
 gave him a pen, and assigned him the New York No. 1 
 wire. Then, after some little delay, he was called over to 
 
36 BOSTON EXPERIENCES. 
 
 a table to take a special report for the Boston Herald. 
 Now the plotters had arranged that, for his discomfiture, 
 one of the fastest senders in New York should send him 
 the despatch. Edison sat down and began to work. He 
 had long since, as we have seen, attained to a very rapid 
 style of writing, and had perfected it to such an extent that 
 he could increase it from forty-five to fifty-four words a 
 minute, by writing smaller and smaller as he proceeded. At 
 first the New York operator began to send slowly, then he 
 increased his speed. Edison gradually adapted his pace 
 to the sender's. The latter soon sent at his very fastest. 
 Looking round quietly, Edison saw that his fellow-workers 
 were watching over his shoulders, with no little excitement. 
 That betrayed them. But, taking no apparent notice, he 
 went on, calmly sharpening a pencil now and then, to their 
 no small astonishment. Then the New York telegraphist 
 worked very carelessly and hurriedly, letting his words run 
 together; but Edison, undismayed, went on until he had 
 nearly done the special report. Then he opened the key, 
 and said calmly, 'Say, young man, change off, and send 
 with your other foot.' Upon that, the New York man 
 gave up trying to overwhelm him, and allowed another 
 clerk to take his place. 
 
 The great ability he had displayed under trying circum- 
 stances secured the respect of Edison's new associates, 
 who saw in him one of the most expert operators in the 
 country. 
 
 His active mind was then, as ever, full of schemes for 
 achieving wondrous labour-saving and beneficial inventions. 
 Even during sleep, his brain was busy devising intricate 
 machines, which he was not, however, able to remember 
 when he awoke. One rather amusing instance of his 
 applying his inventive mind to the exigencies of an unusual 
 
BOSTON EXPERIENCES. 37 
 
 position occurred about this time. It happened that the 
 telegraph premises were overrun with a numerous army of 
 cockroaches, against whom the telegraph clerks had long 
 waged a vain and inglorious warfare. Overpowered by- 
 numbers, hourly increasing, when Edison came upon the 
 scene the men were decidedly the defeated party. No 
 hiding-places could secure for them immunity from the pest, 
 no shelf or hook was safe from the active climbers : over 
 books, appliances, food, and clothes, onward came the 
 enemy. Edison's device for exterminating them was 
 simple, yet effective. Fastening some shining strips of 
 tinfoil on the wall, he smeared these with such food as 
 beetles love, and connected the strips with a powerful 
 battery. Then the poor calcined insects poured down 
 from what was for them a crematory. 
 
 Edison's friend, Mr Milton Adams, happened at that 
 time to be himself experiencing a reverse of fortune, and 
 the youth gladly gave him board and lodging for a while. 
 His sympathy was very helpful, and together the friends 
 frequented second-hand book stores, and sought for scien- 
 tific appliances in queer old shops, or investigated the 
 grand resources of the Boston Public Library, which 
 contained a collection of two hundred and eighty thousand 
 volumes. Edison's present manager, too, gave him sym- 
 pathy and appreciation such as he had not often met with. 
 
 Once, when he was very busy experimenting, he bought 
 the whole of Faraday's works on electricity, and, having 
 brought them home at three o'clock in the morning, read 
 without stopping until Mr Adams got up, and it was time 
 for them to adjourn for breakfast to the place, a mile 
 distant, where they took their meals. Edison was full of 
 interest and excitement about what he had been reading. 
 
 'Adams,' he said, ' I 've got so much to do, and life is so 
 
g8 BOSTON EXPERIENCES. 
 
 short, that I'm going to hustle,' and so he set off running 
 to his breakfast. 
 
 Next, we have a glimpse of him, at six o'clock one 
 morning, carefully letting down a bottle into a sewer at 
 the corner of State and Washington Streets. The bottle 
 contained nitro-glycerine made by himself and a mechanic 
 with whom he had formed an acquaintance. Having 
 tested a small quantity of this explosive, it produced such 
 alarming results that they decided the sooner it was out of 
 their way and that of everyone else, the better it would be; 
 hence its immersion in the sewer. 
 
 Not long after coming to Boston, Edison commenced to 
 make his electrical vote-recorder, which caused his first 
 appearance at the Patent Office. Having been struck with 
 the great waste of time occasioned by the old way of taking 
 votes in Congress and in the State legislatures — half an 
 hour or more being required to count the 'Ayes' and 
 'Noes' — he made a machine, something like the hotel 
 annunciator that was invented long afterwards, although 
 more complicated. Edison thus described this ingenious 
 invention : ' In front of each member of the House were 
 two buttons, one for " Aye " and one for " No." By the 
 side of the Speaker's desk was erected a square frame, in 
 the upper part of which were two dials, also corresponding 
 to the two classes of vote. Below these dials were spaces 
 in which numbers appeared. When the vote was called 
 for, each member pressed one or other of the buttons in 
 front of him, and the numbers of " Ayes " and " Noes " that 
 had been cast at once appeared automatically on the 
 record board. All the Speaker had to do was to glance at 
 the dial and announce the result.' 
 
 This device would save several hours of time for the 
 public every day in the session, and Edison spared neither 
 
 
BOSTON EXPERIENCES. 39 
 
 time nor money to secure its introduction. Having inter- 
 ested a moneyed man in the venture, they went together to 
 Washington. ' We got hold of the right man,' said Edison 
 afterwards, ' to get the machine adopted, and I enthusiasti- 
 cally set forth its merits to him. Just imagine my feelings 
 when, in a horrified tone, he exclaimed, " Young man, that 
 won't do at all. That is just what we do not want. Your 
 invention would destroy the only hope the minority have 
 of influencing legislation. It would deliver them over, 
 bound hand and foot, to the majority. The present system 
 gives them a weapon which is invaluable, and, as the 
 ruling majority always knows that it may some day become 
 a minority, they will be as much averse to any change as 
 their opponents." I saw the force of his remarks, and was 
 about as much crushed as it was possible to be at my age.' 
 
 The vote-recorder got no further than the Patent Office, 
 and, ever after, Mr Edison made a point of investigating 
 carefully the utility of any invention before taking the 
 trouble to perfect it. 
 
 While employed by the Western Union Telegraph Com- 
 pany at Boston, Edison invented a dial instrument for 
 people to use who wished to have private wires in their 
 houses or offices, and did not want to trouble to learn 
 telegraphy. He also invented a private-wire printer 
 besides. But his most successful work was the first 
 conception and partial development of a stock-quotation 
 printer, for printing the price of stock in brokers' offices. 
 
 Edison was now in such high repute at Boston that he 
 was chosen by a ladies' academy to lecture on telegraphy. 
 Being exceedingly busy at the time, he forgot about the 
 engagement, and, when sought hurriedly by his friend, Mr 
 Adams, was found at the top of a house, busily erecting a 
 telegraph wire. When reminded of the lecture, forgetting 
 
40 BOSTON EXPERIENCES. 
 
 again that it was an academy of ladies he was going to 
 address, he set off in his untidy old clothes, just as he was, 
 to give the lecture. Hurrying through the streets and into 
 the hall, he suddenly found himself in view of an assembly 
 of stylishly dressed young ladies. This was overwhelming, 
 indeed ; but Edison, although feeling disconcerted, bravely 
 plunged into his subject, and gave his fair hearers a happy 
 and clear explanation of telegraphy. 
 
 The girl graduates admired the frankness and presence 
 of mind of their learned, but badly dressed lecturer, and 
 showed their approval afterwards by their sweet, gracious 
 behaviour to him when they met. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 QUADRUPLEX TELEGRAPHY. 
 
 KNEW Tom [Edison] when he was a barefoot 
 boy living at Fort Gratiot, Michigan,' said Mr S.J. 
 House to a press reporter; f he was always hank- 
 ering after telegraphy, and once rigged up a line from his 
 house to mine, a block away. I could not receive very well, 
 and sometimes I would come out, climb on the fence, and 
 halloa over to know what he said. That always angered him ; 
 he seemed to take it as a reflection upon his telegraph line.' 
 
 And now that same barefoot boy, grown a man and 
 already remarkable for his abilities as a telegraphist and 
 inventive talents, set to work zealously to improve the 
 system of electric telegraphy. 
 
 The idea of the electric telegraph occurred to Professor 
 Morse in 1832, and in 1837 he made his first somewhat 
 rude apparatus, and set his system to work. Excellent 
 
QUADRUPLEX TELEGRAPHY. 4 1 
 
 as it was fundamentally, yet it had imperfections and 
 limitations, which Edison sought to remove patiently and 
 with great success. Less expensive, easier to work, more 
 rapid became the system as altered and modified by 
 him, until, after six years, he accomplished his greatest 
 effort in that way — the discovery of quadruplex telegraphy. 
 Let me explain. 
 
 The rapid increase in the business of telegraphy called 
 forth the exercise of the ingenuity of telegraph engineers 
 to increase the capacity of a single wire for the transmission 
 of messages. Duplex telegraphy is one way in which this 
 is done. By this system messages can be sent on one line 
 in both directions at the same time. For instance, a man 
 at Station A can send a message to Station B, at the same 
 time that an operator at B is sending a totally different 
 message to A. But if Station A or Station B is able to 
 send two messages to the other at the same time on the 
 same wire, we have diplex telegraphy. When these two 
 systems duplex and diplex are combined, we may have 
 four messages sent simultaneously on a single wire, and 
 this constitutes quadruplex telegraphy. 
 
 The invention of quadruplex telegraphy is universally 
 held to be Edison's crowning achievement in telegraphy. 
 In America alone it has effected the enormous saving of 
 15,000,000 dollars, by immensely lessening the number of 
 wires required for the telegraph work. 
 
 Like Edison's other inventions, quadruplex telegraphy 
 was the result of long-continued patient study and ex- 
 perimenting. It had been suggested by Stark and Bosscha 
 in 1855, but it was not until 1874 that Edison's device 
 solved the difficult problem of how it was to be done, and 
 the system now in use is the practical result of his efforts, 
 supplemented by those of others. It may be broadly 
 
42 QUADRUPLEX TELEGRAPHY. 
 
 described as the duplex system provided with two keys in 
 the sending circuit, and two relays, each having a coil in 
 both the line and the compensation circuits. One key is 
 so connected that, when its lever is depressed, the battery 
 connections are reversed, so reversing the direction of the 
 current, while the other key is so constructed that the 
 depression of the lever brings into circuit three times as 
 much battery power, so that (whatever the direction of the 
 current) it is increased in strength threefold. The relay 
 at one end responds correctly to the 'marking' and 
 ' spacing ' currents, whatever their strength ; while the relay 
 on the other end is actuated only when the greater current 
 is received, and then responds whether the ' current ' is 
 positive or negative. 
 
 Edison is still busy with experiments which he hopes 
 will extend the quadruplex system into a sextuplex, or 
 even octuplex one. If he succeeds, six or eight messages 
 can be sent simultaneously over the same wire. 
 
 But to return to Edison at Boston. The same year 1869, 
 in which his engagement there terminated, he had so far 
 perfected his duplex system that he determined to make a 
 trial of it. Mr F. L. Pope, Patent-adviser of the Western 
 Union Telegraph Company, very kindly assisted him to 
 do this. The results were imperfect, but Edison per- 
 ceived in them the germs of great things. He resolved at 
 once that he would go and carry out his schemes in a 
 wider sphere of action. 
 
 Accordingly he went to New York, after having taken a 
 trip to Rochester, where he wished to try his new invention 
 by the wires of the Pacific and Atlantic Railway Company. 
 The trial, however, resulted in failure, because the tele- 
 graphist at the New York end could not understand how 
 the invention should be worked. 
 
FROM POVERTY TO RICHES. 43 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FROM POVERTY TO RICHES. 
 
 HEN Edison came to New York he was painfully 
 poor, for besides his empty pockets, he was loaded 
 yyHIIJ with a debt amounting to two or three hundred 
 dollars. 
 
 For three weeks the young man had a hard time of it. 
 Hunger, rough lodgings, and discouraging interviews with 
 the heads of telegraph departments were most depressing. 
 But there is an old saying that the darkest hour is just 
 before the dawn, and when things are at their lowest ebb 
 they often begin to rise; and so it was with Edison. 
 Plunged into poverty and the contempt of man in a 
 strange place, after all his brilliant achievements and his 
 long toil of night and day, his soul was sinking within him, 
 and his physical endurance was beginning to wane, when 
 one day he found himself on the steps of the Laws Gold 
 Reporting Company's Office, Wall Street. A crowd was 
 surging about the place and elbowing its way inside the 
 door, desperation in some countenances, trouble in all. 
 Amidst the confusion, Edison passed into the office un- 
 noticed, and standing by, observed with keen eyes exactly 
 what was wrong, and also how to remedy it. 
 
 The office was the centre of no fewer than six hundred 
 brokers' offices, with each of which it was connected by a 
 system of indicators. It was in fact, in a way, the great 
 heart of wide-spread commercial activity. And just then 
 Wall Street was in a state of immense excitement about a 
 
44 FROM POVERTY TO RICHES. 
 
 singular financial crisis. A panic threatened in the gold 
 market ; whole families were on the verge of ruin, fortunes 
 trembled in the balance. Inflamed, unmanned by the 
 lust of gold, men crowded round the centre whence 
 news could be obtained, with cruel shouts of triumph or 
 senile bursts of tears; and just at the time of all that 
 wretched excitement, when the eyes of thousands were 
 turned with frantic eagerness to see what statistics 
 would be furnished by the hundreds of indicators, there in 
 the Laws Gold Reporting Company's chief office, the 
 stock-quotation printer, working by means of electricity, 
 had suddenly collapsed, whilst with it was lost every 
 subordinate source of information. Mr Laws was a very 
 nervous man; his superintendent, Mr Frank Pope, re- 
 sembled him in that respect; they were therefore almost 
 driven off their mental balance by this dire misfortune. Six 
 hundred brokers' boys, weighted with indignant messages 
 from their chiefs, and a crowd of angry, excited people 
 surging to and fro without and even within their office, 
 drove them almost to desperation. What could they do ? 
 
 ■ I think, Mr Laws,' remarked Edison quietly, after having 
 calmly examined the broken-down printer, ' I can show 
 you where the trouble lies. There is a contact spring 
 which has broken and fallen between two cog-wheels, 
 which prevents the gear from moving.' 
 
 It was indeed so. With gratitude Mr Laws looked at 
 the shabbily dressed stranger whose cleverness had saved 
 him from his most disastrous position. The obstruction 
 was quickly removed from the quotation printer, and that 
 important centre was again in touch with all its dependent 
 organs. 
 
 Soon Edison found himself a hero gazed upon by 
 hundreds of admiring eyes. And the end of it was that, 
 
FROM POVERTY TO RICHES. 45 
 
 the very next day, Mr Laws gladly engaged him to take 
 charge in future of all the machinery, and see that it 
 ran successfully. His salary was fixed at three hundred 
 dollars a month, which was very nearly three times as 
 much as he had ever received before. Thus lifted out of 
 poverty, and encouraged by the confidence of his new 
 employer, Edison found himself in much more favourable 
 circumstances for inventing. The stock-quotation indicator 
 being in his charge, was much improved by him, but by- 
 and-by he devised another, which was so good that Mr 
 Laws exerted himself, and did not spare his money in 
 introducing it. 
 
 The Edison stock printer, chiefly intended for the gold 
 market, was made to print letters, figures, and characters 
 from a double type wheel. This invention was a grand 
 success. But the immediate result for young Edison was 
 that he lost his situation, for a Consolidated Company was 
 formed. The Consolidated Company, however, made 
 overtures to him which he refused, entering instead into a 
 partnership with a firm of electricians. Then he invented 
 another and better gold-reporting printer, which was 
 eventually bought by the Consolidated Company. 
 
 After working some time for the electricians, and 
 receiving from them very much less remuneration than Mr 
 Laws had given him, Edison left the firm and became 
 connected with General Marshall LefFerts, the President of 
 the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company. And now, 
 under more advantageous circumstances, he invented 
 some stock printers and private family telegraph appliances, 
 with which the company was so pleased that it sent a 
 committee to wait upon him, for the purpose of securing 
 these inventions for itself. 
 
 Edison had made up his mind that the sum that the 
 
46 FROM POVERTY TO RICHES. 
 
 company ought to pay him should be about five thousand 
 dollars. But, wanting money badly as he did for further 
 experiments, he was privately resolved to accept anything. 
 
 ' How much do you want for your devices ? ' asked one 
 of the members of the committee. 
 
 ' Make me an offer,' replied Edison cautiously. 
 
 1 Well/ said the other, ' how would forty thousand dollars 
 strike you ? ' 
 
 Edison was so 'struck' that in his own words, he ' could 
 have been knocked down with the traditional feather/ so 
 astonished was he at the sum. 
 
 Of course he at once accepted it, but later began to fear 
 that the offer was not genuine, and that he had been made 
 the victim of a Wall Street trick. Two days afterwards, 
 however, a large formidable-looking contract was brought 
 him to sign, and after he had done so, a cheque on the 
 William and Wall Street Bank was handed to him. 
 
 Strangely enough, Edison had never been in a bank 
 before, so, when he went to get his cheque cashed, he was 
 not at all certain what to do. He stood still, therefore, a 
 little while, to see as he says, 'the mode of procedure/ and 
 then proceeded to take his place in turn with others, at 
 the paying clerk's window. 
 
 When his turn came and he presented his cheque, the 
 cashier said something to him which he did not hear, and 
 then proceeded to shout to him ; but owing to his deafness, 
 Edison was unable to understand what he wanted. Again 
 the clerk shouted, but in vain. 
 
 Edison turned away, and sitting down dismally on the 
 steps of the bank, concluded that he would never get that 
 forty thousand dollars. Indeed he became so hopeless 
 that, he said afterwards, any one might have bought that 
 cheque of him for fifty dollars. 
 
FROM POVERTY TO RICHES. 
 
 47 
 
 At last, however, he went back to the company's office, 
 and told one of the clerks how he had failed to get the 
 cheque cashed. Then it was explained to him that the 
 cashier only wanted to know who he was, before paying 
 over to him such a large sum. Returning to the bank 
 with Edison, the company's clerk introduced him there, 
 and the money was at once paid over. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 NEWARK LABORATORY AND FACTORY. 
 
 N less than six weeks after Edison received that 
 memorable cheque for forty thousand dollars 
 (about ;£8o2o), he spent most of it in fitting up 
 a workshop of his own with everything necessary for his 
 inventing and manufacturing work. 
 
 Several of these shops were occupied in succession by 
 Edison, and in them much good work was done, and a 
 large number of inventions turned out, most of which 
 were in connection with printing telegraphs. Then he 
 became associated with the Automatic Telegraph Com- 
 pany. This company had gained possession of the inven- 
 tions of a Mr Little; which, however, proved more or 
 less a failure, as they did not fulfil their promise. The 
 company had made a line between New York and 
 Washington, but they could not do business upon it, 
 because Mr Little's apparatus failed them. At that point 
 Edison was called in, and he speedily solved the problem 
 so completely that the line was opened for business, much 
 to the satisfaction of his employers. 
 
 Edison's services were meanwhile retained by the 
 
48 NEWARK LABORATORY AND FACTORY. 
 
 Western Union Railway Company, the Gold Stock 
 Company, and other influential firms, and in 1873 he 
 entered into an agreement to give the former two com- 
 panies the benefit of all his ideas relating to telegraphy. 
 For this a very handsome salary was paid him, and high 
 rates of payment were agreed to in regard to future 
 inventions. 
 
 It was now necessary that Edison should have many 
 assistants and a large sphere of operations. We therefore 
 find him, in the year 1873, when he was twenty-six years 
 old, located in a large laboratory and factory in Ward 
 Street, Newark, with a partner, one Mr William Unger, 
 and a staff of three hundred subordinates. 
 
 Very irregular and unbusinesslike were the arrangements 
 in this large establishment. Edison disliked what he 
 called the ' humbuggery of book-keeping,' and paid his men 
 and kept his accounts in a fashion peculiar to him- 
 self. Perhaps his prejudice against book-keeping was 
 increased by the incompetence of the man whom he at 
 first employed as book-keeper. This fellow, upon winding 
 up the books at the end of the first twelve months, 
 made it out there was a surplus of seven thousand five 
 hundred dollars. Edison was delighted when he heard 
 this, and, with his usual generosity, determined that his 
 men should share the general prosperity; therefore he 
 gave orders for festivities which were to be carried out at 
 his expense. But, before this was done, he began to 
 reflect that it was really incredible that there could be 
 such a large surplus of money after all his heavy expendi- 
 ture in the pursuit of science. He therefore took the 
 books himself, and after wrestling with them the whole of 
 one night, discovered, to his dismay, that, instead of a 
 surplus, the accounts showed a grave deficit of some fifteen 
 
NEWARK LABORATORY AND FACTORY. 49 
 
 thousand dollars (more than ^3000). The orders he had 
 given were instantly countermanded, and henceforward he 
 would have no book-keeper. 
 
 The men's wages and the bills generally were now paid 
 by Edison in a somewhat erratic fashion. The hours of 
 work also were as irregular as the pay-times, and all might 
 have been confusion and insubordination if Edison had 
 not been what he was. But he won the love of his men 
 and their zealous sympathy by his bright winning 
 enthusiasm and his sunny disposition. The men could 
 discern their master's superior abilities in the humblest 
 detail; his ready help was ever given to the meanest 
 mechanic in his employ. 
 
 • We had no fixed hours,' he said, speaking of their work 
 together, 'but the men, so far from objecting to the 
 irregularity, often begged to be allowed to return and 
 complete certain experiments upon which they knew my 
 heart was set' 
 
 Sometimes, when an experiment of unusual importance 
 was to be made, and it was necessary that the work should 
 be done expeditiously, Edison would pass through the 
 laboratory, giving gifts liberally, and, by joking remarks 
 about their dullness, inciting the men to greater exertions. 
 ' A good story is told us by Mr and Mrs Dickson of 
 another occasion when the master-will commanded the 
 situation by sheer force. Edison had received an order 
 to supply thirty thousand dollars worth of his gold and 
 stock-quotation printer, and for some reason or other the 
 new instruments would not work. Edison thereupon went 
 up to the top floor of his factory, with several of his 
 scientific assistants, and, turning, locked himself and them 
 in. ' Now, you fellows,' he cried, ' I 've locked the door, 
 and you'll have to stay here until this job is completed.' 
 
 D 
 
50 NEWARK LABORATORY AND FACTORY. 
 
 And they remained there for sixty hours of hard work of 
 mind and body, with no sleep and with scarcely any food. 
 But at the end of that time the difficulty was conquered ; 
 what was wrong in the new instruments was discovered 
 and rectified. After this great and long-continued effort, 
 Edison slept for thirty-six hours, and then awoke feeling 
 all right again and ready for fresh labours. 
 
 Now and again, in his moments of success, Edison's 
 happy and still boyish disposition showed itself in scenes 
 like the following. One day, on his return from New 
 York, where he had just sold a favourite invention, he 
 entered his workshop with a 'whoop.' Tossing his silk 
 hat into an oil pan, he was just about to send his coat 
 after it, when some one laughingly stopped him and took 
 possession of the coat. 
 
 Once, when he had a number of schemes in his brain 
 — amongst others the important quadruplex telegraph — 
 which required great concentration of thought, Edison was 
 served with a notice that unless he paid his taxes the next 
 day — the last of the days of grace allowed — he would have 
 to pay twelve and a half per cent, extra. 
 
 Accordingly he went to the City Hall, and took his 
 place in the line of those who were going to pay their 
 taxes. There were about a hundred people before him, 
 and so Edison filled up the tedious interval by mentally 
 working out his quadruplex telegraphy, and became so 
 absorbed that he completely forgot what had brought him 
 to the tax office. 
 
 ' Now then, young man, look sharp. What is your 
 name?' asked the official behind the counter when, he 
 mechanically stood before him. 
 
 Edison looked at the man in no little perplexity, and 
 answered, ' I — I don't know.' 
 
NEWARK LABORATORY AND FACTORY. 51 
 
 He was waived aside impatiently, others poured into his 
 place, the clock struck the hour, the time of grace was 
 over, and he had incurred the extra charge of twelve and a 
 half per cent. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 T was about this time that a touch of romance 
 came into Edison's life, as it comes into that 
 of most men at least once in a lifetime. 
 Amongst those who were members of the inventor's 
 working force was one Mary E. Stillwell, whom the 
 master learned to love. Her influence was gentle and 
 elevating, as his mother's had been during her lifetime, 
 and Edison's courtship of her — brief, and simple as was 
 the nature of the man — ended in their happy marriage in 
 the year 1873. 
 
 Mrs Edison retained her sympathy with the work-people 
 amongst whom she had once laboured, and she is said to 
 have been greatly beloved and highly esteemed by them. 
 Well was it for Edison that he had now some one to look 
 after his home comforts. Neglectful as he had ever been 
 of necessary food and sleep when engaged on any special 
 work, it was only his splendid physique — a physique which 
 had never been injured by any form of dissipation — that 
 enabled him to bear such deprivations. But one cannot 
 with impunity for ever violate the laws of nature. With 
 increased years, and the increased tension of an arduous 
 life, greater care was necessary. Mrs Edison had no easy 
 task before her. When he did condescend to pay atten- 
 
52 MARRIAGE. 
 
 tion to such subjects, Edison's views of domestic comfort 
 were, to say the least of it, uncommon. 
 
 'I wish I may never eat the same thing twice in a 
 month,' he said to his wife when she began housekeeping. 
 
 'Variety,' he repeated, on another occasion, 'is the 
 secret of wise eating. The nations that eat the most 
 kinds of food are the greatest' 
 
 And he argued that there was a striking resemblance 
 between material and spiritual laws, and held that in 
 proportion to the elasticity of the diet provided for the 
 body would be the capacity and the power of the mind, 
 basing these assertions on the dietary and intellectual 
 ability of the different nations. Rice-eating nations, he 
 said, never got on well, or thought or did anything but rice, 
 rice, rice for ever. The Irish, too, who ate potatoes and 
 black bread, though naturally bright, were enervated by the 
 uniformity of their food. On the other hand, the French, 
 the most thrifty, well-mannered, educated, and accom- 
 plished people, had an immense variety of food. And 
 when the Roman Empire was at the zenith of its grandeur, 
 the food of its great men was delicate and richly varied. 
 And so on, adding, 'A nation begins to decay, philo- 
 sophically and morally, as soon as cooking is degraded 
 from an art to an occupation.' 
 
 Edison's biographers remark that these youthful con- 
 victions of the great inventor have yielded in great measure 
 to the larger views of his more mature manhood ; and that 
 is well, for history scarcely bears out his early assertions. 
 With the luxurious epicureanism of the great Oriental and 
 Latin nations came the sapping of their intellectual life, 
 the degrading of their moral sense, the loss of political 
 unity. 
 
 The year following his marriage was for Edison a year 
 
MARRIAGE. 53 
 
 of great creative activity. It was then that the famous 
 quadruplex telegraphy, of which mention has been made, 
 was given to the world. 
 
 At first this great invention met with much opposition 
 from those who wanted to make it out that their own 
 methods were as good or better, but its immense superior- 
 ity at length was universally recognised, and it spread 
 rapidly over the world. 
 
 Four years afterwards, the president of the Western 
 Union stated that the invention was one of the most 
 important in telegraphy, and had saved the company six 
 hundred thousand dollars annually. 
 
 Edison received only a comparatively small sum for 
 this world-renowned invention, which he spent entirely in 
 making and bringing out his octuplex, an instrument which 
 would send eight messages at the same time over the same 
 wire. 
 
 Three children, Marian and Thomas Alva (nicknamed 
 Dot and Dash), and William Leslie, were born to Edison 
 and his wife. But their union was comparatively a short 
 one; for, eight years after their marriage, in the year 1881, 
 Edison had the great sorrow of losing by death his intel- 
 ligent, sympathising, and beloved wife. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 DIVERS INVENTIONS. 
 
 YOUNG man who has kept the path to the 
 Patent Office hot with his footsteps.' Thus the 
 United States Patent Commissioner described 
 Edison at the comparatively early age of twenty-four years. 
 
54 DIVERS INVENTIONS. 
 
 And it was indeed astonishing to the beholders to see the 
 number and the excellence of his inventions. 
 
 Large and complete as the laboratory and factory at 
 Newark seemed to him, after his former quarters, so great 
 were the works done in it — at one time he had forty-five 
 separate inventions in different stages of completion — 
 that he found he required many things impossible to 
 get on the Newark premises. His growing fame, too, 
 caused the place to be thronged with visitors, who came 
 there sometimes from a love of science, but oftener from 
 vulgar curiosity. To escape from these, and to obtain 
 greater facilities for his work, Edison took his family and 
 the whole establishment to Menlo Park, a quiet spot about 
 twenty-four miles from New York. 
 
 At this place he built a large and splendidly fitted up 
 laboratory, with every accessory that could assist him and 
 his followers in their work. He declared that when the 
 public tracked him out there, he would simply have to take 
 to the woods. 
 
 It is interesting to read the description of the large and 
 costly appurtenances of this mighty workshop, from its^ 
 splendid scientific library of the newest and most reliable 
 works of reference, to the pipe-organ of good tone and 
 dimensions and the musical box, which were so frequently 
 useful when the inventor thought that the soothing influence 
 of music would assist him or his employees in their arduous 
 duties. 
 
 From the wonderfulness and variety of the feats of 
 scientific skill which were accomplished in this quiet 
 retreat, its owner has been designated 'The Wizard of 
 Menlo Park? 
 
 Let us glance at some of these inventions. There was, 
 first, the carbon telephone transmitter. The telephone, as 
 
DIVERS INVENTIONS. 55 
 
 first used, bore Bell's name, having been invented by 
 Professor Alexander Bell. It was in need of one thing to 
 make it thoroughly practicable, and that was the transmitter, 
 which Edison forthwith invented and patented. In this 
 transmitter carbon was employed to translate sound into 
 electric waves. Let me explain. To transmit speech 
 by means of electricity, the current must not be suddenly 
 interrupted, but made to vary in strength in exact con- 
 formity with the rapidly changing motion of the sound- 
 bearing waves. The strength of a current may be varied 
 in two ways — the current-producing power may be altered, 
 or the resistance that the current has to encounter may be 
 changed. Thus, as Professor Barrett points out, in scientific 
 phraseology, the strength of the current is equal to the 
 electro-motive force divided by the resistance in the path 
 of the current. 
 
 In the telephone invented by Professor Bell, the voice 
 produces variations in the numerator of this fraction. It 
 has both to make the current as well as to make it vary 
 in accordance with itself. This works well enough on 
 short lines, but will not do for long ones, because the 
 strength of its current depends entirely upon the voice 
 itself. 
 
 In Edison's telephone the voice has merely to vary the 
 resistance in the path of the current (the denominator of 
 the fraction), and not to produce the current itself; which 
 was produced by coarser means. The best form of a 
 telephone on this principle was invented by an American 
 named Elisha Gray. His invention, however, .was not 
 practicable; but Edison succeeded where he failed. 
 
 Having obtained a current from an ordinary -voltaic 
 battery, Edison's object was to_ make, the voice vary the 
 resistance in its path. For this- purpose he., devised all 
 
56 DIVERS INVENTIONS. 
 
 sorts of ingenious contrivances for transmitting speech on 
 this principle. But one by one they were proved faulty and 
 abandoned until, in 1877, he tried a thin film of plum- 
 bago on ground glass included in the circuit, a spring being 
 attached to the vibrating diaphragm, the end of which 
 rested on the film, so that, as the diaphragm moved, more 
 or less of the film was included in the circuit. By degrees 
 this led to the use of small cylinders of plumbago against 
 which the diaphragm passed. The articulation was poor, 
 but conversation could be understood. At last, however, 
 Edison made a transmitter which had a button or wafer of 
 some semi-conducting substance between two discs of 
 platinum. The slight pressure of a piece of rubber tubing 
 secured to the diaphragm, and resting against the outside 
 disc, maintained electrical connection between the button 
 and discs. Thus the vibrations of the diaphragm were 
 able to produce the requisite pressure on the platinum disc, 
 and in that way vary the resistance of the button included 
 in the primary circuit of an induction coil. A button of 
 solid plumbago, such as is employed by electrotypers, was 
 first used with what were considered excellent results, 
 for everything transmitted came out moderately distinct, 
 but the sound altogether was not greater than that of the 
 magneto-telephone. 
 
 Again and again Edison tried other semi-conductors, 
 until he hit upon some lampblack which had been taken 
 from the chimney of a smoking petroleum lamp. It was 
 intensely black. Edison made a small disc the size of six- 
 pence of this black substance, and placed it in the tele- 
 phone. The result was excellent, the articulation being 
 distinct, and the sound much greater than with telephones 
 worked on the magneto principle. When, however, with 
 the line being very long, there was a great permanent 
 
DIVERS INVENTIONS. 57 
 
 resistance in the circuit, the alterations of resistance pro- 
 duced by the voice in the carbon wafer, and thus in the 
 current strength, were almost imperceptible. Edison met 
 this difficulty, and conquered it to a great extent by employ- 
 ing an induction coil in the current. A coil consisted of 
 two parts — a short thick coil of wire called the preliminary 
 coil, surrounded by a long thin wire, the secondary coil. 
 A current of electricity flowing through the former induced 
 currents in the latter, and the least difference in the strength 
 of the primary current caused a considerable fluctuation in 
 the secondary coil. Now Edison's carbon transmitter was 
 included in the primary circuit, no direct battery current 
 being sent along the line, but only induced currents from 
 the secondary coil. Edison next found that the thin vibrat- 
 ing diaphragm was not necessary, and so he attached the 
 carbon wafer rigidly to a comparatively thick plate of iron 
 against which the voice was directed. The result was 
 wonderful; a whisper three feet from the telephone was 
 clearly heard and understood at the end of the line. 
 
 Having sold the right to use this transmitter to the 
 Western Union, whilst Bell's instrument was in the hands 
 of Boston capitalists, a fierce competition ensued. 
 
 ' In England,' said Edison, when describing the matter, 
 'we had fun. You see neither the Bell people nor we 
 could work satisfactorily without injuring the other. They 
 infringed on my transmitter, and we infringed on their 
 receiver ; and there we were, cutting each other's throats. 
 Well, of course, this could not go on for ever, and consoli- 
 dation had to come, although a second fight over the 
 terms of this consolidation was bound to come. In a 
 measure they had the whip hand of us; so I was not 
 surprised to receive one day from our representative in 
 England a telegram, the gist of which was that the Bell 
 
58 DIVERS INVENTIONS. 
 
 people wanted more than their full share of the receipts in 
 case of consolidation, and that our agent was at his wits' 
 end what to do. I cabled back at once, somewhat to this 
 effect : " Do not accept terms of consolidation. I will 
 invent new receiver and send it over." Then I set to 
 work. I had found out some time before that electricity 
 altered, in some mysterious way, the co-efficients of friction 
 in moving bodies, and I determined to turn this fact to 
 account. In three weeks I had a receiver finished which 
 worked even better than the Bell, and in less than no time 
 afterwards we had got six hundred of them made. With 
 those we started off a body of men on a quick steamer ; 
 and an instructor went along, who, during the voyage, 
 taught the men how to manipulate the new receivers, and 
 how to make them if more should be required. The new 
 receivers, immediately on their arrival in England, were 
 attached to the instruments in all our stations ; and this 
 brought our opponents round. We consolidated on equal 
 terms shortly afterwards.' 
 
 Edison called this new receiver the motograph. It is 
 very ingenious. A carbon point presses upon a revolving 
 cylinder. A current of electricity passing through this 
 makes the carbon point press more or less heavily upon 
 the cylinder according as the current is strong or weak or 
 intermittent. The vibrations of the diaphragm give this 
 varying action to the current, and, by the principle of 
 'give and take,' another diaphragm at any distance 
 vibrates sympathetically with that affected by the sound 
 waves. 
 
 Then Edison invented the micro-tasimeter, an exceed- 
 ingly delicate instrument for measuring inappreciable 
 degrees of heat. The name of it is taken from three Greek 
 words, and means ' minute-pressure-measurer.' Edison him- 
 
DIVERS INVENTIONS. 59 
 
 self explains its principles thus : ' It consists of a carbon 
 button placed between two metallic plates. A current of 
 electricity is passed through one plate. A piece of hard 
 rubber, or of gelatine, is so supported as to press against 
 these plates. The whole is then placed in connection 
 with a galvanometer and an electric battery. Heat causes 
 the strip of rubber to expand and press the plates closer 
 together on the carbon, allows more current to pass 
 through, and deflects the needle of the galvanometer. 
 Cold decreases the pressure. Moisture near the strip 
 of gelatine can be measured in the same way by increasing 
 or decreasing the pressure, and accordingly deflecting 
 the needle. By means of this apparatus, or one combined 
 with sensitive electrical galvanometers, it is possible to 
 measure the millionth part of a degree Fahrenheit.' 
 
 In a solar eclipse which occurred soon after he had 
 invented it, Edison discovered with the instrument traces 
 of heat in the outer gaseous envelope of the sun, known 
 as the corona. Not only was the capacity of the tasimeter 
 found sufficient for the registration of the desired pheno- 
 menon, but it was found that the heat from the sun's 
 corona went ten times beyond the index capacity of the 
 instrument. 
 
 Edison's tasimeter was now brought into public notice, 
 and the Scientific American for October 1878 said : 
 
 ' Seeing that the tasimeter is affected by a wider range of 
 etheric undulations than the eye can take cognisance of, 
 and is withal far more acutely sensitive ; the probabilities 
 are that it" will open up hitherto inaccessible regions of 
 space, and possibly extend the range of aerial knowledge 
 as far beyond the limit obtained by the telescope as that 
 is beyond the reach of unaided vision. Possibly, too, it 
 may bring within human ken a vast multitude of nearer 
 
60 DIVERS INVENTIONS. 
 
 bodies — burnt-out suns, or feebly reflecting planets, now 
 unknown because not luminous.' 
 
 Exceedingly sensitive is the tasimeter. A lighted cigar 
 several feet away will throw the light off the scale, as may 
 also the heat from a human body standing eight feet off 
 and in a line with the cone ; and the radiance from a gas 
 jet one hundred feet away causes a noticeable deviation. 
 
 Moisture also causes a very perceptible alteration in the 
 gelatine. One day, when he was experimenting, the great 
 inventor put a strip of gelatine between the upright pieces 
 of carbon, and then held a strip of damp paper three 
 inches away from the gelatine. Instantly the latter 
 expanded, causing the needle to shift eight degrees. A 
 drop of water upon the tip of the finger five inches away 
 deflected the needle eleven degrees. 
 
 This instrument has been found very useful for the 
 detection of icebergs at sea. For that purpose it is put 
 into a case which is connected with the ship's keel, and 
 attached by wires which run from a kind of Daniell battery 
 to a common galvanometer in the captain's cabin. As 
 cold causes the compressing rod to contract and warmth 
 makes it expand, the deflections caused in that manner are 
 brought at once before the captain's sight, so quickly that 
 he has sufficient time to guard against the danger. Thus, 
 before the huge ice-mountain can bear down upon the 
 fragile ship, it is enabled to get far away in an opposite 
 direction. 
 
 The tasimeter also shows with equal promptness and 
 accuracy when a sudden fire has broken out. 
 
 The odoroscope is a modification of the tasimeter, and 
 is so named from its usefulness in measuring odour inap- 
 preciable to the human sense. 
 
 The microphone, which was invented by Edison about 
 
DIVERS INVENTIONS. 6 1 
 
 this time, has some resemblance to a telephone, with this 
 difference, that it magnifies sound in transmitting it. So 
 much so, indeed, that it is alleged the movement of a 
 little camel's-hair brush is magnified into a great roar like 
 the rushing of a mighty wind through the murmuring 
 leaves of forest trees; a tiny gnat buzzing about gives a 
 sound like the tramping of troops ; whilst the ticking of a 
 watch and the beating of the human heart can be heard an 
 altogether incredible distance off. 
 
 In the mechanism of the microphone there are several 
 upright carbon pieces, each supported by a light spring. 
 To the diaphragm is attached a carbon button, against 
 which the first carbon piece rests, and the vibrations in the 
 diaphragm are passed in turns from carbon one to carbon 
 two, and so on, with the result that the sounds communi- 
 cated to the telephone receiver are most marvellously 
 heightened. 
 
 Two of Edison's other inventions, which are not yet 
 used in commerce, are the megaphone and aerophone. 
 The former is a device by which distant sounds may be 
 brought to the ear by means of nothing but the air and two 
 funnels six feet long, mounted on a tripod, and tapering 
 from a diameter of two feet six inches at the mouth to a 
 small opening attached to which are tubes for the ears. 
 Men some miles apart have been able to converse by 
 means of this instrument, and the sound of cattle crunching 
 grass six miles away has been heard by listeners at Menlo 
 Park. 
 
 The aerophone is a sort of exaggeration of the phono- 
 graph. It is an instrument which not only transmits the 
 ordinary tones of the voice to an indefinite distance, but 
 also magnifies them two hundred times. In fact, it not 
 only catches up casual and indiscreet remarks, but roars 
 
62 DIVERS INVENTIONS. 
 
 them out to the adjoining neighbourhood. When the 
 public was apprised of Edison's new invention, the aero- 
 phone, it was ridiculously angry at this invasion of its 
 privacy, and shrank from the exposure which such a tell-tale 
 instrument might bring about. The public would there- 
 fore have nothing to do with it, and perchance in that it 
 acted wisely. 
 
 ' Why in creation, Edison,' said a merchant, one day, to 
 the great inventor, 'don't you turn your attention to 
 inventing something that would save this endless waste of 
 time and labour?' The speaker was referring to the toil 
 and tediousness of much writing. 
 
 Edison pondered over the casual hint, and the result of 
 his meditations, and the experiments consequent upon 
 them, was that he invented the electric pen. Here, as 
 Professor Barrett observes, there is no new scientific prin- 
 ciple, but merely an ingenious arrangement whereby a 
 very swift to-and-fro motion is given to a needle point 
 by means of a tiny electric magnet. The object is to 
 puncture the paper which is written upon by the pen, so 
 that the record of the handwriting is left in a myriad of 
 minute holes. Thus a paper stencil-plate is formed, from 
 which many hundred impressions can be taken by means 
 of an ordinary inked roller. The construction of the 
 penholder is very simple. It consists of a needle, the 
 point of which projects scarcely a hundredth of an inch 
 beyond its enclosing sheath. At the upper part of the 
 small fly-wheel, the shaft of the wheel forms a tiny crank, 
 which is attached to the needle ; as the wheel revolves, the 
 needle point is rapidly pushed out of the sheath and 
 pulled back, just like the sting of a bee. The revolution 
 of the fly-wheel is accomplished by a small electro-magnet 
 animated by a single voltaic cell. So swift is the motion 
 
DIVERS INVENTIONS. 6 
 
 of the needle that rapid writing is not impeded — a hole is 
 punched in the paper, and the needle withdrawn more 
 rapidly than the muscles can move the pen. Every letter 
 is thus traced out in innumerable small pin-hbles, through 
 which the ink can be squeezed when copies have to be 
 taken, while the holes are so close together that the letters 
 seem to be continuous. 
 
 A modification of the electric pen is the mimeograph, 
 the mode of using which is as follows : A sheet of thin 
 waxed paper is placed over a steel plate, which is roughened 
 like a very fine file, and presents a surface of very sharp 
 points. The operator writes on the prepared paper with 
 a smooth steel-pointed tool, or stylus, and then perfor- 
 ations are made, and, by means of an ink roller, as 
 many as two thousand copies can be duplicated from 
 it, all of them exquisitely legible. 
 
 But certainly one of the most astonishing inventions of 
 Edison's is telegraphy from a moving train. When this is 
 done no extra wire is used, but the air alone acts as a 
 medium for carrying the electrical currents from the train 
 apparatus to the ordinary telegraph wires running by the 
 side of the line. With Edison in this successful work is 
 incorporated the name of Phelps ; and Messrs Gilliland 
 and Smith had also worked at the invention. 
 
 The great distance travelled by railway passengers in 
 America, and the frequent need of sending a message after 
 a traveller, already on his way, has caused inventors to 
 ponder over the desirability of telegraphing to and from 
 trains in motion. 
 
 The principle upon which the inventors have worked has 
 always been the same : they have taken advantage of the 
 law of electrical induction, by which a current sent through 
 a wire creates a sympathetic current in a wire parallel to 
 
64 DIVERS INVENTIONS. 
 
 it. Thus, if an insulated wire be laid down between the 
 metals of a track, and one of the carriages of a moving 
 train be wound round with coils of wire, which act as an 
 inductive receiver, a message sent along the track wire will 
 jump the interval between it and the carriage in question, 
 and be received by the operator in the carriage of the 
 moving train, who will at once convey it to the passenger 
 who sits in the seat the number of which is indicated on 
 the telegram. 
 
 Afterwards a distinct improvement was made by the 
 inventors in elevating the conducting wire from the tracks 
 upon short poles by the side of the line — about ten or 
 twelve feet from the line. The poles are much shorter 
 than ordinary telegraph poles, being from ten to sixteen 
 feet high. And now, whenever practicable, the metal roof 
 of the carriage is employed as the inductive receiver ; but 
 where no metal roof exists, the plan is to attach a wire 
 to the roof, which wire is placed under the eaves of the 
 carriage. As the operator sits in his carriage, receiving 
 and transmitting the message, a battery of twelve small 
 cells is by his side for the transmission of messages, a small 
 tablet is on his knee to which the key, the coil, and the 
 buzzer are attached, and there is just sufficient surface to 
 hold a telegraph form. A telephone is fixed under his cap 
 and pressed closely to the ear. The buzzing message just 
 arrived from a distant station left by the train some time 
 before is broken up into Morse characters by the key, and 
 he writes it on the telegraph form before him. 
 
 On the occasion of a trial, some years ago, Colonel 
 Gouraud sent the following despatch from a moving train 
 to Mr Pender, in London, via the Atlantic cable : 
 
 ' I am telegraphing these words while comfortably sitting 
 in a car of the Lehigh Valley Railway Company, flying 
 
DIVERS INVENTIONS. 65 
 
 through the beautiful valley of that name, at a rate of 
 something more than sixty miles an hour, by that marvel- 
 lous system invented by Edison and Phelps, known as 
 the induction telegraph, there being, of course, no wire 
 connecting the train with continuous telegraph wires over 
 which the message is now passing, the current jumping 
 from the car to the wires, a distance of twenty-five feet. 
 We are telegraphing in this way to any or all trains on the 
 railway, each train being equally in connection with the 
 train despatches This is the first message sent in this 
 manner from America to England. A large party of 
 representative telegraphists and scientists are the guests of 
 the Consolidated Railway Telegraph Company, amongst 
 which are many of your American friends, including Mr 
 Edison and President Cheever.' 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 1 IKE a fairy~taie "reads the further history of 
 Edison's most wonderful and wonder-working 
 inventions, one of the chief of whi ch is _lh &- 
 phono graph, an instrument invented in the spring ^1877,, 
 at the Menlo Park laboratory, for recording and repro- 
 ducing human speech and songs, &c. 
 
 Long years before, Lieutenant Maury, the distinguished 
 student of storms and winds, writing to a friend about the 
 invention of photography, said, ' What a pity it is that M. 
 Daguerre, instead of photography, had not invented a 
 process of writing by merely speaking through a trumpet 
 at a piece of paper ! Instead of saying, - 1 wrote you a 
 
 E 
 
66 THE PHONOGRAPH. 
 
 letter last Monday,' the phrase would have been, ' I spoke 
 you a ream! Edison had not read this letter, which had 
 not then been published, when he began the experiments 
 that resulted in his famous phonograph. 
 
 In those early days when such an instrument as the 
 phonograph was a mere possibility, based on the crudest 
 of material foundations, Edison, speaking of the instrument 
 he fain would create, wrote words which proved to be 
 prophetic : ' This tongueless, toothless instrument, without 
 larynx or pharynx, dumb, voiceless matter, nevertheless 
 mimics your voice, utters your words, and centuries after 
 you have crumbled into dust, will repeat again and again 
 to a generation that could never know you, every idle 
 thought, every fond fancy, every vain word that you choose 
 to whisper against this thin iron diaphragm.' 
 
 ■Ajtej_aU^jULjffias_by^ accident that he discovered the 
 principle on which he IhacTeHhis pho"nograpRT~ .Busy wiTrr 
 experiments about the telephone, 'I was singing to the 
 mouth-piece of a telephone,' he said, ' when the vibrations 
 of the voice sent the fine steel. point into my finger! Th"aT~ 
 set me thinking. If I could record the actions oTTRe 
 point, and send the point over the same surface afterward, 
 I saw no reason why the thing would not talk. I tried the 
 experiment first on a strip of telegraph paper, and found 
 that the point made an alphabet. I shouted the words, 
 " Halloo ! halloo ! " into the mouth-piece, ran the paper 
 back over the steel point, and heard a faint " Halloo ! 
 halloo ! " in return. I determined to make a machine that 
 would work accurately, and gave my assistants instructions, 
 telling them what I had discovered. They laughed at me. 
 That 's the whole story. The ph onograph is the result of 
 the pricking of a finger.' 
 TKsfriend Batchelor was sceptical about the success of 
 
68 THE PHONOGRAPH. 
 
 the new venture, and laughingly bet him a barrel of apples 
 that he could not make the thing go. Edison, however, 
 made a drawing of a model, took it to Mr Kreusi, who was 
 then assisting him, and told him it was a talking machine. 
 He smiled, thinking it was a joke, but set to work and 
 soon had the model ready. Then Edison arranged some 
 tinfoil on it, and spoke into the machine. Kreusi looked 
 on, still laughing at it. ' But when,' said Edison, ' I 
 arranged the machine for transmission, and we both heard 
 a distinct sound from it, he nearly fell down in his fright. 
 I was a little scared myself, I must admit. I won that 
 barrel of apples from Batchelor, though, and was mighty 
 glad of it.' 
 
 The facts of the case were these : Following up some 
 of his telegraph inventions, Edison had developed a 
 machine, which by reason of the indentations made on 
 paper, would transfer a message in Morse characters from 
 one circuit to another automatically, through the agency 
 of a tracing-point connected with a circuit-closing device. 
 Upon rapidly revolving the cylinder that carried the 
 indented or embossed paper, Mr Edison found that the 
 indentations could be reproduced with immense rapidity 
 through the vibrations of the tracing-point. Then he saw 
 at once that he could vibrate a diaphragm by the sound- 
 waves of the voice, and by means of a stylus attached to 
 the diaphragm make them record themselves upon an 
 impressible substance placed on the revolving cylinder. 
 The record being thus made, the diaphragm would, when 
 the stylus again traversed the cylinder, be thrown into the 
 same vibrations as before, and the actual reproduction of 
 human speech or any other sound would be the result. 
 At first the invention thus thought out was tried with 
 paraffined paper as the receiving material, and afterwards 
 
THE PHONOGRAPH. 69 
 
 with tinfoil. The records were made on soft tinfoil sheets 
 fastened round metal cylinders. By-and-by, however, a 
 light tube of wax to slide on and off the cylinder was sub- 
 stituted for the tinfoil which had been wrapped around, 
 and the indenting stylus was replaced by a minute 
 engraving point. Under the varying pressure of the sound 
 waves, this point or knife cut into the tube almost 
 imperceptibly, the wax chiselled away wreathing off in very 
 fine spirals before the edge of the little blade as the 
 cylinder travelled under it. Each cylinder would receive 
 about a thousand words. In the improved machine 
 Edison at first employed two diaphragms in 'spectacle 
 form,' one to receive and the other to reproduce, but he 
 has since effectively combined these. The wax cylinders 
 can be used several hundred times, the machine being 
 fitted with a small paring tool, which will shave off a 
 record that has been used, leaving a smooth new surface. 
 The machine has also been supplemented by Edison with 
 an ingenious little electric motor, with delicate governing 
 mechanism, so that the phonograph can be operated at 
 any chosen rate of speed, uniformly. This motor gains 
 its energising current either from an Edison-Lalande 
 primary battery, a storage battery, or an electric-light 
 circuit. 
 
 Infinite pains were bestowed by the great inventor on 
 the finer shades of sound repetition. Aspirates and 
 sibilants (letters making a hissing sound, as s and z, are 
 called sibilant), for instance, taxed his patience exceedingly. 
 With his usual disregard of the need of resting when bent 
 upon succeeding, Edison, we are told, often spent from 
 fifteen to twenty hours a day, for six or seven months 
 together, in repeating such a word as Spezia into the 
 stubborn surface of the wax. 'Spezia,' he would say 
 
70 THE PHONOGRAPH. 
 
 repeatedly in a loud voice. ' Pezia,' lisped the phonograph, 
 like a shy little girl. And so on for thousands of times, 
 until at last the tube gave back the desired result, and 
 Spezia was properly pronounced. 
 
 It must have been droll to hear the revered man of 
 science, with his many honours and wide-spread fame, 
 gravely repeating, over and over again, such infantile 
 rhymes as, 
 
 ' Mary had a little lamb, 
 A little lamb, lamb, LAMB,' 
 
 with emphasis, into his tube. 
 
 From the very first, even as made with the crudest 
 apparatus, the success of the phonograph was marked. 
 It has been the centre of interest in every exhibition which 
 has taken place since 1878, and most of the distinctions 
 conferred upon Edison have been given him in connection 
 with it. 
 
 In the French Exhibition of 1878, the daily concourse 
 of people attracted by the phonograph alone was estimated 
 at 30,000. Forty-five phonographs were shown, and men 
 of all nationalities heard their tones reproduced in them. 
 ' Never before,' it was said, ' was such a collection of the 
 languages of the whole world made. It was the first 
 linguistic concourse since Babel times.' 
 
 The late President Carnot and his family, Mr.and Mrs 
 Gladstone, the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Prince of 
 Monaco, Buffalo Bill, and De Brazza, the famous African 
 explorer, were some of those present on this occasion. 
 The last-named gentleman was hopeful that the phono- 
 graph would be of great use in Southern Africa, in the 
 way of recording treaties made with tribes who possess no 
 written alphabet, and therefore cannot preserve them in 
 any other way. 
 
THE PHONOGRAPH. 7 I 
 
 An amusing incident occurred at tfeis exhibition. One 
 of the Sioux braves, in the following of Buffalo Bill, was 
 asked to speak into the phonograph, which he proceeded 
 to do with great gravity. But when he heard his familiar 
 gutturals repeated to him again, he was greatly alarmed, 
 and throwing his tubes down, sprang back some paces, with 
 looks of terror. The poor fellow would have it that he had 
 heard the voice of the Great Spirit, and his fellow-Indians 
 could not be induced to come within twenty feet of the 
 phonograph. 
 
 The mode of using the phonograph is quite simple. It 
 is only necessary to talk into the receiver in a natural tone 
 of voice, and in one's usual manner, after which the 
 phonogram, as it is called, is taken from the phonograph 
 and enclosed in a little box. The recipient of the phono- 
 gram places it in his apparatus, and then setting the 
 machine in motion, hears the familiar voice of his corre- 
 spondent speaking to him. 
 
 The first phonogram in this country, a private letter of 
 Edison's to his representative, Colonel Gouraud, of Upper 
 Norwood, was received on the occasion of a party which 
 had been assembled at his house 'to meet Mr Edison.' 
 When the little cylinder was placed in the machine await- 
 ing it, Mr Edison's voice began to speak, with the most 
 startling effects upon those present, even the children 
 recognising the tones of the inventor's voice. 
 
 An amusing phonogram addressed to the London press, 
 began, ' Gentlemen, in the name of Edison, to whose rare 
 genius, incomparable patience, and indefatigable industry I 
 owe my being, I greet you. I thank you for the honour 
 you do me by your presence here to-day. My only regret 
 is that my great master is not here to meet you in the flesh 
 as he is in voice,' and so on. 
 
72 THE PHONOGRAPH. 
 
 This phonogram, together with several others, was 
 exhibited by Colonel Gouraud at the Crystal Palace in 
 1888. Several musical pieces were also given, from a 
 whistled operatic air to a cornet and piano duet. 
 
 Here several distinguished men availed themselves of 
 Edison's permission to talk to him, and early in the following 
 January he received several cylinders, enclosed in a little 
 
 Transmitting Cornet Solo in the Phonograph. 
 
 oak box, containing speeches to him by Gladstone, Sir 
 Morell Mackenzie, and others. 
 
 Gladstone's words were : 'lam profoundly indebted to 
 you for not the entertainment only, but the instruction 
 and marvels of one of the most remarkable evenings which 
 it has been my privilege to enjoy. Your great country is 
 leading the way in the important work of invention. 
 
74 THE PHONOGRAPH. 
 
 Heartily do we wish it well ; and to you, as one of its 
 greatest celebrities, allow me to offer my hearty good- 
 wishes and earnest prayers that you may long live to 
 witness its triumphs, in all that appertains to the well- 
 being of mankind.' 
 
 Queen Victoria also sent a message to the inventor 
 by means of one of his phonograms, in very gracious terms. 
 Henry Irving and others sent their congratulations, or 
 messages of approval, and songs and tunes were sent off 
 to him in America. During the Handel festival of 1888, 
 a huge horn which was placed in the press gallery of the 
 Crystal Palace concert-room, gathered up the volume of 
 sound from four thousand voices, the powerful organ and 
 orchestra playing and singing Handel's Israel in Egypt, 
 all which was in America afterwards reproduced by the 
 phonograph, in the most wonderful way, before large 
 audiences of people in America's largest cities. 
 
 Edison himself said the phonograph would be found 
 useful for letter-writing, the teaching of elocution, the 
 reproduction of music, and the family record, which would 
 preserve the sayings, reminiscences, and so on of members 
 of a family in their own voices, and the last words of dying 
 people. Also it would be useful for musical boxes and 
 toys, clocks that should tell the time in speech, and for 
 educational purposes, so preserving the explanations made 
 by a teacher that his pupils can refer to them any moment; 
 or spelling and other lessons could be put on the phono- 
 graph, and committed to memory afterwards at the con- 
 venience of the learner. Again, in connection with a 
 telephone, it would be of use so as to make that invention 
 an auxiliary in the transmission of permanent and valuable 
 records. And he adds another use which seems to me 
 to be particularly pleasing and beneficial : phonographic 
 
 
THE PHONOGRAPH. 75 
 
 books could be made which would speak to blind people 
 without any effort on their part. Not only have these 
 claims of Edison's been more than substantiated, but each 
 year brings forward more uses for the phonograph than 
 even those thought of by the inventor's fertile brain. The 
 phonograph has been found helpful in restoring the deaf, 
 by stimulating the dormant functions of their ears by means 
 of the vibratory force conveyed from the cylinder of the 
 phonograph. 
 
 Perhaps, however, the prettiest use to which the phono- 
 graph has been put is in the matter of children's toys. 
 By inserting miniature phonographs in dolls, they are 
 made to say nursery rhymes, or coo, or cry very like a real 
 baby. 
 
 The Queen of Holland was presented with the first 
 three of these accomplished dolls, to the no small delight 
 of the royal nursery. 
 
 The demand for these phonographic playthings has 
 been so great that the jCdison Phonog raph Toy Company 
 has been formed, which has turned over an immense 
 amount of money. The dolls' bodies are made in European 
 factories, and then they are sent to the Orange phono- 
 graphic works at New Jersey, to be fitted with the tiny 
 phonograms. 
 
 As for the application of the phonographs to clocks, 
 this has been done at Edison's own house so successfully, 
 that a guest of his was terribly alarmed by being awoke 
 out of sleep in the night with the words spoken in a loud 
 sepulchral tone of voice, ' Midnight has struck/ followed 
 by the solemn words, ' Prepare to meet thy God.' 
 
 The hapless visitor rose and fled into the passage, where 
 he met the inventor himself, who mildly remarked, ' Don't 
 be scared, old man; it's nothing but the clock.' 
 
76 THE PHONOGRAPH. 
 
 Very general has become the use of the phonograph 
 in many business ways ; several thousands are distributed 
 amongst American business-offices, where they facilitate 
 correspondence. They are also employed by stenographers 
 as a help in the transcription of their shorthand notes. 
 Heretofore, these notes have been slowly dictated to 
 amanuenses, but they are now frequently read off to a 
 phonograph, and then written out at leisure. The phono- 
 graph is, however, being used for direct stenographic work, 
 and it reported verbatim forty thousand words of discus- 
 sion at a convention held in 1890, the words being 
 quietly repeated into the machine by the reporter as 
 quickly as they were uttered by the various speakers. 
 
 A large number of phonographs are in use by actors, 
 clergymen, musicians, reciters, and others, to improve their 
 elocution and singing. Automatic phonographs are prob- 
 ably familiar to us all, as they are to be found in many 
 places of public resort, equipped with musical or elocu- 
 tionary cylinders, which can be heard on the insertion of 
 a small coin. The value of the phonograph in the pre- 
 servation of dying languages has been proved, too, and 
 records have already been secured of the speech, songs, 
 war-cries, and folk-lore of American tribes which are 
 becoming extinct. Several voice records, also, remain to 
 us yet of distinguished men, who 'being dead, yet -speak.' 
 Their tones can now be renewed at will, and their very 
 utterances can be heard again and again through all time. 
 The machine in a more or less modified form is also being 
 used to furnish a record of communications made through 
 the telephone. 
 
 Large sums of money have of course accrued to Edison 
 from the immense success of this single unique machine; — 
 
ELECTRIC RAILROADING. 
 
 77 
 
 CHAPTER XII I. 
 
 ELECTRIC RAILROADING. 
 
 O you want to see my novel?' Edison asked a 
 writer of fiction one day, after the latter had 
 given him some of his books. 
 
 ' Yes/ was the somewhat wondering reply. 
 
 The great inventor at once took out of his desk a short 
 but very thick blank book, and, turning the pages, dis- 
 played a number of rough sketches, accompanied by 
 pencil notes. The sketches were plans or general out- 
 lines of mechanical contrivances, each of which had a page 
 by itself, and the date when it was scribbled. Nearly 
 every day in a month was represented by some such 
 entry. 
 
 ' These ideas are occurring to me all the time,' said 
 Edison. 'Some of them are for new inventions, others 
 are proposed improvements in existing machines — both 
 other people's and my own machines. I just dot them 
 down here whenever they strike me, day or night, and 
 keep them with the hope of getting leisure to develop 
 them.' 
 
 Electric railroading was one of the earliest branches of 
 locomotive science Edison experimented with. One day, 
 with a view to making a mountain-climbing electrical rail- 
 road, he was busy experimenting with a car, in which rode 
 a small boy, on a track he had built on a down grade at 
 an angle of forty degrees, using grippers to catch the rail. 
 All at once, however, his grippers broke, and the car 
 
78 ELECTRIC RAILROADING. 
 
 rushed down the hill so rapidly that the small boy was 
 in danger of being killed. That checked the experiments 
 in that line. 
 
 Very different and much more practical, however, was 
 the line of electric railroading which was set up at Menlo 
 Park, and carried out with considerable success later on. 
 The current was furnished from the laboratory, and passed 
 into the rails, which were pitched for insulation from the 
 ground. Entering through one rail and passing up through 
 the wheels, which were insulated from the shaft, the current 
 passed thence to the motor and out through the other 
 wheel. The motor was simply one of Edison's dynamos. 
 
 An amusing story is told of Edison's having a little fun 
 — in all his arduous toils he never lost his boyish love of 
 fun — at the expense of the directors and shareholders of 
 the line, when he invited them to go upon a trial trip. 
 After the customary greetings and civilities, the gentlemen 
 took their seats, with the anticipation that, first of all, 
 they would hear a proper scientific explanation from 
 Edison of the new system. But their serious demeanour 
 and solemn faces upset Edison's gravity entirely. With- 
 out one word to prepare them for it, he suddenly turned 
 the motive power on to his line in all its force. Faster 
 and ever faster, at the rate of forty miles an hour, flew 
 the engine; greater and greater grew the terror of the 
 passengers. The directors' hats were carried off, their 
 coat-tails fluttered in the breeze, and agonised entreaties 
 to him to stop the engine were to be heard. But Edison, 
 for a little while, only increased the speed. 
 
 Shortly after that, the inventor found that he had two 
 rivals in electric locomotion, Messrs Siemens and Field. 
 When the matter was tried in court, the claims of Siemens 
 were dismissed, and Edison effected a consolidation with 
 
ELECTRIC RAILROADING. 79 
 
 Mr Field, which led to the establishment of the United 
 States Electric Railway Company. 
 
 At the Chicago Exhibition, soon afterwards, their first 
 electric railroad was shown to the world, and their electric 
 locomotive, which was called 'the Judge,' was greatly 
 admired. During the thirteen days whilst it ran to and 
 fro upon the limited line of about one-third of a mile, it 
 carried 28,805 passengers, and made 1588 trips. After- 
 wards it was taken to the Louisville Exhibition, where an 
 electric railroad was prepared for it, and there, too, it won 
 immense applause. 
 
 Now there is brisk and extensive locomotion going on 
 in different places, and it is but a question of time when 
 the work of the steam locomotive will fall to the electric 
 car. The latter is now supplanting steam in the long 
 tunnel under the city of Baltimore, where whole trains, 
 both luggage and passenger, are drawn along, six or seven 
 miles, by powerful electric motors. The engineers study- 
 ing the gradual details of electrical locomotion are still 
 uncertain whether the better plan will be to have a sepa- 
 rate locomotive drawing the train of the future, or whether 
 each carriage or truck is to be furnished with its own 
 motor. 
 
 Mr Lenier says that the possible speed is to be limited 
 only by the problems of the cohesion of steel in the rails 
 and engines. He asked Mr Edison what in his opinion 
 was the practical speed limit on the horizon of electrical 
 locomotion, and he replied, ' Perhaps one hundred and 
 fifty miles an hour.' But he believes that before we come 
 to moving heavy trains by electricity — to which there are 
 serious, although not insuperable obstacles — we shall shoot 
 our mail through the country by some electrical device 
 of telpherage construction. 
 
8o ELECTRIC LIGHT. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ELECTRIC LIGHT. 
 
 PON being asked which of his inventions caused 
 him the greatest amount of study, and needed 
 the most elaborate experiments, Edison promptly 
 replied, 'The electric light; for although I was never 
 myself discouraged, or inclined to be hopeless of success, 
 1 cannot say the same for all my associates.' 
 
 And then he went on to say that, through all those years 
 of experimenting and research, he never once made a dis- 
 covery. All his work was deductive, and the results 
 achieved were those of invention pure and simple. He 
 would construct a theory, and work on its lines until he 
 found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at 
 once, and another theory evolved. This was the only 
 possible way in which he could work out the problem, for 
 the conditions under which the incandescent electric light 
 exists are peculiar and unsatisfactory for close investigation. 
 
 'Just consider this,' he said. 'We have an almost 
 infinitesimal filament, heated to a degree which it is diffi- 
 cult for us to comprehend ; and it is in a vacuum, under 
 conditions of which we are wholly ignorant. You cannot 
 use your eyes to help you in the investigation, and you 
 really know nothing of what is going on in that tiny bulb.' 
 He had made three thousand different theories, he con- 
 tinued, in connection with electric light, each of which 
 seemed reasonable and likely to be true. Yet in only 
 two cases had his experiments proved the truth of the 
 
ELECTRIC LIGHT. 8 1 
 
 theory. His chief _jlifficulty was in constructing the 
 carbon filament, the incandescence of which was the 
 source of light. Every quarter of the globe was ransacked 
 by his agents, and all sorts of the queerest materials were 
 used, until, at length, a peculiar shred of bamboo was 
 fixed upon. 
 
 From the time of Sir Humphry Davy's first practical 
 contribution to the science of electric lighting in 1812, 
 men of science had repeatedly striven to perfect and make 
 practicable the electric light. They had been baffled by 
 many difficulties ; amongst these, notably that of great 
 expense, and also of the short duration of the lights when 
 obtained. The celebrated Jablochkoff candles, for in- 
 stance, only lasted a few hours. 
 
 Then Edison took the matter up in his persevering and 
 masterly way. First, he made an incandescent solid, 
 which was a great success. Then, on the 16th of October 
 1879, he and Mr Eatchelor were hard at work, trying to 
 maTtelTcirrbon filament into a lamp. A cotton thread was 
 firsTTaken, and a peculiarly shaped groove just wide enough 
 to hold the thread was cut in a nickel plate, which was 
 placed in a small nickel mould and filled with charcoal. 
 For five hours they carbonised and cooked the mould. 
 But upon Mr Batchelor's taking it out of the groove, it at 
 once fell to pieces. 
 
 The experiments were repeated, neither man going to 
 bed on the nights of the 16th and 17th. On a late hour 
 of the night of the 18th, a filament was rescued intact; 
 but it unfortunately broke as they were securing it to the 
 conducting wire. 
 
 With characteristic indomitableness, Edison suggested 
 that they should make a lamp before they slept, or perish 
 in the attempt. 
 
82 ELECTRIC LIGHT. 
 
 To this Mr Batchelor agreed, and work was resumed. 
 At last, on the morning of the 20th, a perfect specimen 
 was obtained. But, alas ! in carrying it from the labora- 
 tory to the glass-blowing building, a slight breeze whirled 
 it from its fastening and blew it to a powder. 
 
 1 Edison, it 's gone — broken by the wind ! I 'm sick, 
 I 'm disgusted ! ' cried poor Mr Batchelor, worn by fasting 
 and sleeplessness. 
 
 On^e^gist^^Jiowever, a lamp was completed, lighted, 
 and eagerly watched by thirty experimenters. Then 
 Edison and Batchelor allowed themselves to sleep for a 
 few hours. When they awoke, they found, to their satis- 
 faction, that the lamp was still burning. For several days 
 it burnt on, until, at length, the soft glow faded. This 
 was the first specimen of the Edison incandescent light. 
 
 In great excitement at the success of that first lamp, 
 thirty or more of Edison's assistants set to work at once to 
 try to carbonise every material which seemed likely to yield 
 the necessary amount of carbon. A graphic picture is 
 drawn us by Edison's biographers, of the eager, hard- 
 working men in the great workshop, toiling until they 
 were perforce obliged to lie down and sleep anywhere, on 
 bench, or floor, or table, just as it happened ; others 
 working on, meanwhile, with bloodshot eyes and tense 
 brows. 
 
 'These were the pioneers of the electric light,' said 
 Edison; 'and to their faithful labours is due the wide- 
 spread introduction of the system.' 
 
 Whilst Edison was still experimenting in the endeavour 
 to find a filament which would answer his purpose better 
 than the one which had with such difficulty been made to 
 do duty for the first specimen of incandescent light, he 
 remembered a passage in Humboldt's writings which 
 
ELECTRIC LIGHT. 83 
 
 described the properties of a certain kind of bamboo that 
 grew on the banks of the Amazon. As he more closely 
 examined this description, he became convinced that in 
 vegetable fibre alone could be found the exact material for 
 which he had been so long looking. After that, therefore, 
 he sent from time to time chosen emissaries to far-distant 
 lands, to find out if possible where grew the particular 
 kind of bamboo which would best answer his purpose. 
 
 Mr William Moore was the first discoverer of the 
 required bamboo, which he found for Edison in the year 
 1880. This gentleman travelled in China and Japan, and 
 was eminently successful in his search for the fine fibre of 
 the bamboo, which he found furnished a conductor of the 
 requisite resisting power for the incandescent lamp. This 
 fibre is still in use, nothing better having been as yet 
 discovered. 
 
 Not being certain, however, that there was no superior 
 bamboo for the work, Edison, as we have seen, sent out 
 others to make still further investigations. Mr McGowan, 
 a gentleman of Celtic birth, and consequently energetic 
 and enterprising, went off to search the vicinity of the 
 Amazon, which he accordingly did for two thousand three 
 hundred miles, in spite of dangers from wild beasts, reptiles, 
 fevers, and predatory Indians. He explored the great 
 continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, passing through 
 districts so beset by wild beasts, and so heavy with 
 poisonous exhalations, that they were avoided even by the 
 natives. For one hundred and sixteen days he tasted no 
 meat, and did not change his clothes for ninety-eight 
 days. 
 
 ' I '11 make the trip, do my duty or die,' he said boldly, 
 to those who tried to dissuade him from penetrating into 
 particularly dangerous regions. 
 
84 ELECTRIC LIGHT. 
 
 On one occasion he was deserted by all his Indian 
 followers but one faithful man, who would not leave him. 
 Another time, when he, with a fresh band of Indians, was 
 busily searching for bamboos about five miles from the 
 Napo River, they all had a tremendous fight with a ' tiger ' 
 or jaguar. Many varieties of bamboo were found by this 
 indefatigable explorer, of many different sizes — in some 
 places they never exceeded four inches in diameter, or 
 forty feet in height, and in others they grew from six to 
 nine inches in diameter and from seventy-five to a 
 hundred feet in height. 
 
 Not long after his return from this satisfactory expedition, 
 McGowan suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. Search 
 was made for him, but in vain ; no trace of him could 
 be discovered. It was then thought that he had either 
 been taken suddenly ill and died before he could 
 communicate with his friends, or else that, in his American 
 travels, he had fallen in love with some beautiful native 
 maiden, for whose sake he had for ever left the more 
 civilised though less poetically beautiful regions of 
 mankind. 
 
 Still unsatisfied as to what further might remain to be 
 discovered in other quarters of the globe, Edison 
 determined, much later on, to despatch an explorer for 
 bamboo to Ceylon, the Indian peninsula, and adjacent 
 countries. With his usual skill he chose an able man. 
 
 Mr Ricalton, the school principal of Maplewood, N.J., 
 was busily engaged one day in his schoolroom, when he 
 received a note from Mr Edison, requesting him to be so 
 good as to come and see him. Wondering what the 
 Wizard would require of one in the scholastic line, the 
 schoolmaster, at the appointed time, entered the inventor's 
 great laboratory, and was conducted to his presence. 
 
ELECTRIC LIGHT. 85 
 
 * You like travel, I believe ?' was Edison's first remark. 
 
 ' Rather,' replied the schoolmaster. 
 
 1 1 want a man to ransack the world for a fibre ; how 
 would you like to undertake that?' was the next question. 
 
 ' That would suit me,' said Mr Ricalton. 
 
 ' How soon could you start ?' asked the other. 
 
 The schoolmaster said he must first get permission from 
 the Board of Education to vacate his position as principal 
 of the school. The Board would have to procure a 
 substitute for him, and then he would require a little time 
 for preparation. 
 
 'Oh, I want you to start to-morrow,' said the great 
 man. 
 
 ' But, Mr Edison, I must have a little time ; you want 
 me to search the world — the world is large, and I have 
 buttons to sew on,' remarked the other humorously. 
 
 'Well,' rejoined Edison, 'it is somewhat of an under- 
 taking. It may take you three years, and you may succeed 
 in six months; so lose no time in securing a leave of 
 absence, take a week or two for preparations, come to my 
 laboratory daily during that time for experimentation ; 
 when you have completed your experimental work, go into 
 the library and study the flora of the tropics ; learn the 
 habits of every species of bamboo,' and so on. Edison 
 agreed to prepare him meantime a complete outfit of 
 tools for testing the fibrous products of the tropics. 
 
 Two weeks of preparation were spent in this way, and 
 then, having obtained the necessary leave of absence from 
 the Board of Education, Mr Ricalton sailed for India. 
 
 In Ceylon, where he visited every part of the island, he 
 found the most magnificent species of the bamboo family, 
 although, he says, it is a native of Burma. It is called 
 the giant bamboo, and clumps of from one hundred to two 
 
86 ELECTRIC LIGHT. 
 
 hundred may be seen, reaching to a height of 120 feet, 
 and measuring from ten to twelve inches in diameter. 
 From Ceylon he crossed to India, ascending the Himalayas 
 to an altitude of 6000 feet, where he found some fine 
 specimens of the bamboo family. In Japan, which he 
 next visited, his search was simplified by finding a complete 
 collection of bamboos in the Botanical Gardens and 
 Museum at Tokio. When he left Edison's laboratory, the 
 great electrician placed a sample of bamboo in his hand, 
 saying, ' If you find as good as that, I will be satisfied.' 
 And now, in two localities of the tropical belt through 
 which he passed, Mr Ricalton found fibre which stood a 
 much higher test as a carbon than the sample Mr Edison 
 gave him. But he afterwards found its splitting qualities 
 were not so good. His intention had been to visit Java, 
 Borneo, and the Asiatic Islands, but thinking the two 
 different fibres already found were quite good enough for 
 the purpose for which they were wanted, he set out on his 
 return journey. 
 
 Mr Ricalton tells the story of his reception by Edison, 
 when he again reached his laboratory, in the following 
 words : 
 
 ' The first time I met Mr Edison after my return I shall 
 not soon forget, as showing how ordinarily important 
 things are looked upon as trifles in a mind so fully 
 occupied. I had spent a year in an unusually hazardous 
 search, embracing a circuit of the globe, and entailing an 
 expense that would be a fortune to many a toiler. He 
 was passing through the laboratory on his incessant 
 supervisory work ; he extended his hand, smiled, and, with 
 a brief "Did you get it?" hurried on to the thousand-and- 
 one exigences with which his wondrously busy life is 
 filled.' 
 
ELECTRIC LIGHT. 87 
 
 Mr Edison, he was informed, was then using an artificial 
 carbon, which he expected would supersede the bamboo, 
 and Mr Ricalton never learned whether any practical use 
 was ever made of the fibres he had found. 
 
 Edison has never claimed to be the original discoverer 
 of electric light. But he does claim that the desultory and 
 immature principles of his predecessors were by him made 
 into a complete whole. By him the incandescent electric 
 light was taken from its hiding-place in the laboratory, and 
 made of practical utility. Instead of a costly toy, it has 
 become an important adjunct to public life. 
 
 In the winter of 1880, at Menlo Park, the first public 
 exhibition of the new electric lamp was given. Special 
 trains conveyed visitors there from all parts of the United 
 States. They came from motives of scientific or com- 
 mercial curiosity. Seven hundred lamps were distributed 
 in the most effective manner throughout the grounds, 
 streets, and all about the Edison Works. Most of the 
 conductors were laid under ground, much as gas is laid ; 
 and thus was demonstrated the inventor's assertion as to 
 the entire practicability of electrical commercial lighting. 
 Cautious capitalists thereupon plied him with schemes for 
 the extension of his methods. A company was formed to 
 work the new incandescent light, and the stock, whose 
 par value was only a hundred dollars a share, rapidly rose 
 until it was three thousand. Newspapers and visitors vied 
 with each other in spreading the tidings of the glorious 
 electric light, which soon became famous and much sought 
 after. 
 
 An amusing story is told of a scientific dispute which 
 took place about this time. A certain schoolmaster had 
 been an interested spectator at the Menlo Park illum- 
 ination, as he had exerted his faculties in following up 
 
88 ELECTRIC LIGHT. 
 
 Edison's experiments with the electric light ; and upon his 
 return to the hamlet (SufTern) in which he lived, and where 
 his word was unquestioned on matters of science and 
 erudition, he was appealed to by the villagers to explain 
 the nature of a brilliant light which appeared in the 
 western sky. 
 
 With his mind full of the wonders he had witnessed in 
 the way of electrical lighting at Menlo Park, and with the 
 most credulous belief in the powers of its inventor, the 
 worthy schoolmaster promptly pronounced the new light 
 that overhung the Remapo Mountains to be an electric 
 light. When asked for further explanations, he gave it out 
 that Edison was experimenting with an electric light and 
 a balloon at Menlo Park— forty miles distant — to see how 
 long that sort of illumination would burn in the upper 
 regions of the air. Moreover, he stated that upon the 
 successful issue of this test important results depended, 
 the system being under consideration of government, which 
 was considering it in relation to coast-lighting and signal- 
 service. Now in the little hamlet every one but the post- 
 master assented to this view of the matter. But the post- 
 master recognised in the new light a distinct resemblance 
 to a planet. Public opinion, however, scouted this idea, 
 and the notion that it was an electrical light of Edison's 
 prevailed, until it was proved to be nothing of the sort. 
 
 Many tributes, say Mr and Mrs Dickson, have been 
 laid at the inventor's feet, but none which will vie with the 
 above in absolute naivete of admiration. 
 
 At the Paris Electrical Exhibition, soon after, the new 
 Edison incandescent lamp was displayed very extensively, 
 and its inventor became the recipient of five gold medals 
 and a diploma of honour, which was the highest distinction 
 bestowed on any exhibitor. 
 

 ELECTRIC LIGHT. 89 
 
 On that occasion Edison received this cablegram from 
 the official headquarters of the exhibition : 
 
 ' Official list, published to-day, shows you in the highest 
 class of inventors. No other exhibitor of electric light in 
 that class. Swan, Fox, and Maxim receive medals 
 in class below. The sub-juries have voted you five gold 
 medals, but General Congress promoted you to the 
 diploma of honour. This is complete success, the Con- 
 gress having nothing further to give.' 
 
 Other telegrams, containing compliments and congratu- 
 lations from men of science, followed. Swan, the proprietor 
 of the Swan Incandescent Light in England, generously 
 cabled : ' You have received the highest award the jury has 
 to give. I congratulate you.' 
 
 The new system spread 'like wildfire.' The following 
 year, at the Crystal Palace Electrical Exhibition of London, 
 Edison's light attracted general attention. Mr and Mrs 
 Dickson's description of the display made on this occasion 
 reads like a fairy tale. 
 
 ' From the glittering coronal of frozen loveliness — meet 
 diadem for the Scandinavian frost giants — which overhung 
 the concert room of the Palace, to the tinted fires which 
 glowed in the heart of fountain, flower, and sward, the eye 
 was intoxicated with beauty. The entertainment court 
 was canopied with a chandelier of the most exquisite 
 design, the work of Messrs Verity & Co., gathering into 
 itself the floral magnificence of a hundred favoured climes. 
 Metal and coloured glass combined in the reproduction of 
 nature's softest and richest hues, and a tiny spark, con- 
 cealed among the petals, or nestling beneath the folded 
 leaves, brought into relief each delicate curve and vein. 
 Three hundred and fifty of these fairy blossoms were 
 represented, ranging from the sunflower, the narcissus, the 
 
90 ELECTRIC LIGHT. 
 
 tiger-lily, and the orchid, down to the modest pink, the 
 whole enshrined in a basket of hammered brass. Ninety- 
 nine Edison lamps in three circuits were employed, the 
 brass stems of the flowers being hollow, so as to admit of 
 the passage of the wires.' 
 
 Mr Edison presented a miniature model of this chande- 
 lier, or electrolier, to the Prince and Princess of Wales. 
 Upon it was the inscription : ' A souvenir of the visit of 
 their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, 
 to the Electrical Exposition of the Crystal Palace, 1882; 
 with the compliments of Thomas Alva Edison.' Electricity, 
 we are told, was stored within the recesses of the bouquet, 
 so as to be instantaneously brought into play or extin- 
 guished. 
 
 The press vehemently expressed its admiration. The 
 Illustrated London News commented on the soft delicious 
 radiance which came from the new Edison lamp, saying 
 that its soothing influence had quite neutralised the popular 
 objection to electricity for indoor illumination. Finally, it 
 said, the Edison exhibit was unique, and well merited the 
 praise bestowed upon it. 
 
 ' The palm is undoubtedly carried off by the Edison 
 show, which is extremely beautiful,' said another peri- 
 odical. 
 
 1 Mr Edison's splendid show in the concert room and 
 entertainment hall continues to attract more attention than 
 any other,' said a third paper. 
 
 At other exhibitions, in Munich, Vienna, Philadelphia, 
 Paris, and Minneapolis, the beautiful, steady, and mellow 
 Edison electric light met with the same admiration and 
 success. And in the Paris Exhibition of 1889, where nine 
 thousand feet were allotted to the inventor, that space was 
 filled to overflowing with the fruits of Edison's inventive 
 
ELECTRIC LIGHT. Ql 
 
 genius. In the centre of all was an immense model of an 
 incandescent lamp, forty feet high, the globe of which was 
 constructed of no less than twenty thousand incandescent 
 lamp bulbs, which brilliantly illuminated the entire build- 
 ing. An enormous dynamo was also shown, and an 
 allegorical picture, entitled, ' Menlo Park, the Birthplace 
 of the Incandescent Lamp.' A series of charts was also 
 exhibited, representing the most important buildings in 
 the world which have adopted the Edison methods of 
 lighting. 
 
 More companies, industries, and factories for the work- 
 ing of the Edison light forthwith sprang into being, and 
 grew in strength and magnitude. In 1882 the European 
 Company was organised, plants were set up in important 
 transatlantic centres, and the Edison London Company 
 was formed. Commercial success followed, and this more 
 especially in the States, where the Menlo Park Exposition 
 of electric light had first given fame to the new venture, 
 which had increased more and more as time revealed its 
 excellence. 
 
 Edison personally superintended the extension of the 
 factories. The Goerck Street shop in New York was first 
 established, and then another at 65 Fifth Avenue, which 
 became a favourite one of Edison and his earlier associates. 
 A smaller lamp manufactory at Menlo Park followed, 
 together with establishments first begun at Brooklyn, for 
 promoting underground tubing ; these establishments were 
 of much importance to the system, and were incorporated 
 under the name of the Electric Tube Company. The 
 Edison Company for Isolated Lighting was launched in 
 1881, and in 1882 a common source of creative energy for 
 the isolated plants was supplied by the establishment of 
 the Pearl Street Central Station at New York, which 
 
$2 ELECTRIC LIGHT. 
 
 possessed fifty miles of conductors and 2000 lamps. A 
 large factory at Newark, N.J., gave rise to the Edison 
 Lamp Company, which in time caused the place to become 
 known as the ' Lamp Works of the Edison General Electric 
 Light Company.' At the present day this is a large 
 business extending to 25,000 lamps a day. 
 
 In 1886 the Edison Electric Light Company and the 
 Edison Company for Isolated Lighting consolidated under 
 the name of the Edison United Manufacturing Company. 
 But in 1889 a still more complete consolidation of the 
 various light and power industries was effected under the 
 name of the Edison General Electric Light Company, with 
 a capital of 15,000,000 dollars, and an annual income of 
 almost the same amount. 
 
 Now, for the first time, money poured into Edison's 
 purse, and he knew what it was to have a good independ- 
 ent capital of his own. No longer cramped and harassed 
 by want of means to further his costly schemes, Edison 
 now worked as hard as ever, but with more freedom, at his 
 wonderful inventions. 
 
 Some detractors of course Edison has had. Professor 
 Barrett, lecturing in 1879, said: 'Amongst scientific men 
 a very unfavourable opinion of Edison exists, from the 
 sensational reports which have come to us from America. 
 But we must remember that the inventive faculty which is 
 so largely developed in the United States seems of late to 
 have extended to its newspaper reporters. Thus it comes 
 to pass that some persons speak of Mr Edison as if he 
 were a Davy, a Faraday, a Tyndall, and a Roscoe all in 
 one, whilst others regard him as almost a scientific char- 
 latan.' 
 
 The attempts of jealous or ambitious people to divert a 
 little of his success resulted in tedious lawsuits, notably 
 
ELECTRIC LIGHT. 93 
 
 the Sawyer-Mann case, and the Goebal case, which, after 
 occupying much time and entailing heavy costs, were 
 decided in favour of Edison and his light. 
 
 In April 1892, when sending Lord Kelvin the record of 
 the litigation in the suits to protect the incandescent lamp, 
 Edison said in his accompanying letter: ' I expect that the 
 already long list of the claimants for the honour of making 
 lighting by incandescence a practical reality, will be still 
 further increased as time goes by. 5 
 
 Lord Kelvin, in his reply, expressed the sincere hope 
 that the results of the litigation 'will ultimately be all 
 satisfactory to Mr Edison, to whom we owe so much for 
 all that he has done of benefit to the world, not only in 
 electricity, but in other large departments of inventions.' 
 
 The inventor's happy disposition has prevented the 
 opposition and jealous detraction of rivals from causing 
 him as much suffering or anxiety as it otherwise would. 
 It was characteristic of him that he should pleasantly 
 assert, when a certain Professor Morton, in the early days 
 of his incandescent light, had been lecturing against it, 
 that, when it was perfected, he would erect a statue to 
 this raven of science, and frame it in the splendour of the 
 new lamps, whilst underneath he would have the words 
 inscribed, 'This is the man who said the Edison light 
 would never work.' 
 
.94 EDISON AS A WORKER AND EMPLOYER. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 EDISON AS A WORKER AND EMPLOYER. 
 
 O you have regular hours, Mr Edison?' inquired 
 an interviewer, Mr Lenier, of him, two or three 
 years ago. 
 
 ' Oh,' replied the great man, ' I do not work hard now. 
 I come to the laboratory about eight o'clock every day, 
 and go home to tea at six, and then I study, or work on 
 some problem, until eleven, which is my hour for bed.' 
 
 ' Fourteen or fifteen hours a day can scarcely be called 
 loafing,' suggested the other. 
 
 'Well,' replied the great inventor, 'for fifteen years I 
 have worked, on an average, twenty hours a day/ 
 
 There is none of the lean and hungry look of the over- 
 worked student about him, Mr Lenier tells us. His face, 
 though strongly, even magnificently chiselled, is almost 
 boyish in its smoothness ; and in his manner there is that 
 flavour of perfect simplicity and cheery goodwill given only 
 to the very great. 
 
 'What makes you work?' asked Mr Lenier of him 
 curiously. 'What impels you to this constant, tireless 
 struggle?' adding, 'You have shown that you care com- 
 paratively nothing for the money it makes, and you have 
 no particular enthusiasm in the attending fame.' 
 
 ' I like it,' was the reply. ' I like it : I don't know any 
 other reason. You know some people like to collect 
 stamps. Anything I have begun is always on my mind, 
 
EDISON AS A WORKER AND EMPLOYER. 95 
 
 and I am not easy while away from it until it is finished. 
 And then I hate it.' 
 
 'Hate it?' inquired the other, struck by his emphatic 
 tones. 
 
 1 Yes,' he replied. ' When it is all done, and is a 
 success, I can't bear the sight of it. I haven't used a 
 telephone in ten years, and I would go out of my way 
 any day to miss an incandescent light.' 
 
 Then the great man grew eloquent, with righteous anger, 
 about the treatment which the inventor only too often 
 meets with. He said a race of professional sharks had 
 arisen to dispute, with absolute disregard of facts, priority 
 of claim to valuable patents. The better known the 
 patentee, the more liable they were to swarm about with 
 suborned witnesses. Mr Edison had no fault to find with 
 the patent law in the matter, but condemned strongly the 
 practice of the United States in issuing injunctions for- 
 bidding an inventor to use his discovery until the case was 
 decided, a period often covering years. He maintained 
 that this worked great injustice to the honest parties to 
 a suit, and that there was no protection in patents at all. 
 
 Sometimes Edison's zeal and long hours, whilst busy 
 with some important invention, bore rather heavily upon 
 the more limited endurance of his assistants. Hence, a 
 story is told us, by the Dicksons, of an ingenuous 
 youth, who thought he would shorten the dreadfully long 
 working hours one night by putting the clocks on a little. 
 Accordingly, when Edison woke up after a doze in the 
 intervals of work, he saw by the clocks that it was four 
 o'clock, and immediately dismissed his tired assistants. 
 Upon going home, however, to bed, he noticed that the 
 theatres were just pouring forth their visitors. It was, in 
 fact, precisely eleven o'clock. Edison burst into a hearty 
 
g6 EDISON AS A WORKER AND EMPLOYER. 
 
 laugh, and took the whole matter in the pleasantest way- 
 imaginable. 
 
 Mr Johnson, who has been associated with Edison in 
 business for twenty years, says that Edison is genial and 
 even frolicsome, with a temperament which might almost be 
 called boyish. ' In the whole of our connection,' he says, 
 1 and notwithstanding the many strains on his temper, and 
 the injustice which he suffers from unscrupulous business 
 antagonists, we have had but one "difference." That was 
 based on a pure misunderstanding, and has long since 
 died a natural death. My association with him has been 
 of the greatest profit and pleasure to me. Our active 
 friendship will end only with the death of one of us, 
 though our business relations have ceased in the course of 
 the natural ramification of the electric light and power 
 industries, with which I became more intimately identified 
 than did his other laboratory associates.' 
 
 Whilst busy with developing machines for generating 
 electrical power, Edison established himself for the purpose 
 at Goerck Street, in the building formerly known as the 
 Etna Iron-works. There, with a chosen band of followers, 
 he worked hard at experimenting on the dynamo. 
 
 It was at Goerck Street that the following incidents 
 occurred. One day his men were testing a new type 
 of dynamo, which had been greatly reduced in size, and 
 was giving more light than was anticipated. Delighted 
 with the unexpected electrical energy, Edison started a 
 series of tests to discover how high the dynamo could be 
 run without flying in pieces — experimental work not 
 without danger to those employed upon it. 
 
 'Fire up, men ; let her go !' cried Edison, ordering more 
 steam, even when the limit of the machine had been 
 reached. 
 
EDISON AS A WORKER AND EMPLOYER. 97 
 
 The men stood at a little distance from the dynamo, 
 but now they found it desirable to betake themselves to 
 an adjacent large and solid brick building, where Edison 
 was awaiting reports. 
 
 Suddenly came a deafening noise. The main steam- 
 pipe had burst. Nothing worse, however, happened, and 
 Edison was satisfied that the demonstration was scien- 
 tifically complete. 
 
 The Dicksons relate another amusing story of the 
 visit of Sitting Bull and his tribe to the Goerck Street 
 works. One morning, Edison sent word that they were 
 coming, and that preparations were to be made for their 
 visit. At the appointed time they accordingly arrived, on 
 several omnibuses and carriages. Very picturesque they 
 looked bedizened with war-paint and other grotesque 
 adornments, but their faces were very grave and stolid. 
 Solemnly they descended from the vehicles which had 
 brought them, and strutted through the establishment, no 
 look of surprise upon their countenances, and no word or 
 sign escaping their lips. 
 
 As in the case of the visit of the solemn-faced directors 
 and shareholders to Edison's first electric railway-line at 
 Menlo Park, this gravity of demeanour on the part of his 
 guests tickled Edison's sense of humour, and caused him 
 to play a practical joke. 
 
 Ordering one of his dynamos to be stopped, he ran a 
 wire heavily insulated with cotton, and connected it by both 
 ends to the generating machine. Then he got the Indians 
 to stand close to the wire, which ran along the full length 
 of the main shop, and looked closely at their faces whilst 
 the metallic thread became red hot. Not the slightest 
 interest was shown in the proceedings by the Indians 
 until the burning cotton rose in a cloud, filling their eyes 
 
 G 
 
98 EDISON AS A WORKER AND EMPLOYER. 
 
 with its stinging fumes. Then a loud 'Ugh!' broke the 
 silence, and the strangers began to rub their eyes. 
 
 Edison himself got some burnt cotton in his eyes, but, 
 in his glee at the success of his experiment he did not 
 care about that. 
 
 Although sometimes, in the exigencies of an important 
 crisis in his experimental work, Edison would seem to 
 forget his assistants' need of rest and food, he was not at 
 other times unmindful of their bodily comfort and of their 
 need of recreation after protracted and arduous labours. 
 
 A certain brick-sloop which anchored at Woodbridge 
 was often hired by him, and, after supplying her with 
 provisions, fishing tackle, and so on, he would take his 
 men some pleasant excursion, during which his genial 
 kindness would come into full play. 
 
 No wonder that he was beloved by his subordinates. 
 He dealt in no scathing rebukes, nor was it his wont to 
 abruptly dismiss a faulty servant. He had great patience 
 with those whose ignorance made them err. 
 
 A good story is told about his treatment of a young 
 assistant, a would-be electrical inventor, who was possessed 
 by such a great idea of his own importance that he refused 
 to perform some rough work, which required doing, when 
 they were busy with an important experiment. Edison 
 quietly and with great courtesy apologised for having 
 suggested to him such a thing as manual work. Then, 
 rolling up his sleeves, he proceeded to do the dirty and 
 somewhat fatiguing task himself. The lesson learned then 
 by the youth never required repeating. His master's 
 example would ever rise up before him when he felt 
 indisposed to do what some would call menial work. 
 
 Perhaps it was after that experience that for a long time, 
 as Mr Lenier tells us ; Edison used to have a test applied 
 
EDISON AS A WORKER AND EMPLOYER. 99 
 
 when a new man came to work with them in his laboratory. 
 He was told that he would be required to sweep the floor 
 in the morning — this was. of course, only to try him. But 
 if he bridled up and resented it as an insult, Edison and 
 his associates knew that he would never be of much use as 
 an electrician. 
 
 Edison will not allow his devoted followers to be * sat 
 upon' by outsiders, but ever stands up for them, when 
 they get into difficulties. Upon one occasion one of Mr 
 Edison's assistants, or associates, as they are pleasantly 
 termed, was called on to give the bearings of some intricate 
 electrical problem before a formidable board of inquiry. 
 Perhaps from nervousness, the unfortunate young man 
 made several inaccurate statements. These were pointed 
 out and taken exception to by the members of the board, 
 but the general verdict was waived because Mr Edison 
 supported his protege. 
 
 As soon as the room was cleared, the master turned to 
 his follower, saying, ' Now, here you were wrong about 
 that affair. I saw that at a glance.' 
 
 'You did, Mr Edison!' said the other in amazement. 
 ' Then why did you endorse me ?' 
 
 1 Because I wasn't going to let those duffers have the 
 satisfaction of crowing over you, if I could help it,' was the 
 kind reply. 
 
 All-night toil is rather exceptional with Edison nowadays, 
 but years ago he often did it. At that time Mr Francis 
 Lathrop went out to Menlo Park to make a portrait of 
 him for a popular magazine. The inventor, he found, had 
 just bought an organ, that playing upon it might relieve 
 the strain of intense study and constant experimenting. 
 Having taught himself to play upon it, he would run out 
 of his private laboratory into the main shop in the middle 
 
100 EDISON AS A WORKER AND EMPLOYER. 
 
 of the night, hammer out one or two tunes on the organ 
 with almost ferocious vigour, sit a while for the artist to 
 draw his portrait — talking gaily as he did so — and then, 
 with the slightest possible warning, plunge abruptly back 
 into his room. He was at that time intent upon making 
 the electric light perfect. Wishing to know what were the 
 resources of the earth in the line of platinum, he sent for 
 every book he could obtain which bore upon that point, 
 and had the volumes all strewn about him on the floor, or 
 piled up near the scene of his then occupation, many of 
 them lying open at the page where he had been reading 
 last. One of his recreations, said Mr Lathrop, was to 
 fling himself down among these tomes, and pore over 
 them in the pursuit of some especial inquiry, after which 
 he would go back refreshed to the manual part of his task. 
 The mention of this one little circumstance, he adds, may 
 help to show 7 how Edison succeeds in combining the 
 different branches of his labour — practical investigation 
 and research by means of books. He uses one as a 
 relief from the other, to give himself recreation and dispel 
 fatigue. 
 
 * Edison,' says Mr Lathrop, ' is always absolutely himself. 
 He does not present to one's observation a mixture of 
 superficial manners and concealed inner man. His out- 
 ward characteristics, therefore, are insignificant and worth 
 nothing. He has, in a degree which is literally startling, 
 the power of self-concentration. With him no time is 
 wasted on formalities and conventions, and not an instant 
 is lost in passing from one mood or subject to another. 
 The transition, however, is made with the whole momentum 
 of his mind. He is capable of great jollity and a most 
 charming companionableness. Yet, although he may at 
 one instant be wholly absorbed in a merry chat with his 
 
EDISON AS A WORKER AND EMPLOYER. IOI 
 
 friends, laughing at their drolleries, and cracking jokes of 
 his own, in the very next instant he will be as completely 
 buried in some abstruse scientific problem.' 
 
 Perhaps nothing showed this sudden complete transition 
 of deep interests in his mind, and the mental abstraction to 
 which it gives rise, more than the following incident, which 
 is told us of his first marriage in the early days at Newark. 
 
 A friend going past his workshop one night saw a light 
 in his room, and, going to him, found that he was dozing 
 over a problem which there was some difficulty in solving. 
 
 ' Hullo, Tom,' cried the friend, ' what are you doing 
 here so late ? Aren't you going home ?' 
 
 'What time is it?' asked Edison sleepily, rubbing his 
 eyes and stretching himself. 
 
 1 Midnight, easy enough. Come along.' 
 
 'Is that so?' replied the inventor. 'I must go home 
 then. I was married to-day.' 
 
 We have seen, too, how completely he forgot money 
 matters once, when money was of great importance to him, 
 by allowing his mind to become buried in the complex 
 question of quadruplex telegraphy whilst waiting to pay 
 his taxes, and so lost the sum allowed during the days of 
 grace, because he was unable to state who he was, and 
 for what purpose he was there. 
 
 It was whilst he was at Menlo Park, and the public 
 were longing to lionise him, that a moulder came there 
 from Messrs Fowler & Wells, to make a cast of his head 
 for their phrenological collection. 
 
 The incident was one which cost Edison some pain and 
 trouble. It took place in the upper floor of the laboratory. 
 The inventor good-humouredly sat down in an arm-chair 
 with a towel round his shoulders as though he were about 
 to be shaved. The moulder having oiled his face and 
 
102 EDISON AS A WORKER AND EMPLOYER. 
 
 smeared his hair, mixed the plaster and began to put it on 
 the back of his head, leaving the face and neck uncovered. 
 Pieces of tissue-paper were next put over the eyes and 
 patted to give the form, then little rolls of paper were 
 placed in the nostrils. After this the moulder oiled the 
 edge of the back mould and began to approach the mouth. 
 Later, when the cast was finished, it showed the mouth 
 twitched to one side — the effect of a surprise felt when the 
 artist grasped his hand before the plaster was set. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE ORANGE LABORATORY. 
 
 ]T last there came a time when even the large 
 premises at Menlo Park were too small for the 
 numerous demands upon them ; therefore, in 1886, 
 Edison removed to his new laboratory at Orange, N.J., a 
 huge building at the foot of the Orange Mountains. 
 
 There, four smaller buildings are grouped near the 
 laboratory, and the whole is surrounded by a high and 
 thick fence, and a gate which is closed to the public, with 
 the notice, ' Mr Edison, in justice to his work, is compelled 
 to deny absolutely all personal interviews;' and again, 'No 
 permits can be issued to visitors to enter these premises.' 
 
 An amusing story is told us of how Edison himself once 
 fel 1 a victim to his own law about this necessary exclusion 
 of the public. One day, when he wished to enter his 
 domain, a new and zealous gatekeeper would not allow 
 him to do so until some one came along and identified him. 
 
 Edison, we are told, is really one of the most accessible 
 of men, and it is with reluctance that he thus allows himself 
 
THE ORANGE LABORATORY. IOJ 
 
 to be protected from a too inquisitive public. But at 
 Menlo Park visitors came so very often that they interfered 
 with work, so that he, at length, said jokingly that he 
 should really have to blow up some one to frighten them 
 away. 
 
 ' Mr Edison is always glad to see a visitor,' said one of 
 his constant associates, ' except when he is hot on the trail 
 of something he has been working for, and then it is as 
 much as a man's head is worth to come in on him.' 
 
 The first room a visitor enters at Mr Edison's Orange 
 establishment is a palatial and luxurious library, containing 
 forty thousand works of reference. This apartment looked 
 somewhat bare and dismal at first, but, on Mr Edison's 
 forty-second birthday, the laboratory staff and workmen 
 lovingly fitted it up with soft Smyrna rugs, pictures, palms, 
 and flowers as a birthday present for him. It is now a 
 delightful and most handsome place for study and mental 
 recreation. The contents of the book-shelves give one an 
 idea of the breadth of thought and sympathy of the 
 self-made and self-taught man of science. He is by no 
 means only a scientific specialist, but can respond and talk 
 intelligently on the most diverse topics. 
 
 From the library the storeroom, or stockroom, is entered, 
 which contains the most diverse and miscellaneous assort- 
 ment of material. Just as Edison, when a lad, brought 
 home to his mother's basement all kinds of rubbish, in the 
 hope that they might come in useful for some of his 
 experiments, so now, as a man, he collects everything, no 
 matter what, which he has the faintest idea of turning to 
 account in any way. Here there are unearthly relics of 
 birds, beasts, plants, and crawling things. Skins of snakes 
 and fishes, furs of fur-bearing animals — some very rare — the 
 skin and teeth of sharks and hippopotami, rhinoceros 
 
104 THE ORANGE LABORATORY. 
 
 horns, fibres of strange exotic plants, all kinds of textile 
 substances, and precious stones. 
 
 1 That,' said Mr Edison, pointing to a globe enclosing 
 the filament of the incandescent light, ' never would work 
 right, no matter how hard we tried, till the fibre of a 
 particular kind of bamboo was put in.' The phonograph, 
 also, was only perfected after the value of the hard sapphire 
 stone was discovered for several of its parts — the repro- 
 ducing ball, the recording knife, amongst others. 
 
 From the storeroom the lower machine shop is entered, 
 which is devoted to making the heavier mechanism of the 
 dynamos, ore-milling machines, &c, and here there is a 
 noisy clanking and throbbing, as the great metal giants are 
 used. On one side are huge mining drills, on another an 
 array of electric motors, in the centre of the shop, so that 
 the power may be sent in any given direction. The 
 men working here are encased in smuts and grime, and 
 powdered with shining filaments of iron or steel. Rough 
 manual labour is here wielded by sturdy frames, and with 
 imperturbable industry. 
 
 In the dynamo room are displayed various kinds of the 
 electric generators. 
 
 An elevator takes people up to the second floor, where 
 are to be found the lighter and more delicate machines, 
 such as the phonograph, the kinetograph, the kinetoscope, 
 and other apparatus. 
 
 The glass-blowing room is very attractive. There the 
 operator wields the plastic crystal, moulds the fairy spheres, 
 and sends out shining threads. On this floor, too, are the 
 rooms devoted to the development of ideas which as yet 
 are barely sketched. 
 
 Edison never tries to keep secret his inventions. Any 
 one can see the work that is going on ; he seems to have 
 
THE ORANGE LABORATORY. 10$ 
 
 no fear of any workman or visitor running off with his 
 ideas. A visitor was once looking over one of his numerous 
 volumes of notes. His companion suggested that he had 
 better not look there, it might be private. 
 
 ' Oh no, there is nothing private here,' said one of the 
 men, overhearing; ' every one is at liberty to see ajl he can, 
 and the boss (master) will tell him all the rest. He has 
 taken out more patents than any other man in America, 
 but he never made an attempt in his life to keep anything 
 secret' 
 
 Edison's patience with inquirers is indeed very great. 
 And sometimes he has very ungrateful experiences. One 
 day, for instance, a man was looking over his inventions 
 who wanted to know all about the telephone. 
 
 Edison explained it in every particular, and received the 
 usual answers ; the visitor saying, * Yes, I comprehend 
 perfectly; simple enough;' and so on, until there was 
 nothing left to tell him. 
 
 ' Then,' said Edison, when relating the occurrence, ' you 
 can imagine how I felt when he said, " Yes, Mr Edison, I 
 understand it all, except how the sound gets out again." 
 I thought he had understood it, and he hadn't. I gave 
 him up.' 
 
 A very powerful impression is made by Edison when he 
 is seen at work, with his fine gray eyes, dark hair inclined 
 to gray, and his robust though not stout figure, in his 
 roomy but somewhat topsy-turvy laboratory, directing his 
 assistants, who follow his directions with almost reverence. 
 
 Mr Johnson tells us that 'he is frank and open to a 
 degree, and despite many a sad experience, as well as 
 oft-repeated expressions of cynicism under the sense of 
 injustice, he is always ready with sympathy and an open 
 hand. When he feels himself injured, he is bitter for a 
 
Io6 THE ORANGE LABORATORY. 
 
 time, but this passes away, unless fed by the active hostility 
 of an opponent. He is extremely sensitive to criticism of 
 his motives, and is even too apt to interpret a light remark 
 to mean a great disparagement. When he is robbed of 
 money he will easily forget it, but if attainted in any moral 
 sense he becomes relentless.' 
 
 We are told that the keynote of his work is commercial 
 utility. He asks himself, when pondering over some new 
 idea that his wonderful inventive genius has evolved, ' Will 
 this be valuable from the industrial point of view ? Will it 
 do some important thing better than existing methods ? ' 
 And if he finds it will, then the next question for him is, 
 •' Can I carry it out ? ' Not so much is he one in search of 
 truth, as a mighty engine for the utilising and application 
 of scientific truths. He is the greatest inventor of his 
 race. 
 
 We cannot expect a man who has for years worked 
 twenty hours a day to care for the conventionalisms of 
 society, and we have seen that Edison, although genial and 
 delightful as a friend, shuns rather than courts the tendency 
 of the world to lionise him. He is a brilliant conversation- 
 alist, so society loses much in losing him, but his work 
 and the benefit of mankind gain by his strict adherence to 
 it. He has often been heard, we are told, to express 
 contempt for an inventor who, having produced a single 
 invention, makes a tour of society, to receive its plaudits, 
 and finding the life so agreeable, pursues it permanently, 
 to the destruction of his further ambition. 
 
 ' I am glad to see that Bradstreet rates your credit at 
 three million dollars' (£616,016), some one remarked to 
 him one day. 
 
 1 It did not come from my inventions,' he said quickly. 
 * I never made money as a professional inventor. What 
 
THE ORANGE LABORATORY. I07 
 
 property I own has been accumulated since I began to do 
 business, and manufacture the machines in my own shop. 
 That is the only hope of the inventor. He will starve if 
 he depends upon his patents.' 
 
 In fact he has been so robbed by patent agents and 
 unscrupulous lawyers, that it is almost to be wondered at 
 that he has still faith in mankind. 
 
 Leaving Edison in his laboratory, perhaps, if it is the 
 hour of noon, sitting with his luncheon basket on his knee; 
 or, if he has been up some nights, dropping into a doze 
 as he sits on a bench amongst his men; or it may be 
 turning anxiously to overlook some important endeavour 
 on the part of an associate, we will pass on to the other 
 departments. 
 
 A very interesting one is the lamp test-room, on the top 
 floor, where there are many electric lamps all alight, that 
 they may be watched and studied, with a view to correcting 
 every conceivable defect before they are handed over to 
 the public. Very brilliant is the light given by these 
 shining bulbs ; but sometimes, as one looks on, a sort of 
 shiver will run through the illumination, and by the bursting 
 of one, the looker-on is powdered with shining fragments. 
 Very necessary, therefore, is this strict examination before 
 they are given over to the public. 
 
 Then there is a hall which is devoted to the exhibition 
 of the several inventions of Edison, and one could linger 
 here for long, studying the various products of his brain 
 and accumulative industry. The collection, however, is 
 not so complete as it was before many of the machines 
 were removed to the Paris Exhibition, and many of the 
 inventions are still unknown to fame. 
 
 The lecture hall and the out-buildings next claim atten- 
 tion. In the chemical room Edison may often be found, 
 
108 THE ORANGE LABORATORY. 
 
 draped in an unsightly toga, which, originally brown, is 
 now stained magenta, green, and yellow, the result of many 
 experiments. Surely he has borne a charmed life in the 
 past, or some of the mighty powers with which he deals 
 might have done worse for him than disfigure his toga. 
 
 Outside there are the galvanometer department — con- 
 taining a vast collection of valuable electrical instruments, 
 galvanometers, magnetometers, cathetometers, and so on — 
 the ore-milling experiment-room, and the supplementary 
 sheds ; to say nothing of the large and unique photographic 
 rooms, in which was evolved one of Edison's latest wonders, 
 the kinetoscope, 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE KINETOSCOPE AND KINETOGRAPH. 
 
 N the year 1887,' says Mr Edison, ' the_idea 
 occurred to me that it would be possible to 
 devise an instrument which should do tor the 
 eye what the phonograph does for the ear, and that, by 
 a combination of the two, all motion and sound could be 
 recorded and reproduced simultaneously. 
 
 The germ of the idea came from the little toy called the 
 zoetrope (wheel of life), and, in working upon it, Mr Edison 
 was but carrying out what Muybridge, Marie, and others 
 had begun. 
 
 So successful has been the result of the countless experi- 
 ments Edison has made, that the kinetoscope, as the device 
 is called, is now an accomplished fact. 
 
 The kinetoscope is now on view in London, and of it 
 the Times says : * This instrument is to the eye what 
 
i /•; 
 
 THE KINETOSCOPE AND KINETOGRAPH. 109 
 
 Edison's phonograph is to the ear, in that it reproduces 
 living movements of the most complex and rapid character. 
 To clearly understand the effect, it is necessary to explain 
 the cause, but to appreciate the result — the working of the 
 invention — it must be witnessed. The moving and appar- 
 ently living photographs in the kinetoscope are produced * : 
 in the following manner: Mr Edison has a stage upon 
 which the performances he produces are enacted. These 
 performances are recorded by taking a series of_forty -three 
 photographs in ra pid succession^ the time occupied in 
 taking them being one second only. Thus every progressive 
 phase of every single action is secured, and the photographs 
 are successfully reproduced on a film of celluloid the 
 length required for a given scene. When this film is passed 
 before the eye at the same rate of speed as that at w hich 
 the photographs were taken, the photographically disjointed 
 parts ofajgiyen action are united in one complete whole. 
 Thus, supposing a person to be photographed taTung~oTF 
 his coat, as is done in one case, the successive views 
 representing the phase of action at every forty-third part of 
 a second are joined up, and the complete operation of 
 taking off the coat is presented to the eye as it would 
 appear in reality. In other words, the kinetoscope is a 
 perfect reproduction of living action without sound. . . . 
 One scene represents a blacksmith's shop in full operation, 
 with three men hammering iron upon an anvil, who stop in 
 their work to take a drink. Each drinks in turn, and 
 passes the pot of beer to the other. The smoke from the 
 forge is seen to rise most perfectly. In another view, a 
 Spanish dancer is shown going through her graceful evolu- 
 tions, as is also Annabella in her serpentine dance.' 
 
 As for the kinetograph, it bears the same relation to the 
 kinetoscope as the recording diaphragm of the phonograph 
 
y 
 
 IIO THE KINETOSCOPE AND KINETOGRAPH. 
 
 does to the reproducing diaphragm. The kinetograph is 
 in part a photographic camera, so constructed with attach- 
 ments and devices that it records forty-six distinct and 
 separate views of moving objects, or scenes, during each 
 second of time. These photographs are recorded on a 
 long film which is finished substantially as all photographs 
 are finished, and is thus prepared for repro duction and 
 exhibition by means of the kinetoscope. fThe kinetoscope 
 is in the shape of a handsome hardwood cabinet, about the 
 size of a phonograph cabinet, and contains a mechanical 
 v . - device, operated by electricity, which is so constructed as 
 ' to run the films (containing the views photographed by the 
 kinetograph) past a given point, at a speed of about 
 forty-six every second of time. The films pass over a 
 series of rollers, which keep them steady and secure 
 accurate results. On the top of the cabinet is a small 
 window covered with clear glass, under which is a magni- 
 fying lens. If we look through this window, the film passes 
 before our eyes with such rapidity that we see one con- 
 tinuous view, with all the characters moving and acting 
 upon it. cT^ 
 
 Mr Edison says : r I believe that in coming years, by my 
 ,/^own work and that of Dickson, Muybridge, Marie, and 
 others who will doubtless enter the field, a grand opera 
 can be given at the Metropolitan Opera House at New 
 York without any material change from the original, and^ 
 with artists and musicians long dead.' 
 
 And when a picture of NiagafaTalls, for instance, is 
 put before us, the noise of the waters may also be conveyed 
 to our ears by the phonograph ; and, in the same manner, 
 the gestures and intonation of some of our public speakers 
 may thus be given. 
 
 'We are progressing, progressing,' said Edison, when 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE AND KINETOGRAPH. Ill 
 
 visited by an interviewer intent upon learning more about 
 the wonderful kinetograph from the great electrician him- 
 self, who is still at work upon it, with a view to further 
 improvements. 'The object of the machine is to afford 
 the spectator two inventions in one — that is, two senses £ 
 are simultaneously appealed to-Sugpose, we will say, an 
 opera is to be reproduced. [ The ph onograph already 
 repeats the sound; the kinetoscope affords a view of 
 the movements. Now, however, we wish to combine the 
 two, and combine them far more effectively than ever their 
 distinct elements have heretofore been rendered by separate 
 instruments. Thus, if one wishes to hear and see the 
 concert, or the opera, it would only be necessar y to sit 
 down jatjiome, look upon a screen, an d see the perform- 
 ance reproduced exactly in every movement, and at the 
 sarne~tim_e the voices of the players and singers, the music 
 of the orchestra, the various sounds that accompany a 
 performance of this sort, will be reproduced exactly. The 
 end attained is a perfect illusion. One really hears and 
 sees the play if the conditions precedent to the suitable 
 impressions upon eye and ear are obtained.' 
 
 ' Can ordinary sights and scenes, the Pope in the Vati- 
 can, or a speech at a mass meeting, be as effectively 
 handled?' 
 
 ' Far more easily,' replied the great electrician ; ' that is 
 the least difficult part of the problem. Even now the 
 spectator could be treated to a perfect reproduction of 
 Gladstone making a speech to the House of Commons. 
 This would be shown life size, and so far as the spectator 
 is concerned would be the real scene. For every word, 
 every gesture of the grand old man, the gestures of each 
 spectator, and the sounds made on the occasion, would be 
 reproduced exactly. And of course two hundred years 
 
112 THE KINETOSCOPE AND KINETOGRAPH. 
 
 hence the same scene could be thr own up at will — a new 
 wavof record ing history, yj m-see^-- 
 
 ~""Thejournalist asked if the mechanism of such a machine 
 would not be very complicated. 
 
 'Not more so than that of the kinetoscope and the 
 phonograph,' was the reply, ' and the difficulty now in the 
 way is the adjustment of the photographic apparatus in 
 minute fractions of a second. Certain flashes of motion 
 are caught in ten forty-ninths of a second. But in preserv- 
 ing them, and in their reproduction, one or two obstacles 
 are met w r ith. The negative itself is very small — not 
 much larger than your thumb nail. In reproducing these 
 postures and movements, great care is necessary in main- 
 taining proportions. To throw upon a screen a series 
 of movements, each taking up an interval of time not 
 longer, perhaps, than a fifth part of ten forty-ninths of a 
 second, and at the same time to ensure fidelity, is the 
 problem. As it is, there are occasional distortions. If 
 a movement in the reproduction be not, so to speak, 
 run out consecutively — that is, if, looked upon as a change 
 of posture, it be not accurately photographed, although it 
 occupied but the two-hundredth part of a second — the 
 effect will be distorted. Hence the extreme nicety required 
 in the mechanism.' 
 
 After a pause : ' Perhaps by to-morrow,' continued Mr 
 Edison, ' we may perfect the machinery. Perhaps we shall 
 have to work another year upon it. In truth, it is a simple 
 matter. It consists merely in adjusting thoroughly under- 
 stood principles to a new contrivance which is made up 
 of old contrivances. Were it not that we have such 
 infinitely small sections of time to deal with, there would 
 be no difficulty at all. But, as I have told you, we know 
 how to overcome the difficulty. We simply lack practice.' 
 
THE KINETOSCOPE AND KINETOGRAPH. 113 
 
 A little more discussion about details followed, and (^^ Cj* 
 then Edison said : M have ^ o^d oubt whatever of the 
 outcome. Before many yea rs w e will have grand opera 7 
 in every little village at ten cents a head. And the very 
 highest grand opera ; you will see and hear Patti in yourM'v<J\< 
 own parlour. She will be heard a hundred years after her 
 death. The President's inauguration can be treated in the 
 same way. Pope Leo and his cardinals may be seen and 
 heard for a hundred years to come.' 
 
 'What a way to write history !' he continued enthusiasti- 
 cally. ' How much more effectively one could convey to 
 future generations an idea of the President than words and 
 writing could ! In fact, written records would cease to 
 have their historical importance. Yet,' he added, ' these 
 things are not so wonderful as they seem.' 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 ORE-MILLING, ETC. 
 
 LMOST two years ago, in the pages of Macluris 
 Magazine, Mr E. J. Edwards gave a very in- 
 teresting account of the problems which Mr 
 Edison was then trying to solve, saying that if he succeeded 
 he would revolutionise the iron and coal trade. This 
 writer says : Mr Edison's most important campaign, 
 according to his own account, upon which he has been 
 engaged for several years, is the invention of an ore- 
 concentrator for cheapening the process of extracting 
 iron from earth and rock. Of ten important details 
 necessary for success, he has mastered eight. In his own 
 words, 'When the machinery is done as I expect to 
 
 H 
 
114 ORE-MILLING, ETC. 
 
 develop it, it will be capable of handling twenty thousand 
 tons of ore a day, with two shifts of men, five in a shift. 
 That is to say, ten workmen, working twenty hours a day 
 in the aggregate, will be able to take this ore, crush it, 
 reduce the iron to cement-like proportions, extract it from 
 the rock and earth, and make it into bricklets of pure iron, 
 and do it so cheaply that it will command the market for 
 magnetic iron.' 
 
 And after this iron-concentrator is finished, Mr Edison 
 said, ' I shall turn my attention to one of the greatest 
 problems that I have ever thought of solving, and that is, 
 the direct control of the energy which is stored up in coal, 
 so that it may be employed without waste, and at a very 
 small margin of cost. Ninety per cent, of the energy that 
 exists in coal is now lost in converting it into power. It 
 goes off in heat through the chimneys of boiler-rooms. 
 You perceive it when you step into a room where there is a 
 furnace and boiler ; it is also greatly wasted in the develop- 
 ment of the latent heat which is created by the change 
 from water to steam. Now this is an awful waste, and 
 even a child can see that, if the waste can be saved, it 
 will result in vastly cheapening the cost of everything 
 which is manufactured by electric or steam power. In 
 fact, it will vastly cheapen the cost of all the necessaries 
 and luxuries of life, and I suppose the results would be of 
 mightier influence upon civilisation than the development 
 of the steam-engine and electricity have been.' 
 
 Then he went on to say that, if this waste were saved, 
 ' it would enable an ocean steamship of twenty thousand 
 horse-power to cross the ocean faster than any of the crack 
 vessels now do, and require the burning of only two 
 hundred and fifty tons of coal instead of three thousand, 
 which are now required ; so that, of course, the charges for 
 
ORE-MILLING, ETC. 115 
 
 freight and passenger fares would be greatly reduced. It 
 would enormously lessen the cost of manufacturing and of 
 traffic. It would develop the electric current directly 
 from coal, so that the cost of steam-engines and boilers 
 would be eliminated. I have thought of this problem very 
 much. The coal would be put into a receptacle, the 
 agencies then applied would develop its energy and save 
 it all, and through this energy electric power of any kind 
 desired could be furnished. Yes, it can be done ; I am 
 sure of that. Some of the details I have already mastered, 
 I think ; at least, I am sure that I go the way to master 
 them. I believe that I shall make this my next campaign. 
 It may be years before it is finished, and it may not be a 
 very long time.' 
 
 Another idea Edison had in his head at that time was 
 marine signalling. 
 
 V ' I think it quite likely,' he said, ' that I may try to 
 develop a plan for marine signalling. I have the idea 
 already pretty well formulated in my own mind. I should 
 use the well-known principle that water is a more perfect 
 medium for carrying vibrations than air, and should develop 
 instruments which may be carried upon sea-going vessels, 
 by which they can transmit or receive, through an inter- 
 national code of signals, reports within a radius of, say, ten 
 miles.' 
 
 It is interesting to note that already, in the year 1895, 
 two special types of Edison's ore-milling machines are 
 being used at the Ogden, N.J., mines. The machine is 
 very successful, and is endowed with great capacity. It is 
 a sight to look at five or six of the monster magnets 
 extracting the metal. The upper hoppers of the machine, 
 when filled with the ore, are opened below, and a perfect 
 Niagara of particles, half an inch wide and thirty feet in 
 
Il6 ORE-MILLING, ETC. 
 
 length, is allowed to rush past the magnets without touching 
 them. As it rushes down, a large proportion of the ore, 
 being magnetic, is drawn inward, changing the trajectory 
 and showing two distinct streams, the destination of each 
 of which is secured by separate partition boards. The 
 clouds of dust are whirled away to specially constructed 
 dust separators, which extract the float iron. The next 
 process is to recrush the magnetic part which was drawn 
 into the inner receptacle, by passing it through a series of 
 rolls, and bringing it down to the semblance of coarse- 
 grained gunpowder. This rough powder is then fed against 
 the second type of magnetic ore-separator, or refining 
 machine, inclined rows of magnets fixed firmly at a certain 
 angle, whilst a swift travelling belt, eight feet wide and over 
 thirty long, passes over the face of these magnets, tumbling 
 and dashing about the mass of particles being thus cleansed, 
 until it reaches the last magnet on the upper row, where 
 what is left is caught up in buckets and thrown into a 
 proper receptacle. Five thousand tons of crude ore are 
 thus crushed and magnetically concentrated every day at 
 the Ogden mines. 
 
 A correspondent of one of the leading Montreal papers 
 thus graphically describes his visit to Edison at his works 
 in New Jersey. A visit to Thomas A. Edison, he says, 
 is suggestive of a pilgrimage to the haunts of some 
 medieval wizard. The greatest inventor that ever lived 
 has established himself in a dell hidden amongst verdant 
 mountains in New Jersey wilds. Then he goes on to say 
 the neighbourhood has no inhabitants except the two 
 hundred men whom the Wizard employs. A somewhat 
 shaky railroad, over which run trains, with wheezy cars 
 meandering this way and that according as the wind 
 blows, leads to the works at the old deserted mine once 
 
ORE-MILLING, ETC. 117 
 
 known as Ogden, but now called after its owner, Edison. 
 There are buildings all over Edison, great buildings which 
 move about when a button is pressed. Indeed, we are 
 told, the people at Edison seldom do anything without 
 pressing a button. 
 
 No one seems to pay much attention to a visitor at 
 Edison. Only sometimes a friendly warning is uttered, 
 as, for instance, when a grimy unkempt worker observed 
 calmly to the journalist, ' If you stay there another minute, 
 you will be broken into small pieces and carried under- 
 ground.' 
 
 'But can I see Mr Edison?' persisted the visitor, 
 preparing to move on. 
 
 1 1 don't know,' is the careless reply. ' The old man 's 
 around somewhere. Go to that red building.' 
 
 Accordingly the visitor set off towards it, but only to 
 find, to his chagrin, that, as he approached, it receded, 
 stopping in the most tantalising way from time to 
 time when he stopped, and again advancing as he drew 
 near. 
 
 At last, however, to his satisfaction, it moved towards 
 him, and then he found that it was an office, and, upon 
 his pressing a button, he was informed where Mr Edison 
 was, and that he would be along presently. 
 
 Whilst waiting for him, the journalist watched the 
 process of ' breaking up mountains.' It begins, of course, 
 by a button being pressed. Thereupon an immense 
 boulder is detached from the rock, carried on a movable 
 hod as big as a barn, dropped upon a pair of huge iron 
 wheels, and smashed into cobble-stones. 
 
 These cobbles whirl up in the air into huge troughs 
 or trays and come down dust, when the grains of iron 
 contained in them are pitched out by magnets. A three- 
 
Il8 ORE-MILLING, ETC. 
 
 ton boulder is broken up into fine iron in three minutes, 
 the refuse going into the dust-hole. 
 
 At last Edison appeared. He was toil-stained, grimy, 
 dusty, and dressed like a navvy. But his face, says the 
 interviewer, was that of a bright, blue-eyed youth, beauti- 
 fully blue-eyed and smiling. It was not until he took off 
 his old dust-covered hat that his gray hair showed he was 
 no longer young. Scarcely a wrinkle was to be seen on 
 his face. 
 
 After discussing the kinetograph with his visitor, the 
 great inventor said : ' It appears to me that the people 
 generally are not keeping pace with scientific progress. 
 What do you think of the idea of vaccinating land ? That 
 experiment, I see, has actually been made with success. 
 The object of this success is to improve the quality of 
 the soil. The law of diminishing returns, so long an 
 important factor in political economy, is thus overcome. 
 To explain the method employed, so as to be comprehen- 
 sible to the popular mind, is not easy. You see certain 
 roots of plants which flourish in inferior soils have been 
 ascertained to nourish a parasite. These parasites afford 
 the plant, through their organic functions, strength and 
 vitality. In return the parasites are fed and sustained by 
 certain properties of the root. One supports the other, 
 and the two have a decided effect upon the soil in which 
 they grow. Now this process of nature has been success- 
 fully applied by science. What we may call an agri- 
 cultural miss is obtained, and the 'impoverished soil into 
 which it is introduced is almost at once bettered. The 
 process is permanently fertilising, and cannot fail to effect 
 in time a revolution in farming.' 
 
 Here a button was pressed somewhere in the remote 
 regions, and Mr Edison hastened away, leaving his visitor 
 
ORE-MILLING, ETC. 119 
 
 to examine the ' Plant,' as he calls the works at Edison, 
 which are being enlarged from day to day. It contains 
 the only stone-breaker in the world of its extraordinary 
 kind. It will reduce a mountain of ordinary size to dust 
 in one day. There are telephones everywhere, and 
 phonographs for making memoranda connected with the 
 desks. There are no houses, no candles or lanterns. 
 Labour is reduced to a minimum. ' A day's toil consists 
 largely in pressing a series of buttons. And they never 
 think this extraordinary in the queer place. Even the 
 'prentice boys are very scientific. They release the giant 
 forces of nature, and hold them in check again. Edison 
 is the Nimrod of this electrical game reserve, with his 
 pack running and gamboling all about him.' 
 
 Having accomplished so much, Edison is still endeavour- 
 ing to achieve yet greater things. Mr Lenier tells us, as 
 did Mr Edwards, that he is working at a still harder prob- 
 lem — so it seems to me — than any he has yet solved. It 
 is the direct production of electricity from oxygen and coal 
 (carbon). At present we burn coal to obtain steam, which 
 is transmuted into mechanical energy, and thence into elec- 
 tricity. Under the very best conditions, before the energy 
 of the coal reaches the dynamo, six-sevenths of its power 
 are lost. If a way is found to dispense with the steam- 
 engine in the making of electricity, the mechanical 
 energy of the world will be multiplied seven times. Many 
 of the cleverest and most earnest engineers and chemists 
 are now striving — mostly in secret — to obtain this great 
 result. Edison confidently predicts that the discovery will 
 come. 
 
 When this immense saving of fuel has been effected, the 
 great Atlantic steamers will only need a coal-bin which will 
 hold two hundred and fifty tons of coal, instead of one for 
 
120 ORE-MILLING, ETC. 
 
 three thousand, to carry them across the Atlantic. Much 
 greater speed will then be attained, and far less expense 
 to the public will be the pleasing result. 
 
 Edison does not believe in the necessity for capital 
 punishment. ' There are wonderful possibilities in each 
 human soul,' he says, ' and I cannot endure a method of 
 punishment which destroys the last chance of usefulness.' 
 
 But, notwithstanding this, he has been induced to make 
 many experiments, with a view to cutting off the lives of 
 criminals who would otherwise be hanged, by the more 
 merciful and rapid death from electricity. As usual, 
 success has crowned his endeavours, and ' electrocution ' is 
 steadily winning precedence as the least objectionable 
 form of judicial killing. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 conclusion — edison's present surroundings. 
 
 ESIDES his large establishments at Orange, 
 N.J., Edison has also a smaller place at Fort 
 Meyers, Florida, where he is supposed to go for 
 recreation, although even there he cannot leave his work 
 behind, and so has a small but complete laboratory 
 attached to it. 
 
 In the roomy and pleasantly situated house, and large, 
 undulating gardens, studded with tropical palms and rich 
 in all kinds of flowering plants, Edison's father, Mr Samuel 
 Edison, and Mr James Symington, a friend of thirty-seven 
 years, spend a large portion of their time. Mr Edison, 
 senior, is ninety years of age, but hale and well in mind 
 and body. He delights in gardening, and is to be seen 
 
EDISON S PRESENT SURROUNDINGS. 121 
 
 busy at work early in the morning and through the hottest 
 hours of the day. 
 
 Edison's biographers tell us that, on one of his visits to 
 Fort Meyers, Edison offered to supply the town with a 
 system of electric lighting, if the Meyerites would furnish 
 the poles. This generous offer, which any other corpora- 
 tion with a modicum of sense would have been only too 
 pleased to accept, was languidly refused by the inhabitants 
 of the place. 
 
 Far and wide as the electric light has extended, there 
 are in many other places besides Fort Meyers sundry 
 influences which tend to keep it back. Speaking of those 
 at present prevailing in Europe, Edison said to a recent 
 interviewer : ' I think the gas interests have still a lease of 
 life. In my opinion those who have had the making of 
 the laws and regulations relating to the electric lighting 
 industry, perhaps guided by the supply companies them- 
 selves, have managed to get it off the right track, and now 
 nearly all the operating companies are on a wrong business 
 basis for any rapid development. Nowadays the chief 
 concern of the station manager is to grind out as much 
 current as possible for every pound of coal he burns. He 
 gets economical boilers, engines, and generators, and 
 studies their arrangement. These are so near the practical 
 limits of their perfection that only a two or three per cent, 
 improvement can be expected ; and so long as the station 
 has a fair load, shows a good efficiency, and does not have 
 breakdowns, every one appears satisfied. The consumer 
 grumbles at the cost of electric lighting, but pays his bill ; 
 the shareholder pockets his small dividend, and the 
 manager is happy. They are selling current by Board 
 of Trade units, although in competition with gas; it is 
 light the public wants, not amperes. Let them produce 
 
122 EDISON'S PRESENT SURROUNDINGS. 
 
 more light — more candle-power — per horse-power hour. 
 I will grant the difficulty of fixing a " unit of light," but it 
 is not necessary to do so ; it is an easy matter to charge 
 from the meter indications for the lamp hours delivered. 
 If the station simply receives payments for volts delivered, 
 it has no inducement to increase the efficiency of the lamp. 
 The companies will even frown upon the inventor, or lamp 
 manufacturer, who gives the consumers lamps taking half 
 as much current, because that lessens their demand and 
 the total consumption ; in fact, it is to the station's interest 
 to see lamps chewing as much current as the poor con- 
 sumer will pay for. At the same time lamp improvements 
 are kept back because the efficient lamp is a short-lived 
 one, and to educate the vast public to study their meter 
 bills instead of their lamp bills is a slow and tedious 
 process. To an ordinary householder each thirty cents 
 spent on a lamp is an evident out-of-pocket expenditure. 
 His main idea is to get the lamp that requires replacement 
 least often. Who is to blame,' he asked, 'the business 
 man or the professor, for the conditions you can find in 
 London of an alternating plant occupying a certain 
 confined area, in which the copper put down in the 
 transformers alone, leaving out any distributing wire, is 
 over and above ample to give a complete and magnificent 
 system of distribution, had a complete low-tension system 
 been employed instead? Was it not lack of unity? With 
 regard to the direct low-tension system, Mr Edison declared 
 that he had not changed his opinion one iota. Alternating 
 systems may have their field — they are explorative — and 
 perhaps a necessary development just now ; but the cream 
 of the electrical business is in the large towns, and I 
 believe all these centres can be best supplied with direct 
 low-tension three-wire systems. With the present one- 
 
edison's present surroundings. 123 
 
 hundred-volt lamp we are able to give service within 
 one mile radius, or say over an area of four square miles. 
 The largest town would not want many such stations.' 
 
 Edison's magnificent northern home is Glenmont, in 
 New Jersey. It consists of an extensive and superbly 
 appointed house, which, built of brick, stone, and wood, 
 abounds in gabled roofs, picturesque nooks and angles, 
 carved balconies, and richly hued stained-glass windows. 
 Beautiful grounds, fitted up with rare shrubs and much 
 that can delight the eye, surround this spacious building. 
 
 Edison married a second time, a beautiful young girl, 
 who has borne him two little ones, Madeline and Charles. 
 They and his elder children — the elder boy is learning to 
 be an inventor in his father's laboratory — have at Glen- 
 mont a beautiful and stately home. 
 
 There, with all that wealth can buy to make life enjoy- 
 able, it is pleasant to think of this hard-working man, who 
 began his career under such great disadvantages as a poor 
 newspaper-boy, and worked his way up the ladder of fame 
 as bravely and steadily as any man on earth, resting 
 sometimes, and enjoying the happiness of his dear 
 ones, as he lavishly bestows upon them the treasures won 
 by almost superhuman efforts. 
 
 At beautiful Glenmont, on the occasion of a juvenile 
 party being given in honour of Edison's daughter Madeline, 
 the great electrician gave a brilliant display of his electric 
 light. 
 
 Many incandescent bulbs stained in a variety of exquisite 
 colours were hidden amongst the crystal fringes and stal- 
 actites of the great chandeliers, and so connected with the 
 sources of electrical supply as to throw out divers sheets of 
 ruby, sapphire, amethyst, and gold, in a manner like the 
 illumination of St Peter's at Rome. In the life-cake, a 
 
124 EDISON S PRESENT SURROUNDINGS. 
 
 brilliantly sparkling structure of fairy towers and chatelaines, 
 foliage and frosted bloom, a single electric bulb was 
 placed, which glowed like a sea of light in a setting of 
 minor gems made of a fringe of tiny incandescent lamps 
 not much larger than drops of dew. 
 
 Edison's biographers graphically describe their visit to 
 him at Glenmont. Upon arriving there, after mounting 
 some steps they were shown into a luxuriously furnished 
 entrance-hall, which seemed to serve as a general loung- 
 ing-place for the whole family. There was a huge old- 
 fashioned fireplace, heaped up with logs and provided 
 with large andirons. The windows in the hall and on the 
 grand staircase were of richly-coloured glass. Passing up 
 this staircase, which was of polished mahogany, the visitors 
 went into the dining-room, ' rich with carvings of oak and 
 mahogany, hunting and pastoral scenes,' and on to Mr 
 Edison's private sitting-room at the other side. 
 
 The great man was sitting in a deep armchair. His 
 deafness was worse than usual that day, as he was not 
 feeling well, and had been taking quinine — which was bad 
 for his hearing — so he did not know visitors were in the 
 room until he was aroused to receive them. Then he 
 looked round from behind a New York periodical, with a 
 face illumined with good-nature and kindly feeling, and 
 greeted them warmly. They felt the pathos of the 
 situation, as they said afterwards, in thus finding the man 
 'to whom we owe such an immeasurable debt in the 
 extension of our physical powers, thus patiently enduring 
 the isolation of his soundless prison.' Apropos of this, it 
 is good to hear from a more recent visitor that Mr Edison's 
 hearing has improved during the past year, owing perhaps 
 to his perfect physical condition. 
 
 His room seemed to be a favourite resort of the whole 
 
"5 
 
 family, whose tastes were shown in several ways. There 
 was a Weber piano of much sweetness, an organette or 
 mechanical organ, a magic lantern, a phonograph, and 
 several revolving bookcases well filled with scientific works. 
 On the mantel-piece were ornaments which were gifts from 
 the Emperor of Russia, the Society of Engineers in Japan, 
 and so on. 
 
 Mrs Edison, ' her queenly head crowned with an aureole 
 of nut-brown hair,' and clad in a gown of pearl and silver 
 draperies which well showed her pretty figure, graciously 
 pointed out to the visitors her husband's medals and 
 decorations. Amongst these were the Prince x\lbert gold 
 medal from the London Society of Arts, the three degrees 
 of the Legion of Honour — officer, chevalier, and com- 
 mander — the bronze medal of the Photographic Society 
 of France given to him because of his kinetograph, the 
 order of the Commander of the Crown of Italy, and medals 
 from Boston and New York Institutes, and from the 
 exhibitions of Sydney, Melbourne, Milan, the Crystal 
 Palace, and Paris. 
 
 In an interesting scrap-book are many autographic letters 
 of great interest, amongst which is the record of a message 
 from the Queen of Italy, phonographically received by Mr 
 Edison, on the occasion of his visiting Europe with Mrs 
 Edison for the purpose of going to the Paris Exhibition in 
 1889. It contains the words: ' Women everywhere owe 
 to Mr Edison a deep debt of gratitude for giving them the 
 means of bringing near to them the very voices of loved 
 ones who are far away.' 
 
 It was on the occasion of that visit to Paris that 
 Madame Carnot placed the presidential opera box 'at 
 Monsieur and Madame Edison's disposal,' and the recep- 
 tion accorded to them at the opera was most enthusiastic. 
 
126 edison's present surroundings. 
 
 Three boxes had been thrown into one, the house was 
 hung with American flags and national colours, and as the 
 Edisons entered, the orchestra struck up the national 
 anthem of America. As soon as the opera was over, the 
 audience hastily left the place ; and when the Edisons 
 reached the brilliantly lighted boulevard, they were sur- 
 rounded with a great crowd shouting, ' Vive Edison !' 
 
 After this brief glimpse of the adulation paid to success- 
 ful genius by the denizens of the Parisian world, Edison 
 returned to America, to his beautiful home and to his 
 hard-working life in his great laboratories. 
 
 Mr Edwards tells us that when Edison was congratu- 
 lated upon attaining his forty-sixth birthday, he said that 
 he did not measure his life by years, but by achievements 
 or by campaigns, and that he looked forward to no period 
 of lest, believing that, for him at least, the happiest life is a 
 life of work. 
 
 And in speaking of his campaigns, he remarked : ' I do 
 not regard myself as a pure scientist, as so many persons 
 have insisted that I am. I do not search for the laws of 
 nature, and have made no great discoveries of such laws. 
 I do not study science as Newton, and Kepler, and Fara- 
 day, and Henry studied it, simply for the purpose of 
 learning truth. I am only a professional inventor. My 
 studies and experiments have been conducted entirely 
 with the object of inventing that which will have com- 
 mercial utility. I suppose I might be called a scientific 
 inventor, as distinguished from a mechanical inventor, 
 although really there is no distinction.' 
 
 Speaking of the campaigns and achievements by which 
 he measured his life, the great electrician mentioned first the 
 stock-ticker and the telephone, upon the latter of which he 
 had worked very hard, but said he looked upon the phono- 
 
EDISON S PRESENT SURROUNDINGS. 1 27 
 
 graph as the greatest of his achievements in the early 
 part of his career. 'That,' he said, 'was an invention 
 pure and simple. No suggestion of it, so far as I know, 
 had ever been made ; and it was a discovery made by 
 accident, while experimenting upon another invention, 
 that led to the development of the phonograph.' Then he 
 went on to say that the second campaign was the invention 
 of his incandescent lamp, which, as we have seen, was the 
 first lamp of the kind which became commercially valuable. 
 He worked about three years upon that, he said, and some 
 of his experiments were very delicate and very costly. 
 That, he estimated, had been so far his chief achievement, 
 as it certainly was the first one which made him independ- 
 ent and left him free to begin other campaigns without 
 the necessity of calling in outside capital, or of finding his 
 invention subject to the manipulations of Wall Street. ' I 
 am now fortunate enough,' he continued, ' to have capital 
 of my own, and that I shall use in these campaigns' 
 (his campaigns in the future). 
 
 People who are not Christians are fond of asserting that 
 the scientific mind is opposed to belief in God. But 
 Edison is a direct refutation of this. 
 
 One day, when he was talking to Mr Lathrop, he said, 
 ' I do not believe that matter is inert, acted upon by 
 an outside force. To me it seems that every atom is 
 possessed by a certain amount of primitive intelligence. 
 Look at the thousand ways in which atoms of hydrogen 
 combine with those of other elements, forming the most 
 diverse substances. Do you mean to say that they do this 
 without intelligence? Atoms in harmonious and useful 
 relation assume beautiful or interesting shapes and colours, 
 or give forth a pleasant perfume, as if expressing their 
 satisfaction.' 
 
128 edison's present surroundings. 
 
 ' But where does this intelligence come from ? ' he was 
 asked. 
 
 The answer was ready : ' From some power greater than 
 ourselves.' 
 
 Then the other asked, 'Do you believe, then, in an 
 intelligent Creator, a personal God ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly,' replied Edison • ' the existence of such a 
 God can, to my mind, almost be proved from chemistry.' 
 
 Mr Edwards reports also that he said to him, ' I tell you 
 that no person can be brought into close contact with the 
 mysteries of nature, or make a study of chemistry, without 
 being convinced that behind it all there is supreme intelli- 
 gence. I am convinced of that, and I think that I could, 
 perhaps I may sometime demonstrate, the existence of such 
 intelligence through the operation of those mysterious laws 
 with the certainty of a demonstration in mathematics.' 
 
 It is a fitting thing that he to whom the Almighty has 
 vouchsafed such great gifts of power and knowledge, gifts 
 which bear fruit oftentimes so like the ancient miracles, 
 should thus bear witness to the One greater than himself, 
 who alone creates and disposes of every creature, animate 
 or inanimate, in his whole world. 
 
 And here we must leave Edison. Marvellous as have 
 been his achievements in the past, the future is for him 
 bright with possibilities. He himself has said, ' I think the 
 world is on the eve of grand and immense discoveries, 
 before whose transcendant glories the record of the past 
 will fade into insignificance.' 
 
 i< 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Edinburgh : 
 Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited. 
 
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