The Project Gutenberg EBook of Edison, His Life and Inventions, by
Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Edison, His Life and Inventions
Author: Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
Release Date: January 21, 2006 [EBook #820]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EDISON, HIS LIFE AND INVENTIONS ***
Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger
EDISON HIS LIFE AND INVENTIONS
By Frank Lewis Dyer
General Counsel For The Edison Laboratory And Allied Interests
And
Thomas Commerford Martin
Ex-President Of The American Institute Of Electrical Engineers
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. THE AGE OF ELECTRICITY
II. EDISON'S PEDIGREE
III. BOYHOOD AT PORT HURON, MICHIGAN
IV. THE YOUNG TELEGRAPH OPERATOR
V. ARDUOUS YEARS IN THE CENTRAL WEST
VI. WORK AND INVENTION IN BOSTON
VII. THE STOCK TICKER
VIII. AUTOMATIC, DUPLEX, AND QUADRUPLEX TELEGRAPHY
IX. THE TELEPHONE, MOTOGRAPH, AND MICROPHONE
X. THE PHONOGRAPH
XI. THE INVENTION OF THE INCANDESCENT LAMP
XII. MEMORIES OF MENLO PARK
XIII. A WORLD-HUNT FOR FILAMENT MATERIAL
XIV. INVENTING A COMPLETE SYSTEM OF LIGHTING
XV. INTRODUCTION OF THE EDISON ELECTRIC LIGHT
XVI. THE FIRST EDISON CENTRAL STATION
XVII. OTHER EARLY STATIONS--THE METER
XVIII. THE ELECTRIC RAILWAY
XIX. MAGNETIC ORE MILLING WORK
XX. EDISON PORTLAND CEMENT
XXI. MOTION PICTURES
XXII. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EDISON STORAGE BATTERY
XXIII. MISCELLANEOUS INVENTIONS
XXIV. EDISON'S METHOD IN INVENTING
XXV. THE LABORATORY AT ORANGE AND THE STAFF
XXVI. EDISON IN COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURE
XXVII. THE VALUE OF EDISON'S INVENTIONS TO THE WORLD
XXVIII. THE BLACK FLAG
XXIX. THE SOCIAL SIDE OF EDISON
APPENDIX
LIST OF UNITED STATES PATENTS
FOREIGN PATENTS
INDEX
INTRODUCTION
PRIOR to this, no complete, authentic, and authorized record of the work
of Mr. Edison, during an active life, has been given to the world. That
life, if there is anything in heredity, is very far from finished; and
while it continues there will be new achievement.
An insistently expressed desire on the part of the public for a
definitive biography of Edison was the reason for the following pages.
The present authors deem themselves happy in the confidence reposed in
them, and in the constant assistance they have enjoyed from Mr. Edison
while preparing these pages, a great many of which are altogether
his own. This co-operation in no sense relieves the authors of
responsibility as to any of the views or statements of their own that
the book contains. They have realized the extreme reluctance of Mr.
Edison to be made the subject of any biography at all; while he has felt
that, if it must be written, it were best done by the hands of friends
and associates of long standing, whose judgment and discretion he could
trust, and whose intimate knowledge of the facts would save him from
misrepresentation.
The authors of the book are profoundly conscious of the fact that the
extraordinary period of electrical development embraced in it has been
prolific of great men. They have named some of them; but there has
been no idea of setting forth various achievements or of ascribing
distinctive merits. This treatment is devoted to one man whom his
fellow-citizens have chosen to regard as in many ways representative of
the American at his finest flowering in the field of invention during
the nineteenth century.
It is designed in these pages to bring the reader face to face with
Edison; to glance at an interesting childhood and a youthful period
marked by a capacity for doing things, and by an insatiable thirst for
knowledge; then to accompany him into the great creative stretch of
forty years, during which he has done so much. This book shows him
plunged deeply into work for which he has always had an incredible
capacity, reveals the exercise of his unsurpassed inventive ability, his
keen reasoning powers, his tenacious memory, his fertility of resource;
follows him through a series of innumerable experiments, conducted
methodically, reaching out like rays of search-light into all the
regions of science and nature, and finally exhibits him emerging
triumphantly from countless difficulties bearing with him in new arts
the fruits of victorious struggle.
These volumes aim to be a biography rather than a history of
electricity, but they have had to cover so much general ground in
defining the relations and contributions of Edison to the electrical
arts, that they serve to present a picture of the whole development
effected in the last fifty years, the most fruitful that electricity has
known. The effort has been made to avoid technique and abstruse phrases,
but some degree of explanation has been absolutely necessary in regard
to each group of inventions. The task of the authors has consisted
largely in summarizing fairly the methods and processes employed by
Edison; and some idea of the difficulties encountered by them in
so doing may be realized from the fact that one brief chapter, for
example,--that on ore milling--covers nine years of most intense
application and activity on the part of the inventor. It is something
like exhibiting the geological eras of the earth in an outline lantern
slide, to reduce an elaborate series of strenuous experiments and a vast
variety of ingenious apparatus to the space of a few hundred words.
A great deal of this narrative is given in Mr. Edison's own language,
from oral or written statements made in reply to questions addressed to
him with the object of securing accuracy. A further large part is based
upon the personal contributions of many loyal associates; and it is
desired here to make grateful acknowledgment to such collaborators as
Messrs. Samuel Insull, E. H. Johnson, F. R. Upton, R. N Dyer, S. B.
Eaton, Francis Jehl, W. S. Andrews, W. J. Jenks, W. J. Hammer, F. J.
Sprague, W. S. Mallory, and C. L. Clarke, and others, without whose
aid the issuance of this book would indeed have been impossible. In
particular, it is desired to acknowledge indebtedness to Mr. W. H.
Meadowcroft not only for substantial aid in the literary part of the
work, but for indefatigable effort to group, classify, and summarize the
boundless material embodied in Edison's note-books and memorabilia of
all kinds now kept at the Orange laboratory. Acknowledgment must also
be made of the courtesy and assistance of Mrs. Edison, and especially
of the loan of many interesting and rare photographs from her private
collection.
EDISON HIS LIFE AND INVENTIONS
CHAPTER I
THE AGE OF ELECTRICITY
THE year 1847 marked a period of great territorial acquisition by
the American people, with incalculable additions to their actual and
potential wealth. By the rational compromise with England in the dispute
over the Oregon region, President Polk had secured during 1846, for
undisturbed settlement, three hundred thousand square miles of forest,
fertile land, and fisheries, including the whole fair Columbia Valley.
Our active "policy of the Pacific" dated from that hour. With swift and
clinching succession came the melodramatic Mexican War, and February,
1848, saw another vast territory south of Oregon and west of the Rocky
Mountains added by treaty to the United States. Thus in about eighteen
months there had been pieced into the national domain for quick
development and exploitation a region as large as the entire Union
of Thirteen States at the close of the War of Independence. Moreover,
within its boundaries was embraced all the great American gold-field,
just on the eve of discovery, for Marshall had detected the shining
particles in the mill-race at the foot of the Sierra Nevada nine days
before Mexico signed away her rights in California and in all the vague,
remote hinterland facing Cathayward.
Equally momentous were the times in Europe, where the attempt to secure
opportunities of expansion as well as larger liberty for the individual
took quite different form. The old absolutist system of government was
fast breaking up, and ancient thrones were tottering. The red lava of
deep revolutionary fires oozed up through many glowing cracks in the
political crust, and all the social strata were shaken. That the wild
outbursts of insurrection midway in the fifth decade failed and died
away was not surprising, for the superincumbent deposits of tradition
and convention were thick. But the retrospect indicates that many
reforms and political changes were accomplished, although the process
involved the exile of not a few ardent spirits to America, to become
leading statesmen, inventors, journalists, and financiers. In 1847, too,
Russia began her tremendous march eastward into Central Asia, just
as France was solidifying her first gains on the littoral of northern
Africa. In England the fierce fervor of the Chartist movement, with its
violent rhetoric as to the rights of man, was sobering down and passing
pervasively into numerous practical schemes for social and political
amelioration, constituting in their entirety a most profound change
throughout every part of the national life.
Into such times Thomas Alva Edison was born, and his relations to
them and to the events of the past sixty years are the subject of
this narrative. Aside from the personal interest that attaches to the
picturesque career, so typically American, there is a broader aspect in
which the work of the "Franklin of the Nineteenth Century" touches
the welfare and progress of the race. It is difficult at any time to
determine the effect of any single invention, and the investigation
becomes more difficult where inventions of the first class have been
crowded upon each other in rapid and bewildering succession. But it will
be admitted that in Edison one deals with a central figure of the great
age that saw the invention and introduction in practical form of the
telegraph, the submarine cable, the telephone, the electric light, the
electric railway, the electric trolley-car, the storage battery, the
electric motor, the phonograph, the wireless telegraph; and that the
influence of these on the world's affairs has not been excelled at
any time by that of any other corresponding advances in the arts and
sciences. These pages deal with Edison's share in the great work of the
last half century in abridging distance, communicating intelligence,
lessening toil, improving illumination, recording forever the human
voice; and on behalf of inventive genius it may be urged that its
beneficent results and gifts to mankind compare with any to be credited
to statesman, warrior, or creative writer of the same period.
Viewed from the standpoint of inventive progress, the first half of
the nineteenth century had passed very profitably when Edison
appeared--every year marked by some notable achievement in the arts and
sciences, with promise of its early and abundant fruition in commerce
and industry. There had been exactly four decades of steam navigation
on American waters. Railways were growing at the rate of nearly
one thousand miles annually. Gas had become familiar as a means of
illumination in large cities. Looms and tools and printing-presses were
everywhere being liberated from the slow toil of man-power. The first
photographs had been taken. Chloroform, nitrous oxide gas, and ether
had been placed at the service of the physician in saving life, and
the revolver, guncotton, and nitroglycerine added to the agencies for
slaughter. New metals, chemicals, and elements had become available in
large numbers, gases had been liquefied and solidified, and the range
of useful heat and cold indefinitely extended. The safety-lamp had been
given to the miner, the caisson to the bridge-builder, the anti-friction
metal to the mechanic for bearings. It was already known how to
vulcanize rubber, and how to galvanize iron. The application of
machinery in the harvest-field had begun with the embryonic reaper,
while both the bicycle and the automobile were heralded in primitive
prototypes. The gigantic expansion of the iron and steel industry was
foreshadowed in the change from wood to coal in the smelting furnaces.
The sewing-machine had brought with it, like the friction match, one of
the most profound influences in modifying domestic life, and making it
different from that of all preceding time.
Even in 1847 few of these things had lost their novelty, most of them
were in the earlier stages of development. But it is when we turn to
electricity that the rich virgin condition of an illimitable new kingdom
of discovery is seen. Perhaps the word "utilization" or "application" is
better than discovery, for then, as now, an endless wealth of phenomena
noted by experimenters from Gilbert to Franklin and Faraday awaited the
invention that could alone render them useful to mankind. The eighteenth
century, keenly curious and ceaselessly active in this fascinating field
of investigation, had not, after all, left much of a legacy in either
principles or appliances. The lodestone and the compass; the frictional
machine; the Leyden jar; the nature of conductors and insulators;
the identity of electricity and the thunder-storm flash; the use of
lightning-rods; the physiological effects of an electrical shock--these
constituted the bulk of the bequest to which philosophers were the only
heirs. Pregnant with possibilities were many of the observations that
had been recorded. But these few appliances made up the meagre kit
of tools with which the nineteenth century entered upon its task of
acquiring the arts and conveniences now such an intimate part of "human
nature's daily food" that the average American to-day pays more for his
electrical service than he does for bread.
With the first year of the new century came Volta's invention of the
chemical battery as a means of producing electricity. A well-known
Italian picture represents Volta exhibiting his apparatus before the
young conqueror Napoleon, then ravishing from the Peninsula its treasure
of ancient art and founding an ephemeral empire. At such a moment this
gift of despoiled Italy to the world was a noble revenge, setting in
motion incalculable beneficent forces and agencies. For the first
time man had command of a steady supply of electricity without toil or
effort. The useful results obtainable previously from the current of a
frictional machine were not much greater than those to be derived from
the flight of a rocket. While the frictional appliance is still
employed in medicine, it ranks with the flint axe and the tinder-box
in industrial obsolescence. No art or trade could be founded on it; no
diminution of daily work or increase of daily comfort could be secured
with it. But the little battery with its metal plates in a weak
solution proved a perennial reservoir of electrical energy, safe and
controllable, from which supplies could be drawn at will. That which was
wild had become domesticated; regular crops took the place of haphazard
gleanings from brake or prairie; the possibility of electrical
starvation was forever left behind.
Immediately new processes of inestimable value revealed themselves; new
methods were suggested. Almost all the electrical arts now employed
made their beginnings in the next twenty-five years, and while the more
extensive of them depend to-day on the dynamo for electrical energy,
some of the most important still remain in loyal allegiance to the older
source. The battery itself soon underwent modifications, and new types
were evolved--the storage, the double-fluid, and the dry. Various
analogies next pointed to the use of heat, and the thermoelectric cell
emerged, embodying the application of flame to the junction of two
different metals. Davy, of the safety-lamp, threw a volume of current
across the gap between two sticks of charcoal, and the voltaic arc,
forerunner of electric lighting, shed its bright beams upon a dazzled
world. The decomposition of water by electrolytic action was recognized
and made the basis of communicating at a distance even before the days
of the electromagnet. The ties that bind electricity and magnetism in
twinship of relation and interaction were detected, and Faraday's work
in induction gave the world at once the dynamo and the motor. "Hitch
your wagon to a star," said Emerson. To all the coal-fields and all the
waterfalls Faraday had directly hitched the wheels of industry. Not
only was it now possible to convert mechanical energy into electricity
cheaply and in illimitable quantities, but electricity at once showed
its ubiquitous availability as a motive power. Boats were propelled by
it, cars were hauled, and even papers printed. Electroplating became
an art, and telegraphy sprang into active being on both sides of the
Atlantic.
At the time Edison was born, in 1847, telegraphy, upon which he was to
leave so indelible an imprint, had barely struggled into acceptance by
the public. In England, Wheatstone and Cooke had introduced a ponderous
magnetic needle telegraph. In America, in 1840, Morse had taken out his
first patent on an electromagnetic telegraph, the principle of which
is dominating in the art to this day. Four years later the memorable
message "What hath God wrought!" was sent by young Miss Ellsworth over
his circuits, and incredulous Washington was advised by wire of the
action of the Democratic Convention in Baltimore in nominating Polk.
By 1847 circuits had been strung between Washington and New York, under
private enterprise, the Government having declined to buy the Morse
system for $100,000. Everything was crude and primitive. The poles were
two hundred feet apart and could barely hold up a wash-line. The slim,
bare, copper wire snapped on the least provocation, and the circuit
was "down" for thirty-six days in the first six months. The little
glass-knob insulators made seductive targets for ignorant sportsmen.
Attempts to insulate the line wire were limited to coating it with
tar or smearing it with wax for the benefit of all the bees in the
neighborhood. The farthest western reach of the telegraph lines in
1847 was Pittsburg, with three-ply iron wire mounted on square glass
insulators with a little wooden pentroof for protection. In that office,
where Andrew Carnegie was a messenger boy, the magnets in use to receive
the signals sent with the aid of powerful nitric-acid batteries weighed
as much as seventy-five pounds apiece. But the business was fortunately
small at the outset, until the new device, patronized chiefly by
lottery-men, had proved its utility. Then came the great outburst of
activity. Within a score of years telegraph wires covered the whole
occupied country with a network, and the first great electrical industry
was a pronounced success, yielding to its pioneers the first great
harvest of electrical fortunes. It had been a sharp struggle for bare
existence, during which such a man as the founder of Cornell University
had been glad to get breakfast in New York with a quarter-dollar picked
up on Broadway.
CHAPTER II
EDISON'S PEDIGREE
THOMAS ALVA EDISON was born at Milan Ohio, February 11, 1847. The State
that rivals Virginia as a "Mother of Presidents" has evidently other
titles to distinction of the same nature. For picturesque detail it
would not be easy to find any story excelling that of the Edison family
before it reached the Western Reserve. The story epitomizes American
idealism, restlessness, freedom of individual opinion, and ready
adjustment to the surrounding conditions of pioneer life. The ancestral
Edisons who came over from Holland, as nearly as can be determined, in
1730, were descendants of extensive millers on the Zuyder Zee, and took
up patents of land along the Passaic River, New Jersey, close to the
home that Mr. Edison established in the Orange Mountains a hundred and
sixty years later. They landed at Elizabethport, New Jersey, and first
settled near Caldwell in that State, where some graves of the family may
still be found. President Cleveland was born in that quiet hamlet. It is
a curious fact that in the Edison family the pronunciation of the name
has always been with the long "e" sound, as it would naturally be in
the Dutch language. The family prospered and must have enjoyed public
confidence, for we find the name of Thomas Edison, as a bank official on
Manhattan Island, signed to Continental currency in 1778. According
to the family records this Edison, great-grandfather of Thomas Alva,
reached the extreme old age of 104 years. But all was not well, and,
as has happened so often before, the politics of father and son were
violently different. The Loyalist movement that took to Nova Scotia so
many Americans after the War of Independence carried with it John, the
son of this stalwart Continental. Thus it came about that Samuel Edison,
son of John, was born at Digby, Nova Scotia, in 1804. Seven years later
John Edison who, as a Loyalist or United Empire emigrant, had become
entitled under the laws of Canada to a grant of six hundred acres of
land, moved westward to take possession of this property. He made his
way through the State of New York in wagons drawn by oxen to the remote
and primitive township of Bayfield, in Upper Canada, on Lake Huron.
Although the journey occurred in balmy June, it was necessarily attended
with difficulty and privation; but the new home was situated in good
farming country, and once again this interesting nomadic family settled
down.
John Edison moved from Bayfield to Vienna, Ontario, on the northern bank
of Lake Erie. Mr. Edison supplies an interesting reminiscence of the old
man and his environment in those early Canadian days. "When I was five
years old I was taken by my father and mother on a visit to Vienna. We
were driven by carriage from Milan, Ohio, to a railroad, then to a
port on Lake Erie, thence by a canal-boat in a tow of several to Port
Burwell, in Canada, across the lake, and from there we drove to Vienna,
a short distance away. I remember my grandfather perfectly as he
appeared, at 102 years of age, when he died. In the middle of the day
he sat under a large tree in front of the house facing a well-travelled
road. His head was covered completely with a large quantity of very
white hair, and he chewed tobacco incessantly, nodding to friends as
they passed by. He used a very large cane, and walked from the chair to
the house, resenting any assistance. I viewed him from a distance, and
could never get very close to him. I remember some large pipes, and
especially a molasses jug, a trunk, and several other things that came
from Holland."
John Edison was long-lived, like his father, and reached the ripe old
age of 102, leaving his son Samuel charged with the care of the family
destinies, but with no great burden of wealth. Little is known of the
early manhood of this father of T. A. Edison until we find him keeping a
hotel at Vienna, marrying a school-teacher there (Miss Nancy Elliott, in
1828), and taking a lively share in the troublous politics of the time.
He was six feet in height, of great bodily vigor, and of such personal
dominance of character that he became a captain of the insurgent forces
rallying under the banners of Papineau and Mackenzie. The opening
years of Queen Victoria's reign witnessed a belated effort in Canada
to emphasize the principle that there should not be taxation without
representation; and this descendant of those who had left the United
States from disapproval of such a doctrine, flung himself headlong into
its support.
It has been said of Earl Durham, who pacified Canada at this time and
established the present system of government, that he made a country
and marred a career. But the immediate measures of repression enforced
before a liberal policy was adopted were sharp and severe, and Samuel
Edison also found his own career marred on Canadian soil as one result
of the Durham administration. Exile to Bermuda with other insurgents was
not so attractive as the perils of a flight to the United States. A very
hurried departure was effected in secret from the scene of trouble, and
there are romantic traditions of his thrilling journey of one hundred
and eighty-two miles toward safety, made almost entirely without food
or sleep, through a wild country infested with Indians of unfriendly
disposition. Thus was the Edison family repatriated by a picturesque
political episode, and the great inventor given a birthplace on American
soil, just as was Benjamin Franklin when his father came from England
to Boston. Samuel Edison left behind him, however, in Canada, several
brothers, all of whom lived to the age of ninety or more, and from whom
there are descendants in the region.
After some desultory wanderings for a year or two along the shores of
Lake Erie, among the prosperous towns then springing up, the family,
with its Canadian home forfeited, and in quest of another resting-place,
came to Milan, Ohio, in 1842. That pretty little village offered at the
moment many attractions as a possible Chicago. The railroad system of
Ohio was still in the future, but the Western Reserve had already become
a vast wheat-field, and huge quantities of grain from the central and
northern counties sought shipment to Eastern ports. The Huron River,
emptying into Lake Erie, was navigable within a few miles of the
village, and provided an admirable outlet. Large granaries were
established, and proved so successful that local capital was tempted
into the project of making a tow-path canal from Lockwood Landing all
the way to Milan itself. The quaint old Moravian mission and quondam
Indian settlement of one hundred inhabitants found itself of a sudden
one of the great grain ports of the world, and bidding fair to rival
Russian Odessa. A number of grain warehouses, or primitive elevators,
were built along the bank of the canal, and the produce of the region
poured in immediately, arriving in wagons drawn by four or six horses
with loads of a hundred bushels. No fewer than six hundred wagons came
clattering in, and as many as twenty sail vessels were loaded with
thirty-five thousand bushels of grain, during a single day. The canal
was capable of being navigated by craft of from two hundred to two
hundred and fifty tons burden, and the demand for such vessels soon
led to the development of a brisk ship-building industry, for which
the abundant forests of the region supplied the necessary lumber. An
evidence of the activity in this direction is furnished by the fact that
six revenue cutters were launched at this port in these brisk days of
its prime.
Samuel Edison, versatile, buoyant of temper, and ever optimistic, would
thus appear to have pitched his tent with shrewd judgment. There was
plenty of occupation ready to his hand, and more than one enterprise
received his attention; but he devoted his energies chiefly to the
making of shingles, for which there was a large demand locally and along
the lake. Canadian lumber was used principally in this industry. The
wood was imported in "bolts" or pieces three feet long. A bolt made two
shingles; it was sawn asunder by hand, then split and shaved. None but
first-class timber was used, and such shingles outlasted far those made
by machinery with their cross-grain cut. A house in Milan, on which some
of those shingles were put in 1844, was still in excellent condition
forty-two years later. Samuel Edison did well at this occupation, and
employed several men, but there were other outlets from time to time for
his business activity and speculative disposition.
Edison's mother was an attractive and highly educated woman, whose
influence upon his disposition and intellect has been profound and
lasting. She was born in Chenango County, New York, in 1810, and was the
daughter of the Rev. John Elliott, a Baptist minister and descendant of
an old Revolutionary soldier, Capt. Ebenezer Elliott, of Scotch descent.
The old captain was a fine and picturesque type. He fought all through
the long War of Independence--seven years--and then appears to have
settled down at Stonington, Connecticut. There, at any rate, he found
his wife, "grandmother Elliott," who was Mercy Peckham, daughter of a
Scotch Quaker. Then came the residence in New York State, with final
removal to Vienna, for the old soldier, while drawing his pension at
Buffalo, lived in the little Canadian town, and there died, over 100
years old. The family was evidently one of considerable culture and deep
religious feeling, for two of Mrs. Edison's uncles and two brothers were
also in the same Baptist ministry. As a young woman she became a teacher
in the public high school at Vienna, and thus met her husband, who was
residing there. The family never consisted of more than three children,
two boys and a girl. A trace of the Canadian environment is seen in the
fact that Edison's elder brother was named William Pitt, after the
great English statesman. Both his brother and the sister exhibited
considerable ability. William Pitt Edison as a youth was so clever with
his pencil that it was proposed to send him to Paris as an art student.
In later life he was manager of the local street railway lines at Port
Huron, Michigan, in which he was heavily interested. He also owned a
good farm near that town, and during the ill-health at the close of
his life, when compelled to spend much of the time indoors, he devoted
himself almost entirely to sketching. It has been noted by intimate
observers of Thomas A. Edison that in discussing any project or new idea
his first impulse is to take up any piece of paper available and make
drawings of it. His voluminous note-books are a mass of sketches.
Mrs-Tannie Edison Bailey, the sister, had, on the other hand, a great
deal of literary ability, and spent much of her time in writing.
The great inventor, whose iron endurance and stern will have enabled him
to wear down all his associates by work sustained through arduous days
and sleepless nights, was not at all strong as a child, and was of
fragile appearance. He had an abnormally large but well-shaped head, and
it is said that the local doctors feared he might have brain trouble.
In fact, on account of his assumed delicacy, he was not allowed to go to
school for some years, and even when he did attend for a short time
the results were not encouraging--his mother being hotly indignant upon
hearing that the teacher had spoken of him to an inspector as "addled."
The youth was, indeed, fortunate far beyond the ordinary in having a
mother at once loving, well-informed, and ambitious, capable herself,
from her experience as a teacher, of undertaking and giving him an
education better than could be secured in the local schools of the day.
Certain it is that under this simple regime studious habits were formed
and a taste for literature developed that have lasted to this day. If
ever there was a man who tore the heart out of books it is Edison, and
what has once been read by him is never forgotten if useful or worthy of
submission to the test of experiment.
But even thus early the stronger love of mechanical processes and of
probing natural forces manifested itself. Edison has said that he
never saw a statement in any book as to such things that he did not
involuntarily challenge, and wish to demonstrate as either right or
wrong. As a mere child the busy scenes of the canal and the grain
warehouses were of consuming interest, but the work in the ship-building
yards had an irresistible fascination. His questions were so ceaseless
and innumerable that the penetrating curiosity of an unusually strong
mind was regarded as deficiency in powers of comprehension, and the
father himself, a man of no mean ingenuity and ability, reports that
the child, although capable of reducing him to exhaustion by endless
inquiries, was often spoken of as rather wanting in ordinary acumen.
This apparent dulness is, however, a quite common incident to youthful
genius.
The constructive tendencies of this child of whom his father said once
that he had never had any boyhood days in the ordinary sense, were early
noted in his fondness for building little plank roads out of the debris
of the yards and mills. His extraordinarily retentive memory was shown
in his easy acquisition of all the songs of the lumber gangs and canal
men before he was five years old. One incident tells how he was found
one day in the village square copying laboriously the signs of the
stores. A highly characteristic event at the age of six is described by
his sister. He had noted a goose sitting on her eggs and the result. One
day soon after, he was missing. By-and-by, after an anxious search, his
father found him sitting in a nest he had made in the barn, filled with
goose-eggs and hens' eggs he had collected, trying to hatch them out.
One of Mr. Edison's most vivid recollections goes back to 1850, when as
a child three of four years old he saw camped in front of his home six
covered wagons, "prairie schooners," and witnessed their departure for
California. The great excitement over the gold discoveries was thus felt
in Milan, and these wagons, laden with all the worldly possessions of
their owners, were watched out of sight on their long journey by this
fascinated urchin, whose own discoveries in later years were to tempt
many other argonauts into the auriferous realms of electricity.
Another vivid memory of this period concerns his first realization
of the grim mystery of death. He went off one day with the son of
the wealthiest man in the town to bathe in the creek. Soon after they
entered the water the other boy disappeared. Young Edison waited around
the spot for half an hour or more, and then, as it was growing dark,
went home puzzled and lonely, but silent as to the occurrence. About two
hours afterward, when the missing boy was being searched for, a man came
to the Edison home to make anxious inquiry of the companion with whom
he had last been seen. Edison told all the circumstances with a painful
sense of being in some way implicated. The creek was at once dragged,
and then the body was recovered.
Edison had himself more than one narrow escape. Of course he fell in the
canal and was nearly drowned; few boys in Milan worth their salt omitted
that performance. On another occasion he encountered a more novel peril
by falling into the pile of wheat in a grain elevator and being almost
smothered. Holding the end of a skate-strap for another lad to shorten
with an axe, he lost the top of a finger. Fire also had its perils. He
built a fire in a barn, but the flames spread so rapidly that, although
he escaped himself, the barn was wholly destroyed, and he was publicly
whipped in the village square as a warning to other youths. Equally well
remembered is a dangerous encounter with a ram that attacked him while
he was busily engaged digging out a bumblebee's nest near an orchard
fence. The animal knocked him against the fence, and was about to butt
him again when he managed to drop over on the safe side and escape. He
was badly hurt and bruised, and no small quantity of arnica was needed
for his wounds.
Meantime little Milan had reached the zenith of its prosperity, and all
of a sudden had been deprived of its flourishing grain trade by the new
Columbus, Sandusky & Hocking Railroad; in fact, the short canal was one
of the last efforts of its kind in this country to compete with the
new means of transportation. The bell of the locomotive was everywhere
ringing the death-knell of effective water haulage, with such dire
results that, in 1880, of the 4468 miles of American freight canal, that
had cost $214,000,000, no fewer than 1893 miles had been abandoned,
and of the remaining 2575 miles quite a large proportion was not paying
expenses. The short Milan canal suffered with the rest, and to-day
lies well-nigh obliterated, hidden in part by vegetable gardens, a mere
grass-grown depression at the foot of the winding, shallow valley. Other
railroads also prevented any further competition by the canal, for a
branch of the Wheeling & Lake Erie now passes through the village, while
the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern runs a few miles to the south.
The owners of the canal soon had occasion to regret that they had
disdained the overtures of enterprising railroad promoters desirous
of reaching the village, and the consequences of commercial isolation
rapidly made themselves felt. It soon became evident to Samuel Edison
and his wife that the cozy brick home on the bluff must be given up
and the struggle with fortune resumed elsewhere. They were well-to-do,
however, and removing, in 1854, to Port Huron, Michigan, occupied a
large colonial house standing in the middle of an old Government fort
reservation of ten acres overlooking the wide expanse of the St. Clair
River just after it leaves Lake Huron. It was in many ways an ideal
homestead, toward which the family has always felt the strongest
attachment, but the association with Milan has never wholly ceased. The
old house in which Edison was born is still occupied (in 1910) by Mr.
S. O. Edison, a half-brother of Edison's father, and a man of marked
inventive ability. He was once prominent in the iron-furnace industry of
Ohio, and was for a time associated in the iron trade with the father
of the late President McKinley. Among his inventions may be mentioned a
machine for making fuel from wheat straw, and a smoke-consuming device.
This birthplace of Edison remains the plain, substantial little brick
house it was originally: one-storied, with rooms finished on the attic
floor. Being built on the hillside, its basement opens into the rear
yard. It was at first heated by means of open coal grates, which may not
have been altogether adequate in severe winters, owing to the altitude
and the north-eastern exposure, but a large furnace is one of the more
modern changes. Milan itself is not materially unlike the smaller Ohio
towns of its own time or those of later creation, but the venerable
appearance of the big elm-trees that fringe the trim lawns tells of its
age. It is, indeed, an extremely neat, snug little place, with well-kept
homes, mostly of frame construction, and flagged streets crossing
each other at right angles. There are no poor--at least, everybody is
apparently well-to-do. While a leisurely atmosphere pervades the
town, few idlers are seen. Some of the residents are engaged in local
business; some are occupied in farming and grape culture; others are
employed in the iron-works near-by, at Norwalk. The stores and places
of public resort are gathered about the square, where there is plenty
of room for hitching when the Saturday trading is done at that point,
at which periods the fitful bustle recalls the old wheat days when young
Edison ran with curiosity among the six and eight horse teams that had
brought in grain. This square is still covered with fine primeval forest
trees, and has at its centre a handsome soldiers' monument of the Civil
War, to which four paved walks converge. It is an altogether pleasant
and unpretentious town, which cherishes with no small amount of pride
its association with the name of Thomas Alva Edison.
In view of Edison's Dutch descent, it is rather singular to find him
with the name of Alva, for the Spanish Duke of Alva was notoriously the
worst tyrant ever known to the Low Countries, and his evil deeds occupy
many stirring pages in Motley's famous history. As a matter of fact,
Edison was named after Capt. Alva Bradley, an old friend of his father,
and a celebrated ship-owner on the Lakes. Captain Bradley died a few
years ago in wealth, while his old associate, with equal ability for
making money, was never able long to keep it (differing again from the
Revolutionary New York banker from whom his son's other name, "Thomas,"
was taken).
CHAPTER III
BOYHOOD AT PORT HURON, MICHIGAN
THE new home found by the Edison family at Port Huron, where Alva spent
his brief boyhood before he became a telegraph operator and roamed the
whole middle West of that period, was unfortunately destroyed by fire
just after the close of the Civil War. A smaller but perhaps more
comfortable home was then built by Edison's father on some property he
had bought at the near-by village of Gratiot, and there his mother spent
the remainder of her life in confirmed invalidism, dying in 1871. Hence
the pictures and postal cards sold largely to souvenir-hunters as the
Port Huron home do not actually show that in or around which the events
now referred to took place.
It has been a romance of popular biographers, based upon the fact that
Edison began his career as a newsboy, to assume that these earlier years
were spent in poverty and privation, as indeed they usually are by the
"newsies" who swarm and shout their papers in our large cities. While
it seems a pity to destroy this erroneous idea, suggestive of a heroic
climb from the depths to the heights, nothing could be further from the
truth. Socially the Edison family stood high in Port Huron at a time
when there was relatively more wealth and general activity than to-day.
The town in its pristine prime was a great lumber centre, and hummed
with the industry of numerous sawmills. An incredible quantity of
lumber was made there yearly until the forests near-by vanished and the
industry with them. The wealth of the community, invested largely in
this business and in allied transportation companies, was accumulated
rapidly and as freely spent during those days of prosperity in St. Clair
County, bringing with it a high standard of domestic comfort. In all
this the Edisons shared on equal terms.
Thus, contrary to the stories that have been so widely published, the
Edisons, while not rich by any means, were in comfortable circumstances,
with a well-stocked farm and large orchard to draw upon also for
sustenance. Samuel Edison, on moving to Port Huron, became a dealer in
grain and feed, and gave attention to that business for many years. But
he was also active in the lumber industry in the Saginaw district and
several other things. It was difficult for a man of such mercurial,
restless temperament to stay constant to any one occupation; in fact,
had he been less visionary he would have been more prosperous, but might
not have had a son so gifted with insight and imagination. One instance
of the optimistic vagaries which led him incessantly to spend time and
money on projects that would not have appealed to a man less sanguine
was the construction on his property of a wooden observation tower over
a hundred feet high, the top of which was reached toilsomely by winding
stairs, after the payment of twenty-five cents. It is true that the
tower commanded a pretty view by land and water, but Colonel Sellers
himself might have projected this enterprise as a possible source of
steady income. At first few visitors panted up the long flights of steps
to the breezy platform. During the first two months Edison's father
took in three dollars, and felt extremely blue over the prospect, and
to young Edison and his relatives were left the lonely pleasures of the
lookout and the enjoyment of the telescope with which it was equipped.
But one fine day there came an excursion from an inland town to see the
lake. They picnicked in the grove, and six hundred of them went up
the tower. After that the railroad company began to advertise these
excursions, and the receipts each year paid for the observatory.
It might be thought that, immersed in business and preoccupied with
schemes of this character, Mr. Edison was to blame for the neglect of
his son's education. But that was not the case. The conditions were
peculiar. It was at the Port Huron public school that Edison received
all the regular scholastic instruction he ever enjoyed--just three
months. He might have spent the full term there, but, as already noted,
his teacher had found him "addled." He was always, according to his own
recollection, at the foot of the class, and had come almost to regard
himself as a dunce, while his father entertained vague anxieties as to
his stupidity. The truth of the matter seems to be that Mrs. Edison, a
teacher of uncommon ability and force, held no very high opinion of
the average public-school methods and results, and was both eager to
undertake the instruction of her son and ambitious for the future of
a boy whom she knew from pedagogic experience to be receptive and
thoughtful to a very unusual degree. With her he found study easy and
pleasant. The quality of culture in that simple but refined home, as
well as the intellectual character of this youth without schooling, may
be inferred from the fact that before he had reached the age of twelve
he had read, with his mother's help, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, Hume's History of England, Sears' History of the World,
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and the Dictionary of Sciences; and had
even attempted to struggle through Newton's Principia, whose mathematics
were decidedly beyond both teacher and student. Besides, Edison, like
Faraday, was never a mathematician, and has had little personal use
for arithmetic beyond that which is called "mental." He said once to a
friend: "I can always hire some mathematicians, but they can't hire me."
His father, by-the-way, always encouraged these literary tastes, and
paid him a small sum for each new book mastered. It will be noted that
fiction makes no showing in the list; but it was not altogether
excluded from the home library, and Edison has all his life enjoyed
it, particularly the works of such writers as Victor Hugo, after whom,
because of his enthusiastic admiration--possibly also because of his
imagination--he was nicknamed by his fellow-operators, "Victor Hugo
Edison."
Electricity at that moment could have no allure for a youthful mind.
Crude telegraphy represented what was known of it practically, and about
that the books read by young Edison were not redundantly informational.
Even had that not been so, the inclinations of the boy barely ten years
old were toward chemistry, and fifty years later there is seen no change
of predilection. It sounds like heresy to say that Edison became an
electrician by chance, but it is the sober fact that to this pre-eminent
and brilliant leader in electrical achievement escape into the chemical
domain still has the aspect of a delightful truant holiday. One of
the earliest stories about his boyhood relates to the incident when
he induced a lad employed in the family to swallow a large quantity of
Seidlitz powders in the belief that the gases generated would enable
him to fly. The agonies of the victim attracted attention, and Edison's
mother marked her displeasure by an application of the switch kept
behind the old Seth Thomas "grandfather clock." The disastrous result
of this experiment did not discourage Edison at all, as he attributed
failure to the lad rather than to the motive power. In the cellar of
the Edison homestead young Alva soon accumulated a chemical outfit,
constituting the first in a long series of laboratories. The word
"laboratory" had always been associated with alchemists in the past,
but as with "filament" this untutored stripling applied an iconoclastic
practicability to it long before he realized the significance of the
new departure. Goethe, in his legend of Faust, shows the traditional
or conventional philosopher in his laboratory, an aged, tottering,
gray-bearded investigator, who only becomes youthful upon diabolical
intervention, and would stay senile without it. In the Edison laboratory
no such weird transformation has been necessary, for the philosopher
had youth, fiery energy, and a grimly practical determination that would
submit to no denial of the goal of something of real benefit to mankind.
Edison and Faust are indeed the extremes of philosophic thought and
accomplishment.
The home at Port Huron thus saw the first Edison laboratory. The boy
began experimenting when he was about ten or eleven years of age. He got
a copy of Parker's School Philosophy, an elementary book on physics, and
about every experiment in it he tried. Young Alva, or "Al," as he was
called, thus early displayed his great passion for chemistry, and in
the cellar of the house he collected no fewer than two hundred bottles,
gleaned in baskets from all parts of the town. These were arranged
carefully on shelves and all labelled "Poison," so that no one else
would handle or disturb them. They contained the chemicals with which
he was constantly experimenting. To others this diversion was both
mysterious and meaningless, but he had soon become familiar with all
the chemicals obtainable at the local drug stores, and had tested to
his satisfaction many of the statements encountered in his scientific
reading. Edison has said that sometimes he has wondered how it was
he did not become an analytical chemist instead of concentrating on
electricity, for which he had at first no great inclination.
Deprived of the use of a large part of her cellar, tiring of the "mess"
always to be found there, and somewhat fearful of results, his mother
once told the boy to clear everything out and restore order. The thought
of losing all his possessions was the cause of so much ardent distress
that his mother relented, but insisted that he must get a lock and key,
and keep the embryonic laboratory closed up all the time except when he
was there. This was done. From such work came an early familiarity with
the nature of electrical batteries and the production of current from
them. Apparently the greater part of his spare time was spent in the
cellar, for he did not share to any extent in the sports of the boys of
the neighborhood, his chum and chief companion, Michael Oates, being a
lad of Dutch origin, many years older, who did chores around the
house, and who could be recruited as a general utility Friday for the
experiments of this young explorer--such as that with the Seidlitz
powders.
Such pursuits as these consumed the scant pocket-money of the boy very
rapidly. He was not in regular attendance at school, and had read all
the books within reach. It was thus he turned newsboy, overcoming the
reluctance of his parents, particularly that of his mother, by pointing
out that he could by this means earn all he wanted for his experiments
and get fresh reading in the shape of papers and magazines free of
charge. Besides, his leisure hours in Detroit he would be able to spend
at the public library. He applied (in 1859) for the privilege of selling
newspapers on the trains of the Grand Trunk Railroad, between Port Huron
and Detroit, and obtained the concession after a short delay, during
which he made an essay in his task of selling newspapers.
Edison had, as a fact, already had some commercial experience from the
age of eleven. The ten acres of the reservation offered an excellent
opportunity for truck-farming, and the versatile head of the family
could not avoid trying his luck in this branch of work. A large "market
garden" was laid out, in which Edison worked pretty steadily with the
help of the Dutch boy, Michael Oates--he of the flying experiment. These
boys had a horse and small wagon intrusted to them, and every morning in
the season they would load up with onions, lettuce, peas, etc., and go
through the town.
As much as $600 was turned over to Mrs. Edison in one year from this
source. The boy was indefatigable but not altogether charmed with
agriculture. "After a while I tired of this work, as hoeing corn in
a hot sun is unattractive, and I did not wonder that it had built up
cities. Soon the Grand Trunk Railroad was extended from Toronto to Port
Huron, at the foot of Lake Huron, and thence to Detroit, at about the
same time the War of the Rebellion broke out. By a great amount of
persistence I got permission from my mother to go on the local train
as a newsboy. The local train from Port Huron to Detroit, a distance of
sixty-three miles, left at 7 A.M. and arrived again at 9.30 P.M. After
being on the train for several months, I started two stores in Port
Huron--one for periodicals, and the other for vegetables, butter, and
berries in the season. These were attended by two boys who shared in the
profits. The periodical store I soon closed, as the boy in charge could
not be trusted. The vegetable store I kept up for nearly a year. After
the railroad had been opened a short time, they put on an express which
left Detroit in the morning and returned in the evening. I received
permission to put a newsboy on this train. Connected with this train was
a car, one part for baggage and the other part for U. S. mail, but for
a long time it was not used. Every morning I had two large baskets of
vegetables from the Detroit market loaded in the mail-car and sent to
Port Huron, where the boy would take them to the store. They were much
better than those grown locally, and sold readily. I never was asked to
pay freight, and to this day cannot explain why, except that I was so
small and industrious, and the nerve to appropriate a U. S. mail-car to
do a free freight business was so monumental. However, I kept this up
for a long time, and in addition bought butter from the farmers along
the line, and an immense amount of blackberries in the season. I bought
wholesale and at a low price, and permitted the wives of the engineers
and trainmen to have the benefit of the discount. After a while there
was a daily immigrant train put on. This train generally had from seven
to ten coaches filled always with Norwegians, all bound for Iowa and
Minnesota. On these trains I employed a boy who sold bread, tobacco, and
stick candy. As the war progressed the daily newspaper sales became very
profitable, and I gave up the vegetable store."
The hours of this occupation were long, but the work was not
particularly heavy, and Edison soon found opportunity for his favorite
avocation--chemical experimentation. His train left Port Huron at 7
A.M., and made its southward trip to Detroit in about three hours. This
gave a stay in that city from 10 A.M. until the late afternoon, when the
train left, arriving at Port Huron about 9.30 P.M. The train was made up
of three coaches--baggage, smoking, and ordinary passenger or "ladies."
The baggage-car was divided into three compartments--one for trunks and
packages, one for the mail, and one for smoking. In those days no use
was made of the smoking-compartment, as there was no ventilation, and it
was turned over to young Edison, who not only kept papers there and his
stock of goods as a "candy butcher," but soon had it equipped with an
extraordinary variety of apparatus. There was plenty of leisure on the
two daily runs, even for an industrious boy, and thus he found time
to transfer his laboratory from the cellar and re-establish it on the
train.
His earnings were also excellent--so good, in fact, that eight or ten
dollars a day were often taken in, and one dollar went every day to his
mother. Thus supporting himself, he felt entitled to spend any other
profit left over on chemicals and apparatus. And spent it was, for with
access to Detroit and its large stores, where he bought his supplies,
and to the public library, where he could quench his thirst for
technical information, Edison gave up all his spare time and money to
chemistry. Surely the country could have presented at that moment no
more striking example of the passionate pursuit of knowledge under
difficulties than this newsboy, barely fourteen years of age, with his
jars and test-tubes installed on a railway baggage-car.
Nor did this amazing equipment stop at batteries and bottles. The same
little space a few feet square was soon converted by this precocious
youth into a newspaper office. The outbreak of the Civil War gave a
great stimulus to the demand for all newspapers, noticing which he
became ambitious to publish a local journal of his own, devoted to the
news of that section of the Grand Trunk road. A small printing-press
that had been used for hotel bills of fare was picked up in Detroit,
and type was also bought, some of it being placed on the train so that
composition could go on in spells of leisure. To one so mechanical in
his tastes as Edison, it was quite easy to learn the rudiments of the
printing art, and thus the Weekly Herald came into existence, of which
he was compositor, pressman, editor, publisher, and newsdealer. Only one
or two copies of this journal are now discoverable, but its appearance
can be judged from the reduced facsimile here shown. The thing was
indeed well done as the work of a youth shown by the date to be less
than fifteen years old. The literary style is good, there are only a few
trivial slips in spelling, and the appreciation is keen of what would be
interesting news and gossip. The price was three cents a copy, or eight
cents a month for regular subscribers, and the circulation ran up to
over four hundred copies an issue. This was by no means the result of
mere public curiosity, but attested the value of the sheet as a genuine
newspaper, to which many persons in the railroad service along the
line were willing contributors. Indeed, with the aid of the railway
telegraph, Edison was often able to print late news of importance, of
local origin, that the distant regular papers like those of Detroit,
which he handled as a newsboy, could not get. It is no wonder that this
clever little sheet received the approval and patronage of the English
engineer Stephenson when inspecting the Grand Trunk system, and was
noted by no less distinguished a contemporary than the London Times as
the first newspaper in the world to be printed on a train in motion.
The youthful proprietor sometimes cleared as much as twenty to thirty
dollars a month from this unique journalistic enterprise.
But all this extra work required attention, and Edison solved the
difficulty of attending also to the newsboy business by the employment
of a young friend, whom he trained and treated liberally as an
understudy. There was often plenty of work for both in the early days
of the war, when the news of battle caused intense excitement and large
sales of papers. Edison, with native shrewdness already so strikingly
displayed, would telegraph the station agents and get them to bulletin
the event of the day at the front, so that when each station was reached
there were eager purchasers waiting. He recalls in particular the
sensation caused by the great battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing,
in April, 1862, in which both Grant and Sherman were engaged, in which
Johnston died, and in which there was a ghastly total of 25,000 killed
and wounded.
In describing his enterprising action that day, Edison says that when
he reached Detroit the bulletin-boards of the newspaper offices were
surrounded with dense crowds, which read awestricken the news that there
were 60,000 killed and wounded, and that the result was uncertain. "I
knew that if the same excitement was attained at the various small towns
along the road, and especially at Port Huron, the sale of papers would
be great. I then conceived the idea of telegraphing the news ahead, went
to the operator in the depot, and by giving him Harper's Weekly and
some other papers for three months, he agreed to telegraph to all the
stations the matter on the bulletin-board. I hurriedly copied it, and he
sent it, requesting the agents to display it on the blackboards used for
stating the arrival and departure of trains. I decided that instead of
the usual one hundred papers I could sell one thousand; but not having
sufficient money to purchase that number, I determined in my desperation
to see the editor himself and get credit. The great paper at that time
was the Detroit Free Press. I walked into the office marked 'Editorial'
and told a young man that I wanted to see the editor on important
business--important to me, anyway, I was taken into an office where
there were two men, and I stated what I had done about telegraphing, and
that I wanted a thousand papers, but only had money for three hundred,
and I wanted credit. One of the men refused it, but the other told the
first spokesman to let me have them. This man, I afterward learned, was
Wilbur F. Storey, who subsequently founded the Chicago Times, and became
celebrated in the newspaper world. By the aid of another boy I lugged
the papers to the train and started folding them. The first station,
called Utica, was a small one where I generally sold two papers. I saw
a crowd ahead on the platform, and thought it some excursion, but
the moment I landed there was a rush for me; then I realized that the
telegraph was a great invention. I sold thirty-five papers there. The
next station was Mount Clemens, now a watering-place, but then a town of
about one thousand. I usually sold six to eight papers there. I decided
that if I found a corresponding crowd there, the only thing to do to
correct my lack of judgment in not getting more papers was to raise
the price from five cents to ten. The crowd was there, and I raised the
price. At the various towns there were corresponding crowds. It had
been my practice at Port Huron to jump from the train at a point
about one-fourth of a mile from the station, where the train generally
slackened speed. I had drawn several loads of sand to this point to jump
on, and had become quite expert. The little Dutch boy with the horse met
me at this point. When the wagon approached the outskirts of the town
I was met by a large crowd. I then yelled: 'Twenty-five cents apiece,
gentlemen! I haven't enough to go around!' I sold all out, and made what
to me then was an immense sum of money."
Such episodes as this added materially to his income, but did not
necessarily increase his savings, for he was then, as now, an utter
spendthrift so long as some new apparatus or supplies for experiment
could be had. In fact, the laboratory on wheels soon became crowded
with such equipment, most costly chemicals were bought on the instalment
plan, and Fresenius' Qualitative Analysis served as a basis for
ceaseless testing and study. George Pullman, who then had a small shop
at Detroit and was working on his sleeping-car, made Edison a lot of
wooden apparatus for his chemicals, to the boy's delight. Unfortunately
a sudden change came, fraught with disaster. The train, running one day
at thirty miles an hour over a piece of poorly laid track, was thrown
suddenly out of the perpendicular with a violent lurch, and, before
Edison could catch it, a stick of phosphorus was jarred from its shelf,
fell to the floor, and burst into flame. The car took fire, and the boy,
in dismay, was still trying to quench the blaze when the conductor, a
quick-tempered Scotchman, who acted also as baggage-master, hastened to
the scene with water and saved his car. On the arrival at Mount Clemens
station, its next stop, Edison and his entire outfit, laboratory,
printing-plant, and all, were promptly ejected by the enraged conductor,
and the train then moved off, leaving him on the platform, tearful and
indignant in the midst of his beloved but ruined possessions. It was
lynch law of a kind; but in view of the responsibility, this action of
the conductor lay well within his rights and duties.
It was through this incident that Edison acquired the deafness that
has persisted all through his life, a severe box on the ears from the
scorched and angry conductor being the direct cause of the infirmity.
Although this deafness would be regarded as a great affliction by most
people, and has brought in its train other serious baubles, Mr. Edison
has always regarded it philosophically, and said about it recently:
"This deafness has been of great advantage to me in various ways. When
in a telegraph office, I could only hear the instrument directly on the
table at which I sat, and unlike the other operators, I was not bothered
by the other instruments. Again, in experimenting on the telephone,
I had to improve the transmitter so I could hear it. This made the
telephone commercial, as the magneto telephone receiver of Bell was too
weak to be used as a transmitter commercially. It was the same with the
phonograph. The great defect of that instrument was the rendering of the
overtones in music, and the hissing consonants in speech. I worked over
one year, twenty hours a day, Sundays and all, to get the word 'specie'
perfectly recorded and reproduced on the phonograph. When this was done
I knew that everything else could be done which was a fact. Again,
my nerves have been preserved intact. Broadway is as quiet to me as a
country village is to a person with normal hearing."
Saddened but not wholly discouraged, Edison soon reconstituted his
laboratory and printing-office at home, although on the part of the
family there was some fear and objection after this episode, on the
score of fire. But Edison promised not to bring in anything of a
dangerous nature. He did not cease the publication of the Weekly Herald.
On the contrary, he prospered in both his enterprises until persuaded
by the "printer's devil" in the office of the Port Huron Commercial to
change the character of his journal, enlarge it, and issue it under the
name of Paul Pry, a happy designation for this or kindred ventures
in the domain of society journalism. No copies of Paul Pry can now be
found, but it is known that its style was distinctly personal, that
gossip was its specialty, and that no small offence was given to the
people whose peculiarities or peccadilloes were discussed in a frank
and breezy style by the two boys. In one instance the resentment of the
victim of such unsought publicity was so intense he laid hands on Edison
and pitched the startled young editor into the St. Clair River. The name
of this violator of the freedom of the press was thereafter excluded
studiously from the columns of Paul Pry, and the incident may have been
one of those which soon caused the abandonment of the paper. Edison
had great zest in this work, and but for the strong influences in other
directions would probably have continued in the newspaper field, in
which he was, beyond question, the youngest publisher and editor of the
day.
Before leaving this period of his career, it is to be noted that it gave
Edison many favorable opportunities. In Detroit he could spend frequent
hours in the public library, and it is matter of record that he began
his liberal acquaintance with its contents by grappling bravely with a
certain section and trying to read it through consecutively, shelf by
shelf, regardless of subject. In a way this is curiously suggestive
of the earnest, energetic method of "frontal attack" with which the
inventor has since addressed himself to so many problems in the arts and
sciences.
The Grand Trunk Railroad machine-shops at Port Huron were a great
attraction to the boy, who appears to have spent a good deal of his time
there. He who was to have much to do with the evolution of the modern
electric locomotive was fascinated by the mechanism of the steam
locomotive; and whenever he could get the chance Edison rode in the cab
with the engineer of his train. He became thoroughly familiar with the
intricacies of fire-box, boiler, valves, levers, and gears, and liked
nothing better than to handle the locomotive himself during the run.
On one trip, when the engineer lay asleep while his eager substitute
piloted the train, the boiler "primed," and a deluge overwhelmed the
young driver, who stuck to his post till the run and the ordeal were
ended. Possibly this helped to spoil a locomotive engineer, but went
to make a great master of the new motive power. "Steam is half an
Englishman," said Emerson. The temptation is strong to say that workaday
electricity is half an American. Edison's own account of the incident
is very laughable: "The engine was one of a number leased to the Grand
Trunk by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. It had bright brass bands all
over, the woodwork beautifully painted, and everything highly polished,
which was the custom up to the time old Commodore Vanderbilt stopped
it on his roads. After running about fifteen miles the fireman couldn't
keep his eyes open (this event followed an all-night dance of the
trainmen's fraternal organization), and he agreed to permit me to run
the engine. I took charge, reducing the speed to about twelve miles
an hour, and brought the train of seven cars to her destination at the
Grand Trunk junction safely. But something occurred which was very much
out of the ordinary. I was very much worried about the water, and I
knew that if it got low the boiler was likely to explode. I hadn't gone
twenty miles before black damp mud blew out of the stack and covered
every part of the engine, including myself. I was about to awaken the
fireman to find out the cause of this when it stopped. Then I approached
a station where the fireman always went out to the cowcatcher, opened
the oil-cup on the steam-chest, and poured oil in. I started to carry
out the procedure when, upon opening the oil-cup, the steam rushed out
with a tremendous noise, nearly knocking me off the engine. I succeeded
in closing the oil-cup and got back in the cab, and made up my mind
that she would pull through without oil. I learned afterward that the
engineer always shut off steam when the fireman went out to oil. This
point I failed to notice. My powers of observation were very much
improved after this occurrence. Just before I reached the junction
another outpour of black mud occurred, and the whole engine was a
sight--so much so that when I pulled into the yard everybody turned to
see it, laughing immoderately. I found the reason of the mud was that I
carried so much water it passed over into the stack, and this washed out
all the accumulated soot."
One afternoon about a week before Christmas Edison's train jumped the
track near Utica, a station on the line. Four old Michigan Central
cars with rotten sills collapsed in the ditch and went all to pieces,
distributing figs, raisins, dates, and candies all over the track and
the vicinity. Hating to see so much waste, Edison tried to save all he
could by eating it on the spot, but as a result "our family doctor had
the time of his life with me in this connection."
An absurd incident described by Edison throws a vivid light on the
free-and-easy condition of early railroad travel and on the Southern
extravagance of the time. "In 1860, just before the war broke out there
came to the train one afternoon, in Detroit, two fine-looking young men
accompanied by a colored servant. They bought tickets for Port Huron,
the terminal point for the train. After leaving the junction just
outside of Detroit, I brought in the evening papers. When I came
opposite the two young men, one of them said: 'Boy, what have you got?'
I said: 'Papers.' 'All right.' He took them and threw them out of the
window, and, turning to the colored man, said: 'Nicodemus, pay this
boy.' I told Nicodemus the amount, and he opened a satchel and paid me.
The passengers didn't know what to make of the transaction. I returned
with the illustrated papers and magazines. These were seized and thrown
out of the window, and I was told to get my money of Nicodemus. I then
returned with all the old magazines and novels I had not been able to
sell, thinking perhaps this would be too much for them. I was small and
thin, and the layer reached above my head, and was all I could possibly
carry. I had prepared a list, and knew the amount in case they bit
again. When I opened the door, all the passengers roared with laughter.
I walked right up to the young men. One asked me what I had. I said
'Magazines and novels.' He promptly threw them out of the window,
and Nicodemus settled. Then I came in with cracked hickory nuts, then
pop-corn balls, and, finally, molasses candy. All went out of the
window. I felt like Alexander the Great!--I had no more chance! I had
sold all I had. Finally I put a rope to my trunk, which was about
the size of a carpenter's chest, and started to pull this from the
baggage-car to the passenger-car. It was almost too much for my
strength, but at last I got it in front of those men. I pulled off my
coat, shoes, and hat, and laid them on the chest. Then he asked: 'What
have you got, boy?' I said: 'Everything, sir, that I can spare that is
for sale.' The passengers fairly jumped with laughter. Nicodemus paid me
$27 for this last sale, and threw the whole out of the door in the rear
of the car. These men were from the South, and I have always retained a
soft spot in my heart for a Southern gentleman."
While Edison was a newsboy on the train a request came to him one day
to go to the office of E. B. Ward & Company, at that time the largest
owners of steamboats on the Great Lakes. The captain of their largest
boat had died suddenly, and they wanted a message taken to another
captain who lived about fourteen miles from Ridgeway station on the
railroad. This captain had retired, taken up some lumber land, and had
cleared part of it. Edison was offered $15 by Mr. Ward to go and fetch
him, but as it was a wild country and would be dark, Edison stood out
for $25, so that he could get the companionship of another lad. The
terms were agreed to. Edison arrived at Ridgeway at 8.30 P.M., when it
was raining and as dark as ink. Getting another boy with difficulty to
volunteer, he launched out on his errand in the pitch-black night. The
two boys carried lanterns, but the road was a rough path through dense
forest. The country was wild, and it was a usual occurrence to see deer,
bear, and coon skins nailed up on the sides of houses to dry. Edison had
read about bears, but couldn't remember whether they were day or night
prowlers. The farther they went the more apprehensive they became, and
every stump in the ravished forest looked like a bear. The other lad
proposed seeking safety up a tree, but Edison demurred on the plea that
bears could climb, and that the message must be delivered that night to
enable the captain to catch the morning train. First one lantern went
out, then the other. "We leaned up against a tree and cried. I thought
if I ever got out of that scrape alive I would know more about the
habits of animals and everything else, and be prepared for all kinds of
mischance when I undertook an enterprise. However, the intense darkness
dilated the pupils of our eyes so as to make them very sensitive, and
we could just see at times the outlines of the road. Finally, just as
a faint gleam of daylight arrived, we entered the captain's yard and
delivered the message. In my whole life I never spent such a night of
horror as this, but I got a good lesson."
An amusing incident of this period is told by Edison. "When I was a
boy," he says, "the Prince of Wales, the late King Edward, came to
Canada (1860). Great preparations were made at Sarnia, the Canadian town
opposite Port Huron. About every boy, including myself, went over to
see the affair. The town was draped in flags most profusely, and carpets
were laid on the cross-walks for the prince to walk on. There were
arches, etc. A stand was built raised above the general level, where the
prince was to be received by the mayor. Seeing all these preparations,
my idea of a prince was very high; but when he did arrive I mistook the
Duke of Newcastle for him, the duke being a fine-looking man. I soon saw
that I was mistaken: that the prince was a young stripling, and did
not meet expectations. Several of us expressed our belief that a prince
wasn't much, after all, and said that we were thoroughly disappointed.
For this one boy was whipped. Soon the Canuck boys attacked the Yankee
boys, and we were all badly licked. I, myself, got a black eye. That has
always prejudiced me against that kind of ceremonial and folly." It is
certainly interesting to note that in later years the prince for whom
Edison endured the ignominy of a black eye made generous compensation
in a graceful letter accompanying the gold Albert Medal awarded by the
Royal Society of Arts.
Another incident of the period is as follows: "After selling papers in
Port Huron, which was often not reached until about 9.30 at night, I
seldom got home before 11.00 or 11.30. About half-way home from the
station and the town, and within twenty-five feet of the road in a
dense wood, was a soldiers' graveyard where three hundred soldiers were
buried, due to a cholera epidemic which took place at Fort Gratiot, near
by, many years previously. At first we used to shut our eyes and run the
horse past this graveyard, and if the horse stepped on a twig my heart
would give a violent movement, and it is a wonder that I haven't some
valvular disease of that organ. But soon this running of the horse
became monotonous, and after a while all fears of graveyards absolutely
disappeared from my system. I was in the condition of Sam Houston, the
pioneer and founder of Texas, who, it was said, knew no fear. Houston
lived some distance from the town and generally went home late at night,
having to pass through a dark cypress swamp over a corduroy road. One
night, to test his alleged fearlessness, a man stationed himself behind
a tree and enveloped himself in a sheet. He confronted Houston suddenly,
and Sam stopped and said: 'If you are a man, you can't hurt me. If you
are a ghost, you don't want to hurt me. And if you are the devil, come
home with me; I married your sister!'"
It is not to be inferred, however, from some of the preceding statements
that the boy was of an exclusively studious bent of mind. He had then,
as now, the keen enjoyment of a joke, and no particular aversion to the
practical form. An incident of the time is in point. "After the breaking
out of the war there was a regiment of volunteer soldiers quartered
at Fort Gratiot, the reservation extending to the boundary line of our
house. Nearly every night we would hear a call, such as 'Corporal of
the Guard, No. 1.' This would be repeated from sentry to sentry until it
reached the barracks, when Corporal of the Guard, No. 1, would come and
see what was wanted. I and the little Dutch boy, after returning from
the town after selling our papers, thought we would take a hand at
military affairs. So one night, when it was very dark, I shouted for
Corporal of the Guard, No. 1. The second sentry, thinking it was the
terminal sentry who shouted, repeated it to the third, and so on. This
brought the corporal along the half mile, only to find that he was
fooled. We tried him three nights; but the third night they were
watching, and caught the little Dutch boy, took him to the lock-up at
the fort, and shut him up. They chased me to the house. I rushed for the
cellar. In one small apartment there were two barrels of potatoes and a
third one nearly empty. I poured these remnants into the other barrels,
sat down, and pulled the barrel over my head, bottom up. The soldiers
had awakened my father, and they were searching for me with candles and
lanterns. The corporal was absolutely certain I came into the cellar,
and couldn't see how I could have gotten out, and wanted to know from my
father if there was no secret hiding-place. On assurance of my father,
who said that there was not, he said it was most extraordinary. I was
glad when they left, as I was cramped, and the potatoes were rotten that
had been in the barrel and violently offensive. The next morning I was
found in bed, and received a good switching on the legs from my father,
the first and only one I ever received from him, although my mother kept
a switch behind the old Seth Thomas clock that had the bark worn off.
My mother's ideas and mine differed at times, especially when I got
experimenting and mussed up things. The Dutch boy was released next
morning."
CHAPTER IV
THE YOUNG TELEGRAPH OPERATOR
"WHILE a newsboy on the railroad," says Edison, "I got very much
interested in electricity, probably from visiting telegraph offices with
a chum who had tastes similar to mine." It will also have been noted
that he used the telegraph to get items for his little journal, and to
bulletin his special news of the Civil War along the line. The next step
was natural, and having with his knowledge of chemistry no trouble about
"setting up" his batteries, the difficulties of securing apparatus were
chiefly those connected with the circuits and the instruments. American
youths to-day are given, if of a mechanical turn of mind, to amateur
telegraphy or telephony, but seldom, if ever, have to make any part of
the system constructed. In Edison's boyish days it was quite different,
and telegraphic supplies were hard to obtain. But he and his "chum"
had a line between their homes, built of common stove-pipe wire. The
insulators were bottles set on nails driven into trees and short poles.
The magnet wire was wound with rags for insulation, and pieces of spring
brass were used for keys. With an idea of securing current cheaply,
Edison applied the little that he knew about static electricity,
and actually experimented with cats, which he treated vigorously as
frictional machines until the animals fled in dismay, and Edison had
learned his first great lesson in the relative value of sources of
electrical energy. The line was made to work, however, and additional to
the messages that the boys interchanged, Edison secured practice in an
ingenious manner. His father insisted on 11.30 as proper bedtime, which
left but a short interval after the long day on the train. But each
evening, when the boy went home with a bundle of papers that had
not been sold in the town, his father would sit up reading the
"returnables." Edison, therefore, on some excuse, left the papers
with his friend, but suggested that he could get the news from him by
telegraph, bit by bit. The scheme interested his father, and was
put into effect, the messages being written down and handed over for
perusal. This yielded good practice nightly, lasting until 12 and
1 o'clock, and was maintained for some time until Mr. Edison became
willing that his son should stay up for a reasonable time. The papers
were then brought home again, and the boys amused themselves to their
hearts' content until the line was pulled down by a stray cow wandering
through the orchard. Meantime better instruments had been secured, and
the rudiments of telegraphy had been fairly mastered.
The mixed train on which Edison was employed as newsboy did the
way-freight work and shunting at the Mount Clemens station, about half
an hour being usually spent in the work. One August morning, in 1862,
while the shunting was in progress, and a laden box-car had been pushed
out of a siding, Edison, who was loitering about the platform, saw the
little son of the station agent, Mr. J. U. Mackenzie, playing with the
gravel on the main track along which the car without a brakeman was
rapidly approaching. Edison dropped his papers and his glazed cap,
and made a dash for the child, whom he picked up and lifted to safety
without a second to spare, as the wheel of the car struck his heel; and
both were cut about the face and hands by the gravel ballast on which
they fell. The two boys were picked up by the train-hands and carried
to the platform, and the grateful father at once offered to teach the
rescuer, whom he knew and liked, the art of train telegraphy and to make
an operator of him. It is needless to say that the proposal was eagerly
accepted.
Edison found time for his new studies by letting one of his friends look
after the newsboy work on the train for part of the trip, reserving
to himself the run between Port Huron and Mount Clemens. That he was
already well qualified as a beginner is evident from the fact that he
had mastered the Morse code of the telegraphic alphabet, and was able
to take to the station a neat little set of instruments he had just
finished with his own hands at a gun-shop in Detroit. This was probably
a unique achievement in itself among railway operators of that day or of
later times. The drill of the student involved chiefly the acquisition
of the special signals employed in railway work, including the numerals
and abbreviations applied to save time. Some of these have passed
into the slang of the day, "73" being well known as a telegrapher's
expression of compliments or good wishes, while "23" is an accident
or death message, and has been given broader popular significance as
a general synonym for "hoodoo." All of this came easily to Edison, who
had, moreover, as his Herald showed, an unusual familiarity with train
movement along that portion of the Grand Trunk road.
Three or four months were spent pleasantly and profitably by the youth
in this course of study, and Edison took to it enthusiastically, giving
it no less than eighteen hours a day. He then put up a little telegraph
line from the station to the village, a distance of about a mile, and
opened an office in a drug store; but the business was naturally very
small. The telegraph operator at Port Huron knowing of his proficiency,
and wanting to get into the United States Military Telegraph Corps,
where the pay in those days of the Civil War was high, succeeded in
convincing his brother-in-law, Mr. M. Walker, that young Edison could
fill the position. Edison was, of course, well acquainted with the
operators along the road and at the southern terminal, and took up his
new duties very easily. The office was located in a jewelry store, where
newspapers and periodicals were also sold. Edison was to be found at the
office both day and night, sleeping there. "I became quite valuable to
Mr. Walker. After working all day I worked at the office nights as well,
for the reason that 'press report' came over one of the wires until 3
A.M., and I would cut in and copy it as well as I could, to become more
rapidly proficient. The goal of the rural telegraph operator was to be
able to take press. Mr. Walker tried to get my father to apprentice me
at $20 per month, but they could not agree. I then applied for a job on
the Grand Trunk Railroad as a railway operator, and was given a place,
nights, at Stratford Junction, Canada." Apparently his friend Mackenzie
helped him in the matter. The position carried a salary of $25 per
month. No serious objections were raised by his family, for the distance
from Port Huron was not great, and Stratford was near Bayfield, the
old home from which the Edisons had come, so that there were doubtless
friends or even relatives in the vicinity. This was in 1863.
Mr. Walker was an observant man, who has since that time installed a
number of waterworks systems and obtained several patents of his own. He
describes the boy of sixteen as engrossed intensely in his experiments
and scientific reading, and somewhat indifferent, for this reason, to
his duties as operator. This office was not particularly busy, taking
from $50 to $75 a month, but even the messages taken in would remain
unsent on the hook while Edison was in the cellar below trying to solve
some chemical problem. The manager would see him studying sometimes
an article in such a paper as the Scientific American, and then
disappearing to buy a few sundries for experiments. Returning from the
drug store with his chemicals, he would not be seen again until required
by his duties, or until he had found out for himself, if possible, in
this offhand manner, whether what he had read was correct or not. When
he had completed his experiment all interest in it was lost, and the
jars and wires would be left to any fate that might befall them. In like
manner Edison would make free use of the watchmaker's tools that lay
on the little table in the front window, and would take the wire pliers
there without much thought as to their value as distinguished from a
lineman's tools. The one idea was to do quickly what he wanted to do;
and the same swift, almost headlong trial of anything that comes to
hand, while the fervor of a new experiment is felt, has been noted
at all stages of the inventor's career. One is reminded of Palissy's
recklessness, when in his efforts to make the enamel melt on his pottery
he used the very furniture of his home for firewood.
Mr. Edison remarks the fact that there was very little difference
between the telegraph of that time and of to-day, except the general use
of the old Morse register with the dots and dashes recorded by indenting
paper strips that could be read and checked later at leisure if
necessary. He says: "The telegraph men couldn't explain how it worked,
and I was always trying to get them to do so. I think they couldn't. I
remember the best explanation I got was from an old Scotch line repairer
employed by the Montreal Telegraph Company, which operated the railroad
wires. He said that if you had a dog like a dachshund, long enough to
reach from Edinburgh to London, if you pulled his tail in Edinburgh he
would bark in London. I could understand that, but I never could get
it through me what went through the dog or over the wire." To-day
Mr. Edison is just as unable to solve the inner mystery of electrical
transmission. Nor is he alone. At the banquet given to celebrate his
jubilee in 1896 as professor at Glasgow University, Lord Kelvin, the
greatest physicist of our time, admitted with tears in his eyes and the
note of tragedy in his voice, that when it came to explaining the
nature of electricity, he knew just as little as when he had begun as
a student, and felt almost as though his life had been wasted while he
tried to grapple with the great mystery of physics.
Another episode of this period is curious in its revelation of the
tenacity with which Edison has always held to some of his oldest
possessions with a sense of personal attachment. "While working
at Stratford Junction," he says, "I was told by one of the freight
conductors that in the freight-house at Goodrich there were several
boxes of old broken-up batteries. I went there and found over eighty
cells of the well-known Grove nitric-acid battery. The operator there,
who was also agent, when asked by me if I could have the electrodes of
each cell, made of sheet platinum, gave his permission readily, thinking
they were of tin. I removed them all, amounting to several ounces.
Platinum even in those days was very expensive, costing several dollars
an ounce, and I owned only three small strips. I was overjoyed at this
acquisition, and those very strips and the reworked scrap are used to
this day in my laboratory over forty years later."
It was at Stratford that Edison's inventiveness was first displayed. The
hours of work of a night operator are usually from 7 P.M. to 7 A.M., and
to insure attention while on duty it is often provided that the operator
every hour, from 9 P.M. until relieved by the day operator, shall send
in the signal "6" to the train dispatcher's office. Edison revelled in
the opportunity for study and experiment given him by his long hours
of freedom in the daytime, but needed sleep, just as any healthy youth
does. Confronted by the necessity of sending in this watchman's signal
as evidence that he was awake and on duty, he constructed a small wheel
with notches on the rim, and attached it to the clock in such a manner
that the night-watchman could start it when the line was quiet, and at
each hour the wheel revolved and sent in accurately the dots required
for "sixing." The invention was a success, the device being, indeed,
similar to that of the modern district messenger box; but it was soon
noticed that, in spite of the regularity of the report, "Sf" could not
be raised even if a train message were sent immediately after. Detection
and a reprimand came in due course, but were not taken very seriously.
A serious occurrence that might have resulted in accident drove him soon
after from Canada, although the youth could hardly be held to blame for
it. Edison says: "This night job just suited me, as I could have the
whole day to myself. I had the faculty of sleeping in a chair any time
for a few minutes at a time. I taught the night-yardman my call, so I
could get half an hour's sleep now and then between trains, and in case
the station was called the watchman would awaken me. One night I got an
order to hold a freight train, and I replied that I would. I rushed out
to find the signalman, but before I could find him and get the signal
set, the train ran past. I ran to the telegraph office, and reported
that I could not hold her. The reply was: 'Hell!' The train dispatcher,
on the strength of my message that I would hold the train, had permitted
another to leave the last station in the opposite direction. There was a
lower station near the junction where the day operator slept. I started
for it on foot. The night was dark, and I fell into a culvert and was
knocked senseless." Owing to the vigilance of the two engineers on
the locomotives, who saw each other approaching on the straight single
track, nothing more dreadful happened than a summons to the thoughtless
operator to appear before the general manager at Toronto. On reaching
the manager's office, his trial for neglect of duty was fortunately
interrupted by the call of two Englishmen; and while their conversation
proceeded, Edison slipped quietly out of the room, hurried to the Grand
Trunk freight depot, found a conductor he knew taking out a freight
train for Sarnia, and was not happy until the ferry-boat from Sarnia had
landed him once more on the Michigan shore. The Grand Trunk still owes
Mr. Edison the wages due him at the time he thus withdrew from its
service, but the claim has never been pressed.
The same winter of 1863-64, while at Port Huron, Edison had a further
opportunity of displaying his ingenuity. An ice-jam had broken the light
telegraph cable laid in the bed of the river across to Sarnia, and thus
communication was interrupted. The river is three-quarters of a mile
wide, and could not be crossed on foot; nor could the cable be repaired.
Edison at once suggested using the steam whistle of the locomotive,
and by manipulating the valve conversed the short and long outbursts of
shrill sound into the Morse code. An operator on the Sarnia shore was
quick enough to catch the significance of the strange whistling, and
messages were thus sent in wireless fashion across the ice-floes in the
river. It is said that such signals were also interchanged by military
telegraphers during the war, and possibly Edison may have heard of
the practice; but be that as it may, he certainly showed ingenuity
and resource in applying such a method to meet the necessity. It is
interesting to note that at this point the Grand Trunk now has its St.
Clair tunnel, through which the trains are hauled under the river-bed by
electric locomotives.
Edison had now begun unconsciously the roaming and drifting that took
him during the next five years all over the Middle States, and that
might well have wrecked the career of any one less persistent
and industrious. It was a period of his life corresponding to the
Wanderjahre of the German artisan, and was an easy way of gratifying a
taste for travel without the risk of privation. To-day there is little
temptation to the telegrapher to go to distant parts of the country on
the chance that he may secure a livelihood at the key. The ranks are
well filled everywhere, and of late years the telegraph as an art or
industry has shown relatively slight expansion, owing chiefly to the
development of telephony. Hence, if vacancies occur, there are plenty of
operators available, and salaries have remained so low as to lead to one
or two formidable and costly strikes that unfortunately took no account
of the economic conditions of demand and supply. But in the days of the
Civil War there was a great dearth of skilful manipulators of the key.
About fifteen hundred of the best operators in the country were at the
front on the Federal side alone, and several hundred more had enlisted.
This created a serious scarcity, and a nomadic operator going to any
telegraphic centre would be sure to find a place open waiting for him.
At the close of the war a majority of those who had been with the two
opposed armies remained at the key under more peaceful surroundings, but
the rapid development of the commercial and railroad systems fostered a
new demand, and then for a time it seemed almost impossible to train
new operators fast enough. In a few years, however, the telephone sprang
into vigorous existence, dating from 1876, drawing off some of the
most adventurous spirits from the telegraph field; and the deterrent
influence of the telephone on the telegraph had made itself felt by
1890. The expiration of the leading Bell telephone patents, five years
later, accentuated even more sharply the check that had been put
on telegraphy, as hundreds and thousands of "independent" telephone
companies were then organized, throwing a vast network of toll lines
over Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and other States, and affording
cheap, instantaneous means of communication without any necessity for
the intervention of an operator.
It will be seen that the times have changed radically since Edison
became a telegrapher, and that in this respect a chapter of electrical
history has been definitely closed. There was a day when the art offered
a distinct career to all of its practitioners, and young men of ambition
and good family were eager to begin even as messenger boys, and were
ready to undergo a severe ordeal of apprenticeship with the belief that
they could ultimately attain positions of responsibility and profit.
At the same time operators have always been shrewd enough to regard the
telegraph as a stepping-stone to other careers in life. A bright fellow
entering the telegraph service to-day finds the experience he may
gain therein valuable, but he soon realizes that there are not enough
good-paying official positions to "go around," so as to give each worthy
man a chance after he has mastered the essentials of the art. He feels,
therefore, that to remain at the key involves either stagnation or
deterioration, and that after, say, twenty-five years of practice he
will have lost ground as compared with friends who started out in other
occupations. The craft of an operator, learned without much difficulty,
is very attractive to a youth, but a position at the key is no place
for a man of mature years. His services, with rare exceptions, grow less
valuable as he advances in age and nervous strain breaks him down. On
the contrary, men engaged in other professions find, as a rule, that
they improve and advance with experience, and that age brings larger
rewards and opportunities.
The list of well-known Americans who have been graduates of the key is
indeed an extraordinary one, and there is no department of our national
life in which they have not distinguished themselves. The contrast,
in this respect, between them and their European colleagues is highly
significant. In Europe the telegraph systems are all under government
management, the operators have strictly limited spheres of promotion,
and at the best the transition from one kind of employment to another is
not made so easily as in the New World. But in the United States we have
seen Rufus Bullock become Governor of Georgia, and Ezra Cornell Governor
of New York. Marshall Jewell was Postmaster-General of President
Grant's Cabinet, and Daniel Lamont was Secretary of State in President
Cleveland's. Gen. T. T. Eckert, past-President of the Western Union
Telegraph Company, was Assistant Secretary of War under President
Lincoln; and Robert J. Wynne, afterward a consul-general, served as
Assistant Postmaster General. A very large proportion of the
presidents and leading officials of the great railroad systems are old
telegraphers, including Messrs. W. C. Brown, President of the New York
Central Railroad, and Marvin Hughitt, President of the Chicago & North
western Railroad. In industrial and financial life there have been
Theodore N. Vail, President of the Bell telephone system; L. C. Weir,
late President of the Adams Express; A. B. Chandler, President of the
Postal Telegraph and Cable Company; Sir W. Van Home, identified with
Canadian development; Robert C. Clowry, President of the Western
Union Telegraph Company; D. H. Bates, Manager of the Baltimore &
Ohio telegraph for Robert Garrett; and Andrew Carnegie, the greatest
ironmaster the world has ever known, as well as its greatest
philanthropist. In journalism there have been leaders like Edward
Rosewater, founder of the Omaha Bee; W. J. Elverson, of the Philadelphia
Press; and Frank A. Munsey, publisher of half a dozen big magazines.
George Kennan has achieved fame in literature, and Guy Carleton and
Harry de Souchet have been successful as dramatists. These are but
typical of hundreds of men who could be named who have risen from
work at the key to become recognized leaders in differing spheres of
activity.
But roving has never been favorable to the formation of steady habits.
The young men who thus floated about the country from one telegraph
office to another were often brilliant operators, noted for speed in
sending and receiving, but they were undisciplined, were without the
restraining influences of home life, and were so highly paid for their
work that they could indulge freely in dissipation if inclined that way.
Subjected to nervous tension for hours together at the key, many of them
unfortunately took to drink, and having ended one engagement in a city
by a debauch that closed the doors of the office to them, would drift
away to the nearest town, and there securing work, would repeat the
performance. At one time, indeed, these men were so numerous and so
much in evidence as to constitute a type that the public was disposed
to accept as representative of the telegraphic fraternity; but as the
conditions creating him ceased to exist, the "tramp operator" also
passed into history. It was, however, among such characters that Edison
was very largely thrown in these early days of aimless drifting, to
learn something perhaps of their nonchalant philosophy of life, sharing
bed and board with them under all kinds of adverse conditions, but
always maintaining a stoic abstemiousness, and never feeling other than
a keen regret at the waste of so much genuine ability and kindliness on
the part of those knights errant of the key whose inevitable fate might
so easily have been his own.
Such a class or group of men can always be presented by an individual
type, and this is assuredly best embodied in Milton F. Adams, one of
Edison's earliest and closest friends, to whom reference will be made in
later chapters, and whose life has been so full of adventurous episodes
that he might well be regarded as the modern Gil Blas. That career is
certainly well worth the telling as "another story," to use the Kipling
phrase. Of him Edison says: "Adams was one of a class of operators never
satisfied to work at any place for any great length of time. He had the
'wanderlust.' After enjoying hospitality in Boston in 1868-69, on the
floor of my hall-bedroom, which was a paradise for the entomologist,
while the boarding-house itself was run on the banting system of flesh
reduction, he came to me one day and said: 'Good-bye, Edison; I have
got sixty cents, and I am going to San Francisco.' And he did go. How, I
never knew personally. I learned afterward that he got a job there, and
then within a week they had a telegraphers' strike. He got a big
torch and sold patent medicine on the streets at night to support the
strikers. Then he went to Peru as partner of a man who had a grizzly
bear which they proposed entering against a bull in the bull-ring in
that city. The grizzly was killed in five minutes, and so the scheme
died. Then Adams crossed the Andes, and started a market-report
bureau in Buenos Ayres. This didn't pay, so he started a restaurant in
Pernambuco, Brazil. There he did very well, but something went wrong
(as it always does to a nomad), so he went to the Transvaal, and ran a
panorama called 'Paradise Lost' in the Kaffir kraals. This didn't pay,
and he became the editor of a newspaper; then went to England to raise
money for a railroad in Cape Colony. Next I heard of him in New York,
having just arrived from Bogota, United States of Colombia, with a power
of attorney and $2000 from a native of that republic, who had applied
for a patent for tightening a belt to prevent it from slipping on a
pulley--a device which he thought a new and great invention, but which
was in use ever since machinery was invented. I gave Adams, then, a
position as salesman for electrical apparatus. This he soon got tired
of, and I lost sight of him." Adams, in speaking of this episode, says
that when he asked for transportation expenses to St. Louis, Edison
pulled out of his pocket a ferry ticket to Hoboken, and said to his
associates: "I'll give him that, and he'll get there all right." This
was in the early days of electric lighting; but down to the present
moment the peregrinations of this versatile genius of the key have never
ceased in one hemisphere or the other, so that as Mr. Adams himself
remarked to the authors in April, 1908: "The life has been somewhat
variegated, but never dull."
The fact remains also that throughout this period Edison, while himself
a very Ishmael, never ceased to study, explore, experiment. Referring
to this beginning of his career, he mentions a curious fact that
throws light on his ceaseless application. "After I became a telegraph
operator," he says, "I practiced for a long time to become a rapid
reader of print, and got so expert I could sense the meaning of a whole
line at once. This faculty, I believe, should be taught in schools, as
it appears to be easily acquired. Then one can read two or three books
in a day, whereas if each word at a time only is sensed, reading is
laborious."
CHAPTER V
ARDUOUS YEARS IN THE CENTRAL WEST
IN 1903, when accepting the position of honorary electrician to the
International Exposition held in St. Louis in 1904, to commemorate the
centenary of the Louisiana Purchase, Mr. Edison spoke in his letter
of the Central West as a "region where as a young telegraph operator I
spent many arduous years before moving East." The term of probation
thus referred to did not end until 1868, and while it lasted Edison's
wanderings carried him from Detroit to New Orleans, and took him, among
other cities, to Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Memphis, some
of which he visited twice in his peregrinations to secure work. From
Canada, after the episodes noted in the last chapter, he went to Adrian,
Michigan, and of what happened there Edison tells a story typical of
his wanderings for several years to come. "After leaving my first job
at Stratford Junction, I got a position as operator on the Lake Shore &
Michigan Southern at Adrian, Michigan, in the division superintendent's
office. As usual, I took the 'night trick,' which most operators
disliked, but which I preferred, as it gave me more leisure to
experiment. I had obtained from the station agent a small room, and had
established a little shop of my own. One day the day operator wanted to
get off, and I was on duty. About 9 o'clock the superintendent handed me
a despatch which he said was very important, and which I must get off at
once. The wire at the time was very busy, and I asked if I should
break in. I got orders to do so, and acting under those orders of the
superintendent, I broke in and tried to send the despatch; but the
other operator would not permit it, and the struggle continued for ten
minutes. Finally I got possession of the wire and sent the message. The
superintendent of telegraph, who then lived in Adrian and went to his
office in Toledo every day, happened that day to be in the Western Union
office up-town--and it was the superintendent I was really struggling
with! In about twenty minutes he arrived livid with rage, and I was
discharged on the spot. I informed him that the general superintendent
had told me to break in and send the despatch, but the general
superintendent then and there repudiated the whole thing. Their families
were socially close, so I was sacrificed. My faith in human nature got a
slight jar."
Edison then went to Toledo and secured a position at Fort Wayne, on the
Pittsburg, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad, now leased to the Pennsylvania
system. This was a "day job," and he did not like it. He drifted two
months later to Indianapolis, arriving there in the fall of 1864, when
he was at first assigned to duty at the Union Station at a salary of $75
a month for the Western Union Telegraph Company, whose service he
now entered, and with which he has been destined to maintain highly
important and close relationships throughout a large part of his life.
Superintendent Wallick appears to have treated him generously and to
have loaned him instruments, a kindness that was greatly appreciated,
for twenty years later the inventor called on his old employer, and
together they visited the scene where the borrowed apparatus had been
mounted on a rough board in the depot. Edison did not stay long in
Indianapolis, however, resigning in February, 1865, and proceeding to
Cincinnati. The transfer was possibly due to trouble caused by one of
his early inventions embodying what has been characterized by an expert
as "probably the most simple and ingenious arrangement of connections
for a repeater." His ambition was to take "press report," but finding,
even after considerable practice, that he "broke" frequently, he
adjusted two embossing Morse registers--one to receive the press
matter, and the other to repeat the dots and dashes at a lower speed, so
that the message could be copied leisurely. Hence he could not be rushed
or "broken" in receiving, while he could turn out "copy" that was a
marvel of neatness and clearness. All was well so long as ordinary
conditions prevailed, but when an unusual pressure occurred the little
system fell behind, and the newspapers complained of the slowness with
which reports were delivered to them. It is easy to understand that with
matter received at a rate of forty words per minute and worked off at
twenty-five words per minute a serious congestion or delay would result,
and the newspapers were more anxious for the news than they were for
fine penmanship.
Of this device Mr. Edison remarks: "Together we took press for several
nights, my companion keeping the apparatus in adjustment and I copying.
The regular press operator would go to the theatre or take a nap, only
finishing the report after 1 A.M. One of the newspapers complained of
bad copy toward the end of the report--that, is from 1 to 3 A.M., and
requested that the operator taking the report up to 1 A.M.--which was
ourselves--take it all, as the copy then was perfectly unobjectionable.
This led to an investigation by the manager, and the scheme was
forbidden.
"This instrument, many years afterward, was applied by me for
transferring messages from one wire to any other wire simultaneously,
or after any interval of time. It consisted of a disk of paper, the
indentations being formed in a volute spiral, exactly as in the disk
phonograph to-day. It was this instrument which gave me the idea of the
phonograph while working on the telephone."
Arrived in Cincinnati, where he got employment in the Western Union
commercial telegraph department at a wage of $60 per month, Edison
made the acquaintance of Milton F. Adams, already referred to as facile
princeps the typical telegrapher in all his more sociable and brilliant
aspects. Speaking of that time, Mr. Adams says: "I can well recall when
Edison drifted in to take a job. He was a youth of about eighteen years,
decidedly unprepossessing in dress and rather uncouth in manner. I was
twenty-one, and very dudish. He was quite thin in those days, and his
nose was very prominent, giving a Napoleonic look to his face, although
the curious resemblance did not strike me at the time. The boys did not
take to him cheerfully, and he was lonesome. I sympathized with him, and
we became close companions. As an operator he had no superiors and very
few equals. Most of the time he was monkeying with the batteries and
circuits, and devising things to make the work of telegraphy less
irksome. He also relieved the monotony of office-work by fitting up the
battery circuits to play jokes on his fellow-operators, and to deal with
the vermin that infested the premises. He arranged in the cellar what he
called his 'rat paralyzer,' a very simple contrivance consisting of two
plates insulated from each other and connected with the main battery.
They were so placed that when a rat passed over them the fore feet on
the one plate and the hind feet on the other completed the circuit and
the rat departed this life, electrocuted."
Shortly after Edison's arrival at Cincinnati came the close of the Civil
War and the assassination of President Lincoln. It was natural that
telegraphers should take an intense interest in the general struggle,
for not only did they handle all the news relating to it, but many of
them were at one time or another personal participants. For example, one
of the operators in the Cincinnati office was George Ellsworth, who was
telegrapher for Morgan, the famous Southern Guerrilla, and was with him
when he made his raid into Ohio and was captured near the Pennsylvania
line. Ellsworth himself made a narrow escape by swimming the Ohio
River with the aid of an army mule. Yet we can well appreciate the
unimpressionable way in which some of the men did their work, from an
anecdote that Mr. Edison tells of that awful night of Friday, April 14,
1865: "I noticed," he says, "an immense crowd gathering in the street
outside a newspaper office. I called the attention of the other
operators to the crowd, and we sent a messenger boy to find the cause
of the excitement. He returned in a few minutes and shouted 'Lincoln's
shot.' Instinctively the operators looked from one face to another to
see which man had received the news. All the faces were blank, and every
man said he had not taken a word about the shooting. 'Look over your
files,' said the boss to the man handling the press stuff. For a few
moments we waited in suspense, and then the man held up a sheet of
paper containing a short account of the shooting of the President. The
operator had worked so mechanically that he had handled the news without
the slightest knowledge of its significance." Mr. Adams says that at the
time the city was en fete on account of the close of the war, the name
of the assassin was received by telegraph, and it was noted with a
thrill of horror that it was that of a brother of Edwin Booth and of
Junius Brutus Booth--the latter of whom was then playing at the old
National Theatre. Booth was hurried away into seclusion, and the next
morning the city that had been so gay over night with bunting was draped
with mourning.
Edison's diversions in Cincinnati were chiefly those already observed.
He read a great deal, but spent most of his leisure in experiment. Mr.
Adams remarks: "Edison and I were very fond of tragedy. Forrest and John
McCullough were playing at the National Theatre, and when our capital
was sufficient we would go to see those eminent tragedians alternate in
Othello and Iago. Edison always enjoyed Othello greatly. Aside from an
occasional visit to the Loewen Garden 'over the Rhine,' with a glass of
beer and a few pretzels, consumed while listening to the excellent music
of a German band, the theatre was the sum and substance of our innocent
dissipation."
The Cincinnati office, as a central point, appears to have been
attractive to many of the clever young operators who graduated from it
to positions of larger responsibility. Some of them were conspicuous for
their skill and versatility. Mr. Adams tells this interesting story as
an illustration: "L. C. Weir, or Charlie, as he was known, at that
time agent for the Adams Express Company, had the remarkable ability of
taking messages and copying them twenty-five words behind the sender.
One day he came into the operating-room, and passing a table he heard
Louisville calling Cincinnati. He reached over to the key and answered
the call. My attention was arrested by the fact that he walked off after
responding, and the sender happened to be a good one. Weir coolly asked
for a pen, and when he sat down the sender was just one message ahead
of him with date, address, and signature. Charlie started in, and in a
beautiful, large, round hand copied that message. The sender went right
along, and when he finished with six messages closed his key. When Weir
had done with the last one the sender began to think that after all
there had been no receiver, as Weir did not 'break,' but simply gave
his O. K. He afterward became president of the Adams Express, and was
certainly a wonderful operator." The operating-room referred to was on
the fifth floor of the building with no elevators.
Those were the early days of trade unionism in telegraphy, and the
movement will probably never quite die out in the craft which has always
shown so much solidarity. While Edison was in Cincinnati a delegation
of five union operators went over from Cleveland to form a local branch,
and the occasion was one of great conviviality. Night came, but the
unionists were conspicuous by their absence, although more circuits than
one were intolerant of delay and clamorous for attention---eight local
unionists being away. The Cleveland report wire was in special need, and
Edison, almost alone in the office, devoted himself to it all through
the night and until 3 o'clock the next morning, when he was relieved.
He had previously been getting $80 a month, and had eked this out
by copying plays for the theatre. His rating was that of a "plug" or
inferior operator; but he was determined to lift himself into the class
of first-class operators, and had kept up the practice of going to the
office at night to "copy press," acting willingly as a substitute for
any operator who wanted to get off for a few hours--which often meant
all night. Speaking of this special ordeal, for which he had thus been
unconsciously preparing, Edison says: "My copy looked fine if viewed
as a whole, as I could write a perfectly straight line across the wide
sheet, which was not ruled. There were no flourishes, but the individual
letters would not bear close inspection. When I missed understanding a
word, there was no time to think what it was, so I made an illegible one
to fill in, trusting to the printers to sense it. I knew they could read
anything, although Mr. Bloss, an editor of the Inquirer, made such bad
copy that one of his editorials was pasted up on the notice-board in the
telegraph office with an offer of one dollar to any man who could 'read
twenty consecutive words.' Nobody ever did it. When I got through I
was too nervous to go home, so waited the rest of the night for the day
manager, Mr. Stevens, to see what was to be the outcome of this Union
formation and of my efforts. He was an austere man, and I was afraid of
him. I got the morning papers, which came out at 4 A. M., and the press
report read perfectly, which surprised me greatly. I went to work on
my regular day wire to Portsmouth, Ohio, and there was considerable
excitement, but nothing was said to me, neither did Mr. Stevens examine
the copy on the office hook, which I was watching with great interest.
However, about 3 P. M. he went to the hook, grabbed the bunch and
looked at it as a whole without examining it in detail, for which I
was thankful. Then he jabbed it back on the hook, and I knew I was all
right. He walked over to me, and said: 'Young man, I want you to work
the Louisville wire nights; your salary will be $125.' Thus I got from
the plug classification to that of a 'first-class man.'"
But no sooner was this promotion secured than he started again on his
wanderings southward, while his friend Adams went North, neither
having any difficulty in making the trip. "The boys in those days
had extraordinary facilities for travel. As a usual thing it was only
necessary for them to board a train and tell the conductor they were
operators. Then they would go as far as they liked. The number of
operators was small, and they were in demand everywhere." It was in this
way Edison made his way south as far as Memphis, Tennessee, where the
telegraph service at that time was under military law, although the
operators received $125 a month. Here again Edison began to invent and
improve on existing apparatus, with the result of having once more to
"move on." The story may be told in his own terse language: "I was not
the inventor of the auto repeater, but while in Memphis I worked on
one. Learning that the chief operator, who was a protege of the
superintendent, was trying in some way to put New York and New Orleans
together for the first time since the close of the war, I redoubled my
efforts, and at 2 o'clock one morning I had them speaking to each other.
The office of the Memphis Avalanche was in the same building. The paper
got wind of it and sent messages. A column came out in the morning about
it; but when I went to the office in the afternoon to report for duty I
was discharged with out explanation. The superintendent would not even
give me a pass to Nashville, so I had to pay my fare. I had so little
money left that I nearly starved at Decatur, Alabama, and had to stay
three days before going on north to Nashville. Arrived in that city,
I went to the telegraph office, got money enough to buy a little solid
food, and secured a pass to Louisville. I had a companion with me who
was also out of a job. I arrived at Louisville on a bitterly cold day,
with ice in the gutters. I was wearing a linen duster and was not much
to look at, but got a position at once, working on a press wire. My
travelling companion was less successful on account of his 'record.'
They had a limit even in those days when the telegraph service was so
demoralized."
Some reminiscences of Mr. Edison are of interest as bearing not only
upon the "demoralized" telegraph service, but the conditions from
which the New South had to emerge while working out its salvation. "The
telegraph was still under military control, not having been turned over
to the original owners, the Southern Telegraph Company. In addition to
the regular force, there was an extra force of two or three operators,
and some stranded ones, who were a burden to us, for board was high.
One of these derelicts was a great source of worry to me, personally. He
would come in at all hours and either throw ink around or make a lot
of noise. One night he built a fire in the grate and started to throw
pistol cartridges into the flames. These would explode, and I was twice
hit by the bullets, which left a black-and-blue mark. Another night he
came in and got from some part of the building a lot of stationery with
'Confederate States' printed at the head. He was a fine operator, and
wrote a beautiful hand. He would take a sheet of this paper, write
capital 'A', and then take another sheet and make the 'A' differently;
and so on through the alphabet; each time crumpling the paper up in his
hand and throwing it on the floor. He would keep this up until the room
was filled nearly flush with the table. Then he would quit.
"Everything at that time was 'wide open.' Disorganization reigned
supreme. There was no head to anything. At night myself and a companion
would go over to a gorgeously furnished faro-bank and get our midnight
lunch. Everything was free. There were over twenty keno-rooms running.
One of them that I visited was in a Baptist church, the man with the
wheel being in the pulpit, and the gamblers in the pews.
"While there the manager of the telegraph office was arrested for
something I never understood, and incarcerated in a military prison
about half a mile from the office. The building was in plain sight from
the office, and four stories high. He was kept strictly incommunicado.
One day, thinking he might be confined in a room facing the office, I
put my arm out of the window and kept signalling dots and dashes by the
movement of the arm. I tried this several times for two days. Finally
he noticed it, and putting his arm through the bars of the window he
established communication with me. He thus sent several messages to his
friends, and was afterward set free."
Another curious story told by Edison concerns a fellow-operator on night
duty at Chattanooga Junction, at the time he was at Memphis: "When it
was reported that Hood was marching on Nashville, one night a Jew came
into the office about 11 o'clock in great excitement, having heard the
Hood rumor. He, being a large sutler, wanted to send a message to save
his goods. The operator said it was impossible--that orders had been
given to send no private messages. Then the Jew wanted to bribe my
friend, who steadfastly refused for the reason, as he told the Jew, that
he might be court-martialled and shot. Finally the Jew got up to $800.
The operator swore him to secrecy and sent the message. Now there was
no such order about private messages, and the Jew, finding it out,
complained to Captain Van Duzer, chief of telegraphs, who investigated
the matter, and while he would not discharge the operator, laid him
off indefinitely. Van Duzer was so lenient that if an operator were
discharged, all the operator had to do was to wait three days and then
go and sit on the stoop of Van Duzer's office all day, and he would be
taken back. But Van Duzer swore he would never give in in this case.
He said that if the operator had taken $800 and sent the message at the
regular rate, which was twenty-five cents, it would have been all right,
as the Jew would be punished for trying to bribe a military operator;
but when the operator took the $800 and then sent the message deadhead,
he couldn't stand it, and he would never relent."
A third typical story of this period deals with a cipher message for
Thomas. Mr. Edison narrates it as follows: "When I was an operator in
Cincinnati working the Louisville wire nights for a time, one night a
man over on the Pittsburg wire yelled out: 'D. I. cipher,' which meant
that there was a cipher message from the War Department at Washington
and that it was coming--and he yelled out 'Louisville.' I started
immediately to call up that place. It was just at the change of shift in
the office. I could not get Louisville, and the cipher message began to
come. It was taken by the operator on the other table direct from the
War Department. It was for General Thomas, at Nashville. I called for
about twenty minutes and notified them that I could not get Louisville.
I kept at it for about fifteen minutes longer, and notified them that
there was still no answer from Louisville. They then notified the War
Department that they could not get Louisville. Then we tried to get it
by all kinds of roundabout ways, but in no case could anybody get them
at that office. Soon a message came from the War Department to send
immediately for the manager of the Cincinnati office. He was brought to
the office and several messages were exchanged, the contents of which,
of course, I did not know, but the matter appeared to be very serious,
as they were afraid of General Hood, of the Confederate Army, who was
then attempting to march on Nashville; and it was very important that
this cipher of about twelve hundred words or so should be got through
immediately to General Thomas. I kept on calling up to 12 or 1 o'clock,
but no Louisville. About 1 o'clock the operator at the Indianapolis
office got hold of an operator on a wire which ran from Indianapolis to
Louisville along the railroad, who happened to come into his office. He
arranged with this operator to get a relay of horses, and the message
was sent through Indianapolis to this operator who had engaged horses to
carry the despatches to Louisville and find out the trouble, and get the
despatches through without delay to General Thomas. In those days the
telegraph fraternity was rather demoralized, and the discipline was very
lax. It was found out a couple of days afterward that there were
three night operators at Louisville. One of them had gone over to
Jeffersonville and had fallen off a horse and broken his leg, and was
in a hospital. By a remarkable coincidence another of the men had
been stabbed in a keno-room, and was also in hospital while the third
operator had gone to Cynthiana to see a man hanged and had got left by
the train."
I think the most important line of
investigation is the production of
Electricity direct from carbon.
Edison
Young Edison remained in Louisville for about two years, quite a long
stay for one with such nomadic instincts. It was there that he perfected
the peculiar vertical style of writing which, beginning with him in
telegraphy, later became so much of a fad with teachers of penmanship
and in the schools. He says of this form of writing, a current example
of which is given above: "I developed this style in Louisville while
taking press reports. My wire was connected to the 'blind' side of a
repeater at Cincinnati, so that if I missed a word or sentence, or if
the wire worked badly, I could not break in and get the last words,
because the Cincinnati man had no instrument by which he could hear me.
I had to take what came. When I got the job, the cable across the
Ohio River at Covington, connecting with the line to Louisville, had a
variable leak in it, which caused the strength of the signalling current
to make violent fluctuations. I obviated this by using several relays,
each with a different adjustment, working several sounders all connected
with one sounding-plate. The clatter was bad, but I could read it with
fair ease. When, in addition to this infernal leak, the wires north to
Cleveland worked badly, it required a large amount of imagination to get
the sense of what was being sent. An imagination requires an appreciable
time for its exercise, and as the stuff was coming at the rate of
thirty-five to forty words a minute, it was very difficult to write down
what was coming and imagine what wasn't coming. Hence it was necessary
to become a very rapid writer, so I started to find the fastest style. I
found that the vertical style, with each letter separate and without
any flourishes, was the most rapid, and that the smaller the letter
the greater the rapidity. As I took on an average from eight to fifteen
columns of news report every day, it did not take long to perfect
this method." Mr. Edison has adhered to this characteristic style of
penmanship down to the present time.
As a matter of fact, the conditions at Louisville at that time were not
much better than they had been at Memphis. The telegraph operating-room
was in a deplorable condition. It was on the second story of a
dilapidated building on the principal street of the city, with the
battery-room in the rear; behind which was the office of the agent of
the Associated Press. The plastering was about one-third gone from the
ceiling. A small stove, used occasionally in the winter, was connected
to the chimney by a tortuous pipe. The office was never cleaned. The
switchboard for manipulating the wires was about thirty-four inches
square. The brass connections on it were black with age and with the
arcing effects of lightning, which, to young Edison, seemed particularly
partial to Louisville. "It would strike on the wires," he says, "with
an explosion like a cannon-shot, making that office no place for an
operator with heart-disease." Around the dingy walls were a dozen
tables, the ends next to the wall. They were about the size of those
seen in old-fashioned country hotels for holding the wash-bowl and
pitcher. The copper wires connecting the instruments to the switchboard
were small, crystallized, and rotten. The battery-room was filled
with old record-books and message bundles, and one hundred cells of
nitric-acid battery, arranged on a stand in the centre of the room. This
stand, as well as the floor, was almost eaten through by the destructive
action of the powerful acid. Grim and uncompromising as the description
reads, it was typical of the equipment in those remote days of the
telegraph at the close of the war.
Illustrative of the length to which telegraphers could go at a time when
they were so much in demand, Edison tells the following story: "When I
took the position there was a great shortage of operators. One night at
2 A.M. another operator and I were on duty. I was taking press report,
and the other man was working the New York wire. We heard a heavy tramp,
tramp, tramp on the rickety stairs. Suddenly the door was thrown
open with great violence, dislodging it from one of the hinges. There
appeared in the doorway one of the best operators we had, who
worked daytime, and who was of a very quiet disposition except when
intoxicated. He was a great friend of the manager of the office. His
eyes were bloodshot and wild, and one sleeve had been torn away from his
coat. Without noticing either of us he went up to the stove and kicked
it over. The stove-pipe fell, dislocated at every joint. It was half
full of exceedingly fine soot, which floated out and filled the room
completely. This produced a momentary respite to his labors. When the
atmosphere had cleared sufficiently to see, he went around and pulled
every table away from the wall, piling them on top of the stove in the
middle of the room. Then he proceeded to pull the switchboard away from
the wall. It was held tightly by screws. He succeeded, finally, and when
it gave way he fell with the board, and striking on a table cut
himself so that he soon became covered with blood. He then went to the
battery-room and knocked all the batteries off on the floor. The nitric
acid soon began to combine with the plaster in the room below, which
was the public receiving-room for messengers and bookkeepers. The excess
acid poured through and ate up the account-books. After having finished
everything to his satisfaction, he left. I told the other operator to
do nothing. We would leave things just as they were, and wait until the
manager came. In the mean time, as I knew all the wires coming through
to the switchboard, I rigged up a temporary set of instruments so that
the New York business could be cleared up, and we also got the remainder
of the press matter. At 7 o'clock the day men began to appear. They were
told to go down-stairs and wait the coming of the manager. At 8 o'clock
he appeared, walked around, went into the battery-room, and then came to
me, saying: 'Edison, who did this?' I told him that Billy L. had come in
full of soda-water and invented the ruin before him. He walked backward
and forward, about a minute, then coming up to my table put his fist
down, and said: 'If Billy L. ever does that again, I will discharge
him.' It was needless to say that there were other operators who took
advantage of that kind of discipline, and I had many calls at night
after that, but none with such destructive effects."
This was one aspect of life as it presented itself to the sensitive
and observant young operator in Louisville. But there was another,
more intellectual side, in the contact afforded with journalism and its
leaders, and the information taken in almost unconsciously as to the
political and social movements of the time. Mr. Edison looks back on
this with great satisfaction. "I remember," he says, "the discussions
between the celebrated poet and journalist George D. Prentice, then
editor of the Courier-Journal, and Mr. Tyler, of the Associated Press.
I believe Prentice was the father of the humorous paragraph of the
American newspaper. He was poetic, highly educated, and a brilliant
talker. He was very thin and small. I do not think he weighed over one
hundred and twenty five pounds. Tyler was a graduate of Harvard, and had
a very clear enunciation, and, in sharp contrast to Prentice, he was a
large man. After the paper had gone to press, Prentice would generally
come over to Tyler's office and start talking. Having while in Tyler's
office heard them arguing on the immortality of the soul, etc., I asked
permission of Mr. Tyler if, after finishing the press matter, I might
come in and listen to the conversation, which I did many times after.
One thing I never could comprehend was that Tyler had a sideboard with
liquors and generally crackers. Prentice would pour out half a glass of
what they call corn whiskey, and would dip the crackers in it and eat
them. Tyler took it sans food. One teaspoonful of that stuff would put
me to sleep."
Mr. Edison throws also a curious side-light on the origin of the comic
column in the modern American newspaper, the telegraph giving to a new
joke or a good story the ubiquity and instantaneity of an important
historical event. "It was the practice of the press operators all over
the country at that time, when a lull occurred, to start in and send
jokes or stories the day men had collected; and these were copied and
pasted up on the bulletin-board. Cleveland was the originating
office for 'press,' which it received from New York, and sent it out
simultaneously to Milwaukee, Chicago, Toledo, Detroit, Pittsburg,
Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Vincennes, Terre Haute, St.
Louis, and Louisville. Cleveland would call first on Milwaukee, if he
had anything. If so, he would send it, and Cleveland would repeat it to
all of us. Thus any joke or story originating anywhere in that area
was known the next day all over. The press men would come in and copy
anything which could be published, which was about three per cent. I
collected, too, quite a large scrap-book of it, but unfortunately have
lost it."
Edison tells an amusing story of his own pursuits at this time. Always
an omnivorous reader, he had some difficulty in getting a sufficient
quantity of literature for home consumption, and was in the habit
of buying books at auctions and second-hand stores. One day at an
auction-room he secured a stack of twenty unbound volumes of the North
American Review for two dollars. These he had bound and delivered at the
telegraph office. One morning, when he was free as usual at 3 o'clock,
he started off at a rapid pace with ten volumes on his shoulder. He
found himself very soon the subject of a fusillade. When he stopped, a
breathless policeman grabbed him by the throat and ordered him to drop
his parcel and explain matters, as a suspicious character. He opened the
package showing the books, somewhat to the disgust of the officer, who
imagined he had caught a burglar sneaking away in the dark alley with
his booty. Edison explained that being deaf he had heard no challenge,
and therefore had kept moving; and the policeman remarked apologetically
that it was fortunate for Edison he was not a better shot.
The incident is curiously revelatory of the character of the man, for
it must be admitted that while literary telegraphers are by no means
scarce, there are very few who would spend scant savings on back numbers
of a ponderous review at an age when tragedy, beer, and pretzels are far
more enticing. Through all his travels Edison has preserved those books,
and has them now in his library at Llewellyn Park, on Orange Mountain,
New Jersey.
Drifting after a time from Louisville, Edison made his way as far north
as Detroit, but, like the famous Duke of York, soon made his way back
again. Possibly the severer discipline after the happy-go-lucky regime
in the Southern city had something to do with this restlessness, which
again manifested itself, however, on his return thither. The end of the
war had left the South a scene of destruction and desolation, and
many men who had fought bravely and well found it hard to reconcile
themselves to the grim task of reconstruction. To them it seemed better
to "let ill alone" and seek some other clime where conditions would
be less onerous. At this moment a great deal of exaggerated talk was
current as to the sunny life and easy wealth of Latin America, and under
its influences many "unreconstructed" Southerners made their way
to Mexico, Brazil, Peru, or the Argentine. Telegraph operators were
naturally in touch with this movement, and Edison's fertile
imagination was readily inflamed by the glowing idea of all these vague
possibilities. Again he threw up his steady work and, with a couple of
sanguine young friends, made his way to New Orleans. They had the
notion of taking positions in the Brazilian Government telegraphs, as
an advertisement had been inserted in some paper stating that operators
were wanted. They had timed their departure from Louisville so as to
catch a specially chartered steamer, which was to leave New Orleans for
Brazil on a certain day, to convey a large number of Confederates and
their families, who were disgusted with the United States and were
going to settle in Brazil, where slavery still prevailed. Edison and his
friends arrived in New Orleans just at the time of the great riot, when
several hundred negroes were killed, and the city was in the hands of
a mob. The Government had seized the steamer chartered for Brazil, in
order to bring troops from the Yazoo River to New Orleans to stop the
rioting. The young operators therefore visited another shipping-office
to make inquiries as to vessels for Brazil, and encountered an old
Spaniard who sat in a chair near the steamer agent's desk, and to
whom they explained their intentions. He had lived and worked in South
America, and was very emphatic in his assertion, as he shook his yellow,
bony finger at them, that the worst mistake they could possibly make
would be to leave the United States. He would not leave on any account,
and they as young Americans would always regret it if they forsook their
native land, whose freedom, climate, and opportunities could not be
equalled anywhere on the face of the globe. Such sincere advice as this
could not be disdained, and Edison made his way North again. One cannot
resist speculation as to what might have happened to Edison himself and
to the development of electricity had he made this proposed plunge into
the enervating tropics. It will be remembered that at a somewhat similar
crisis in life young Robert Burns entertained seriously the idea of
forsaking Scotland for the West Indies. That he did not go was certainly
better for Scottish verse, to which he contributed later so many
immortal lines; and it was probably better for himself, even if he died
a gauger. It is simply impossible to imagine Edison working out the
phonograph, telephone, and incandescent lamp under the tropical climes
he sought. Some years later he was informed that both his companions had
gone to Vera Cruz, Mexico, and had died there of yellow fever.
Work was soon resumed at Louisville, where the dilapidated old office
occupied at the close of the war had been exchanged for one much more
comfortable and luxurious in its equipment. As before, Edison was
allotted to press report, and remembers very distinctly taking the
Presidential message and veto of the District of Columbia bill
by President Johnson. As the matter was received over the wire he
paragraphed it so that each printer had exactly three lines, thus
enabling the matter to be set up very expeditiously in the newspaper
offices. This earned him the gratitude of the editors, a dinner, and all
the newspaper "exchanges" he wanted. Edison's accounts of the sprees and
debauches of other night operators in the loosely managed offices enable
one to understand how even a little steady application to the work in
hand would be appreciated. On one occasion Edison acted as treasurer for
his bibulous companions, holding the stakes, so to speak, in order that
the supply of liquor might last longer. One of the mildest mannered of
the party took umbrage at the parsimony of the treasurer and knocked
him down, whereupon the others in the party set upon the assailant and
mauled him so badly that he had to spend three weeks in hospital. At
another time two of his companions sharing the temporary hospitality of
his room smashed most of the furniture, and went to bed with their boots
on. Then his kindly good-nature rebelled. "I felt that this was running
hospitality into the ground, so I pulled them out and left them on the
floor to cool off from their alcoholic trance."
Edison seems on the whole to have been fairly comfortable and happy in
Louisville, surrounding himself with books and experimental apparatus,
and even inditing a treatise on electricity. But his very thirst for
knowledge and new facts again proved his undoing. The instruments in the
handsome new offices were fastened in their proper places, and operators
were strictly forbidden to remove them, or to use the batteries except
on regular work. This prohibition meant little to Edison, who had access
to no other instruments except those of the company. "I went one night,"
he says, "into the battery-room to obtain some sulphuric acid for
experimenting. The carboy tipped over, the acid ran out, went through
to the manager's room below, and ate up his desk and all the carpet. The
next morning I was summoned before him, and told that what the company
wanted was operators, not experimenters. I was at liberty to take my pay
and get out."
The fact that Edison is a very studious man, an insatiate lover and
reader of books, is well known to his associates; but surprise is often
expressed at his fund of miscellaneous information. This, it will be
seen, is partly explained by his work for years as a "press" reporter.
He says of this: "The second time I was in Louisville, they had moved
into a new office, and the discipline was now good. I took the press
job. In fact, I was a very poor sender, and therefore made the taking
of press report a specialty. The newspaper men allowed me to come over
after going to press at 3 A.M. and get all the exchanges I wanted. These
I would take home and lay at the foot of my bed. I never slept more than
four or five hours' so that I would awake at nine or ten and read
these papers until dinner-time. I thus kept posted, and knew from their
activity every member of Congress, and what committees they were on; and
all about the topical doings, as well as the prices of breadstuffs
in all the primary markets. I was in a much better position than
most operators to call on my imagination to supply missing words or
sentences, which were frequent in those days of old, rotten wires, badly
insulated, especially on stormy nights. Upon such occasions I had to
supply in some cases one-fifth of the whole matter--pure guessing--but
I got caught only once. There had been some kind of convention in
Virginia, in which John Minor Botts was the leading figure. There
was great excitement about it, and two votes had been taken in the
convention on the two days. There was no doubt that the vote the next
day would go a certain way. A very bad storm came up about 10 o'clock,
and my wire worked very badly. Then there was a cessation of all
signals; then I made out the words 'Minor Botts.' The next was a New
York item. I filled in a paragraph about the convention and how the vote
had gone, as I was sure it would. But next day I learned that instead of
there being a vote the convention had adjourned without action until the
day after." In like manner, it was at Louisville that Mr. Edison got
an insight into the manner in which great political speeches are more
frequently reported than the public suspects. "The Associated Press
had a shorthand man travelling with President Johnson when he made his
celebrated swing around the circle in a private train delivering hot
speeches in defence of his conduct. The man engaged me to write out
the notes from his reading. He came in loaded and on the verge of
incoherence. We started in, but about every two minutes I would have to
scratch out whole paragraphs and insert the same things said in
another and better way. He would frequently change words, always to the
betterment of the speech. I couldn't understand this, and when he got
through, and I had copied about three columns, I asked him why those
changes, if he read from notes. 'Sonny,' he said, 'if these politicians
had their speeches published as they deliver them, a great many
shorthand writers would be out of a job. The best shorthanders and the
holders of good positions are those who can take a lot of rambling,
incoherent stuff and make a rattling good speech out of it.'"
Going back to Cincinnati and beginning his second term there as an
operator, Edison found the office in new quarters and with greatly
improved management. He was again put on night duty, much to his
satisfaction. He rented a room in the top floor of an office building,
bought a cot and an oil-stove, a foot lathe, and some tools. He
cultivated the acquaintance of Mr. Sommers, superintendent of telegraph
of the Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad, who gave him permission to
take such scrap apparatus as he might desire, that was of no use to the
company. With Sommers on one occasion he had an opportunity to indulge
his always strong sense of humor. "Sommers was a very witty man,"
he says, "and fond of experimenting. We worked on a self-adjusting
telegraph relay, which would have been very valuable if we could have
got it. I soon became the possessor of a second-hand Ruhmkorff induction
coil, which, although it would only give a small spark, would twist the
arms and clutch the hands of a man so that he could not let go of the
apparatus. One day we went down to the round-house of the Cincinnati &
Indianapolis Railroad and connected up the long wash-tank in the room
with the coil, one electrode being connected to earth. Above this
wash-room was a flat roof. We bored a hole through the roof, and could
see the men as they came in. The first man as he entered dipped his
hands in the water. The floor being wet he formed a circuit, and up went
his hands. He tried it the second time, with the same result. He then
stood against the wall with a puzzled expression. We surmised that
he was waiting for somebody else to come in, which occurred shortly
after--with the same result. Then they went out, and the place was soon
crowded, and there was considerable excitement. Various theories
were broached to explain the curious phenomenon. We enjoyed the sport
immensely." It must be remembered that this was over forty years ago,
when there was no popular instruction in electricity, and when its
possibilities for practical joking were known to very few. To-day such a
crowd of working-men would be sure to include at least one student of
a night school or correspondence course who would explain the mystery
offhand.
Note has been made of the presence of Ellsworth in the Cincinnati
office, and his service with the Confederate guerrilla Morgan, for whom
he tapped Federal wires, read military messages, sent false ones, and
did serious mischief generally. It is well known that one operator can
recognize another by the way in which he makes his signals--it is his
style of handwriting. Ellsworth possessed in a remarkable degree the
skill of imitating these peculiarities, and thus he deceived the Union
operators easily. Edison says that while apparently a quiet man in
bearing, Ellsworth, after the excitement of fighting, found the tameness
of a telegraph office obnoxious, and that he became a bad "gun man"
in the Panhandle of Texas, where he was killed. "We soon became
acquainted," says Edison of this period in Cincinnati, "and he wanted me
to invent a secret method of sending despatches so that an intermediate
operator could not tap the wire and understand it. He said that if it
could be accomplished, he could sell it to the Government for a large
sum of money. This suited me, and I started in and succeeded in making
such an instrument, which had in it the germ of my quadruplex now used
throughout the world, permitting the despatch of four messages over
one wire simultaneously. By the time I had succeeded in getting the
apparatus to work, Ellsworth suddenly disappeared. Many years afterward
I used this little device again for the same purpose. At Menlo Park, New
Jersey, I had my laboratory. There were several Western Union wires cut
into the laboratory, and used by me in experimenting at night. One day
I sat near an instrument which I had left connected during the night. I
soon found it was a private wire between New York and Philadelphia, and
I heard among a lot of stuff a message that surprised me. A week after
that I had occasion to go to New York, and, visiting the office of
the lessee of the wire, I asked him if he hadn't sent such and such a
message. The expression that came over his face was a sight. He asked me
how I knew of any message. I told him the circumstances, and suggested
that he had better cipher such communications, or put on a secret
sounder. The result of the interview was that I installed for him my old
Cincinnati apparatus, which was used thereafter for many years."
Edison did not make a very long stay in Cincinnati this time, but went
home after a while to Port Huron. Soon tiring of idleness and isolation
he sent "a cry from Macedonia" to his old friend "Milt" Adams, who was
in Boston, and whom he wished to rejoin if he could get work promptly in
the East.
Edison himself gives the details of this eventful move, when he went
East to grow up with the new art of electricity. "I had left Louisville
the second time, and went home to see my parents. After stopping at home
for some time, I got restless, and thought I would like to work in the
East. Knowing that a former operator named Adams, who had worked with me
in the Cincinnati office, was in Boston, I wrote him that I wanted a job
there. He wrote back that if I came on immediately he could get me in
the Western Union office. I had helped out the Grand Trunk Railroad
telegraph people by a new device when they lost one of the two submarine
cables they had across the river, making the remaining cable act just as
well for their purpose, as if they had two. I thought I was entitled
to a pass, which they conceded; and I started for Boston. After leaving
Toronto a terrific blizzard came up and the train got snowed under in a
cut. After staying there twenty-four hours, the trainmen made snowshoes
of fence-rail splints and started out to find food, which they did about
a half mile away. They found a roadside inn, and by means of snowshoes
all the passengers were taken to the inn. The train reached Montreal
four days late. A number of the passengers and myself went to the
military headquarters to testify in favor of a soldier who was on
furlough, and was two days late, which was a serious matter with
military people, I learned. We willingly did this, for this soldier
was a great story-teller, and made the time pass quickly. I met here a
telegraph operator named Stanton, who took me to his boarding-house,
the most cheerless I have ever been in. Nobody got enough to eat; the
bedclothes were too short and too thin; it was 28 degrees below zero,
and the wash-water was frozen solid. The board was cheap, being only
$1.50 per week.
"Stanton said that the usual live-stock accompaniment of operators'
boarding-houses was absent; he thought the intense cold had caused
them to hibernate. Stanton, when I was working in Cincinnati, left his
position and went out on the Union Pacific to work at Julesburg, which
was a cattle town at that time and very tough. I remember seeing him off
on the train, never expecting to see him again. Six months afterward,
while working press wire in Cincinnati, about 2 A.M., there was flung
into the middle of the operating-room a large tin box. It made a
report like a pistol, and we all jumped up startled. In walked Stanton.
'Gentlemen,' he said 'I have just returned from a pleasure trip to the
land beyond the Mississippi. All my wealth is contained in my metallic
travelling case and you are welcome to it.' The case contained one
paper collar. He sat down, and I noticed that he had a woollen comforter
around his neck with his coat buttoned closely. The night was intensely
warm. He then opened his coat and revealed the fact that he had nothing
but the bare skin. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'you see before you an operator
who has reached the limit of impecuniosity.'" Not far from the limit of
impecuniosity was Edison himself, as he landed in Boston in 1868 after
this wintry ordeal.
This chapter has run to undue length, but it must not close without one
citation from high authority as to the service of the military telegraph
corps so often referred to in it. General Grant in his Memoirs,
describing the movements of the Army of the Potomac, lays stress on the
service of his telegraph operators, and says: "Nothing could be more
complete than the organization and discipline of this body of brave and
intelligent men. Insulated wires were wound upon reels, two men and a
mule detailed to each reel. The pack-saddle was provided with a rack
like a sawbuck, placed crosswise, so that the wheel would revolve
freely; there was a wagon provided with a telegraph operator,
battery, and instruments for each division corps and army, and for my
headquarters. Wagons were also loaded with light poles supplied with an
iron spike at each end to hold the wires up. The moment troops were in
position to go into camp, the men would put up their wires. Thus in a
few minutes' longer time than it took a mule to walk the length of
its coil, telegraphic communication would be effected between all the
headquarters of the army. No orders ever had to be given to establish
the telegraph."
CHAPTER VI
WORK AND INVENTION IN BOSTON
MILTON ADAMS was working in the office of the Franklin Telegraph Company
in Boston when he received Edison's appeal from Port Huron, and with
characteristic impetuosity at once made it his business to secure a
position for his friend. There was no opening in the Franklin office, so
Adams went over to the Western Union office, and asked the manager,
Mr. George F. Milliken, if he did not want an operator who, like young
Lochinvar, came out of the West. "What kind of copy does he make?" was
the cautious response. "I passed Edison's letter through the window for
his inspection. Milliken read it, and a look of surprise came over his
countenance as he asked me if he could take it off the line like that. I
said he certainly could, and that there was nobody who could stick him.
Milliken said that if he was that kind of an operator I could send for
him, and I wrote to Edison to come on, as I had a job for him in the
main office of the Western Union." Meantime Edison had secured his pass
over the Grand Trunk Railroad, and spent four days and nights on the
journey, suffering extremes of cold and hunger. Franklin's arrival in
Philadelphia finds its parallel in the very modest debut of Adams's
friend in Boston.
It took only five minutes for Edison to get the "job," for
Superintendent Milliken, a fine type of telegraph official, saw quickly
through the superficialities, and realized that it was no ordinary
young operator he was engaging. Edison himself tells the story of what
happened. "The manager asked me when I was ready to go to work. 'Now,'
I replied I was then told to return at 5.30 P.M., and punctually at that
hour I entered the main operating-room and was introduced to the night
manager. The weather being cold, and being clothed poorly, my peculiar
appearance caused much mirth, and, as I afterward learned, the night
operators had consulted together how they might 'put up a job on the jay
from the woolly West.' I was given a pen and assigned to the New York
No. 1 wire. After waiting an hour, I was told to come over to a special
table and take a special report for the Boston Herald, the conspirators
having arranged to have one of the fastest senders in New York send the
despatch and 'salt' the new man. I sat down unsuspiciously at the table,
and the New York man started slowly. Soon he increased his speed, to
which I easily adapted my pace. This put my rival on his mettle, and he
put on his best powers, which, however, were soon reached. At this
point I happened to look up, and saw the operators all looking over my
shoulder, with their faces shining with fun and excitement. I knew then
that they were trying to put up a job on me, but kept my own counsel.
The New York man then commenced to slur over his words, running them
together and sticking the signals; but I had been used to this style
of telegraphy in taking report, and was not in the least discomfited.
Finally, when I thought the fun had gone far enough, and having
about completed the special, I quietly opened the key and remarked,
telegraphically, to my New York friend: 'Say, young man, change off and
send with your other foot.' This broke the New York man all up, and he
turned the job over to another man to finish."
Edison had a distaste for taking press report, due to the fact that
it was steady, continuous work, and interfered with the studies and
investigations that could be carried on in the intervals of ordinary
commercial telegraphy. He was not lazy in any sense. While he had no
very lively interest in the mere routine work of a telegraph office,
he had the profoundest curiosity as to the underlying principles of
electricity that made telegraphy possible, and he had an unflagging
desire and belief in his own ability to improve the apparatus he handled
daily. The whole intellectual atmosphere of Boston was favorable to the
development of the brooding genius in this shy, awkward, studious youth,
utterly indifferent to clothes and personal appearance, but ready to
spend his last dollar on books and scientific paraphernalia. It is
matter of record that he did once buy a new suit for thirty dollars in
Boston, but the following Sunday, while experimenting with acids in his
little workshop, the suit was spoiled. "That is what I get for putting
so much money in a new suit," was the laconic remark of the youth, who
was more than delighted to pick up a complete set of Faraday's works
about the same time. Adams says that when Edison brought home these
books at 4 A.M. he read steadily until breakfast-time, and then he
remarked, enthusiastically: "Adams, I have got so much to do and life is
so short, I am going to hustle." And thereupon he started on a run for
breakfast. Edison himself says: "It was in Boston I bought Faraday's
works. I think I must have tried about everything in those books. His
explanations were simple. He used no mathematics. He was the Master
Experimenter. I don't think there were many copies of Faraday's works
sold in those days. The only people who did anything in electricity were
the telegraphers and the opticians making simple school apparatus to
demonstrate the principles." One of these firms was Palmer & Hall, whose
catalogue of 1850 showed a miniature electric locomotive made by Mr.
Thomas Hall, and exhibited in operation the following year at the
Charitable Mechanics' Fair in Boston. In 1852 Mr. Hall made for a Dr.
A. L. Henderson, of Buffalo, New York, a model line of railroad with
electric-motor engine, telegraph line, and electric railroad signals,
together with a figure operating the signals at each end of the line
automatically. This was in reality the first example of railroad trains
moved by telegraph signals, a practice now so common and universal as
to attract no comment. To show how little some fundamental methods can
change in fifty years, it may be noted that Hall conveyed the current
to his tiny car through forty feet of rail, using the rail as conductor,
just as Edison did more than thirty years later in his historic
experiments for Villard at Menlo Park; and just as a large proportion of
American trolley systems do at this present moment.
It was among such practical, investigating folk as these that Edison was
very much at home. Another notable man of this stamp, with whom Edison
was thrown in contact, was the late Mr. Charles Williams, who, beginning
his career in the electrical field in the forties, was at the height of
activity as a maker of apparatus when Edison arrived in the city; and
who afterward, as an associate of Alexander Graham Bell, enjoyed the
distinction of being the first manufacturer in the world of telephones.
At his Court Street workshop Edison was a frequent visitor. Telegraph
repairs and experiments were going on constantly, especially on the
early fire-alarm telegraphs [1] of Farmer and Gamewell, and with the aid
of one of the men there--probably George Anders--Edison worked out
into an operative model his first invention, a vote-recorder, the first
Edison patent, for which papers were executed on October 11, 1868,
and which was taken out June 1, 1869, No. 90,646. The purpose of
this particular device was to permit a vote in the National House of
Representatives to be taken in a minute or so, complete lists being
furnished of all members voting on the two sides of any question Mr.
Edison, in recalling the circumstances, says: "Roberts was the telegraph
operator who was the financial backer to the extent of $100. The
invention when completed was taken to Washington. I think it was
exhibited before a committee that had something to do with the Capitol.
The chairman of the committee, after seeing how quickly and perfectly
it worked, said: 'Young man, if there is any invention on earth that
we don't want down here, it is this. One of the greatest weapons in
the hands of a minority to prevent bad legislation is filibustering on
votes, and this instrument would prevent it.' I saw the truth of
this, because as press operator I had taken miles of Congressional
proceedings, and to this day an enormous amount of time is wasted during
each session of the House in foolishly calling the members' names and
recording and then adding their votes, when the whole operation could be
done in almost a moment by merely pressing a particular button at each
desk. For filibustering purposes, however, the present methods are
most admirable." Edison determined from that time forth to devote his
inventive faculties only to things for which there was a real, genuine
demand, something that subserved the actual necessities of humanity.
This first patent was taken out for him by the late Hon. Carroll
D. Wright, afterward U. S. Commissioner of Labor, and a well-known
publicist, then practicing patent law in Boston. He describes Edison as
uncouth in manner, a chewer rather than a smoker of tobacco, but full of
intelligence and ideas.
[Footnote 1: The general scheme of a fire-alarm telegraph
system embodies a central office to which notice can be sent
from any number of signal boxes of the outbreak of a fire in
the district covered by the box, the central office in turn
calling out the nearest fire engines, and warning the fire
department in general of the occurrence. Such fire alarms
can be exchanged automatically, or by operators, and are
sometimes associated with a large fire-alarm bell or
whistle. Some boxes can be operated by the passing public;
others need special keys. The box mechanism is usually of
the ratchet, step-by-step movement, familiar in district
messenger call-boxes.]
Edison's curiously practical, though imaginative, mind demanded
realities to work upon, things that belong to "human nature's daily
food," and he soon harked back to telegraphy, a domain in which he
was destined to succeed, and over which he was to reign supreme as
an inventor. He did not, however, neglect chemistry, but indulged his
tastes in that direction freely, although we have no record that
this work was anything more, at that time, than the carrying out of
experiments outlined in the books. The foundations were being laid for
the remarkable chemical knowledge that later on grappled successfully
with so many knotty problems in the realm of chemistry; notably with
the incandescent lamp and the storage battery. Of one incident in his
chemical experiments he tells the following story: "I had read in a
scientific paper the method of making nitroglycerine, and was so fired
by the wonderful properties it was said to possess, that I determined
to make some of the compound. We tested what we considered a very small
quantity, but this produced such terrible and unexpected results that we
became alarmed, the fact dawning upon us that we had a very large
white elephant in our possession. At 6 A.M. I put the explosive into
a sarsaparilla bottle, tied a string to it, wrapped it in a paper,
and gently let it down into the sewer, corner of State and Washington
Streets." The associate in this was a man whom he had found endeavoring
to make electrical apparatus for sleight-of-hand performances.
In the Boston telegraph office at that time, as perhaps at others, there
were operators studying to enter college; possibly some were already in
attendance at Harvard University. This condition was not unusual at one
time; the first electrical engineer graduated from Columbia University,
New York, followed up his studies while a night operator, and came out
brilliantly at the head of his class. Edison says of these scholars that
they paraded their knowledge rather freely, and that it was his delight
to go to the second-hand book stores on Cornhill and study up questions
which he could spring upon them when he got an occasion. With those
engaged on night duty he got midnight lunch from an old Irishman called
"the Cake Man," who appeared regularly with his wares at 12 midnight.
"The office was on the ground floor, and had been a restaurant previous
to its occupation by the Western Union Telegraph Company. It was
literally loaded with cockroaches, which lived between the wall and the
board running around the room at the floor, and which came after the
lunch. These were such a bother on my table that I pasted two strips
of tinfoil on the wall at my desk, connecting one piece to the positive
pole of the big battery supplying current to the wires and the negative
pole to the other strip. The cockroaches moving up on the wall would
pass over the strips. The moment they got their legs across both strips
there was a flash of light and the cockroaches went into gas. This
automatic electrocuting device attracted so much attention, and got half
a column in an evening paper, that the manager made me stop it." The
reader will remember that a similar plan of campaign against rats was
carried out by Edison while in the West.
About this time Edison had a narrow escape from injury that might easily
have shortened his career, and he seems to have provoked the trouble
more or less innocently by using a little elementary chemistry. "After
being in Boston several months," he says, "working New York wire No.
1, I was requested to work the press wire, called the 'milk route,' as
there were so many towns on it taking press simultaneously. New
York office had reported great delays on the wire, due to operators
constantly interrupting, or 'breaking,' as it was called, to have words
repeated which they had failed to get; and New York claimed that Boston
was one of the worst offenders. It was a rather hard position for me,
for if I took the report without breaking, it would prove the previous
Boston operator incompetent. The results made the operator have some
hard feelings against me. He was put back on the wire, and did much
better after that. It seems that the office boy was down on this man.
One night he asked me if I could tell him how to fix a key so that it
would not 'break,' even if the circuit-breaker was open, and also so
that it could not be easily detected. I told him to jab a penful of
ink on the platinum points, as there was sugar enough to make it
sufficiently thick to hold up when the operator tried to break--the
current still going through the ink so that he could not break.
"The next night about 1 A.M. this operator, on the press wire, while
I was standing near a House printer studying it, pulled out a glass
insulator, then used upside down as a substitute for an ink-bottle,
and threw it with great violence at me, just missing my head. It would
certainly have killed me if it had not missed. The cause of the trouble
was that this operator was doing the best he could not to break, but
being compelled to, opened his key and found he couldn't. The press
matter came right along, and he could not stop it. The office boy had
put the ink in a few minutes before, when the operator had turned his
head during a lull. He blamed me instinctively as the cause of the
trouble. Later on we became good friends. He took his meals at the same
emaciator that I did. His main object in life seemed to be acquiring
the art of throwing up wash-pitchers and catching them without breaking
them. About one-third of his salary was used up in paying for pitchers."
One day a request reached the Western Union Telegraph office in Boston,
from the principal of a select school for young ladies, to the effect
that she would like some one to be sent up to the school to exhibit and
describe the Morse telegraph to her "children." There has always been
a warm interest in Boston in the life and work of Morse, who was born
there, at Charlestown, barely a mile from the birthplace of Franklin,
and this request for a little lecture on Morse's telegraph was quite
natural. Edison, who was always ready to earn some extra money for his
experiments, and was already known as the best-informed operator in the
office, accepted the invitation. What happened is described by Adams
as follows: "We gathered up a couple of sounders, a battery, and sonic
wire, and at the appointed time called on her to do the stunt. Her
school-room was about twenty by twenty feet, not including a small
platform. We rigged up the line between the two ends of the room, Edison
taking the stage while I was at the other end of the room. All being
in readiness, the principal was told to bring in her children. The door
opened and in came about twenty young ladies elegantly gowned, not one
of whom was under seventeen. When Edison saw them I thought he would
faint. He called me on the line and asked me to come to the stage and
explain the mysteries of the Morse system. I replied that I thought he
was in the right place, and told him to get busy with his talk on dots
and dashes. Always modest, Edison was so overcome he could hardly speak,
but he managed to say, finally, that as his friend Mr. Adams was better
equipped with cheek than he was, we would change places, and he would
do the demonstrating while I explained the whole thing. This caused the
bevy to turn to see where the lecturer was. I went on the stage, said
something, and we did some telegraphing over the line. I guess it was
satisfactory; we got the money, which was the main point to us." Edison
tells the story in a similar manner, but insists that it was he who
saved the situation. "I managed to say that I would work the apparatus,
and Mr. Adams would make the explanations. Adams was so embarrassed
that he fell over an ottoman. The girls tittered, and this increased
his embarrassment until he couldn't say a word. The situation was so
desperate that for a reason I never could explain I started in myself
and talked and explained better than I ever did before or since. I can
talk to two or three persons; but when there are more they radiate some
unknown form of influence which paralyzes my vocal cords. However, I got
out of this scrape, and many times afterward when I chanced with other
operators to meet some of the young ladies on their way home from
school, they would smile and nod, much to the mystification of the
operators, who were ignorant of this episode."
Another amusing story of this period of impecuniosity and financial
strain is told thus by Edison: "My friend Adams was working in the
Franklin Telegraph Company, which competed with the Western Union. Adams
was laid off, and as his financial resources had reached absolute zero
centigrade, I undertook to let him sleep in my hall bedroom. I generally
had hall bedrooms, because they were cheap and I needed money to
buy apparatus. I also had the pleasure of his genial company at the
boarding-house about a mile distant, but at the sacrifice of some
apparatus. One morning, as we were hastening to breakfast, we came
into Tremont Row, and saw a large crowd in front of two small 'gents'
furnishing goods stores. We stopped to ascertain the cause of the
excitement. One store put up a paper sign in the display window which
said: 'Three-hundred pairs of stockings received this day, five cents a
pair--no connection with the store next door.' Presently the other store
put up a sign stating they had received three hundred pairs, price three
cents per pair, and stated that they had no connection with the store
next door. Nobody went in. The crowd kept increasing. Finally, when the
price had reached three pairs for one cent, Adams said to me: 'I can't
stand this any longer; give me a cent.' I gave him a nickel, and he
elbowed his way in; and throwing the money on the counter, the store
being filled with women clerks, he said: 'Give me three pairs.' The
crowd was breathless, and the girl took down a box and drew out three
pairs of baby socks. 'Oh!' said Adams, 'I want men's size.' 'Well, sir,
we do not permit one to pick sizes for that amount of money.' And the
crowd roared; and this broke up the sales."
It has generally been supposed that Edison did not take up work on the
stock ticker until after his arrival a little later in New York; but he
says: "After the vote-recorder I invented a stock ticker, and started a
ticker service in Boston; had thirty or forty subscribers, and operated
from a room over the Gold Exchange. This was about a year after Callahan
started in New York." To say the least, this evidenced great ability
and enterprise on the part of the youth. The dealings in gold during the
Civil War and after its close had brought gold indicators into use, and
these had soon been followed by "stock tickers," the first of which
was introduced in New York in 1867. The success of this new but still
primitively crude class of apparatus was immediate. Four manufacturers
were soon busy trying to keep pace with the demands for it from brokers;
and the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company formed to exploit the system soon
increased its capital from $200,000 to $300,000, paying 12 per cent.
dividends on the latter amount. Within its first year the capital was
again increased to $1,000,000, and dividends of 10 per cent. were paid
easily on that sum also. It is needless to say that such facts became
quickly known among the operators, from whose ranks, of course, the new
employees were enlisted; and it was a common ambition among the more
ingenious to produce a new ticker. From the beginning, each phase
of electrical development--indeed, each step in mechanics--has been
accompanied by the well-known phenomenon of invention; namely, the
attempt of the many to perfect and refine and even re-invent where one
or two daring spirits have led the way. The figures of capitalization
and profit just mentioned were relatively much larger in the sixties
than they are to-day; and to impressionable young operators they spelled
illimitable wealth. Edison was, how ever, about the only one in Boston
of whom history makes record as achieving any tangible result in this
new art; and he soon longed for the larger telegraphic opportunity of
New York. His friend, Milt Adams, went West with quenchless zest for
that kind of roving life and aimless adventure of which the serious
minded Edison had already had more than enough. Realizing that to New
York he must look for further support in his efforts, Edison, deep in
debt for his embryonic inventions, but with high hope and courage,
now made the next momentous step in his career. He was far riper in
experience and practice of his art than any other telegrapher of his
age, and had acquired, moreover, no little knowledge of the practical
business of life. Note has been made above of his invention of a stock
ticker in Boston, and of his establishing a stock-quotation circuit.
This was by no means all, and as a fitting close to this chapter he may
be quoted as to some other work and its perils in experimentation:
"I also engaged in putting up private lines, upon which I used
an alphabetical dial instrument for telegraphing between business
establishments, a forerunner of modern telephony. This instrument
was very simple and practical, and any one could work it after a few
minutes' explanation. I had these instruments made at Mr. Hamblet's, who
had a little shop where he was engaged in experimenting with electric
clocks. Mr. Hamblet was the father and introducer in after years of the
Western Union Telegraph system of time distribution. My laboratory was
the headquarters for the men, and also of tools and supplies for those
private lines. They were put up cheaply, as I used the roofs of houses,
just as the Western Union did. It never occurred to me to ask permission
from the owners; all we did was to go to the store, etc., say we
were telegraph men, and wanted to go up to the wires on the roof; and
permission was always granted.
"In this laboratory I had a large induction coil which I had borrowed to
make some experiments with. One day I got hold of both electrodes of
the coil, and it clinched my hand on them so that I couldn't let go. The
battery was on a shelf. The only way I could get free was to back off
and pull the coil, so that the battery wires would pull the cells off
the shelf and thus break the circuit. I shut my eyes and pulled, but the
nitric acid splashed all over my face and ran down my back. I rushed to
a sink, which was only half big enough, and got in as well as I could
and wiggled around for several minutes to permit the water to dilute the
acid and stop the pain. My face and back were streaked with yellow; the
skin was thoroughly oxidized. I did not go on the street by daylight for
two weeks, as the appearance of my face was dreadful. The skin, however,
peeled off, and new skin replaced it without any damage."
CHAPTER VII
THE STOCK TICKER
"THE letters and figures used in the language of the tape," said a
well-known Boston stock speculator, "are very few, but they spell ruin
in ninety-nine million ways." It is not to be inferred, however, that
the modern stock ticker has anything to do with the making or losing
of fortunes. There were regular daily stock-market reports in London
newspapers in 1825, and New York soon followed the example. As far back
as 1692, Houghton issued in London a weekly review of financial and
commercial transactions, upon which Macaulay based the lively narrative
of stock speculation in the seventeenth century, given in his famous
history. That which the ubiquitous stock ticker has done is to give
instantaneity to the news of what the stock market is doing, so that at
every minute, thousands of miles apart, brokers, investors, and gamblers
may learn the exact conditions. The existence of such facilities is to
be admired rather than deplored. News is vital to Wall Street, and there
is no living man on whom the doings in Wall Street are without effect.
The financial history of the United States and of the world, as shown
by the prices of government bonds and general securities, has been told
daily for forty years on these narrow strips of paper tape, of which
thousands of miles are run yearly through the "tickers" of New York
alone. It is true that the record of the chattering little machine, made
in cabalistic abbreviations on the tape, can drive a man suddenly to the
very verge of insanity with joy or despair; but if there be blame for
that, it attaches to the American spirit of speculation and not to
the ingenious mechanism which reads and registers the beating of the
financial pulse.
Edison came first to New York in 1868, with his early stock printer,
which he tried unsuccessfully to sell. He went back to Boston, and quite
undismayed got up a duplex telegraph. "Toward the end of my stay in
Boston," he says, "I obtained a loan of money, amounting to $800, to
build a peculiar kind of duplex telegraph for sending two messages over
a single wire simultaneously. The apparatus was built, and I left
the Western Union employ and went to Rochester, New York, to test the
apparatus on the lines of the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph between that
city and New York. But the assistant at the other end could not be made
to understand anything, notwithstanding I had written out a very minute
description of just what to do. After trying for a week I gave it up and
returned to New York with but a few cents in my pocket." Thus he who
has never speculated in a stock in his life was destined to make the
beginnings of his own fortune by providing for others the apparatus
that should bring to the eye, all over a great city, the momentary
fluctuations of stocks and bonds. No one could have been in direr
poverty than he when the steamboat landed him in New York in 1869. He
was in debt, and his few belongings in books and instruments had to
be left behind. He was not far from starving. Mr. W. S. Mallory, an
associate of many years, quotes directly from him on this point: "Some
years ago we had a business negotiation in New York which made it
necessary for Mr. Edison and me to visit the city five or six times
within a comparatively short period. It was our custom to leave Orange
about 11 A.M., and on arrival in New York to get our lunch before
keeping the appointments, which were usually made for two o'clock.
Several of these lunches were had at Delmonico's, Sherry's, and other
places of similar character, but one day, while en route, Mr. Edison
said: 'I have been to lunch with you several times; now to-day I am
going to take you to lunch with me, and give you the finest lunch you
ever had.' When we arrived in Hoboken, we took the downtown ferry across
the Hudson, and when we arrived on the Manhattan side Mr. Edison led the
way to Smith & McNell's, opposite Washington Market, and well known to
old New Yorkers. We went inside and as soon as the waiter appeared
Mr. Edison ordered apple dumplings and a cup of coffee for himself. He
consumed his share of the lunch with the greatest possible pleasure.
Then, as soon as he had finished, he went to the cigar counter and
purchased cigars. As we walked to keep the appointment he gave me the
following reminiscence: When he left Boston and decided to come to New
York he had only money enough for the trip. After leaving the boat his
first thought was of breakfast; but he was without money to obtain it.
However, in passing a wholesale tea-house he saw a man tasting tea, so
he went in and asked the 'taster' if he might have some of the tea. This
the man gave him, and thus he obtained his first breakfast in New York.
He knew a telegraph operator here, and on him he depended for a loan to
tide him over until such time as he should secure a position. During the
day he succeeded in locating this operator, but found that he also was
out of a job, and that the best he could do was to loan him one dollar,
which he did. This small sum of money represented both food and lodging
until such time as work could be obtained. Edison said that as the
result of the time consumed and the exercise in walking while he found
his friend, he was extremely hungry, and that he gave most serious
consideration as to what he should buy in the way of food, and what
particular kind of food would be most satisfying and filling. The result
was that at Smith & McNell's he decided on apple dumplings and a cup
of coffee, than which he never ate anything more appetizing. It was not
long before he was at work and was able to live in a normal manner."
During the Civil War, with its enormous increase in the national debt
and the volume of paper money, gold had gone to a high premium; and, as
ever, by its fluctuations in price the value of all other commodities
was determined. This led to the creation of a "Gold Room" in Wall
Street, where the precious metal could be dealt in; while for dealings
in stocks there also existed the "Regular Board," the "Open Board," and
the "Long Room." Devoted to one, but the leading object of speculation,
the "Gold Room" was the very focus of all the financial and gambling
activity of the time, and its quotations governed trade and commerce.
At first notations in chalk on a blackboard sufficed, but seeing their
inadequacy, Dr. S. S. Laws, vice-president and actual presiding officer
of the Gold Exchange, devised and introduced what was popularly known
as the "gold indicator." This exhibited merely the prevailing price of
gold; but as its quotations changed from instant to instant, it was in
a most literal sense "the cynosure of neighboring eyes." One indicator
looked upon the Gold Room; the other opened toward the street. Within
the exchange the face could easily be seen high up on the west wall of
the room, and the machine was operated by Mr. Mersereau, the official
registrar of the Gold Board.
Doctor Laws, who afterward became President of the State University of
Missouri, was an inventor of unusual ability and attainments. In
his early youth he had earned his livelihood in a tool factory; and,
apparently with his savings, he went to Princeton, where he studied
electricity under no less a teacher than the famous Joseph Henry. At the
outbreak of the war in 1861 he was president of one of the Presbyterian
synodical colleges in the South, whose buildings passed into the hands
of the Government. Going to Europe, he returned to New York in 1863,
and, becoming interested with a relative in financial matters, his
connection with the Gold Exchange soon followed, when it was organized.
The indicating mechanism he now devised was electrical, controlled at
central by two circuit-closing keys, and was a prototype of all the
later and modern step-by-step printing telegraphs, upon which the
distribution of financial news depends. The "fraction" drum of the
indicator could be driven in either direction, known as the advance and
retrograde movements, and was divided and marked in eighths. It geared
into a "unit" drum, just as do speed-indicators and cyclometers. Four
electrical pulsations were required to move the drum the distance
between the fractions. The general operation was simple, and in
normally active times the mechanism and the registrar were equal to all
emergencies. But it is obvious that the record had to be carried away
to the brokers' offices and other places by messengers; and the delay,
confusion, and mistakes soon suggested to Doctor Laws the desirability
of having a number of indicators at such scattered points, operated by a
master transmitter, and dispensing with the regiments of noisy boys.
He secured this privilege of distribution, and, resigning from the
exchange, devoted his exclusive attention to the "Gold Reporting
Telegraph," which he patented, and for which, at the end of 1866, he had
secured fifty subscribers. His indicators were small oblong boxes, in
the front of which was a long slot, allowing the dials as they travelled
past, inside, to show the numerals constituting the quotation; the dials
or wheels being arranged in a row horizontally, overlapping each other,
as in modern fare registers which are now seen on most trolley cars. It
was not long before there were three hundred subscribers; but the very
success of this device brought competition and improvement. Mr. E. A.
Callahan, an ingenious printing-telegraph operator, saw that there
were unexhausted possibilities in the idea, and his foresight and
inventiveness made him the father of the "ticker," in connection with
which he was thus, like Laws, one of the first to grasp and exploit the
underlying principle of the "central station" as a universal source
of supply. The genesis of his invention Mr. Callahan has told in an
interesting way: "In 1867, on the site of the present Mills Building on
Broad Street, opposite the Stock Exchange of today, was an old building
which had been cut up to subserve the necessities of its occupants, all
engaged in dealing in gold and stocks. It had one main entrance from the
street to a hallway, from which entrance to the offices of two prominent
broker firms was obtained. Each firm had its own army of boys, numbering
from twelve to fifteen, whose duties were to ascertain the latest
quotations from the different exchanges. Each boy devoted his attention
to some particularly active stock. Pushing each other to get into these
narrow quarters, yelling out the prices at the door, and pushing back
for later ones, the hustle made this doorway to me a most undesirable
refuge from an April shower. I was simply whirled into the street.
I naturally thought that much of this noise and confusion might be
dispensed with, and that the prices might be furnished through some
system of telegraphy which would not require the employment of skilled
operators. The conception of the stock ticker dates from this incident."
Mr. Callahan's first idea was to distribute gold quotations, and to
this end he devised an "indicator." It consisted of two dials mounted
separately, each revolved by an electromagnet, so that the desired
figures were brought to an aperture in the case enclosing the apparatus,
as in the Laws system. Each shaft with its dial was provided with two
ratchet wheels, one the reverse of the other. One was used in connection
with the propelling lever, which was provided with a pawl to fit into
the teeth of the reversed ratchet wheel on its forward movement. It was
thus made impossible for either dial to go by momentum beyond its limit.
Learning that Doctor Laws, with the skilful aid of F. L. Pope, was
already active in the same direction, Mr. Callahan, with ready wit,
transformed his indicator into a "ticker" that would make a printed
record. The name of the "ticker" came through the casual remark of
an observer to whom the noise was the most striking feature of the
mechanism. Mr. Callahan removed the two dials, and, substituting type
wheels, turned the movements face to face, so that each type wheel
could imprint its characters upon a paper tape in two lines. Three wires
stranded together ran from the central office to each instrument. Of
these one furnished the current for the alphabet wheel, one for the
figure wheel, and one for the mechanism that took care of the inking and
printing on the tape. Callahan made the further innovation of insulating
his circuit wires, although the cost was then forty times as great as
that of bare wire. It will be understood that electromagnets were the
ticker's actuating agency. The ticker apparatus was placed under a
neat glass shade and mounted on a shelf. Twenty-five instruments were
energized from one circuit, and the quotations were supplied from a
"central" at 18 New Street. The Gold & Stock Telegraph Company was
promptly organized to supply to brokers the system, which was very
rapidly adopted throughout the financial district of New York, at the
southern tip of Manhattan Island. Quotations were transmitted by the
Morse telegraph from the floor of the Stock Exchange to the "central,"
and thence distributed to the subscribers. Success with the "stock" news
system was instantaneous.
It was at this juncture that Edison reached New York, and according to
his own statement found shelter at night in the battery-room of the Gold
Indicator Company, having meantime applied for a position as operator
with the Western Union. He had to wait a few days, and during this time
he seized the opportunity to study the indicators and the complicated
general transmitter in the office, controlled from the keyboard of the
operator on the floor of the Gold Exchange. What happened next has been
the basis of many inaccurate stories, but is dramatic enough as told
in Mr. Edison's own version: "On the third day of my arrival and while
sitting in the office, the complicated general instrument for sending
on all the lines, and which made a very great noise, suddenly came to
a stop with a crash. Within two minutes over three hundred boys--a boy
from every broker in the street--rushed up-stairs and crowded the long
aisle and office, that hardly had room for one hundred, all yelling that
such and such a broker's wire was out of order and to fix it at once.
It was pandemonium, and the man in charge became so excited that he lost
control of all the knowledge he ever had. I went to the indicator, and,
having studied it thoroughly, knew where the trouble ought to be, and
found it. One of the innumerable contact springs had broken off and had
fallen down between the two gear wheels and stopped the instrument; but
it was not very noticeable. As I went out to tell the man in charge
what the matter was, Doctor Laws appeared on the scene, the most excited
person I had seen. He demanded of the man the cause of the trouble, but
the man was speechless. I ventured to say that I knew what the trouble
was, and he said, 'Fix it! Fix it! Be quick!' I removed the spring and
set the contact wheels at zero; and the line, battery, and inspecting
men all scattered through the financial district to set the instruments.
In about two hours things were working again. Doctor Laws came in to ask
my name and what I was doing. I told him, and he asked me to come to his
private office the following day. His office was filled with stacks of
books all relating to metaphysics and kindred matters. He asked me a
great many questions about the instruments and his system, and I showed
him how he could simplify things generally. He then requested that I
should call next day. On arrival, he stated at once that he had decided
to put me in charge of the whole plant, and that my salary would be $300
per month! This was such a violent jump from anything I had ever seen
before, that it rather paralyzed me for a while, I thought it was too
much to be lasting, but I determined to try and live up to that salary
if twenty hours a day of hard work would do it. I kept this position,
made many improvements, devised several stock tickers, until the Gold &
Stock Telegraph Company consolidated with the Gold Indicator Company."
Certainly few changes in fortune have been more sudden and dramatic in
any notable career than this which thus placed an ill-clad, unkempt,
half-starved, eager lad in a position of such responsibility in days
when the fluctuations in the price of gold at every instant meant
fortune or ruin to thousands.
Edison, barely twenty-one years old, was a keen observer of the stirring
events around him. "Wall Street" is at any time an interesting study,
but it was never at a more agitated and sensational period of its
history than at this time. Edison's arrival in New York coincided
with an active speculation in gold which may, indeed, be said to have
provided him with occupation; and was soon followed by the attempt
of Mr. Jay Gould and his associates to corner the gold market,
precipitating the panic of Black Friday, September 24, 1869. Securing
its import duties in the precious metal and thus assisting to create an
artificial stringency in the gold market, the Government had made it
a practice to relieve the situation by selling a million of gold each
month. The metal was thus restored to circulation. In some manner,
President Grant was persuaded that general conditions and the movement
of the crops would be helped if the sale of gold were suspended for
a time; and, this put into effect, he went to visit an old friend in
Pennsylvania remote from railroads and telegraphs. The Gould pool had
acquired control of $10,000,000 in gold, and drove the price upward
rapidly from 144 toward their goal of 200. On Black Friday they
purchased another $28,000,000 at 160, and still the price went up. The
financial and commercial interests of the country were in panic; but
the pool persevered in its effort to corner gold, with a profit of many
millions contingent on success. Yielding to frantic requests, President
Grant, who returned to Washington, caused Secretary Boutwell, of the
Treasury, to throw $4,000,000 of gold into the market. Relief was
instantaneous, the corner was broken, but the harm had been done.
Edison's remarks shed a vivid side-light on this extraordinary episode:
"On Black Friday," he says, "we had a very exciting time with the
indicators. The Gould and Fisk crowd had cornered gold, and had run the
quotations up faster than the indicator could follow. The indicator was
composed of several wheels; on the circumference of each wheel were the
numerals; and one wheel had fractions. It worked in the same way as an
ordinary counter; one wheel made ten revolutions, and at the tenth
it advanced the adjacent wheel; and this in its turn having gone ten
revolutions, advanced the next wheel, and so on. On the morning of
Black Friday the indicator was quoting 150 premium, whereas the bids by
Gould's agents in the Gold Room were 165 for five millions or any part.
We had a paper-weight at the transmitter (to speed it up), and by one
o'clock reached the right quotation. The excitement was prodigious. New
Street, as well as Broad Street, was jammed with excited people. I sat
on the top of the Western Union telegraph booth to watch the surging,
crazy crowd. One man came to the booth, grabbed a pencil, and attempted
to write a message to Boston. The first stroke went clear off the blank;
he was so excited that he had the operator write the message for him.
Amid great excitement Speyer, the banker, went crazy and it took five
men to hold him; and everybody lost their head. The Western Union
operator came to me and said: 'Shake, Edison, we are O. K. We haven't
got a cent.' I felt very happy because we were poor. These occasions are
very enjoyable to a poor man; but they occur rarely."
There is a calm sense of detachment about this description that has
been possessed by the narrator even in the most anxious moments of his
career. He was determined to see all that could be seen, and, quitting
his perch on the telegraph booth, sought the more secluded headquarters
of the pool forces. "A friend of mine was an operator who worked in the
office of Belden & Company, 60 Broadway, which were headquarters for
Fisk. Mr. Gould was up-town in the Erie offices in the Grand Opera
House. The firm on Broad Street, Smith, Gould & Martin, was the other
branch. All were connected with wires. Gould seemed to be in charge,
Fisk being the executive down-town. Fisk wore a velvet corduroy coat
and a very peculiar vest. He was very chipper, and seemed to be
light-hearted and happy. Sitting around the room were about a dozen
fine-looking men. All had the complexion of cadavers. There was a basket
of champagne. Hundreds of boys were rushing in paying checks, all checks
being payable to Belden & Company. When James Brown, of Brown Brothers
& Company, broke the corner by selling five million gold, all payments
were repudiated by Smith, Gould & Martin; but they continued to receive
checks at Belden & Company's for some time, until the Street got wind of
the game. There was some kind of conspiracy with the Government people
which I could not make out, but I heard messages that opened my eyes as
to the ramifications of Wall Street. Gold fell to 132, and it took us
all night to get the indicator back to that quotation. All night long
the streets were full of people. Every broker's office was brilliantly
lighted all night, and all hands were at work. The clearing-house for
gold had been swamped, and all was mixed up. No one knew if he was
bankrupt or not."
Edison in those days rather liked the modest coffee-shops, and mentions
visiting one. "When on the New York No. 1 wire, that I worked in Boston,
there was an operator named Jerry Borst at the other end. He was a
first-class receiver and rapid sender. We made up a scheme to hold this
wire, so he changed one letter of the alphabet and I soon got used
to it; and finally we changed three letters. If any operator tried to
receive from Borst, he couldn't do it, so Borst and I always worked
together. Borst did less talking than any operator I ever knew. Never
having seen him, I went while in New York to call upon him. I did all
the talking. He would listen, stroke his beard, and say nothing. In the
evening I went over to an all-night lunch-house in Printing House Square
in a basement--Oliver's. Night editors, including Horace Greeley, and
Henry Raymond, of the New York Times, took their midnight lunch there.
When I went with Borst and another operator, they pointed out two or
three men who were then celebrated in the newspaper world. The night was
intensely hot and close. After getting our lunch and upon reaching the
sidewalk, Borst opened his mouth, and said: 'That's a great place; a
plate of cakes, a cup of coffee, and a Russian bath, for ten cents.'
This was about fifty per cent. of his conversation for two days."
The work of Edison on the gold-indicator had thrown him into close
relationship with Mr. Franklin L. Pope, the young telegraph engineer
then associated with Doctor Laws, and afterward a distinguished expert
and technical writer, who became President of the American Institute of
Electrical Engineers in 1886. Each recognized the special ability of
the other, and barely a week after the famous events of Black Friday the
announcement of their partnership appeared in the Telegrapher of
October 1, 1869. This was the first "professional card," if it may be so
described, ever issued in America by a firm of electrical engineers, and
is here reproduced. It is probable that the advertisement, one of the
largest in the Telegrapher, and appearing frequently, was not paid for
at full rates, as the publisher, Mr. J. N. Ashley, became a partner in
the firm, and not altogether a "sleeping one" when it came to a division
of profits, which at times were considerable. In order to be nearer his
new friend Edison boarded with Pope at Elizabeth, New Jersey, for some
time, living "the strenuous life" in the performance of his duties.
Associated with Pope and Ashley, he followed up his work on telegraph
printers with marked success. "While with them I devised a printer
to print gold quotations instead of indicating them. The lines were
started, and the whole was sold out to the Gold & Stock Telegraph
Company. My experimenting was all done in the small shop of a Doctor
Bradley, located near the station of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Jersey
City. Every night I left for Elizabeth on the 1 A.M. train, then walked
half a mile to Mr. Pope's house and up at 6 A.M. for breakfast to catch
the 7 A.M. train. This continued all winter, and many were the occasions
when I was nearly frozen in the Elizabeth walk." This Doctor Bradley
appears to have been the first in this country to make electrical
measurements of precision with the galvanometer, but was an old-school
experimenter who would work for years on an instrument without
commercial value. He was also extremely irascible, and when on one
occasion the connecting wire would not come out of one of the binding
posts of a new and costly galvanometer, he jerked the instrument to
the floor and then jumped on it. He must have been, however, a man of
originality, as evidenced by his attempt to age whiskey by electricity,
an attempt that has often since been made. "The hobby he had at the
time I was there," says Edison, "was the aging of raw whiskey by passing
strong electric currents through it. He had arranged twenty jars with
platinum electrodes held in place by hard rubber. When all was ready, he
filled the cells with whiskey, connected the battery, locked the door of
the small room in which they were placed, and gave positive orders that
no one should enter. He then disappeared for three days. On the second
day we noticed a terrible smell in the shop, as if from some dead
animal. The next day the doctor arrived and, noticing the smell, asked
what was dead. We all thought something had got into his whiskey-room
and died. He opened it and was nearly overcome. The hard rubber he used
was, of course, full of sulphur, and this being attacked by the nascent
hydrogen, had produced sulphuretted hydrogen gas in torrents, displacing
all of the air in the room. Sulphuretted hydrogen is, as is well known,
the gas given off by rotten eggs."
Another glimpse of this period of development is afforded by an
interesting article on the stock-reporting telegraph in the Electrical
World of March 4, 1899, by Mr. Ralph W. Pope, the well-known Secretary
of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, who had as a youth an
active and intimate connection with that branch of electrical industry.
In the course of his article he mentions the curious fact that Doctor
Laws at first, in receiving quotations from the Exchanges, was so
distrustful of the Morse system that he installed long lines of
speaking-tube as a more satisfactory and safe device than a telegraph
wire. As to the relations of that time Mr. Pope remarks: "The rivalry
between the two concerns resulted in consolidation, Doctor Laws's
enterprise being absorbed by the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company, while
the Laws stock printer was relegated to the scrap-heap and the museum.
Competition in the field did not, however, cease. Messrs. Pope and
Edison invented a one-wire printer, and started a system of 'gold
printers' devoted to the recording of gold quotations and sterling
exchange only. It was intended more especially for importers and
exchange brokers, and was furnished at a lower price than the indicator
service.... The building and equipment of private telegraph lines was
also entered upon. This business was also subsequently absorbed by the
Gold & Stock Telegraph Company, which was probably at this time at the
height of its prosperity. The financial organization of the company was
peculiar and worthy of attention. Each subscriber for a machine paid
in $100 for the privilege of securing an instrument. For the service
he paid $25 weekly. In case he retired or failed, he could transfer
his 'right,' and employees were constantly on the alert for purchasable
rights, which could be disposed of at a profit. It was occasionally
worth the profit to convince a man that he did not actually own the
machine which had been placed in his office.... The Western Union
Telegraph Company secured a majority of its stock, and Gen. Marshall
Lefferts was elected president. A private-line department was
established, and the business taken over from Pope, Edison, and Ashley
was rapidly enlarged."
At this juncture General Lefferts, as President of the Gold & Stock
Telegraph Company, requested Edison to go to work on improving the stock
ticker, furnishing the money; and the well-known "Universal" ticker, in
wide-spread use in its day, was one result. Mr. Edison gives a graphic
picture of the startling effect on his fortunes: "I made a great many
inventions; one was the special ticker used for many years outside of
New York in the large cities. This was made exceedingly simple, as
they did not have the experts we had in New York to handle anything
complicated. The same ticker was used on the London Stock Exchange.
After I had made a great number of inventions and obtained patents, the
General seemed anxious that the matter should be closed up. One day I
exhibited and worked a successful device whereby if a ticker should get
out of unison in a broker's office and commence to print wild figures,
it could be brought to unison from the central station, which saved the
labor of many men and much trouble to the broker. He called me into his
office, and said: 'Now, young man, I want to close up the matter of your
inventions. How much do you think you should receive?' I had made up
my mind that, taking into consideration the time and killing pace I
was working at, I should be entitled to $5000, but could get along with
$3000. When the psychological moment arrived, I hadn't the nerve to
name such a large sum, so I said: 'Well, General, suppose you make me an
offer.' Then he said: 'How would $40,000 strike you?' This caused me to
come as near fainting as I ever got. I was afraid he would hear my heart
beat. I managed to say that I thought it was fair. 'All right, I will
have a contract drawn; come around in three days and sign it, and I
will give you the money.' I arrived on time, but had been doing some
considerable thinking on the subject. The sum seemed to be very large
for the amount of work, for at that time I determined the value by the
time and trouble, and not by what the invention was worth to others. I
thought there was something unreal about it. However, the contract was
handed to me. I signed without reading it." Edison was then handed the
first check he had ever received, one for $40,000 drawn on the Bank of
New York, at the corner of William and Wall Streets. On going to the
bank and passing in the check at the wicket of the paying teller,
some brief remarks were made to him, which in his deafness he did not
understand. The check was handed back to him, and Edison, fancying for a
moment that in some way he had been cheated, went outside "to the
large steps to let the cold sweat evaporate." He then went back to the
General, who, with his secretary, had a good laugh over the matter,
told him the check must be endorsed, and sent with him a young man to
identify him. The ceremony of identification performed with the paying
teller, who was quite merry over the incident, Edison was given the
amount in bundles of small bills "until there certainly seemed to be one
cubic foot." Unaware that he was the victim of a practical joke, Edison
proceeded gravely to stow away the money in his overcoat pockets and all
his other pockets. He then went to Newark and sat up all night with
the money for fear it might be stolen. Once more he sought help next
morning, when the General laughed heartily, and, telling the clerk that
the joke must not be carried any further, enabled him to deposit the
currency in the bank and open an account.
Thus in an inconceivably brief time had Edison passed from poverty to
independence; made a deep impression as to his originality and ability
on important people, and brought out valuable inventions; lifting
himself at one bound out of the ruck of mediocrity, and away from the
deadening drudgery of the key. Best of all he was enterprising, one of
the leaders and pioneers for whom the world is always looking; and, to
use his own criticism of himself, he had "too sanguine a temperament
to keep money in solitary confinement." With quiet self-possession he
seized his opportunity, began to buy machinery, rented a shop and got
work for it. Moving quickly into a larger shop, Nos. 10 and 12 Ward
Street, Newark, New Jersey, he secured large orders from General
Lefferts to build stock tickers, and employed fifty men. As business
increased he put on a night force, and was his own foreman on both
shifts. Half an hour of sleep three or four times in the twenty-four
hours was all he needed in those days, when one invention succeeded
another with dazzling rapidity, and when he worked with the fierce,
eruptive energy of a great volcano, throwing out new ideas incessantly
with spectacular effect on the arts to which they related. It has always
been a theory with Edison that we sleep altogether too much; but on
the other hand he never, until long past fifty, knew or practiced the
slightest moderation in work or in the use of strong coffee and black
cigars. He has, moreover, while of tender and kindly disposition, never
hesitated to use men up as freely as a Napoleon or Grant; seeing only
the goal of a complete invention or perfected device, to attain which
all else must become subsidiary. He gives a graphic picture of his first
methods as a manufacturer: "Nearly all my men were on piece work, and
I allowed them to make good wages, and never cut until the pay became
absurdly high as they got more expert. I kept no books. I had two hooks.
All the bills and accounts I owed I jabbed on one hook; and memoranda of
all owed to myself I put on the other. When some of the bills fell due,
and I couldn't deliver tickers to get a supply of money, I gave a note.
When the notes were due, a messenger came around from the bank with the
note and a protest pinned to it for $1.25. Then I would go to New York
and get an advance, or pay the note if I had the money. This method of
giving notes for my accounts and having all notes protested I kept up
over two years, yet my credit was fine. Every store I traded with was
always glad to furnish goods, perhaps in amazed admiration of my system
of doing business, which was certainly new." After a while Edison got
a bookkeeper, whose vagaries made him look back with regret on the
earlier, primitive method. "The first three months I had him go over
the books to find out how much we had made. He reported $3000. I gave
a supper to some of my men to celebrate this, only to be told two days
afterward that he had made a mistake, and that we had lost $500; and
then a few days after that he came to me again and said he was all
mixed up, and now found that we had made over $7000." Edison changed
bookkeepers, but never thereafter counted anything real profit until he
had paid all his debts and had the profits in the bank.
The factory work at this time related chiefly to stock tickers,
principally the "Universal," of which at one time twelve hundred were
in use. Edison's connection with this particular device was very close
while it lasted. In a review of the ticker art, Mr. Callahan stated,
with rather grudging praise, that "a ticker at the present time (1901)
would be considered as impracticable and unsalable if it were not
provided with a unison device," and he goes on to remark: "The first
unison on stock tickers was one used on the Laws printer. [2] It was a
crude and unsatisfactory piece of mechanism and necessitated doubling
of the battery in order to bring it into action. It was short-lived. The
Edison unison comprised a lever with a free end travelling in a spiral
or worm on the type-wheel shaft until it met a pin at the end of the
worm, thus obstructing the shaft and leaving the type-wheels at the
zero-point until released by the printing lever. This device is too
well known to require a further description. It is not applicable to any
instrument using two independently moving type-wheels; but on nearly if
not all other instruments will be found in use." The stock ticker has
enjoyed the devotion of many brilliant inventors--G. M. Phelps, H. Van
Hoevenbergh, A. A. Knudson, G. B. Scott, S. D. Field, John Burry--and
remains in extensive use as an appliance for which no substitute or
competitor has been found. In New York the two great stock exchanges
have deemed it necessary to own and operate a stock-ticker service for
the sole benefit of their members; and down to the present moment the
process of improvement has gone on, impelled by the increasing volume of
business to be reported. It is significant of Edison's work, now dimmed
and overlaid by later advances, that at the very outset he recognized
the vital importance of interchangeability in the construction of this
delicate and sensitive apparatus. But the difficulties of these early
days were almost insurmountable. Mr. R. W. Pope says of the "Universal"
machines that they were simple and substantial and generally
satisfactory, but adds: "These instruments were supposed to have been
made with interchangeable parts; but as a matter of fact the instances
in which these parts would fit were very few. The instruction-book
prepared for the use of inspectors stated that 'The parts should not be
tinkered nor bent, as they are accurately made and interchangeable.' The
difficulties encountered in fitting them properly doubtless gave rise
to a story that Mr. Edison had stated that there were three degrees of
interchangeability. This was interpreted to mean: First, the parts will
fit; second, they will almost fit; third, they do not fit, and can't be
made to fit."
[Footnote 2: This I invented as well.--T. A. E.]
This early shop affords an illustration of the manner in which Edison
has made a deep impression on the personnel of the electrical arts. At
a single bench there worked three men since rich or prominent. One
was Sigmund Bergmann, for a time partner with Edison in his lighting
developments in the United States, and now head and principal owner
of electrical works in Berlin employing ten thousand men. The next
man adjacent was John Kruesi, afterward engineer of the great General
Electric Works at Schenectady. A third was Schuckert, who left the bench
to settle up his father's little estate at Nuremberg, stayed there and
founded electrical factories, which became the third largest in Germany,
their proprietor dying very wealthy. "I gave them a good training as
to working hours and hustling," says their quondam master; and this is
equally true as applied to many scores of others working in companies
bearing the Edison name or organized under Edison patents. It is
curiously significant in this connection that of the twenty-one
presidents of the national society, the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers, founded in 1884, eight have been intimately associated with
Edison--namely, Norvin Green and F. L. Pope, as business colleagues of
the days of which we now write; while Messrs. Frank J. Sprague, T. C.
Martin, A. E. Kennelly, S. S. Wheeler, John W. Lieb, Jr., and Louis A.
Ferguson have all been at one time or another in the Edison employ. The
remark was once made that if a famous American teacher sat at one end
of a log and a student at the other end, the elements of a successful
university were present. It is equally true that in Edison and the many
men who have graduated from his stern school of endeavor, America has
had its foremost seat of electrical engineering.
CHAPTER VIII
AUTOMATIC, DUPLEX, AND QUADRUPLEX TELEGRAPHY
WORK of various kinds poured in upon the young manufacturer, busy also
with his own schemes and inventions, which soon began to follow so many
distinct lines of inquiry that it ceases to be easy or necessary for the
historian to treat them all in chronological sequence. Some notion of
his ceaseless activity may be formed from the fact that he started no
fewer than three shops in Newark during 1870-71, and while directing
these was also engaged by the men who controlled the Automatic Telegraph
Company of New York, which had a circuit to Washington, to help it out
of its difficulties. "Soon after starting the large shop (10 and 12 Ward
Street, Newark), I rented shop-room to the inventor of a new rifle.
I think it was the Berdan. In any event, it was a rifle which was
subsequently adopted by the British Army. The inventor employed a
tool-maker who was the finest and best tool-maker I had ever seen. I
noticed that he worked pretty near the whole of the twenty-four hours.
This kind of application I was looking for. He was getting $21.50 per
week, and was also paid for overtime. I asked him if he could run the
shop. 'I don't know; try me!' he said. 'All right, I will give you $60
per week to run both shifts.' He went at it. His executive ability
was greater than that of any other man I have yet seen. His memory was
prodigious, conversation laconic, and movements rapid. He doubled
the production inside three months, without materially increasing the
pay-roll, by increasing the cutting speeds of tools, and by the use of
various devices. When in need of rest he would lie down on a work-bench,
sleep twenty or thirty minutes, and wake up fresh. As this was just what
I could do, I naturally conceived a great pride in having such a man in
charge of my work. But almost everything has trouble connected with it.
He disappeared one day, and although I sent men everywhere that it was
likely he could be found, he was not discovered. After two weeks he came
into the factory in a terrible condition as to clothes and face. He sat
down and, turning to me, said: 'Edison, it's no use, this is the third
time; I can't stand prosperity. Put my salary back and give me a job.' I
was very sorry to learn that it was whiskey that spoiled such a career.
I gave him an inferior job and kept him for a long time."
Edison had now entered definitely upon that career as an inventor which
has left so deep an imprint on the records of the United States Patent
Office, where from his first patent in 1869 up to the summer of 1910
no fewer than 1328 separate patents have been applied for in his name,
averaging thirty-two every year, and one about every eleven days; with a
substantially corresponding number issued. The height of this inventive
activity was attained about 1882, in which year no fewer than 141
patents were applied for, and seventy-five granted to him, or nearly
nine times as many as in 1876, when invention as a profession may
be said to have been adopted by this prolific genius. It will be
understood, of course, that even these figures do not represent the full
measure of actual invention, as in every process and at every step there
were many discoveries that were not brought to patent registration, but
remained "trade secrets." And furthermore, that in practically every
case the actual patented invention followed from one to a dozen or more
gradually developing forms of the same idea.
An Englishman named George Little had brought over a system of automatic
telegraphy which worked well on a short line, but was a failure when put
upon the longer circuits for which automatic methods are best adapted.
The general principle involved in automatic or rapid telegraphs, except
the photographic ones, is that of preparing the message in advance, for
dispatch, by perforating narrow strips of paper with holes--work which
can be done either by hand-punches or by typewriter apparatus. A certain
group of perforations corresponds to a Morse group of dots and dashes
for a letter of the alphabet. When the tape thus made ready is run
rapidly through a transmitting machine, electrical contact occurs
wherever there is a perforation, permitting the current from the battery
to flow into the line and thus transmit signals correspondingly. At
the distant end these signals are received sometimes on an ink-writing
recorder as dots and dashes, or even as typewriting letters; but in
many of the earlier systems, like that of Bain, the record at the higher
rates of speed was effected by chemical means, a tell-tale stain
being made on the travelling strip of paper by every spurt of incoming
current. Solutions of potassium iodide were frequently used for this
purpose, giving a sharp, blue record, but fading away too rapidly.
The Little system had perforating apparatus operated by electromagnets;
its transmitting machine was driven by a small electromagnetic motor;
and the record was made by electrochemical decomposition, the writing
member being a minute platinum roller instead of the more familiar iron
stylus. Moreover, a special type of wire had been put up for the single
circuit of two hundred and eighty miles between New York and Washington.
This is believed to have been the first "compound" wire made for
telegraphic or other signalling purposes, the object being to secure
greater lightness with textile strength and high conductivity. It had a
steel core, with a copper ribbon wound spirally around it, and tinned
to the core wire. But the results obtained were poor, and in their
necessity the parties in interest turned to Edison.
Mr. E. H. Johnson tells of the conditions: "Gen. W. J. Palmer and some
New York associates had taken up the Little automatic system and had
expended quite a sum in its development, when, thinking they had reduced
it to practice, they got Tom Scott, of the Pennsylvania Railroad to send
his superintendent of telegraph over to look into and report upon it. Of
course he turned it down. The syndicate was appalled at this report, and
in this extremity General Palmer thought of the man who had impressed
him as knowing it all by the telling of telegraphic tales as a means of
whiling away lonesome hours on the plains of Colorado, where they were
associated in railroad-building. So this man--it was I--was sent for to
come to New York and assuage their grief if possible. My report was that
the system was sound fundamentally, that it contained the germ of a good
thing, but needed working out. Associated with General Palmer was one
Col. Josiah C. Reiff, then Eastern bond agent for the Kansas Pacific
Railroad. The Colonel was always resourceful, and didn't fail in
this case. He knew of a young fellow who was doing some good work for
Marshall Lefferts, and who it was said was a genius at invention, and
a very fiend for work. His name was Edison, and he had a shop out at
Newark, New Jersey. He came and was put in my care for the purpose of a
mutual exchange of ideas and for a report by me as to his competency in
the matter. This was my introduction to Edison. He confirmed my views
of the automatic system. He saw its possibilities, as well as the chief
obstacles to be overcome--viz., the sluggishness of the wire, together
with the need of mechanical betterment of the apparatus; and he agreed
to take the job on one condition--namely, that Johnson would stay and
help, as 'he was a man with ideas.' Mr. Johnson was accordingly given
three months' leave from Colorado railroad-building, and has never seen
Colorado since."
Applying himself to the difficulties with wonted energy, Edison devised
new apparatus, and solved the problem to such an extent that he and his
assistants succeeded in transmitting and recording one thousand words
per minute between New York and Washington, and thirty-five hundred
words per minute to Philadelphia. Ordinary manual transmission by key
is not in excess of forty to fifty words a minute. Stated very briefly,
Edison's principal contribution to the commercial development of the
automatic was based on the observation that in a line of considerable
length electrical impulses become enormously extended, or sluggish, due
to a phenomenon known as self-induction, which with ordinary Morse work
is in a measure corrected by condensers. But in the automatic the aim
was to deal with impulses following each other from twenty-five to one
hundred times as rapidly as in Morse lines, and to attempt to receive
and record intelligibly such a lightning-like succession of signals
would have seemed impossible. But Edison discovered that by utilizing
a shunt around the receiving instrument, with a soft iron core, the
self-induction would produce a momentary and instantaneous reversal of
the current at the end of each impulse, and thereby give an absolutely
sharp definition to each signal. This discovery did away entirely with
sluggishness, and made it possible to secure high speeds over lines of
comparatively great lengths. But Edison's work on the automatic did
not stop with this basic suggestion, for he took up and perfected the
mechanical construction of the instruments, as well as the perforators,
and also suggested numerous electrosensitive chemicals for the
receivers, so that the automatic telegraph, almost entirely by reason of
his individual work, was placed on a plane of commercial practicability.
The long line of patents secured by him in this art is an interesting
exhibit of the development of a germ to a completed system, not, as
is usually the case, by numerous inventors working over considerable
periods of time, but by one man evolving the successive steps at a white
heat of activity.
This system was put in commercial operation, but the company, now
encouraged, was quite willing to allow Edison to work out his idea of an
automatic that would print the message in bold Roman letters instead
of in dots and dashes; with consequent gain in speed in delivery of
the message after its receipt in the operating-room, it being obviously
necessary in the case of any message received in Morse characters to
copy it in script before delivery to the recipient. A large shop was
rented in Newark, equipped with $25,000 worth of machinery, and Edison
was given full charge. Here he built their original type of apparatus,
as improved, and also pushed his experiments on the letter system so far
that at a test, between New York and Philadelphia, three thousand words
were sent in one minute and recorded in Roman type. Mr. D. N. Craig, one
of the early organizers of the Associated Press, became interested
in this company, whose president was Mr. George Harrington, formerly
Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury.
Mr. Craig brought with him at this time--the early seventies--from
Milwaukee a Mr. Sholes, who had a wooden model of a machine to which had
been given the then new and unfamiliar name of "typewriter." Craig
was interested in the machine, and put the model in Edison's hands to
perfect. "This typewriter proved a difficult thing," says Edison, "to
make commercial. The alignment of the letters was awful. One letter
would be one-sixteenth of an inch above the others; and all the letters
wanted to wander out of line. I worked on it till the machine gave
fair results. [3] Some were made and used in the office of the Automatic
company. Craig was very sanguine that some day all business letters
would be written on a typewriter. He died before that took place; but
it gradually made its way. The typewriter I got into commercial shape is
now known as the Remington. About this time I got an idea I could devise
an apparatus by which four messages could simultaneously be sent over a
single wire without interfering with each other. I now had five shops,
and with experimenting on this new scheme I was pretty busy; at least I
did not have ennui."
[Footnote 3: See illustration on opposite page, showing
reproduction of the work done with this machine.]
A very interesting picture of Mr. Edison at this time is furnished by
Mr. Patrick B. Delany, a well-known inventor in the field of automatic
and multiplex telegraphy, who at that time was a chief operator of the
Franklin Telegraph Company at Philadelphia. His remark about Edison that
"his ingenuity inspired confidence, and wavering financiers stiffened
up when it became known that he was to develop the automatic" is a
noteworthy evidence of the manner in which the young inventor had
already gained a firm footing. He continues: "Edward H. Johnson was
brought on from the Denver & Rio Grande Railway to assist in the
practical introduction of automatic telegraphy on a commercial basis,
and about this time, in 1872, I joined the enterprise. Fairly good
results were obtained between New York and Washington, and Edison,
indifferent to theoretical difficulties, set out to prove high speeds
between New York and Charleston, South Carolina, the compound wire being
hitched up to one of the Southern & Atlantic wires from Washington to
Charleston for the purpose of experimentation. Johnson and I went to the
Charleston end to carry out Edison's plans, which were rapidly unfolded
by telegraph every night from a loft on lower Broadway, New York. We
could only get the wire after all business was cleared, usually about
midnight, and for months, in the quiet hours, that wire was subjected
to more electrical acrobatics than any other wire ever experienced. When
the experiments ended, Edison's system was put into regular commercial
operation between New York and Washington; and did fine work. If the
single wire had not broken about every other day, the venture would have
been a financial success; but moisture got in between the copper ribbon
and the steel core, setting up galvanic action which made short work of
the steel. The demonstration was, however, sufficiently successful to
impel Jay Gould to contract to pay about $4,000,000 in stock for the
patents. The contract was never completed so far as the $4,000,000
were concerned, but Gould made good use of it in getting control of the
Western Union."
One of the most important persons connected with the automatic
enterprise was Mr. George Harrington, to whom we have above referred,
and with whom Mr. Edison entered into close confidential relations, so
that the inventions made were held jointly, under a partnership deed
covering "any inventions or improvements that may be useful or desired
in automatic telegraphy." Mr. Harrington was assured at the outset by
Edison that while the Little perforator would give on the average only
seven or eight words per minute, which was not enough for commercial
purposes, he could devise one giving fifty or sixty words, and that
while the Little solution for the receiving tape cost $15 to $17 per
gallon, he could furnish a ferric solution costing only five or six
cents per gallon. In every respect Edison "made good," and in a short
time the system was a success, "Mr. Little having withdrawn his obsolete
perforator, his ineffective resistance, his costly chemical solution, to
give place to Edison's perforator, Edison's resistance and devices, and
Edison's solution costing a few cents per gallon. But," continues Mr.
Harrington, in a memorable affidavit, "the inventive efforts of Mr.
Edison were not confined to automatic telegraphy, nor did they cease
with the opening of that line to Washington." They all led up to the
quadruplex.
Flattered by their success, Messrs. Harrington and Reiff, who owned with
Edison the foreign patents for the new automatic system, entered into an
arrangement with the British postal telegraph authorities for a trial
of the system in England, involving its probable adoption if successful.
Edison was sent to England to make the demonstration, in 1873, reporting
there to Col. George E. Gouraud, who had been an associate in the United
States Treasury with Mr. Harrington, and was now connected with the
new enterprise. With one small satchel of clothes, three large boxes of
instruments, and a bright fellow-telegrapher named Jack Wright, he took
voyage on the Jumping Java, as she was humorously known, of the Cunard
line. The voyage was rough and the little Java justified her reputation
by jumping all over the ocean. "At the table," says Edison, "there were
never more than ten or twelve people. I wondered at the time how it
could pay to run an ocean steamer with so few people; but when we got
into calm water and could see the green fields, I was astounded to see
the number of people who appeared. There were certainly two or three
hundred. I learned afterward that they were mostly going to the Vienna
Exposition. Only two days could I get on deck, and on one of these a
gentleman had a bad scalp wound from being thrown against the iron wall
of a small smoking-room erected over a freight hatch."
Arrived in London, Edison set up his apparatus at the Telegraph Street
headquarters, and sent his companion to Liverpool with the instruments
for that end. The condition of the test was that he was to send from
Liverpool and receive in London, and to record at the rate of one
thousand words per minute, five hundred words to be sent every half hour
for six hours. Edison was given a wire and batteries to operate with,
but a preliminary test soon showed that he was going to fail. Both wire
and batteries were poor, and one of the men detailed by the authorities
to watch the test remarked quietly, in a friendly way: "You are not
going to have much show. They are going to give you an old Bridgewater
Canal wire that is so poor we don't work it, and a lot of 'sand
batteries' at Liverpool." [4] The situation was rather depressing to
the young American thus encountering, for the first time, the stolid
conservatism and opposition to change that characterizes so much of
official life and methods in Europe. "I thanked him," says Edison, "and
hoped to reciprocate somehow. I knew I was in a hole. I had been staying
at a little hotel in Covent Garden called the Hummums! and got nothing
but roast beef and flounders, and my imagination was getting into a
coma. What I needed was pastry. That night I found a French pastry shop
in High Holborn Street and filled up. My imagination got all right.
Early in the morning I saw Gouraud, stated my case, and asked if he
would stand for the purchase of a powerful battery to send to Liverpool.
He said 'Yes.' I went immediately to Apps on the Strand and asked if
he had a powerful battery. He said he hadn't; that all that he had was
Tyndall's Royal Institution battery, which he supposed would not
serve. I saw it--one hundred cells--and getting the price--one hundred
guineas--hurried to Gouraud. He said 'Go ahead.' I telegraphed to the
man in Liverpool. He came on, got the battery to Liverpool, set up and
ready, just two hours before the test commenced. One of the principal
things that made the system a success was that the line was put to earth
at the sending end through a magnet, and the extra current from this,
passed to the line, served to sharpen the recording waves. This new
battery was strong enough to pass a powerful current through the magnet
without materially diminishing the strength of the line current."
[Footnote 4: The sand battery is now obsolete. In this type,
the cell containing the elements was filled with sand, which
was kept moist with an electrolyte.]
The test under these more favorable circumstances was a success. "The
record was as perfect as copper plate, and not a single remark was made
in the 'time lost' column." Edison was now asked if he thought he could
get a greater speed through submarine cables with this system than with
the regular methods, and replied that he would like a chance to try
it. For this purpose, twenty-two hundred miles of Brazilian cable then
stored under water in tanks at the Greenwich works of the Telegraph
Construction & Maintenance Company, near London, was placed at his
disposal from 8 P.M. until 6 A.M. "This just suited me, as I preferred
night-work. I got my apparatus down and set up, and then to get a
preliminary idea of what the distortion of the signal would be, I sent a
single dot, which should have been recorded upon my automatic paper by
a mark about one-thirty-second of an inch long. Instead of that it was
twenty-seven feet long! If I ever had any conceit, it vanished from my
boots up. I worked on this cable more than two weeks, and the best I
could do was two words per minute, which was only one-seventh of what
the guaranteed speed of the cable should be when laid. What I did
not know at the time was that a coiled cable, owing to induction, was
infinitely worse than when laid out straight, and that my speed was as
good as, if not better than, with the regular system; but no one told me
this." While he was engaged on these tests Colonel Gouraud came down
one night to visit him at the lonely works, spent a vigil with him, and
toward morning wanted coffee. There was only one little inn near
by, frequented by longshoremen and employees from the soap-works and
cement-factories--a rough lot--and there at daybreak they went as soon
as the other customers had left for work. "The place had a bar and six
bare tables, and was simply infested with roaches. The only things
that I ever could get were coffee made from burnt bread, with brown
molasses-cake. I ordered these for Gouraud. The taste of the coffee, the
insects, etc., were too much. He fainted. I gave him a big dose of gin,
and this revived him. He went back to the works and waited until six
when the day men came, and telegraphed for a carriage. He lost all
interest in the experiments after that, and I was ordered back to
America." Edison states, however, that the automatic was finally adopted
in England and used for many years; indeed, is still in use there. But
they took whatever was needed from his system, and he "has never had a
cent from them."
Arduous work was at once resumed at home on duplex and quadruplex
telegraphy, just as though there had been no intermission or
discouragement over dots twenty-seven feet long. A clue to his activity
is furnished in the fact that in 1872 he had applied for thirty-eight
patents in the class of telegraphy, and twenty-five in 1873; several
of these being for duplex methods, on which he had experimented. The
earlier apparatus had been built several years prior to this, as shown
by a curious little item of news that appeared in the Telegrapher
of January 30, 1869: "T. A. Edison has resigned his situation in the
Western Union office, Boston, and will devote his time to bringing out
his inventions." Oh, the supreme, splendid confidence of youth! Six
months later, as we have seen, he had already made his mark, and the
same journal, in October, 1869, could say: "Mr. Edison is a young man
of the highest order of mechanical talent, combined with good scientific
electrical knowledge and experience. He has already invented and
patented a number of valuable and useful inventions, among which may be
mentioned the best instrument for double transmission yet brought out."
Not bad for a novice of twenty-two. It is natural, therefore, after his
intervening work on indicators, stock tickers, automatic telegraphs, and
typewriters, to find him harking back to duplex telegraphy, if, indeed,
he can be said to have dropped it in the interval. It has always been
one of the characteristic features of Edison's method of inventing that
work in several lines has gone forward at the same time. No one line of
investigation has ever been enough to occupy his thoughts fully; or to
express it otherwise, he has found rest in turning from one field of
work to another, having absolutely no recreations or hobbies, and not
needing them. It may also be said that, once entering it, Mr. Edison has
never abandoned any field of work. He may change the line of attack; he
may drop the subject for a time; but sooner or later the note-books or
the Patent Office will bear testimony to the reminiscent outcropping of
latent thought on the matter. His attention has shifted chronologically,
and by process of evolution, from one problem to another, and some
results are found to be final; but the interest of the man in the thing
never dies out. No one sees more vividly than he the fact that in the
interplay of the arts one industry shapes and helps another, and that no
invention lives to itself alone.
The path to the quadruplex lay through work on the duplex, which,
suggested first by Moses G. Farmer in 1852, had been elaborated by many
ingenious inventors, notably in this country by Stearns, before Edison
once again applied his mind to it. The different methods of such
multiple transmission--namely, the simultaneous dispatch of the two
communications in opposite directions over the same wire, or the
dispatch of both at once in the same direction--gave plenty of play to
ingenuity. Prescott's Elements of the Electric Telegraph, a standard
work in its day, described "a method of simultaneous transmission
invented by T. A. Edison, of New Jersey, in 1873," and says of it: "Its
peculiarity consists in the fact that the signals are transmitted in one
direction by reversing the polarity of a constant current, and in the
opposite direction by increasing or decreasing the strength of the same
current." Herein lay the germ of the Edison quadruplex. It is also noted
that "In 1874 Edison invented a method of simultaneous transmission
by induced currents, which has given very satisfactory results in
experimental trials." Interest in the duplex as a field of invention
dwindled, however, as the quadruplex loomed up, for while the one
doubled the capacity of a circuit, the latter created three "phantom
wires," and thus quadruplexed the working capacity of any line to which
it was applied. As will have been gathered from the above, the principle
embodied in the quadruplex is that of working over the line with two
currents from each end that differ from each other in strength or
nature, so that they will affect only instruments adapted to respond
to just such currents and no others; and by so arranging the receiving
apparatus as not to be affected by the currents transmitted from its
own end of the line. Thus by combining instruments that respond only
to variation in the strength of current from the distant station, with
instruments that respond only to the change in the direction of current
from the distant station, and by grouping a pair of these at each end of
the line, the quadruplex is the result. Four sending and four receiving
operators are kept busy at each end, or eight in all. Aside from other
material advantages, it is estimated that at least from $15,000,000 to
$20,000,000 has been saved by the Edison quadruplex merely in the cost
of line construction in America.
The quadruplex has not as a rule the same working efficiency that
four separate wires have. This is due to the fact that when one of the
receiving operators is compelled to "break" the sending operator for
any reason, the "break" causes the interruption of the work of eight
operators, instead of two, as would be the case on a single wire. The
working efficiency of the quadruplex, therefore, with the apparatus in
good working condition, depends entirely upon the skill of the operators
employed to operate it. But this does not reflect upon or diminish the
ingenuity required for its invention. Speaking of the problem involved,
Edison said some years later to Mr. Upton, his mathematical assistant,
that "he always considered he was only working from one room to another.
Thus he was not confused by the amount of wire and the thought of
distance."
The immense difficulties of reducing such a system to practice may be
readily conceived, especially when it is remembered that the "line"
itself, running across hundreds of miles of country, is subject to all
manner of atmospheric conditions, and varies from moment to moment in
its ability to carry current, and also when it is borne in mind that
the quadruplex requires at each end of the line a so-called "artificial
line," which must have the exact resistance of the working line and must
be varied with the variations in resistance of the working line. At this
juncture other schemes were fermenting in his brain; but the quadruplex
engrossed him. "This problem was of most difficult and complicated kind,
and I bent all my energies toward its solution. It required a peculiar
effort of the mind, such as the imagining of eight different things
moving simultaneously on a mental plane, without anything to demonstrate
their efficiency." It is perhaps hardly to be wondered at that when
notified he would have to pay 12 1/2 per cent. extra if his taxes in
Newark were not at once paid, he actually forgot his own name when asked
for it suddenly at the City Hall, lost his place in the line, and, the
fatal hour striking, had to pay the surcharge after all!
So important an invention as the quadruplex could not long go begging,
but there were many difficulties connected with its introduction, some
of which are best described in Mr. Edison's own words: "Around 1873 the
owners of the Automatic Telegraph Company commenced negotiations with
Jay Gould for the purchase of the wires between New York and Washington,
and the patents for the system, then in successful operation. Jay Gould
at that time controlled the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company, and
was competing with the Western Union and endeavoring to depress Western
Union stock on the Exchange. About this time I invented the quadruplex.
I wanted to interest the Western Union Telegraph Company in it, with
a view of selling it, but was unsuccessful until I made an arrangement
with the chief electrician of the company, so that he could be known as
a joint inventor and receive a portion of the money. At that time I was
very short of money, and needed it more than glory. This electrician
appeared to want glory more than money, so it was an easy trade.
I brought my apparatus over and was given a separate room with a
marble-tiled floor, which, by-the-way, was a very hard kind of floor to
sleep on, and started in putting on the finishing touches.
"After two months of very hard work, I got a detail at regular times of
eight operators, and we got it working nicely from one room to another
over a wire which ran to Albany and back. Under certain conditions of
weather, one side of the quadruplex would work very shakily, and I had
not succeeded in ascertaining the cause of the trouble. On a certain
day, when there was a board meeting of the company, I was to make an
exhibition test. The day arrived. I had picked the best operators in New
York, and they were familiar with the apparatus. I arranged that if a
storm occurred, and the bad side got shaky, they should do the best
they could and draw freely on their imaginations. They were sending old
messages. About 1, o'clock everything went wrong, as there was a storm
somewhere near Albany, and the bad side got shaky. Mr. Orton, the
president, and Wm. H. Vanderbilt and the other directors came in. I had
my heart trying to climb up around my oesophagus. I was paying a sheriff
five dollars a day to withhold judgment which had been entered against
me in a case which I had paid no attention to; and if the quadruplex had
not worked before the president, I knew I was to have trouble and might
lose my machinery. The New York Times came out next day with a full
account. I was given $5000 as part payment for the invention, which
made me easy, and I expected the whole thing would be closed up. But Mr.
Orton went on an extended tour just about that time. I had paid for all
the experiments on the quadruplex and exhausted the money, and I was
again in straits. In the mean time I had introduced the apparatus on the
lines of the company, where it was very successful.
"At that time the general superintendent of the Western Union was Gen.
T. T. Eckert (who had been Assistant Secretary of War with Stanton).
Eckert was secretly negotiating with Gould to leave the Western Union
and take charge of the Atlantic & Pacific--Gould's company. One day
Eckert called me into his office and made inquiries about money matters.
I told him Mr. Orton had gone off and left me without means, and I was
in straits. He told me I would never get another cent, but that he
knew a man who would buy it. I told him of my arrangement with the
electrician, and said I could not sell it as a whole to anybody; but if
I got enough for it, I would sell all my interest in any SHARE I might
have. He seemed to think his party would agree to this. I had a set
of quadruplex over in my shop, 10 and 12 Ward Street, Newark, and he
arranged to bring him over next evening to see the apparatus. So the
next morning Eckert came over with Jay Gould and introduced him to me.
This was the first time I had ever seen him. I exhibited and explained
the apparatus, and they departed. The next day Eckert sent for me, and
I was taken up to Gould's house, which was near the Windsor Hotel, Fifth
Avenue. In the basement he had an office. It was in the evening, and we
went in by the servants' entrance, as Eckert probably feared that he
was watched. Gould started in at once and asked me how much I wanted.
I said: 'Make me an offer.' Then he said: 'I will give you $30,000.' I
said: 'I will sell any interest I may have for that money,' which was
something more than I thought I could get. The next morning I went with
Gould to the office of his lawyers, Sherman & Sterling, and received a
check for $30,000, with a remark by Gould that I had got the steamboat
Plymouth Rock, as he had sold her for $30,000 and had just received the
check. There was a big fight on between Gould's company and the Western
Union, and this caused more litigation. The electrician, on account
of the testimony involved, lost his glory. The judge never decided
the case, but went crazy a few months afterward." It was obviously a
characteristically shrewd move on the part of Mr. Gould to secure an
interest in the quadruplex, as a factor in his campaign against the
Western Union, and as a decisive step toward his control of that system,
by the subsequent merger that included not only the Atlantic & Pacific
Telegraph Company, but the American Union Telegraph Company.
Nor was Mr. Gould less appreciative of the value of Edison's automatic
system. Referring to matters that will be taken up later in the
narrative, Edison says: "After this Gould wanted me to help install the
automatic system in the Atlantic & Pacific company, of which General
Eckert had been elected president, the company having bought the
Automatic Telegraph Company. I did a lot of work for this company making
automatic apparatus in my shop at Newark. About this time I invented a
district messenger call-box system, and organized a company called the
Domestic Telegraph Company, and started in to install the system in
New York. I had great difficulty in getting subscribers, having tried
several canvassers, who, one after the other, failed to get subscribers.
When I was about to give it up, a test operator named Brown, who was
on the Automatic Telegraph wire between New York and Washington, which
passed through my Newark shop, asked permission to let him try and see
if he couldn't get subscribers. I had very little faith in his ability
to get any, but I thought I would give him a chance, as he felt
certain of his ability to succeed. He started in, and the results were
surprising. Within a month he had procured two hundred subscribers, and
the company was a success. I have never quite understood why six men
should fail absolutely, while the seventh man should succeed. Perhaps
hypnotism would account for it. This company was sold out to the
Atlantic & Pacific company." As far back as 1872, Edison had applied for
a patent on district messenger signal boxes, but it was not issued until
January, 1874, another patent being granted in September of the same
year. In this field of telegraph application, as in others, Edison was
a very early comer, his only predecessor being the fertile and ingenious
Callahan, of stock-ticker fame. The first president of the Gold & Stock
Telegraph Company, Elisha W. Andrews, had resigned in 1870 in order
to go to England to introduce the stock ticker in London. He lived in
Englewood, New Jersey, and the very night he had packed his trunk the
house was burglarized. Calling on his nearest friend the next morning
for even a pair of suspenders, Mr. Andrews was met with regrets of
inability, because the burglars had also been there. A third and fourth
friend in the vicinity was appealed to with the same disheartening reply
of a story of wholesale spoliation. Mr. Callahan began immediately to
devise a system of protection for Englewood; but at that juncture a
servant-girl who had been for many years with a family on the Heights
in Brooklyn went mad suddenly and held an aged widow and her daughter
as helpless prisoners for twenty-four hours without food or water. This
incident led to an extension of the protective idea, and very soon a
system was installed in Brooklyn with one hundred subscribers. Out of
this grew in turn the district messenger system, for it was just as
easy to call a messenger as to sound a fire-alarm or summon the police.
To-day no large city in America is without a service of this character,
but its function was sharply limited by the introduction of the
telephone.
Returning to the automatic telegraph it is interesting to note that so
long as Edison was associated with it as a supervising providence it did
splendid work, which renders the later neglect of automatic or "rapid
telegraphy" the more remarkable. Reid's standard Telegraph in America
bears astonishing testimony on this point in 1880, as follows: "The
Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company had twenty-two automatic stations.
These included the chief cities on the seaboard, Buffalo, Chicago,
and Omaha. The through business during nearly two years was largely
transmitted in this way. Between New York and Boston two thousand words
a minute have been sent. The perforated paper was prepared at the rate
of twenty words per minute. Whatever its demerits this system enabled
the Atlantic & Pacific company to handle a much larger business during
1875 and 1876 than it could otherwise have done with its limited
number of wires in their then condition." Mr. Reid also notes as a
very thorough test of the perfect practicability of the system, that it
handled the President's message, December 3, 1876, of 12,600 words with
complete success. This long message was filed at Washington at 1.05 and
delivered in New York at 2.07. The first 9000 words were transmitted
in forty-five minutes. The perforated strips were prepared in thirty
minutes by ten persons, and duplicated by nine copyists. But to-day,
nearly thirty-five years later, telegraphy in America is still
practically on a basis of hand transmission!
Of this period and his association with Jay Gould, some very interesting
glimpses are given by Edison. "While engaged in putting in the automatic
system, I saw a great deal of Gould, and frequently went uptown to his
office to give information. Gould had no sense of humor. I tried several
times to get off what seemed to me a funny story, but he failed to see
any humor in them. I was very fond of stories, and had a choice
lot, always kept fresh, with which I could usually throw a man into
convulsions. One afternoon Gould started in to explain the great future
of the Union Pacific Railroad, which he then controlled. He got a map,
and had an immense amount of statistics. He kept at it for over four
hours, and got very enthusiastic. Why he should explain to me, a mere
inventor, with no capital or standing, I couldn't make out. He had a
peculiar eye, and I made up my mind that there was a strain of insanity
somewhere. This idea was strengthened shortly afterward when the Western
Union raised the monthly rental of the stock tickers. Gould had one in
his house office, which he watched constantly. This he had removed,
to his great inconvenience, because the price had been advanced a few
dollars! He railed over it. This struck me as abnormal. I think Gould's
success was due to abnormal development. He certainly had one trait
that all men must have who want to succeed. He collected every kind of
information and statistics about his schemes, and had all the data. His
connection with men prominent in official life, of which I was aware,
was surprising to me. His conscience seemed to be atrophied, but that
may be due to the fact that he was contending with men who never had any
to be atrophied. He worked incessantly until 12 or 1 o'clock at night.
He took no pride in building up an enterprise. He was after money, and
money only. Whether the company was a success or a failure mattered not
to him. After he had hammered the Western Union through his opposition
company and had tired out Mr. Vanderbilt, the latter retired from
control, and Gould went in and consolidated his company and controlled
the Western Union. He then repudiated the contract with the Automatic
Telegraph people, and they never received a cent for their wires or
patents, and I lost three years of very hard labor. But I never had any
grudge against him, because he was so able in his line, and as long as
my part was successful the money with me was a secondary consideration.
When Gould got the Western Union I knew no further progress in
telegraphy was possible, and I went into other lines." The truth is
that General Eckert was a conservative--even a reactionary--and being
prejudiced like many other American telegraph managers against "machine
telegraphy," threw out all such improvements.
The course of electrical history has been variegated by some very
remarkable litigation; but none was ever more extraordinary than that
referred to here as arising from the transfer of the Automatic Telegraph
Company to Mr. Jay Gould and the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company.
The terms accepted by Colonel Reiff from Mr. Gould, on December 30,
1874, provided that the purchasing telegraph company should increase its
capital to $15,000,000, of which the Automatic interests were to receive
$4,000,000 for their patents, contracts, etc. The stock was then selling
at about 25, and in the later consolidation with the Western Union
"went in" at about 60; so that the real purchase price was not less than
$1,000,000 in cash. There was a private arrangement in writing with Mr.
Gould that he was to receive one-tenth of the "result" to the Automatic
group, and a tenth of the further results secured at home and abroad.
Mr. Gould personally bought up and gave money and bonds for one or two
individual interests on the above basis, including that of Harrington,
who in his representative capacity executed assignments to Mr. Gould.
But payments were then stopped, and the other owners were left without
any compensation, although all that belonged to them in the shape of
property and patents was taken over bodily into Atlantic & Pacific
hands, and never again left them. Attempts at settlement were made in
their behalf, and dragged wearily, due apparently to the fact that
the plans were blocked by General Eckert, who had in some manner taken
offence at a transaction effected without his active participation in
all the details. Edison, who became under the agreement the electrician
of the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company, has testified to the
unfriendly attitude assumed toward him by General Eckert, as president.
In a graphic letter from Menlo Park to Mr. Gould, dated February 2,
1877, Edison makes a most vigorous and impassioned complaint of
his treatment, "which, acting cumulatively, was a long, unbroken
disappointment to me"; and he reminds Mr. Gould of promises made to
him the day the transfer had been effected of Edison's interest in the
quadruplex. The situation was galling to the busy, high-spirited young
inventor, who, moreover, "had to live"; and it led to his resumption of
work for the Western Union Telegraph Company, which was only too glad to
get him back. Meantime, the saddened and perplexed Automatic group was
left unpaid, and it was not until 1906, on a bill filed nearly thirty
years before, that Judge Hazel, in the United States Circuit Court
for the Southern District of New York, found strongly in favor of the
claimants and ordered an accounting. The court held that there had been
a most wrongful appropriation of the patents, including alike those
relating to the automatic, the duplex, and the quadruplex, all being
included in the general arrangement under which Mr. Gould had held put
his tempting bait of $4,000,000. In the end, however, the complainant
had nothing to show for all his struggle, as the master who made the
accounting set the damages at one dollar!
Aside from the great value of the quadruplex, saving millions of
dollars, for a share in which Edison received $30,000, the automatic
itself is described as of considerable utility by Sir William Thomson in
his juror report at the Centennial Exposition of 1876, recommending it
for award. This leading physicist of his age, afterward Lord Kelvin, was
an adept in telegraphy, having made the ocean cable talk, and he saw in
Edison's "American Automatic," as exhibited by the Atlantic & Pacific
company, a most meritorious and useful system. With the aid of Mr. E.
H. Johnson he made exhaustive tests, carrying away with him to Glasgow
University the surprising records that he obtained. His official report
closes thus: "The electromagnetic shunt with soft iron core, invented
by Mr. Edison, utilizing Professor Henry's discovery of electromagnetic
induction in a single circuit to produce a momentary reversal of the
line current at the instant when the battery is thrown off and so cut
off the chemical marks sharply at the proper instant, is the electrical
secret of the great speed he has achieved. The main peculiarities of Mr.
Edison's automatic telegraph shortly stated in conclusion are: (1) the
perforator; (2) the contact-maker; (3) the electromagnetic shunt; and
(4) the ferric cyanide of iron solution. It deserves award as a very
important step in land telegraphy." The attitude thus disclosed toward
Mr. Edison's work was never changed, except that admiration grew as
fresh inventions were brought forward. To the day of his death Lord
Kelvin remained on terms of warmest friendship with his American
co-laborer, with whose genius he thus first became acquainted at
Philadelphia in the environment of Franklin.
It is difficult to give any complete idea of the activity maintained at
the Newark shops during these anxious, harassed years, but the statement
that at one time no fewer than forty-five different inventions were
being worked upon, will furnish some notion of the incandescent activity
of the inventor and his assistants. The hours were literally endless;
and upon one occasion, when the order was in hand for a large quantity
of stock tickers, Edison locked his men in until the job had been
finished of making the machine perfect, and "all the bugs taken out,"
which meant sixty hours of unintermitted struggle with the difficulties.
Nor were the problems and inventions all connected with telegraphy.
On the contrary, Edison's mind welcomed almost any new suggestion as a
relief from the regular work in hand. Thus: "Toward the latter part of
1875, in the Newark shop, I invented a device for multiplying copies of
letters, which I sold to Mr. A. B. Dick, of Chicago, and in the years
since it has been universally introduced throughout the world. It is
called the 'Mimeograph.' I also invented devices for and introduced
paraffin paper, now used universally for wrapping up candy, etc."
The mimeograph employs a pointed stylus, used as in writing with a
lead-pencil, which is moved over a kind of tough prepared paper placed
on a finely grooved steel plate. The writing is thus traced by means of
a series of minute perforations in the sheet, from which, as a stencil,
hundreds of copies can be made. Such stencils can be prepared on
typewriters. Edison elaborated this principle in two other forms--one
pneumatic and one electric--the latter being in essence a reciprocating
motor. Inside the barrel of the electric pen a little plunger, carrying
the stylus, travels to and fro at a very high rate of speed, due to the
attraction and repulsion of the solenoid coils of wire surrounding it;
and as the hand of the writer guides it the pen thus makes its record
in a series of very minute perforations in the paper. The current from
a small battery suffices to energize the pen, and with the stencil thus
made hundreds of copies of the document can be furnished. As a matter
of fact, as many as three thousand copies have been made from a single
mimeographic stencil of this character.
CHAPTER IX
THE TELEPHONE, MOTOGRAPH, AND MICROPHONE
A VERY great invention has its own dramatic history. Episodes full of
human interest attend its development. The periods of weary struggle,
the daring adventure along unknown paths, the clash of rival claimants,
are closely similar to those which mark the revelation and subjugation
of a new continent. At the close of the epoch of discovery it is seen
that mankind as a whole has made one more great advance; but in the
earlier stages one watched chiefly the confused vicissitudes of fortune
of the individual pioneers. The great modern art of telephony has had
thus in its beginnings, its evolution, and its present status as a
universal medium of intercourse, all the elements of surprise, mystery,
swift creation of wealth, tragic interludes, and colossal battle that
can appeal to the imagination and hold public attention. And in this
new electrical industry, in laying its essential foundations, Edison has
again been one of the dominant figures.
As far back as 1837, the American, Page, discovered the curious fact
that an iron bar, when magnetized and demagnetized at short intervals
of time, emitted sounds due to the molecular disturbances in the mass.
Philipp Reis, a simple professor in Germany, utilized this principle in
the construction of apparatus for the transmission of sound; but in the
grasp of the idea he was preceded by Charles Bourseul, a young French
soldier in Algeria, who in 1854, under the title of "Electrical
Telephony," in a Parisian illustrated paper, gave a brief and lucid
description as follows:
"We know that sounds are made by vibrations, and are made sensible to
the ear by the same vibrations, which are reproduced by the intervening
medium. But the intensity of the vibrations diminishes very rapidly with
the distance; so that even with the aid of speaking-tubes and trumpets
it is impossible to exceed somewhat narrow limits. Suppose a man speaks
near a movable disk sufficiently flexible to lose none of the vibrations
of the voice; that this disk alternately makes and breaks the connection
with a battery; you may have at a distance another disk which will
simultaneously execute the same vibrations.... Any one who is not deaf
and dumb may use this mode of transmission, which would require no
apparatus except an electric battery, two vibrating disks, and a wire."
This would serve admirably for a portrayal of the Bell telephone, except
that it mentions distinctly the use of the make-and-break method (i.
e., where the circuit is necessarily opened and closed as in telegraphy,
although, of course, at an enormously higher rate), which has never
proved practical.
So far as is known Bourseul was not practical enough to try his own
suggestion, and never made a telephone. About 1860, Reis built several
forms of electrical telephonic apparatus, all imitating in some degree
the human ear, with its auditory tube, tympanum, etc., and examples
of the apparatus were exhibited in public not only in Germany, but in
England. There is a variety of testimony to the effect that not only
musical sounds, but stray words and phrases, were actually transmitted
with mediocre, casual success. It was impossible, however, to maintain
the devices in adjustment for more than a few seconds, since the
invention depended upon the make-and-break principle, the circuit being
made and broken every time an impulse-creating sound went through it,
causing the movement of the diaphragm on which the sound-waves impinged.
Reis himself does not appear to have been sufficiently interested in the
marvellous possibilities of the idea to follow it up--remarking to the
man who bought his telephonic instruments and tools that he had shown
the world the way. In reality it was not the way, although a monument
erected to his memory at Frankfort styles him the inventor of the
telephone. As one of the American judges said, in deciding an early
litigation over the invention of the telephone, a hundred years of Reis
would not have given the world the telephonic art for public use. Many
others after Reis tried to devise practical make-and-break telephones,
and all failed; although their success would have rendered them very
valuable as a means of fighting the Bell patent. But the method was a
good starting-point, even if it did not indicate the real path. If Reis
had been willing to experiment with his apparatus so that it did not
make-and-break, he would probably have been the true father of the
telephone, besides giving it the name by which it is known. It was not
necessary to slam the gate open and shut. All that was required was to
keep the gate closed, and rattle the latch softly. Incidentally it
may be noted that Edison in experimenting with the Reis transmitter
recognized at once the defect caused by the make-and-break action, and
sought to keep the gap closed by the use, first, of one drop of water,
and later of several drops. But the water decomposed, and the incurable
defect was still there.
The Reis telephone was brought to America by Dr. P. H. Van der Weyde,
a well-known physicist in his day, and was exhibited by him before a
technical audience at Cooper Union, New York, in 1868, and described
shortly after in the technical press. The apparatus attracted attention,
and a set was secured by Prof. Joseph Henry for the Smithsonian
Institution. There the famous philosopher showed and explained it to
Alexander Graham Bell, when that young and persevering Scotch genius
went to get help and data as to harmonic telegraphy, upon which he was
working, and as to transmitting vocal sounds. Bell took up immediately
and energetically the idea that his two predecessors had dropped--and
reached the goal. In 1875 Bell, who as a student and teacher of vocal
physiology had unusual qualifications for determining feasible methods
of speech transmission, constructed his first pair of magneto telephones
for such a purpose. In February of 1876 his first telephone patent was
applied for, and in March it was issued. The first published account
of the modern speaking telephone was a paper read by Bell before the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston in May of that year;
while at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia the public first
gained any familiarity with it. It was greeted at once with scientific
acclaim and enthusiasm as a distinctly new and great invention, although
at first it was regarded more as a scientific toy than as a commercially
valuable device.
By an extraordinary coincidence, the very day that Bell's application
for a patent went into the United States Patent Office, a caveat was
filed there by Elisha Gray, of Chicago, covering the specific idea of
transmitting speech and reproducing it in a telegraphic circuit "through
an instrument capable of vibrating responsively to all the tones of
the human voice, and by which they are rendered audible." Out of this
incident arose a struggle and a controversy whose echoes are yet heard
as to the legal and moral rights of the two inventors, the assertion
even being made that one of the most important claims of Gray, that on
a liquid battery transmitter, was surreptitiously "lifted" into the
Bell application, then covering only the magneto telephone. It was also
asserted that the filing of the Gray caveat antedated by a few hours
the filing of the Bell application. All such issues when brought to
the American courts were brushed aside, the Bell patent being broadly
maintained in all its remarkable breadth and fullness, embracing an
entire art; but Gray was embittered and chagrined, and to the last
expressed his belief that the honor and glory should have been his. The
path of Gray to the telephone was a natural one. A Quaker carpenter who
studied five years at Oberlin College, he took up electrical invention,
and brought out many ingenious devices in rapid succession in the
telegraphic field, including the now universal needle annunciator for
hotels, etc., the useful telautograph, automatic self-adjusting relays,
private-line printers--leading up to his famous "harmonic" system. This
was based upon the principle that a sound produced in the presence of a
reed or tuning-fork responding to the sound, and acting as the armature
of a magnet in a closed circuit, would, by induction, set up electric
impulses in the circuit and cause a distant magnet having a similarly
tuned armature to produce the same tone or note. He also found that over
the same wire at the same time another series of impulses corresponding
to another note could be sent through the agency of a second set
of magnets without in any way interfering with the first series of
impulses. Building the principle into apparatus, with a keyboard and
vibrating "reeds" before his magnets, Doctor Gray was able not only to
transmit music by his harmonic telegraph, but went so far as to send
nine different telegraph messages at the same instant, each set of
instruments depending on its selective note, while any intermediate
office could pick up the message for itself by simply tuning its relays
to the keynote required. Theoretically the system could be split up into
any number of notes and semi-tones. Practically it served as the basis
of some real telegraphic work, but is not now in use. Any one can
realize, however, that it did not take so acute and ingenious a mind
very long to push forward to the telephone, as a dangerous competitor
with Bell, who had also, like Edison, been working assiduously in the
field of acoustic and multiple telegraphs. Seen in the retrospect, the
struggle for the goal at this moment was one of the memorable incidents
in electrical history.
Among the interesting papers filed at the Orange Laboratory is a
lithograph, the size of an ordinary patent drawing, headed "First
Telephone on Record." The claim thus made goes back to the period
when all was war, and when dispute was hot and rife as to the actual
invention of the telephone. The device shown, made by Edison in 1875,
was actually included in a caveat filed January 14, 1876, a month before
Bell or Gray. It shows a little solenoid arrangement, with one end
of the plunger attached to the diaphragm of a speaking or resonating
chamber. Edison states that while the device is crudely capable of use
as a magneto telephone, he did not invent it for transmitting speech,
but as an apparatus for analyzing the complex waves arising from various
sounds. It was made in pursuance of his investigations into the subject
of harmonic telegraphs. He did not try the effect of sound-waves
produced by the human voice until Bell came forward a few months later;
but he found then that this device, made in 1875, was capable of use as
a telephone. In his testimony and public utterances Edison has always
given Bell credit for the discovery of the transmission of articulate
speech by talking against a diaphragm placed in front of an
electromagnet; but it is only proper here to note, in passing, the
curious fact that he had actually produced a device that COULD talk,
prior to 1876, and was therefore very close to Bell, who took the
one great step further. A strong characterization of the value and
importance of the work done by Edison in the development of the carbon
transmitter will be found in the decision of Judge Brown in the United
States Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in Boston, on February 27,
1901, declaring void the famous Berliner patent of the Bell telephone
system. [5]
[Footnote 5: See Federal Reporter, vol. 109, p. 976 et seq.]
Bell's patent of 1876 was of an all-embracing character, which only
the make-and-break principle, if practical, could have escaped. It was
pointed out in the patent that Bell discovered the great principle that
electrical undulations induced by the vibrations of a current produced
by sound-waves can be represented graphically by the same sinusoidal
curve that expresses the original sound vibrations themselves; or, in
other words, that a curve representing sound vibrations will correspond
precisely to a curve representing electric impulses produced or
generated by those identical sound vibrations--as, for example, when
the latter impinge upon a diaphragm acting as an armature of an
electromagnet, and which by movement to and fro sets up the electric
impulses by induction. To speak plainly, the electric impulses
correspond in form and character to the sound vibration which they
represent. This reduced to a patent "claim" governed the art as firmly
as a papal bull for centuries enabled Spain to hold the Western
world. The language of the claim is: "The method of and apparatus for
transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically as herein described,
by causing electrical undulations similar in form to the vibrations of
the air accompanying the said vocal or other sounds substantially as set
forth." It was a long time, however, before the inclusive nature of this
grant over every possible telephone was understood or recognized, and
litigation for and against the patent lasted during its entire life. At
the outset, the commercial value of the telephone was little appreciated
by the public, and Bell had the greatest difficulty in securing capital;
but among far-sighted inventors there was an immediate "rush to the gold
fields." Bell's first apparatus was poor, the results being described by
himself as "unsatisfactory and discouraging," which was almost as
true of the devices he exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial. The
new-comers, like Edison, Berliner, Blake, Hughes, Gray, Dolbear, and
others, brought a wealth of ideas, a fund of mechanical ingenuity,
and an inventive ability which soon made the telephone one of the most
notable gains of the century, and one of the most valuable additions
to human resources. The work that Edison did was, as usual, marked by
infinite variety of method as well as by the power to seize on the
one needed element of practical success. Every one of the six million
telephones in use in the United States, and of the other millions in use
through out the world, bears the imprint of his genius, as at one time
the instruments bore his stamped name. For years his name was branded
on every Bell telephone set, and his patents were a mainstay of what has
been popularly called the "Bell monopoly." Speaking of his own efforts
in this field, Mr. Edison says:
"In 1876 I started again to experiment for the Western Union and
Mr. Orton. This time it was the telephone. Bell invented the first
telephone, which consisted of the present receiver, used both as a
transmitter and a receiver (the magneto type). It was attempted to
introduce it commercially, but it failed on account of its faintness and
the extraneous sounds which came in on its wires from various causes.
Mr. Orton wanted me to take hold of it and make it commercial. As I
had also been working on a telegraph system employing tuning-forks,
simultaneously with both Bell and Gray, I was pretty familiar with the
subject. I started in, and soon produced the carbon transmitter, which
is now universally used.
"Tests were made between New York and Philadelphia, also between New
York and Washington, using regular Western Union wires. The noises were
so great that not a word could be heard with the Bell receiver when used
as a transmitter between New York and Newark, New Jersey. Mr. Orton and
W. K. Vanderbilt and the board of directors witnessed and took part
in the tests. The Western Union then put them on private lines. Mr.
Theodore Puskas, of Budapest, Hungary, was the first man to suggest
a telephone exchange, and soon after exchanges were established. The
telephone department was put in the hands of Hamilton McK. Twombly,
Vanderbilt's ablest son-in-law, who made a success of it. The Bell
company, of Boston, also started an exchange, and the fight was on,
the Western Union pirating the Bell receiver, and the Boston company
pirating the Western Union transmitter. About this time I wanted to be
taken care of. I threw out hints of this desire. Then Mr. Orton sent
for me. He had learned that inventors didn't do business by the regular
process, and concluded he would close it right up. He asked me how much
I wanted. I had made up my mind it was certainly worth $25,000, if it
ever amounted to anything for central-station work, so that was the sum
I had in mind to stick to and get--obstinately. Still it had been an
easy job, and only required a few months, and I felt a little shaky and
uncertain. So I asked him to make me an offer. He promptly said he would
give me $100,000. 'All right,' I said. 'It is yours on one condition,
and that is that you do not pay it all at once, but pay me at the rate
of $6000 per year for seventeen years'--the life of the patent. He
seemed only too pleased to do this, and it was closed. My ambition was
about four times too large for my business capacity, and I knew that I
would soon spend this money experimenting if I got it all at once, so
I fixed it that I couldn't. I saved seventeen years of worry by this
stroke."
Thus modestly is told the debut of Edison in the telephone art, to which
with his carbon transmitter he gave the valuable principle of varying
the resistance of the transmitting circuit with changes in the pressure,
as well as the vital practice of using the induction coil as a means of
increasing the effective length of the talking circuit. Without these,
modern telephony would not and could not exist. [6] But Edison, in
telephonic work, as in other directions, was remarkably fertile and
prolific. His first inventions in the art, made in 1875-76, continue
through many later years, including all kinds of carbon instruments
--the water telephone, electrostatic telephone, condenser telephone,
chemical telephone, various magneto telephones, inertia telephone,
mercury telephone, voltaic pile telephone, musical transmitter, and the
electromotograph. All were actually made and tested.
[Footnote 6: Briefly stated, the essential difference
between Bell's telephone and Edison's is this: With the
former the sound vibrations impinge upon a steel diaphragm
arranged adjacent to the pole of a bar electromagnet,
whereby the diaphragm acts as an armature, and by its
vibrations induces very weak electric impulses in the
magnetic coil. These impulses, according to Bell's theory,
correspond in form to the sound-waves, and passing over the
line energize the magnet coil at the receiving end, and by
varying the magnetism cause the receiving diaphragm to be
similarly vibrated to reproduce the sounds. A single
apparatus is therefore used at each end, performing the
double function of transmitter and receiver. With Edison's
telephone a closed circuit is used on which is constantly
flowing a battery current, and included in that circuit is a
pair of electrodes, one or both of which is of carbon. These
electrodes are always in contact with a certain initial
pressure, so that current will be always flowing over the
circuit. One of the electrodes is connected with the
diaphragm on which the sound-waves impinge, and the
vibration of this diaphragm causes the pressure between the
electrodes to be correspondingly varied, and thereby effects
a variation in the current, resulting in the production of
impulses which actuate the receiving magnet. In other words,
with Bell's telephone the sound-waves themselves generate
the electric impulses, which are hence extremely faint. With
the Edison telephone, the sound-waves actuate an electric
valve, so to speak, and permit variations in a current of
any desired strength.
A second distinction between the two telephones is this:
With the Bell apparatus the very weak electric impulses
generated by the vibration of the transmitting diaphragm
pass over the entire line to the receiving end, and in
consequence the permissible length of line is limited to a
few miles under ideal conditions. With Edison's telephone
the battery current does not flow on the main line, but
passes through the primary circuit of an induction coil, by
which corresponding impulses of enormously higher potential
are sent out on the main line to the receiving end. In
consequence, the line may be hundreds of miles in length. No
modern telephone system in use to-day lacks these
characteristic features--the varying resistance and the
induction coil.]
The principle of the electromotograph was utilized by Edison in
more ways than one, first of all in telegraphy at this juncture. The
well-known Page patent, which had lingered in the Patent Office for
years, had just been issued, and was considered a formidable weapon. It
related to the use of a retractile spring to withdraw the armature
lever from the magnet of a telegraph or other relay or sounder, and thus
controlled the art of telegraphy, except in simple circuits. "There was
no known way," remarks Edison, "whereby this patent could be evaded, and
its possessor would eventually control the use of what is known as the
relay and sounder, and this was vital to telegraphy. Gould was pounding
the Western Union on the Stock Exchange, disturbing its railroad
contracts, and, being advised by his lawyers that this patent was of
great value, bought it. The moment Mr. Orton heard this he sent for me
and explained the situation, and wanted me to go to work immediately and
see if I couldn't evade it or discover some other means that could be
used in case Gould sustained the patent. It seemed a pretty hard job,
because there was no known means of moving a lever at the other end of
a telegraph wire except by the use of a magnet. I said I would go at it
that night. In experimenting some years previously, I had discovered
a very peculiar phenomenon, and that was that if a piece of metal
connected to a battery was rubbed over a moistened piece of chalk
resting on a metal connected to the other pole, when the current passed
the friction was greatly diminished. When the current was reversed the
friction was greatly increased over what it was when no current was
passing. Remembering this, I substituted a piece of chalk rotated by
a small electric motor for the magnet, and connecting a sounder to a
metallic finger resting on the chalk, the combination claim of Page was
made worthless. A hitherto unknown means was introduced in the electric
art. Two or three of the devices were made and tested by the company's
expert. Mr. Orton, after he had me sign the patent application and got
it in the Patent Office, wanted to settle for it at once. He asked my
price. Again I said: 'Make me an offer.' Again he named $100,000. I
accepted, providing he would pay it at the rate of $6000 a year for
seventeen years. This was done, and thus, with the telephone money, I
received $12,000 yearly for that period from the Western Union Telegraph
Company."
A year or two later the motograph cropped up again in Edison's work in a
curious manner. The telephone was being developed in England, and Edison
had made arrangements with Colonel Gouraud, his old associate in the
automatic telegraph, to represent his interests. A company was formed, a
large number of instruments were made and sent to Gouraud in London, and
prospects were bright. Then there came a threat of litigation from
the owners of the Bell patent, and Gouraud found he could not push
the enterprise unless he could avoid using what was asserted to be an
infringement of the Bell receiver. He cabled for help to Edison, who
sent back word telling him to hold the fort. "I had recourse again,"
says Edison, "to the phenomenon discovered by me years previous, that
the friction of a rubbing electrode passing over a moist chalk surface
was varied by electricity. I devised a telephone receiver which was
afterward known as the 'loud-speaking telephone,' or 'chalk receiver.'
There was no magnet, simply a diaphragm and a cylinder of compressed
chalk about the size of a thimble. A thin spring connected to the centre
of the diaphragm extended outwardly and rested on the chalk cylinder,
and was pressed against it with a pressure equal to that which would be
due to a weight of about six pounds. The chalk was rotated by hand.
The volume of sound was very great. A person talking into the carbon
transmitter in New York had his voice so amplified that he could be
heard one thousand feet away in an open field at Menlo Park. This great
excess of power was due to the fact that the latter came from the person
turning the handle. The voice, instead of furnishing all the power
as with the present receiver, merely controlled the power, just as an
engineer working a valve would control a powerful engine.
"I made six of these receivers and sent them in charge of an expert on
the first steamer. They were welcomed and tested, and shortly afterward
I shipped a hundred more. At the same time I was ordered to send twenty
young men, after teaching them to become expert. I set up an exchange,
around the laboratory, of ten instruments. I would then go out and get
each one out of order in every conceivable way, cutting the wires of
one, short-circuiting another, destroying the adjustment of a third,
putting dirt between the electrodes of a fourth, and so on. A man would
be sent to each to find out the trouble. When he could find the trouble
ten consecutive times, using five minutes each, he was sent to London.
About sixty men were sifted to get twenty. Before all had arrived,
the Bell company there, seeing we could not be stopped, entered into
negotiations for consolidation. One day I received a cable from Gouraud
offering '30,000' for my interest. I cabled back I would accept. When
the draft came I was astonished to find it was for L30,000. I had
thought it was dollars."
In regard to this singular and happy conclusion, Edison makes some
interesting comments as to the attitude of the courts toward inventors,
and the difference between American and English courts. "The men I sent
over were used to establish telephone exchanges all over the Continent,
and some of them became wealthy. It was among this crowd in London that
Bernard Shaw was employed before he became famous. The chalk telephone
was finally discarded in favor of the Bell receiver--the latter being
more simple and cheaper. Extensive litigation with new-comers followed.
My carbon-transmitter patent was sustained, and preserved the monopoly
of the telephone in England for many years. Bell's patent was not
sustained by the courts. Sir Richard Webster, now Chief-Justice of
England, was my counsel, and sustained all of my patents in England for
many years. Webster has a marvellous capacity for understanding things
scientific; and his address before the courts was lucidity itself. His
brain is highly organized. My experience with the legal fraternity is
that scientific subjects are distasteful to them, and it is rare in this
country, on account of the system of trying patent suits, for a judge
really to reach the meat of the controversy, and inventors scarcely ever
get a decision squarely and entirely in their favor. The fault rests, in
my judgment, almost wholly with the system under which testimony to the
extent of thousands of pages bearing on all conceivable subjects, many
of them having no possible connection with the invention in dispute,
is presented to an over-worked judge in an hour or two of argument
supported by several hundred pages of briefs; and the judge is supposed
to extract some essence of justice from this mass of conflicting, blind,
and misleading statements. It is a human impossibility, no matter how
able and fair-minded the judge may be. In England the case is different.
There the judges are face to face with the experts and other witnesses.
They get the testimony first-hand and only so much as they need, and
there are no long-winded briefs and arguments, and the case is decided
then and there, a few months perhaps after suit is brought, instead of
many years afterward, as in this country. And in England, when a case is
once finally decided it is settled for the whole country, while here it
is not so. Here a patent having once been sustained, say, in Boston,
may have to be litigated all over again in New York, and again in
Philadelphia, and so on for all the Federal circuits. Furthermore, it
seems to me that scientific disputes should be decided by some
court containing at least one or two scientific men--men capable of
comprehending the significance of an invention and the difficulties of
its accomplishment--if justice is ever to be given to an inventor. And
I think, also, that this court should have the power to summon before it
and examine any recognized expert in the special art, who might be able
to testify to FACTS for or against the patent, instead of trying
to gather the truth from the tedious essays of hired experts, whose
depositions are really nothing but sworn arguments. The real gist of
patent suits is generally very simple, and I have no doubt that any
judge of fair intelligence, assisted by one or more scientific advisers,
could in a couple of days at the most examine all the necessary
witnesses; hear all the necessary arguments, and actually decide an
ordinary patent suit in a way that would more nearly be just, than
can now be done at an expenditure of a hundred times as much money and
months and years of preparation. And I have no doubt that the time taken
by the court would be enormously less, because if a judge attempts to
read the bulky records and briefs, that work alone would require several
days.
"Acting as judges, inventors would not be very apt to correctly decide
a complicated law point; and on the other hand, it is hard to see how a
lawyer can decide a complicated scientific point rightly. Some inventors
complain of our Patent Office, but my own experience with the Patent
Office is that the examiners are fair-minded and intelligent, and when
they refuse a patent they are generally right; but I think the whole
trouble lies with the system in vogue in the Federal courts for trying
patent suits, and in the fact, which cannot be disputed, that the
Federal judges, with but few exceptions, do not comprehend complicated
scientific questions. To secure uniformity in the several Federal
circuits and correct errors, it has been proposed to establish a central
court of patent appeals in Washington. This I believe in; but this court
should also contain at least two scientific men, who would not be blind
to the sophistry of paid experts. [7] Men whose inventions would have
created wealth of millions have been ruined and prevented from making
any money whereby they could continue their careers as creators of
wealth for the general good, just because the experts befuddled the
judge by their misleading statements."
[Footnote 7: As an illustration of the perplexing nature of
expert evidence in patent cases, the reader will probably be
interested in perusing the following extracts from the
opinion of Judge Dayton, in the suit of Bryce Bros. Co. vs.
Seneca Glass Co., tried in the United States Circuit Court,
Northern District of West Virginia, reported in The Federal
Reporter, 140, page 161:
"On this subject of the validity of this patent, a vast
amount of conflicting, technical, perplexing, and almost
hypercritical discussion and opinion has been indulged, both
in the testimony and in the able and exhaustive arguments
and briefs of counsel. Expert Osborn for defendant, after
setting forth minutely his superior qualifications
mechanical education, and great experience, takes up in
detail the patent claims, and shows to his own entire
satisfaction that none of them are new; that all of them
have been applied, under one form or another, in some
twenty-two previous patents, and in two other machines, not
patented, to-wit, the Central Glass and Kuny Kahbel ones;
that the whole machine is only 'an aggregation of well-known
mechanical elements that any skilled designer would bring to
his use in the construction of such a machine.' This
certainly, under ordinary conditions, would settle the
matter beyond peradventure; for this witness is a very wise
and learned man in these things, and very positive. But
expert Clarke appears for the plaintiff, and after setting
forth just as minutely his superior qualifications,
mechanical education, and great experience, which appear
fully equal in all respects to those of expert Osborn,
proceeds to take up in detail the patent claims, and shows
to his entire satisfaction that all, with possibly one
exception, are new, show inventive genius, and distinct
advances upon the prior art. In the most lucid, and even
fascinating, way he discusses all the parts of this machine,
compares it with the others, draws distinctions, points out
the merits of the one in controversy and the defects of all
the others, considers the twenty-odd patents referred to by
Osborn, and in the politest, but neatest, manner imaginable
shows that expert Osborn did not know what he was talking
about, and sums the whole matter up by declaring this
'invention of Mr. Schrader's, as embodied in the patent in
suit, a radical and wide departure, from the Kahbel machine'
(admitted on all sides to be nearest prior approach to it),
'a distinct and important advance in the art of engraving
glassware, and generally a machine for this purpose which
has involved the exercise of the inventive faculty in the
highest degree.'
"Thus a more radical and irreconcilable disagreement between
experts touching the same thing could hardly be found. So it
is with the testimony. If we take that for the defendant,
the Central Glass Company machine, and especially the Kuny
Kahbel machine, built and operated years before this patent
issued, and not patented, are just as good, just as
effective and practical, as this one, and capable of turning
out just as perfect work and as great a variety of it. On
the other hand, if we take that produced by the plaintiff,
we are driven to the conclusion that these prior machines,
the product of the same mind, were only progressive steps
forward from utter darkness, so to speak, into full
inventive sunlight, which made clear to him the solution of
the problem in this patented machine. The shortcomings of
the earlier machines are minutely set forth, and the
witnesses for the plaintiff are clear that they are neither
practical nor profitable.
"But this is not all of the trouble that confronts us in
this case. Counsel of both sides, with an indomitable
courage that must command admiration, a courage that has led
them to a vast amount of study, investigation, and thought,
that in fact has made them all experts, have dissected this
record of 356 closely printed pages, applied all mechanical
principles and laws to the facts as they see them, and,
besides, have ransacked the law-books and cited an enormous
number of cases, more or less in point, as illustration of
their respective contentions. The courts find nothing more
difficult than to apply an abstract principle to all classes
of cases that may arise. The facts in each case so
frequently create an exception to the general rule that such
rule must be honored rather in its breach than in its
observance. Therefore, after a careful examination of these
cases, it is no criticism of the courts to say that both
sides have found abundant and about an equal amount of
authority to sustain their respective contentions, and, as a
result, counsel have submitted, in briefs, a sum total of
225 closely printed pages, in which they have clearly, yet,
almost to a mathematical certainty, demonstrated on the one
side that this Schrader machine is new and patentable, and
on the other that it is old and not so. Under these
circumstances, it would be unnecessary labor and a fruitless
task for me to enter into any further technical discussion
of the mechanical problems involved, for the purpose of
seeking to convince either side of its error. In cases of
such perplexity as this generally some incidents appear that
speak more unerringly than do the tongues of the witnesses,
and to some of these I purpose to now refer."]
Mr. Bernard Shaw, the distinguished English author, has given a most
vivid and amusing picture of this introduction of Edison's telephone
into England, describing the apparatus as "a much too ingenious
invention, being nothing less than a telephone of such stentorian
efficiency that it bellowed your most private communications all over
the house, instead of whispering them with some sort of discretion."
Shaw, as a young man, was employed by the Edison Telephone Company,
and was very much alive to his surroundings, often assisting in public
demonstrations of the apparatus "in a manner which I am persuaded laid
the foundation of Mr. Edison's reputation." The sketch of the men sent
over from America is graphic: "Whilst the Edison Telephone Company
lasted it crowded the basement of a high pile of offices in Queen
Victoria Street with American artificers. These deluded and romantic men
gave me a glimpse of the skilled proletariat of the United States. They
sang obsolete sentimental songs with genuine emotion; and their language
was frightful even to an Irishman. They worked with a ferocious
energy which was out of all proportion to the actual result achieved.
Indomitably resolved to assert their republican manhood by taking no
orders from a tall-hatted Englishman whose stiff politeness covered
his conviction that they were relatively to himself inferior and common
persons, they insisted on being slave-driven with genuine American oaths
by a genuine free and equal American foreman. They utterly despised the
artfully slow British workman, who did as little for his wages as he
possibly could; never hurried himself; and had a deep reverence for one
whose pocket could be tapped by respectful behavior. Need I add that
they were contemptuously wondered at by this same British workman as
a parcel of outlandish adult boys who sweated themselves for their
employer's benefit instead of looking after their own interest? They
adored Mr. Edison as the greatest man of all time in every possible
department of science, art, and philosophy, and execrated Mr. Graham
Bell, the inventor of the rival telephone, as his Satanic adversary;
but each of them had (or intended to have) on the brink of completion
an improvement on the telephone, usually a new transmitter. They were
free-souled creatures, excellent company, sensitive, cheerful, and
profane; liars, braggarts, and hustlers, with an air of making slow old
England hum, which never left them even when, as often happened, they
were wrestling with difficulties of their own making, or struggling in
no-thoroughfares, from which they had to be retrieved like stray sheep
by Englishmen without imagination enough to go wrong."
Mr. Samuel Insull, who afterward became private secretary to Mr. Edison,
and a leader in the development of American electrical manufacturing
and the central-station art, was also in close touch with the London
situation thus depicted, being at the time private secretary to Colonel
Gouraud, and acting for the first half hour as the amateur telephone
operator in the first experimental exchange erected in Europe. He
took notes of an early meeting where the affairs of the company were
discussed by leading men like Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury) and the
Right Hon. E. P. Bouverie (then a cabinet minister), none of whom
could see in the telephone much more than an auxiliary for getting
out promptly in the next morning's papers the midnight debates in
Parliament. "I remember another incident," says Mr. Insull. "It was at
some celebration of one of the Royal Societies at the Burlington House,
Piccadilly. We had a telephone line running across the roofs to the
basement of the building. I think it was to Tyndall's laboratory in
Burlington Street. As the ladies and gentlemen came through, they
naturally wanted to look at the great curiosity, the loud-speaking
telephone: in fact, any telephone was a curiosity then. Mr. and Mrs.
Gladstone came through. I was handling the telephone at the Burlington
House end. Mrs. Gladstone asked the man over the telephone whether he
knew if a man or woman was speaking; and the reply came in quite loud
tones that it was a man!"
With Mr. E. H. Johnson, who represented Edison, there went to England
for the furtherance of this telephone enterprise, Mr. Charles Edison,
a nephew of the inventor. He died in Paris, October, 1879, not twenty
years of age. Stimulated by the example of his uncle, this brilliant
youth had already made a mark for himself as a student and inventor,
and when only eighteen he secured in open competition the contract to
install a complete fire-alarm telegraph system for Port Huron. A few
months later he was eagerly welcomed by his uncle at Menlo Park,
and after working on the telephone was sent to London to aid in its
introduction. There he made the acquaintance of Professor Tyndall,
exhibited the telephone to the late King of England; and also won the
friendship of the late King of the Belgians, with whom he took up the
project of establishing telephonic communication between Belgium and
England. At the time of his premature death he was engaged in installing
the Edison quadruplex between Brussels and Paris, being one of the very
few persons then in Europe familiar with the working of that invention.
Meantime, the telephonic art in America was undergoing very rapid
development. In March, 1878, addressing "the capitalists of the Electric
Telephone Company" on the future of his invention, Bell outlined with
prophetic foresight and remarkable clearness the coming of the modern
telephone exchange. Comparing with gas and water distribution, he said:
"In a similar manner, it is conceivable that cables of telephone wires
could be laid underground or suspended overhead communicating by branch
wires with private dwellings, country houses, shops, manufactories,
etc., uniting them through the main cable with a central office,
where the wire could be connected as desired, establishing direct
communication between any two places in the city.... Not only so, but I
believe, in the future, wires will unite the head offices of telephone
companies in different cities; and a man in one part of the country may
communicate by word of mouth with another in a distant place."
All of which has come to pass. Professor Bell also suggested how this
could be done by "the employ of a man in each central office for the
purpose of connecting the wires as directed." He also indicated the two
methods of telephonic tariff--a fixed rental and a toll; and mentioned
the practice, now in use on long-distance lines, of a time charge. As
a matter of fact, this "centralizing" was attempted in May, 1877, in
Boston, with the circuits of the Holmes burglar-alarm system, four
banking-houses being thus interconnected; while in January of 1878 the
Bell telephone central-office system at New Haven, Connecticut, was
opened for business, "the first fully equipped commercial telephone
exchange ever established for public or general service."
All through this formative period Bell had adhered to and introduced the
magneto form of telephone, now used only as a receiver, and very poorly
adapted for the vital function of a speech-transmitter. From August,
1877, the Western Union Telegraph Company worked along the other line,
and in 1878, with its allied Gold & Stock Telegraph Company, it brought
into existence the American Speaking Telephone Company to introduce
the Edison apparatus, and to create telephone exchanges all over the
country. In this warfare, the possession of a good battery transmitter
counted very heavily in favor of the Western Union, for upon that the
real expansion of the whole industry depended; but in a few months
the Bell system had its battery transmitter, too, tending to equalize
matters. Late in the same year patent litigation was begun which brought
out clearly the merits of Bell, through his patent, as the original and
first inventor of the electric speaking telephone; and the Western Union
Telegraph Company made terms with its rival. A famous contract bearing
date of November 10, 1879, showed that under the Edison and other
controlling patents the Western Union Company had already set going some
eighty-five exchanges, and was making large quantities of telephonic
apparatus. In return for its voluntary retirement from the telephonic
field, the Western Union Telegraph Company, under this contract,
received a royalty of 20 per cent. of all the telephone earnings of the
Bell system while the Bell patents ran; and thus came to enjoy an annual
income of several hundred thousand dollars for some years, based chiefly
on its modest investment in Edison's work. It was also paid several
thousand dollars in cash for the Edison, Phelps, Gray, and other
apparatus on hand. It secured further 40 per cent. of the stock of the
local telephone systems of New York and Chicago; and last, but by no
means least, it exacted from the Bell interests an agreement to stay out
of the telegraph field.
By March, 1881, there were in the United States only nine cities of
more than ten thousand inhabitants, and only one of more than fifteen
thousand, without a telephone exchange. The industry thrived under
competition, and the absence of it now had a decided effect in checking
growth; for when the Bell patent expired in 1893, the total of telephone
sets in operation in the United States was only 291,253. To quote from
an official Bell statement:
"The brief but vigorous Western Union competition was a kind of blessing
in disguise. The very fact that two distinct interests were actively
engaged in the work of organizing and establishing competing telephone
exchanges all over the country, greatly facilitated the spread of the
idea and the growth of the business, and familiarized the people with
the use of the telephone as a business agency; while the keenness of the
competition, extending to the agents and employees of both companies,
brought about a swift but quite unforeseen and unlooked-for expansion
in the individual exchanges of the larger cities, and a corresponding
advance in their importance, value, and usefulness."
The truth of this was immediately shown in 1894, after the Bell patents
had expired, by the tremendous outburst of new competitive activity, in
"independent" country systems and toll lines through sparsely settled
districts--work for which the Edison apparatus and methods were
peculiarly adapted, yet against which the influence of the Edison patent
was invoked. The data secured by the United States Census Office in 1902
showed that the whole industry had made gigantic leaps in eight years,
and had 2,371,044 telephone stations in service, of which 1,053,866
were wholly or nominally independent of the Bell. By 1907 an even
more notable increase was shown, and the Census figures for that year
included no fewer than 6,118,578 stations, of which 1,986,575 were
"independent." These six million instruments every single set employing
the principle of the carbon transmitter--were grouped into 15,527 public
exchanges, in the very manner predicted by Bell thirty years before,
and they gave service in the shape of over eleven billions of talks. The
outstanding capitalized value of the plant was $814,616,004, the income
for the year was nearly $185,000,000, and the people employed were
140,000. If Edison had done nothing else, his share in the creation
of such an industry would have entitled him to a high place among
inventors.
This chapter is of necessity brief in its reference to many extremely
interesting points and details; and to some readers it may seem
incomplete in its references to the work of other men than Edison, whose
influence on telephony as an art has also been considerable. In reply to
this pertinent criticism, it may be pointed out that this is a life of
Edison, and not of any one else; and that even the discussion of his
achievements alone in these various fields requires more space than the
authors have at their disposal. The attempt has been made, however,
to indicate the course of events and deal fairly with the facts. The
controversy that once waged with great excitement over the invention
of the microphone, but has long since died away, is suggestive of the
difficulties involved in trying to do justice to everybody. A standard
history describes the microphone thus:
"A form of apparatus produced during the early days of the telephone
by Professor Hughes, of England, for the purpose of rendering faint,
indistinct sounds distinctly audible, depended for its operation on the
changes that result in the resistance of loose contacts. This apparatus
was called the microphone, and was in reality but one of the many forms
that it is possible to give to the telephone transmitter. For example,
the Edison granular transmitter was a variety of microphone, as was also
Edison's transmitter, in which the solid button of carbon was employed.
Indeed, even the platinum point, which in the early form of the Reis
transmitter pressed against the platinum contact cemented to the centre
of the diaphragm, was a microphone."
At a time when most people were amazed at the idea of hearing, with
the aid of a "microphone," a fly walk at a distance of many miles, the
priority of invention of such a device was hotly disputed. Yet without
desiring to take anything from the credit of the brilliant American,
Hughes, whose telegraphic apparatus is still in use all over Europe, it
may be pointed out that this passage gives Edison the attribution of at
least two original forms of which those suggested by Hughes were mere
variations and modifications. With regard to this matter, Mr. Edison
himself remarks: "After I sent one of my men over to London especially,
to show Preece the carbon transmitter, and where Hughes first saw it,
and heard it--then within a month he came out with the microphone,
without any acknowledgment whatever. Published dates will show that
Hughes came along after me."
There have been other ways also in which Edison has utilized the
peculiar property that carbon possesses of altering its resistance
to the passage of current, according to the pressure to which it is
subjected, whether at the surface, or through closer union of the
mass. A loose road with a few inches of dust or pebbles on it offers
appreciable resistance to the wheels of vehicles travelling over it; but
if the surface is kept hard and smooth the effect is quite different.
In the same way carbon, whether solid or in the shape of finely divided
powder, offers a high resistance to the passage of electricity; but
if the carbon is squeezed together the conditions change, with less
resistance to electricity in the circuit. For his quadruplex system,
Mr. Edison utilized this fact in the construction of a rheostat or
resistance box. It consists of a series of silk disks saturated with a
sizing of plumbago and well dried. The disks are compressed by means of
an adjustable screw; and in this manner the resistance of a circuit can
be varied over a wide range.
In like manner Edison developed a "pressure" or carbon relay, adapted
to the transference of signals of variable strength from one circuit to
another. An ordinary relay consists of an electromagnet inserted in the
main line for telegraphing, which brings a local battery and sounder
circuit into play, reproducing in the local circuit the signals sent
over the main line. The relay is adjusted to the weaker currents likely
to be received, but the signals reproduced on the sounder by the agency
of the relay are, of course, all of equal strength, as they depend upon
the local battery, which has only this steady work to perform. In cases
where it is desirable to reproduce the signals in the local circuit with
the same variations in strength as they are received by the relay,
the Edison carbon pressure relay does the work. The poles of the
electromagnet in the local circuit are hollowed out and filled up with
carbon disks or powdered plumbago. The armature and the carbon-tipped
poles of the electromagnet form part of the local circuit; and if the
relay is actuated by a weak current the armature will be attracted
but feebly. The carbon being only slightly compressed will offer
considerable resistance to the flow of current from the local battery,
and therefore the signal on the local sounder will be weak. If, on the
contrary, the incoming current on the main line be strong, the armature
will be strongly attracted, the carbon will be sharply compressed, the
resistance in the local circuit will be proportionately lowered, and the
signal heard on the local sounder will be a loud one. Thus it will be
seen, by another clever juggle with the willing agent, carbon, for which
he has found so many duties, Edison is able to transfer or transmit
exactly, to the local circuit, the main-line current in all its minutest
variations.
In his researches to determine the nature of the motograph phenomena,
and to open up other sources of electrical current generation, Edison
has worked out a very ingenious and somewhat perplexing piece of
apparatus known as the "chalk battery." It consists of a series of chalk
cylinders mounted on a shaft revolved by hand. Resting against each of
these cylinders is a palladium-faced spring, and similar springs make
contact with the shaft between each cylinder. By connecting all these
springs in circuit with a galvanometer and revolving the shaft rapidly,
a notable deflection is obtained of the galvanometer needle, indicating
the production of electrical energy. The reason for this does not appear
to have been determined.
Last but not least, in this beautiful and ingenious series, comes the
"tasimeter," an instrument of most delicate sensibility in the presence
of heat. The name is derived from the Greek, the use of the apparatus
being primarily to measure extremely minute differences of pressure.
A strip of hard rubber with pointed ends rests perpendicularly on a
platinum plate, beneath which is a carbon button, under which again lies
another platinum plate. The two plates and the carbon button form part
of an electric circuit containing a battery and a galvanometer. The
hard-rubber strip is exceedingly sensitive to heat. The slightest degree
of heat imparted to it causes it to expand invisibly, thus increasing
the pressure contact on the carbon button and producing a variation
in the resistance of the circuit, registered immediately by the little
swinging needle of the galvanometer. The instrument is so sensitive that
with a delicate galvanometer it will show the impingement of the heat
from a person's hand thirty feet away. The suggestion to employ such
an apparatus in astronomical observations occurs at once, and it may
be noted that in one instance the heat of rays of light from the remote
star Arcturus gave results.
CHAPTER X
THE PHONOGRAPH
AT the opening of the Electrical Show in New York City in October, 1908,
to celebrate the jubilee of the Atlantic Cable and the first quarter
century of lighting with the Edison service on Manhattan Island, the
exercises were all conducted by means of the Edison phonograph. This
included the dedicatory speech of Governor Hughes, of New York; the
modest remarks of Mr. Edison, as president; the congratulations of the
presidents of several national electric bodies, and a number of vocal
and instrumental selections of operatic nature. All this was heard
clearly by a very large audience, and was repeated on other evenings.
The same speeches were used again phonographically at the Electrical
Show in Chicago in 1909--and now the records are preserved for
reproduction a hundred or a thousand years hence. This tour de force,
never attempted before, was merely an exemplification of the value
of the phonograph not only in establishing at first hand the facts of
history, but in preserving the human voice. What would we not give to
listen to the very accents and tones of the Sermon on the Mount, the
orations of Demosthenes, the first Pitt's appeal for American liberty,
the Farewell of Washington, or the Address at Gettysburg? Until Edison
made his wonderful invention in 1877, the human race was entirely
without means for preserving or passing on to posterity its own
linguistic utterances or any other vocal sound. We have some idea how
the ancients looked and felt and wrote; the abundant evidence takes us
back to the cave-dwellers. But all the old languages are dead, and the
literary form is their embalmment. We do not even know definitely how
Shakespeare's and Goldsmith's plays were pronounced on the stage in
the theatres of the time; while it is only a guess that perhaps Chaucer
would sound much more modern than he scans.
The analysis of sound, which owes so much to Helmholtz, was one step
toward recording; and the various means of illustrating the phenomena of
sound to the eye and ear, prior to the phonograph, were all ingenious.
One can watch the dancing little flames of Koenig, and see a voice
expressed in tongues of fire; but the record can only be photographic.
In like manner, the simple phonautograph of Leon Scott, invented about
1858, records on a revolving cylinder of blackened paper the sound
vibrations transmitted through a membrane to which a tiny stylus is
attached; so that a human mouth uses a pen and inscribes its sign vocal.
Yet after all we are just as far away as ever from enabling the young
actors at Harvard to give Aristophanes with all the true, subtle
intonation and inflection of the Athens of 400 B.C. The instrument
is dumb. Ingenuity has been shown also in the invention of
"talking-machines," like Faber's, based on the reed organ pipe. These
automata can be made by dexterous manipulation to jabber a little, like
a doll with its monotonous "ma-ma," or a cuckoo clock; but they lack
even the sterile utility of the imitative art of ventriloquism. The real
great invention lies in creating devices that shall be able to evoke
from tinfoil, wax, or composition at any time to-day or in the future
the sound that once was as evanescent as the vibrations it made on the
air.
Contrary to the general notion, very few of the great modern inventions
have been the result of a sudden inspiration by which, Minerva-like,
they have sprung full-fledged from their creators' brain; but, on the
contrary, they have been evolved by slow and gradual steps, so that
frequently the final advance has been often almost imperceptible. The
Edison phonograph is an important exception to the general rule; not,
of course, the phonograph of the present day with all of its mechanical
perfection, but as an instrument capable of recording and reproducing
sound. Its invention has been frequently attributed to the discovery
that a point attached to a telephone diaphragm would, under the effect
of sound-waves, vibrate with sufficient force to prick the finger. The
story, though interesting, is not founded on fact; but, if true, it is
difficult to see how the discovery in question could have contributed
materially to the ultimate accomplishment. To a man of Edison's
perception it is absurd to suppose that the effect of the so-called
discovery would not have been made as a matter of deduction long
before the physical sensation was experienced. As a matter of fact, the
invention of the phonograph was the result of pure reason. Some time
prior to 1877, Edison had been experimenting on an automatic telegraph
in which the letters were formed by embossing strips of paper with the
proper arrangement of dots and dashes. By drawing this strip beneath a
contact lever, the latter was actuated so as to control the circuits and
send the desired signals over the line. It was observed that when the
strip was moved very rapidly the vibration of the lever resulted in
the production of an audible note. With these facts before him, Edison
reasoned that if the paper strip could be imprinted with elevations
and depressions representative of sound-waves, they might be caused to
actuate a diaphragm so as to reproduce the corresponding sounds.
The next step in the line of development was to form the necessary
undulations on the strip, and it was then reasoned that original sounds
themselves might be utilized to form a graphic record by actuating a
diaphragm and causing a cutting or indenting point carried thereby to
vibrate in contact with a moving surface, so as to cut or indent the
record therein. Strange as it may seem, therefore, and contrary to the
general belief, the phonograph was developed backward, the production of
the sounds being of prior development to the idea of actually recording
them.
Mr. Edison's own account of the invention of the phonograph is intensely
interesting. "I was experimenting," he says, "on an automatic method
of recording telegraph messages on a disk of paper laid on a revolving
platen, exactly the same as the disk talking-machine of to-day. The
platen had a spiral groove on its surface, like the disk. Over this was
placed a circular disk of paper; an electromagnet with the embossing
point connected to an arm travelled over the disk; and any signals given
through the magnets were embossed on the disk of paper. If this disk was
removed from the machine and put on a similar machine provided with
a contact point, the embossed record would cause the signals to be
repeated into another wire. The ordinary speed of telegraphic signals
is thirty-five to forty words a minute; but with this machine several
hundred words were possible.
"From my experiments on the telephone I knew of the power of a diaphragm
to take up sound vibrations, as I had made a little toy which, when
you recited loudly in the funnel, would work a pawl connected to the
diaphragm; and this engaging a ratchet-wheel served to give continuous
rotation to a pulley. This pulley was connected by a cord to a little
paper toy representing a man sawing wood. Hence, if one shouted: 'Mary
had a little lamb,' etc., the paper man would start sawing wood. I
reached the conclusion that if I could record the movements of the
diaphragm properly, I could cause such record to reproduce the original
movements imparted to the diaphragm by the voice, and thus succeed in
recording and reproducing the human voice.
"Instead of using a disk I designed a little machine using a cylinder
provided with grooves around the surface. Over this was to be placed
tinfoil, which easily received and recorded the movements of the
diaphragm. A sketch was made, and the piece-work price, $18, was marked
on the sketch. I was in the habit of marking the price I would pay on
each sketch. If the workman lost, I would pay his regular wages; if he
made more than the wages, he kept it. The workman who got the sketch was
John Kruesi. I didn't have much faith that it would work, expecting that
I might possibly hear a word or so that would give hope of a future for
the idea. Kruesi, when he had nearly finished it, asked what it was for.
I told him I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk
back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was
put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb,' etc. I adjusted the
reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly. I was never so
taken aback in my life. Everybody was astonished. I was always afraid
of things that worked the first time. Long experience proved that
there were great drawbacks found generally before they could be got
commercial; but here was something there was no doubt of."
No wonder that honest John Kruesi, as he stood and listened to the
marvellous performance of the simple little machine he had himself just
finished, ejaculated in an awe-stricken tone: "Mein Gott im Himmel!" And
yet he had already seen Edison do a few clever things. No wonder they
sat up all night fixing and adjusting it so as to get better and better
results--reciting and singing, trying each other's voices, and then
listening with involuntary awe as the words came back again and again,
just as long as they were willing to revolve the little cylinder with
its dotted spiral indentations in the tinfoil under the vibrating stylus
of the reproducing diaphragm. It took a little time to acquire the knack
of turning the crank steadily while leaning over the recorder to talk
into the machine; and there was some deftness required also in fastening
down the tinfoil on the cylinder where it was held by a pin running in
a longitudinal slot. Paraffined paper appears also to have been
experimented with as an impressible material. It is said that Carman,
the foreman of the machine shop, had gone the length of wagering Edison
a box of cigars that the device would not work. All the world knows that
he lost.
The original Edison phonograph thus built by Kruesi is preserved in the
South Kensington Museum, London. That repository can certainly have no
greater treasure of its kind. But as to its immediate use, the inventor
says: "That morning I took it over to New York and walked into the
office of the Scientific American, went up to Mr. Beach's desk, and said
I had something to show him. He asked what it was. I told him I had a
machine that would record and reproduce the human voice. I opened the
package, set up the machine and recited, 'Mary had a little lamb,' etc.
Then I reproduced it so that it could be heard all over the room. They
kept me at it until the crowd got so great Mr. Beach was afraid the
floor would collapse; and we were compelled to stop. The papers next
morning contained columns. None of the writers seemed to understand how
it was done. I tried to explain, it was so very simple, but the results
were so surprising they made up their minds probably that they never
would understand it--and they didn't.
"I started immediately making several larger and better machines, which
I exhibited at Menlo Park to crowds. The Pennsylvania Railroad ran
special trains. Washington people telegraphed me to come on. I took
a phonograph to Washington and exhibited it in the room of James G.
Blaine's niece (Gail Hamilton); and members of Congress and notable
people of that city came all day long until late in the evening. I made
one break. I recited 'Mary,' etc., and another ditty:
'There was a little girl, who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead;
And when she was good she was very, very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid.'
"It will be remembered that Senator Roscoe Conkling, then very prominent,
had a curl of hair on his forehead; and all the caricaturists developed
it abnormally. He was very sensitive about the subject. When he came in
he was introduced; but being rather deaf, I didn't catch his name, but
sat down and started the curl ditty. Everybody tittered, and I was told
that Mr. Conkling was displeased. About 11 o'clock at night word was
received from President Hayes that he would be very much pleased if I
would come up to the White House. I was taken there, and found Mr. Hayes
and several others waiting. Among them I remember Carl Schurz, who was
playing the piano when I entered the room. The exhibition continued till
about 12.30 A.M., when Mrs. Hayes and several other ladies, who had been
induced to get up and dress, appeared. I left at 3.30 A.M.
"For a long time some people thought there was trickery. One morning
at Menlo Park a gentleman came to the laboratory and asked to see the
phonograph. It was Bishop Vincent, who helped Lewis Miller found the
Chautauqua I exhibited it, and then he asked if he could speak a few
words. I put on a fresh foil and told him to go ahead. He commenced to
recite Biblical names with immense rapidity. On reproducing it he said:
'I am satisfied, now. There isn't a man in the United States who could
recite those names with the same rapidity.'"
The phonograph was now fairly launched as a world sensation, and a
reference to the newspapers of 1878 will show the extent to which it and
Edison were themes of universal discussion. Some of the press notices
of the period were most amazing--and amusing. As though the real
achievements of this young man, barely thirty, were not tangible
and solid enough to justify admiration of his genius, the "yellow
journalists" of the period began busily to create an "Edison myth," with
gross absurdities of assertion and attribution from which the modest
subject of it all has not yet ceased to suffer with unthinking people.
A brilliantly vicious example of this method of treatment is to be found
in the Paris Figaro of that year, which under the appropriate title of
"This Astounding Eddison" lay bare before the French public the most
startling revelations as to the inventor's life and character. "It
should be understood," said this journal, "that Mr. Eddison does not
belong to himself. He is the property of the telegraph company which
lodges him in New York at a superb hotel; keeps him on a luxurious
footing, and pays him a formidable salary so as to be the one to know
of and profit by his discoveries. The company has, in the dwelling of
Eddison, men in its employ who do not quit him for a moment, at the
table, on the street, in the laboratory. So that this wretched man,
watched more closely than ever was any malefactor, cannot even give a
moment's thought to his own private affairs without one of his guards
asking him what he is thinking about." This foolish "blague" was
accompanied by a description of Edison's new "aerophone," a steam
machine which carried the voice a distance of one and a half miles. "You
speak to a jet of vapor. A friend previously advised can answer you
by the same method." Nor were American journals backward in this wild
exaggeration.
The furor had its effect in stimulating a desire everywhere on the
part of everybody to see and hear the phonograph. A small commercial
organization was formed to build and exploit the apparatus, and the
shops at Menlo Park laboratory were assisted by the little Bergmann shop
in New York. Offices were taken for the new enterprise at 203 Broadway,
where the Mail and Express building now stands, and where, in a
general way, under the auspices of a talented dwarf, C. A. Cheever, the
embryonic phonograph and the crude telephone shared rooms and expenses.
Gardiner G. Hubbard, father-in-law of Alex. Graham Bell, was one of the
stockholders in the Phonograph Company, which paid Edison $10,000 cash
and a 20 per cent. royalty. This curious partnership was maintained for
some time, even when the Bell Telephone offices were removed to Reade
Street, New York, whither the phonograph went also; and was perhaps
explained by the fact that just then the ability of the phonograph as
a money-maker was much more easily demonstrated than was that of
the telephone, still in its short range magneto stage and awaiting
development with the aid of the carbon transmitter.
The earning capacity of the phonograph then, as largely now, lay in its
exhibition qualities. The royalties from Boston, ever intellectually
awake and ready for something new, ran as high as $1800 a week. In New
York there was a ceaseless demand for it, and with the aid of Hilbourne
L. Roosevelt, a famous organ builder, and uncle of ex-President
Roosevelt, concerts were given at which the phonograph was "featured."
To manage this novel show business the services of James Redpath were
called into requisition with great success. Redpath, famous as a friend
and biographer of John Brown, as a Civil War correspondent, and as
founder of the celebrated Redpath Lyceum Bureau in Boston, divided
the country into territories, each section being leased for exhibition
purposes on a basis of a percentage of the "gate money." To 203
Broadway from all over the Union flocked a swarm of showmen, cranks, and
particularly of old operators, who, the seedier they were in appearance,
the more insistent they were that "Tom" should give them, for the sake
of "Auld lang syne," this chance to make a fortune for him and for
themselves. At the top of the building was a floor on which these
novices were graduated in the use and care of the machine, and then,
with an equipment of tinfoil and other supplies, they were sent out on
the road. It was a diverting experience while it lasted. The excitement
over the phonograph was maintained for many months, until a large
proportion of the inhabitants of the country had seen it; and then the
show receipts declined and dwindled away. Many of the old operators,
taken on out of good-nature, were poor exhibitors and worse accountants,
and at last they and the machines with which they had been intrusted
faded from sight. But in the mean time Edison had learned many lessons
as to this practical side of development that were not forgotten when
the renascence of the phonograph began a few years later, leading up to
the present enormous and steady demand for both machines and records.
It deserves to be pointed out that the phonograph has changed little in
the intervening years from the first crude instruments of 1877-78. It
has simply been refined and made more perfect in a mechanical sense.
Edison was immensely impressed with its possibilities, and greatly
inclined to work upon it, but the coming of the electric light compelled
him to throw all his energies for a time into the vast new field
awaiting conquest. The original phonograph, as briefly noted above, was
rotated by hand, and the cylinder was fed slowly longitudinally by means
of a nut engaging a screw thread on the cylinder shaft. Wrapped
around the cylinder was a sheet of tinfoil, with which engaged a small
chisel-like recording needle, connected adhesively with the centre of
an iron diaphragm. Obviously, as the cylinder was turned, the needle
followed a spiral path whose pitch depended upon that of the feed screw.
Along this path a thread was cut in the cylinder so as to permit the
needle to indent the foil readily as the diaphragm vibrated. By rotating
the cylinder and by causing the diaphragm to vibrate under the effect
of vocal or musical sounds, the needle-like point would form a series
of indentations in the foil corresponding to and characteristic of the
sound-waves. By now engaging the point with the beginning of the grooved
record so formed, and by again rotating the cylinder, the undulations of
the record would cause the needle and its attached diaphragm to vibrate
so as to effect the reproduction. Such an apparatus was necessarily
undeveloped, and was interesting only from a scientific point of view.
It had many mechanical defects which prevented its use as a practical
apparatus. Since the cylinder was rotated by hand, the speed at which
the record was formed would vary considerably, even with the same
manipulator, so that it would have been impossible to record and
reproduce music satisfactorily; in doing which exact uniformity of
speed is essential. The formation of the record in tinfoil was also
objectionable from a practical standpoint, since such a record was faint
and would be substantially obliterated after two or three reproductions.
Furthermore, the foil could not be easily removed from and replaced
upon the instrument, and consequently the reproduction had to follow the
recording immediately, and the successive tinfoils were thrown away. The
instrument was also heavy and bulky. Notwithstanding these objections
the original phonograph created, as already remarked, an enormous
popular excitement, and the exhibitions were considered by many
sceptical persons as nothing more than clever ventriloquism. The
possibilities of the instrument as a commercial apparatus were
recognized from the very first, and some of the fields in which it was
predicted that the phonograph would be used are now fully occupied.
Some have not yet been realized. Writing in 1878 in the North
American-Review, Mr. Edison thus summed up his own ideas as to the
future applications of the new invention:
"Among the many uses to which the phonograph will be applied are the
following:
1. Letter writing and all kinds of dictation without the aid of a
stenographer.
2. Phonographic books, which will speak to blind people without effort
on their part.
3. The teaching of elocution.
4. Reproduction of music.
5. The 'Family Record'--a registry of sayings, reminiscences, etc., by
members of a family in their own voices, and of the last words of dying
persons.
6. Music-boxes and toys.
7. Clocks that should announce in articulate speech the time for going
home, going to meals, etc.
8. The preservation of languages by exact reproduction of the manner of
pronouncing.
9. Educational purposes; such as preserving the explanations made by a
teacher, so that the pupil can refer to them at any moment, and
spelling or other lessons placed upon the phonograph for convenience in
committing to memory.
10. Connection with the telephone, so as to make that instrument an
auxiliary in the transmission of permanent and invaluable records,
instead of being the recipient of momentary and fleeting communication."
Of the above fields of usefulness in which it was expected that
the phonograph might be applied, only three have been commercially
realized--namely, the reproduction of musical, including vaudeville or
talking selections, for which purpose a very large proportion of
the phonographs now made is used; the employment of the machine as a
mechanical stenographer, which field has been taken up actively only
within the past few years; and the utilization of the device for the
teaching of languages, for which purpose it has been successfully
employed, for example, by the International Correspondence Schools of
Scranton, Pennsylvania, for several years. The other uses, however,
which were early predicted for the phonograph have not as yet been
worked out practically, although the time seems not far distant when its
general utility will be widely enlarged. Both dolls and clocks have been
made, but thus far the world has not taken them seriously.
The original phonograph, as invented by Edison, remained in its
crude and immature state for almost ten years--still the object of
philosophical interest, and as a convenient text-book illustration of
the effect of sound vibration. It continued to be a theme of curious
interest to the imaginative, and the subject of much fiction, while
its neglected commercial possibilities were still more or less vaguely
referred to. During this period of arrested development, Edison was
continuously working on the invention and commercial exploitation of
the incandescent lamp. In 1887 his time was comparatively free, and the
phonograph was then taken up with renewed energy, and the effort made to
overcome its mechanical defects and to furnish a commercial instrument,
so that its early promise might be realized. The important changes made
from that time up to 1890 converted the phonograph from a scientific toy
into a successful industrial apparatus. The idea of forming the record
on tinfoil had been early abandoned, and in its stead was substituted a
cylinder of wax-like material, in which the record was cut by a minute
chisel-like gouging tool. Such a record or phonogram, as it was then
called, could be removed from the machine or replaced at any time, many
reproductions could be obtained without wearing out the record, and
whenever desired the record could be shaved off by a turning-tool so
as to present a fresh surface on which a new record could be formed,
something like an ancient palimpsest. A wax cylinder having walls less
than one-quarter of an inch in thickness could be used for receiving a
large number of records, since the maximum depth of the record groove is
hardly ever greater than one one-thousandth of an inch. Later on, and
as the crowning achievement in the phonograph field, from a commercial
point of view, came the duplication of records to the extent of many
thousands from a single "master." This work was actively developed
between the years 1890 and 1898, and its difficulties may be appreciated
when the problem is stated; the copying from a single master of many
millions of excessively minute sound-waves having a maximum width of one
hundredth of an inch, and a maximum depth of one thousandth of an
inch, or less than the thickness of a sheet of tissue-paper. Among the
interesting developments of this process was the coating of the original
or master record with a homogeneous film of gold so thin that three
hundred thousand of these piled one on top of the other would present a
thickness of only one inch!
Another important change was in the nature of a reversal of the original
arrangement, the cylinder or mandrel carrying the record being mounted
in fixed bearings, and the recording or reproducing device being fed
lengthwise, like the cutting-tool of a lathe, as the blank or record was
rotated. It was early recognized that a single needle for forming the
record and the reproduction therefrom was an undesirable arrangement,
since the formation of the record required a very sharp cutting-tool,
while satisfactory and repeated reproduction suggested the use of a
stylus which would result in the minimum wear. After many experiments
and the production of a number of types of machines, the present
recorders and reproducers were evolved, the former consisting of a
very small cylindrical gouging tool having a diameter of about forty
thousandths of an inch, and the latter a ball or button-shaped stylus
with a diameter of about thirty-five thousandths of an inch. By using
an incisor of this sort, the record is formed of a series of connected
gouges with rounded sides, varying in depth and width, and with which
the reproducer automatically engages and maintains its engagement.
Another difficulty encountered in the commercial development of the
phonograph was the adjustment of the recording stylus so as to enter the
wax-like surface to a very slight depth, and of the reproducer so as
to engage exactly the record when formed. The earlier types of machines
were provided with separate screws for effecting these adjustments;
but considerable skill was required to obtain good results, and great
difficulty was experienced in meeting the variations in the wax-like
cylinders, due to the warping under atmospheric changes. Consequently,
with the early types of commercial phonographs, it was first necessary
to shave off the blank accurately before a record was formed thereon,
in order that an absolutely true surface might be presented. To overcome
these troubles, the very ingenious suggestion was then made and adopted,
of connecting the recording and reproducing styluses to their respective
diaphragms through the instrumentality of a compensating weight,
which acted practically as a fixed support under the very rapid sound
vibrations, but which yielded readily to distortions or variations
in the wax-like cylinders. By reason of this improvement, it became
possible to do away with all adjustments, the mass of the compensating
weight causing the recorder to engage the blank automatically to the
required depth, and to maintain the reproducing stylus always with the
desired pressure on the record when formed. These automatic adjustments
were maintained even though the blank or record might be so much out of
true as an eighth of an inch, equal to more than two hundred times the
maximum depth of the record groove.
Another improvement that followed along the lines adopted by Edison for
the commercial development of the phonograph was making the recording
and reproducing styluses of sapphire, an extremely hard, non-oxidizable
jewel, so that those tiny instruments would always retain their true
form and effectively resist wear. Of course, in this work many other
things were done that may still be found on the perfected phonograph
as it stands to-day, and many other suggestions were made which were
contemporaneously adopted, but which were later abandoned. For the
curious-minded, reference is made to the records in the Patent Office,
which will show that up to 1893 Edison had obtained upward of sixty-five
patents in this art, from which his line of thought can be very closely
traced. The phonograph of to-day, except for the perfection of its
mechanical features, in its beauty of manufacture and design, and in
small details, may be considered identical with the machine of 1889,
with the exception that with the latter the rotation of the record
cylinder was effected by an electric motor.
Its essential use as then contemplated was as a substitute for
stenographers, and the most extravagant fancies were indulged in as to
utility in that field. To exploit the device commercially, the patents
were sold to Philadelphia capitalists, who organized the North American
Phonograph Company, through which leases for limited periods were
granted to local companies doing business in special territories,
generally within the confines of a single State. Under that plan,
resembling the methods of 1878, the machines and blank cylinders were
manufactured by the Edison Phonograph Works, which still retains its
factories at Orange, New Jersey. The marketing enterprise was early
doomed to failure, principally because the instruments were not well
understood, and did not possess the necessary refinements that would fit
them for the special field in which they were to be used. At first the
instruments were leased; but it was found that the leases were seldom
renewed. Efforts were then made to sell them, but the prices were
high--from $100 to $150. In the midst of these difficulties, the chief
promoter of the enterprise, Mr. Lippincott, died; and it was soon found
that the roseate dreams of success entertained by the sanguine promoters
were not to be realized. The North American Phonograph Company failed,
its principal creditor being Mr. Edison, who, having acquired the assets
of the defunct concern, organized the National Phonograph Company, to
which he turned over the patents; and with characteristic energy he
attempted again to build up a business with which his favorite and, to
him, most interesting invention might be successfully identified. The
National Phonograph Company from the very start determined to retire at
least temporarily from the field of stenographic use, and to exploit the
phonograph for musical purposes as a competitor of the music-box. Hence
it was necessary that for such work the relatively heavy and expensive
electric motor should be discarded, and a simple spring motor
constructed with a sufficiently sensitive governor to permit accurate
musical reproduction. Such a motor was designed, and is now used on
all phonographs except on such special instruments as may be made with
electric motors, as well as on the successful apparatus that has more
recently been designed and introduced for stenographic use. Improved
factory facilities were introduced; new tools were made, and various
types of machines were designed so that phonographs can now be bought at
prices ranging from $10 to $200. Even with the changes which were thus
made in the two machines, the work of developing the business was slow,
as a demand had to be created; and the early prejudice of the public
against the phonograph, due to its failure as a stenographic apparatus,
had to be overcome. The story of the phonograph as an industrial
enterprise, from this point of departure, is itself full of interest,
but embraces so many details that it is necessarily given in a separate
later chapter. We must return to the days of 1878, when Edison, with at
least three first-class inventions to his credit--the quadruplex, the
carbon telephone, and the phonograph--had become a man of mark and a
"world character."
The invention of the phonograph was immediately followed, as usual, by
the appearance of several other incidental and auxiliary devices, some
patented, and others remaining simply the application of the
principles of apparatus that had been worked out. One of these was the
telephonograph, a combination of a telephone at a distant station with a
phonograph. The diaphragm of the phonograph mouthpiece is actuated by an
electromagnet in the same way as that of an ordinary telephone receiver,
and in this manner a record of the message spoken from a distance can
be obtained and turned into sound at will. Evidently such a process
is reversible, and the phonograph can send a message to the distant
receiver.
This idea was brilliantly demonstrated in practice in February, 1889, by
Mr. W. J. Hammer, one of Edison's earliest and most capable associates,
who carried on telephonographic communication between New York and an
audience in Philadelphia. The record made in New York on the Edison
phonograph was repeated into an Edison carbon transmitter, sent over one
hundred and three miles of circuit, including six miles of underground
cable; received by an Edison motograph; repeated by that on to a
phonograph; transferred from the phonograph to an Edison carbon
transmitter, and by that delivered to the Edison motograph receiver in
the enthusiastic lecture-hall, where every one could hear each sound
and syllable distinctly. In real practice this spectacular playing with
sound vibrations, as if they were lacrosse balls to toss around between
the goals, could be materially simplified.
The modern megaphone, now used universally in making announcements
to large crowds, particularly at sporting events, is also due to this
period as a perfection by Edison of many antecedent devices going back,
perhaps, much further than the legendary funnels through which Alexander
the Great is said to have sent commands to his outlying forces. The
improved Edison megaphone for long-distance work comprised two horns of
wood or metal about six feet long, tapering from a diameter of two feet
six inches at the mouth to a small aperture provided with ear-tubes.
These converging horns or funnels, with a large speaking-trumpet in
between them, are mounted on a tripod, and the megaphone is complete.
Conversation can be carried on with this megaphone at a distance of
over two miles, as with a ship or the balloon. The modern megaphone
now employs the receiver form thus introduced as its very effective
transmitter, with which the old-fashioned speaking-trumpet cannot
possibly compete; and the word "megaphone" is universally applied to the
single, side-flaring horn.
A further step in this line brought Edison to the "aerophone," around
which the Figaro weaved its fanciful description. In the construction
of the aerophone the same kind of tympanum is used as in the phonograph,
but the imitation of the human voice, or the transmission of sound,
is effected by the quick opening and closing of valves placed within
a steam-whistle or an organ-pipe. The vibrations of the diaphragm
communicated to the valves cause them to operate in synchronism, so that
the vibrations are thrown upon the escaping air or steam; and the result
is an instrument with a capacity of magnifying the sounds two hundred
times, and of hurling them to great distances intelligibly, like a huge
fog-siren, but with immense clearness and penetration. All this study
of sound transmission over long distances without wires led up to
the consideration and invention of pioneer apparatus for wireless
telegraphy--but that also is another chapter.
Yet one more ingenious device of this period must be noted--Edison's
vocal engine, the patent application for which was executed in August,
1878, the patent being granted the following December. Reference to
this by Edison himself has already been quoted. The "voice-engine," or
"phonomotor," converts the vibrations of the voice or of music, acting
on the diaphragm, into motion which is utilized to drive some secondary
appliance, whether as a toy or for some useful purpose. Thus a man can
actually talk a hole through a board.
Somewhat weary of all this work and excitement, and not having enjoyed
any cessation from toil, or period of rest, for ten years, Edison jumped
eagerly at the opportunity afforded him in the summer of 1878 of making
a westward trip. Just thirty years later, on a similar trip over the
same ground, he jotted down for this volume some of his reminiscences.
The lure of 1878 was the opportunity to try the ability of his delicate
tasimeter during the total eclipse of the sun, July 29. His admiring
friend, Prof. George F. Barker, of the University of Pennsylvania, with
whom he had now been on terms of intimacy for some years, suggested the
holiday, and was himself a member of the excursion party that made
its rendezvous at Rawlins, Wyoming Territory. Edison had tested his
tasimeter, and was satisfied that it would measure down to the millionth
part of a degree Fahrenheit. It was just ten years since he had left the
West in poverty and obscurity, a penniless operator in search of a job;
but now he was a great inventor and famous, a welcome addition to the
band of astronomers and physicists assembled to observe the eclipse and
the corona.
"There were astronomers from nearly every nation," says Mr. Edison. "We
had a special car. The country at that time was rather new; game was
in great abundance, and could be seen all day long from the car window,
especially antelope. We arrived at Rawlins about 4 P.M. It had a small
machine shop, and was the point where locomotives were changed for the
next section. The hotel was a very small one, and by doubling up we were
barely accommodated. My room-mate was Fox, the correspondent of the New
York Herald. After we retired and were asleep a thundering knock on
the door awakened us. Upon opening the door a tall, handsome man with
flowing hair dressed in western style entered the room. His eyes were
bloodshot, and he was somewhat inebriated. He introduced himself as
'Texas Jack'--Joe Chromondo--and said he wanted to see Edison, as he had
read about me in the newspapers. Both Fox and I were rather scared, and
didn't know what was to be the result of the interview. The landlord
requested him not to make so much noise, and was thrown out into the
hall. Jack explained that he had just come in with a party which had
been hunting, and that he felt fine. He explained, also, that he was the
boss pistol-shot of the West; that it was he who taught the celebrated
Doctor Carver how to shoot. Then suddenly pointing to a weather-vane on
the freight depot, he pulled out a Colt revolver and fired through the
window, hitting the vane. The shot awakened all the people, and they
rushed in to see who was killed. It was only after I told him I was
tired and would see him in the morning that he left. Both Fox and I were
so nervous we didn't sleep any that night.
"We were told in the morning that Jack was a pretty good fellow, and was
not one of the 'bad men,' of whom they had a good supply. They had one
in the jail, and Fox and I went over to see him. A few days before he
had held up a Union Pacific train and robbed all the passengers. In
the jail also was a half-breed horse-thief. We interviewed the bad man
through bars as big as railroad rails. He looked like a 'bad man.' The
rim of his ear all around came to a sharp edge and was serrated. His
eyes were nearly white, and appeared as if made of glass and set
in wrong, like the life-size figures of Indians in the Smithsonian
Institution. His face was also extremely irregular. He wouldn't answer a
single question. I learned afterward that he got seven years in prison,
while the horse-thief was hanged. As horses ran wild, and there was no
protection, it meant death to steal one."
This was one interlude among others. "The first thing the astronomers
did was to determine with precision their exact locality upon the earth.
A number of observations were made, and Watson, of Michigan University,
with two others, worked all night computing, until they agreed. They
said they were not in error more than one hundred feet, and that the
station was twelve miles out of the position given on the maps. It
seemed to take an immense amount of mathematics. I preserved one of
the sheets, which looked like the time-table of a Chinese railroad. The
instruments of the various parties were then set up in different parts
of the little town, and got ready for the eclipse which was to occur in
three or four days. Two days before the event we all got together, and
obtaining an engine and car, went twelve miles farther west to visit the
United States Government astronomers at a place called Separation, the
apex of the Great Divide, where the waters run east to the Mississippi
and west to the Pacific. Fox and I took our Winchester rifles with an
idea of doing a little shooting. After calling on the Government people
we started to interview the telegraph operator at this most lonely and
desolate spot. After talking over old acquaintances I asked him if
there was any game around. He said, 'Plenty of jack-rabbits.' These
jack-rabbits are a very peculiar species. They have ears about six
inches long and very slender legs, about three times as long as those
of an ordinary rabbit, and travel at a great speed by a series of jumps,
each about thirty feet long, as near as I could judge. The local
people called them 'narrow-gauge mules.' Asking the operator the best
direction, he pointed west, and noticing a rabbit in a clear space in
the sage bushes, I said, 'There is one now.' I advanced cautiously to
within one hundred feet and shot. The rabbit paid no attention. I
then advanced to within ten feet and shot again--the rabbit was still
immovable. On looking around, the whole crowd at the station were
watching--and then I knew the rabbit was stuffed! However, we did shoot
a number of live ones until Fox ran out of cartridges. On returning to
the station I passed away the time shooting at cans set on a pile of
tins. Finally the operator said to Fox: 'I have a fine Springfield
musket, suppose you try it!' So Fox took the musket and fired. It
knocked him nearly over. It seems that the musket had been run over by
a handcar, which slightly bent the long barrel, but not sufficiently for
an amateur like Fox to notice. After Fox had his shoulder treated with
arnica at the Government hospital tent, we returned to Rawlins."
The eclipse was, however, the prime consideration, and Edison followed
the example of his colleagues in making ready. The place which he
secured for setting up his tasimeter was an enclosure hardly suitable
for the purpose, and he describes the results as follows:
"I had my apparatus in a small yard enclosed by a board fence six feet
high, at one end there was a house for hens. I noticed that they all
went to roost just before totality. At the same time a slight wind
arose, and at the moment of totality the atmosphere was filled with
thistle-down and other light articles. I noticed one feather,
whose weight was at least one hundred and fifty milligrams, rise
perpendicularly to the top of the fence, where it floated away on the
wind. My apparatus was entirely too sensitive, and I got no results."
It was found that the heat from the corona of the sun was ten times
the index capacity of the instrument; but this result did not leave the
value of the device in doubt. The Scientific American remarked;
"Seeing that the tasimeter is affected by a wider range of etheric
undulations than the eye can take cognizance 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 narrow reach of unaided vision."
The eclipse over, Edison, with Professor Barker, Major Thornberg,
several soldiers, and a number of railroad officials, went hunting about
one hundred miles south of the railroad in the Ute country. A few months
later the Major and thirty soldiers were ambushed near the spot at
which the hunting-party had camped, and all were killed. Through an
introduction from Mr. Jay Gould, who then controlled the Union Pacific,
Edison was allowed to ride on the cow-catchers of the locomotives. "The
different engineers gave me a small cushion, and every day I rode in
this manner, from Omaha to the Sacramento Valley, except through the
snow-shed on the summit of the Sierras, without dust or anything else to
obstruct the view. Only once was I in danger when the locomotive struck
an animal about the size of a small cub bear--which I think was a
badger. This animal struck the front of the locomotive just under the
headlight with great violence, and was then thrown off by the rebound. I
was sitting to one side grasping the angle brace, so no harm was done."
This welcome vacation lasted nearly two months; but Edison was back in
his laboratory and hard at work before the end of August, gathering
up many loose ends, and trying out many thoughts and ideas that had
accumulated on the trip. One hot afternoon--August 30th, as shown by
the document in the case--Mr. Edison was found by one of the authors
of this biography employed most busily in making a mysterious series of
tests on paper, using for ink acids that corrugated and blistered the
paper where written upon. When interrogated as to his object, he stated
that the plan was to afford blind people the means of writing directly
to each other, especially if they were also deaf and could not hear a
message on the phonograph. The characters which he was thus forming on
the paper were high enough in relief to be legible to the delicate touch
of a blind man's fingers, and with simple apparatus letters could be
thus written, sent, and read. There was certainly no question as to the
result obtained at the moment, which was all that was asked; but the
Edison autograph thus and then written now shows the paper eaten out by
the acid used, although covered with glass for many years. Mr. Edison
does not remember that he ever recurred to this very interesting test.
He was, however, ready for anything new or novel, and no record can ever
be made or presented that would do justice to a tithe of the thoughts
and fancies daily and hourly put upon the rack. The famous note-books,
to which reference will be made later, were not begun as a regular
series, as it was only the profusion of these ideas that suggested
the vital value of such systematic registration. Then as now, the
propositions brought to Edison ranged over every conceivable subject,
but the years have taught him caution in grappling with them. He tells
an amusing story of one dilemma into which his good-nature led him at
this period: "At Menlo Park one day, a farmer came in and asked if I
knew any way to kill potato-bugs. He had twenty acres of potatoes, and
the vines were being destroyed. I sent men out and culled two quarts
of bugs, and tried every chemical I had to destroy them. Bisulphide of
carbon was found to do it instantly. I got a drum and went over to the
potato farm and sprinkled it on the vines with a pot. Every bug dropped
dead. The next morning the farmer came in very excited and reported
that the stuff had killed the vines as well. I had to pay $300 for not
experimenting properly."
During this year, 1878, the phonograph made its way also to Europe,
and various sums of money were paid there to secure the rights to its
manufacture and exploitation. In England, for example, the Microscopic
Company paid $7500 down and agreed to a royalty, while arrangements were
effected also in France, Russia, and other countries. In every instance,
as in this country, the commercial development had to wait several
years, for in the mean time another great art had been brought into
existence, demanding exclusive attention and exhaustive toil. And when
the work was done the reward was a new heaven and a new earth--in the
art of illumination.
CHAPTER XI
THE INVENTION OF THE INCANDESCENT LAMP
IT is possible to imagine a time to come when the hours of work and rest
will once more be regulated by the sun. But the course of civilization
has been marked by an artificial lengthening of the day, and by a
constant striving after more perfect means of illumination. Why mankind
should sleep through several hours of sunlight in the morning, and
stay awake through a needless time in the evening, can probably only be
attributed to total depravity. It is certainly a most stupid, expensive,
and harmful habit. In no one thing has man shown greater fertility of
invention than in lighting; to nothing does he cling more tenaciously
than to his devices for furnishing light. Electricity to-day reigns
supreme in the field of illumination, but every other kind of artificial
light that has ever been known is still in use somewhere. Toward its
light-bringers the race has assumed an attitude of veneration, though it
has forgotten, if it ever heard, the names of those who first brightened
its gloom and dissipated its darkness. If the tallow candle, hitherto
unknown, were now invented, its creator would be hailed as one of the
greatest benefactors of the present age.
Up to the close of the eighteenth century, the means of house and street
illumination were of two generic kinds--grease and oil; but then came
a swift and revolutionary change in the adoption of gas. The ideas and
methods of Murdoch and Lebon soon took definite shape, and "coal smoke"
was piped from its place of origin to distant points of consumption.
As early as 1804, the first company ever organized for gas lighting was
formed in London, one side of Pall Mall being lit up by the enthusiastic
pioneer, Winsor, in 1807. Equal activity was shown in America, and
Baltimore began the practice of gas lighting in 1816. It is true that
there were explosions, and distinguished men like Davy and Watt opined
that the illuminant was too dangerous; but the "spirit of coal" had
demonstrated its usefulness convincingly, and a commercial development
began, which, for extent and rapidity, was not inferior to that marking
the concurrent adoption of steam in industry and transportation.
Meantime the wax candle and the Argand oil lamp held their own bravely.
The whaling fleets, long after gas came into use, were one of the
greatest sources of our national wealth. To New Bedford, Massachusetts,
alone, some three or four hundred ships brought their whale and sperm
oil, spermaceti, and whalebone; and at one time that port was accounted
the richest city in the United States in proportion to its population.
The ship-owners and refiners of that whaling metropolis were slow to
believe that their monopoly could ever be threatened by newer sources of
illumination; but gas had become available in the cities, and coal-oil
and petroleum were now added to the list of illuminating materials. The
American whaling fleet, which at the time of Edison's birth mustered
over seven hundred sail, had dwindled probably to a bare tenth when he
took up the problem of illumination; and the competition of oil from the
ground with oil from the sea, and with coal-gas, had made the artificial
production of light cheaper than ever before, when up to the middle
of the century it had remained one of the heaviest items of domestic
expense. Moreover, just about the time that Edison took up incandescent
lighting, water-gas was being introduced on a large scale as a
commercial illuminant that could be produced at a much lower cost than
coal-gas.
Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century the search for a
practical electric light was almost wholly in the direction of employing
methods analogous to those already familiar; in other words, obtaining
the illumination from the actual consumption of the light-giving
material. In the third quarter of the century these methods were
brought to practicality, but all may be referred back to the brilliant
demonstrations of Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution, circa
1809-10, when, with the current from a battery of two thousand cells, he
produced an intense voltaic arc between the points of consuming sticks
of charcoal. For more than thirty years the arc light remained an
expensive laboratory experiment; but the coming of the dynamo placed
that illuminant on a commercial basis. The mere fact that electrical
energy from the least expensive chemical battery using up zinc and
acids costs twenty times as much as that from a dynamo--driven by
steam-engine--is in itself enough to explain why so many of the electric
arts lingered in embryo after their fundamental principles had been
discovered. Here is seen also further proof of the great truth that one
invention often waits for another.
From 1850 onward the improvements in both the arc lamp and the dynamo
were rapid; and under the superintendence of the great Faraday, in 1858,
protecting beams of intense electric light from the voltaic arc were
shed over the waters of the Straits of Dover from the beacons of South
Foreland and Dungeness. By 1878 the arc-lighting industry had sprung
into existence in so promising a manner as to engender an extraordinary
fever and furor of speculation. At the Philadelphia Centennial
Exposition of 1876, Wallace-Farmer dynamos built at Ansonia,
Connecticut, were shown, with the current from which arc lamps were
there put in actual service. A year or two later the work of Charles F.
Brush and Edward Weston laid the deep foundation of modern arc lighting
in America, securing as well substantial recognition abroad.
Thus the new era had been ushered in, but it was based altogether on the
consumption of some material--carbon--in a lamp open to the air. Every
lamp the world had ever known did this, in one way or another. Edison
himself began at that point, and his note-books show that he made
various experiments with this type of lamp at a very early stage.
Indeed, his experiments had led him so far as to anticipate in 1875 what
are now known as "flaming arcs," the exceedingly bright and generally
orange or rose-colored lights which have been introduced within the last
few years, and are now so frequently seen in streets and public places.
While the arcs with plain carbons are bluish-white, those with carbons
containing calcium fluoride have a notable golden glow.
He was convinced, however, that the greatest field of lighting lay in
the illumination of houses and other comparatively enclosed areas,
to replace the ordinary gas light, rather than in the illumination
of streets and other outdoor places by lights of great volume
and brilliancy. Dismissing from his mind quickly the commercial
impossibility of using arc lights for general indoor illumination,
he arrived at the conclusion that an electric lamp giving light by
incandescence was the solution of the problem.
Edison was familiar with the numerous but impracticable and commercially
unsuccessful efforts that had been previously made by other inventors
and investigators to produce electric light by incandescence, and at the
time that he began his experiments, in 1877, almost the whole scientific
world had pronounced such an idea as impossible of fulfilment. The
leading electricians, physicists, and experts of the period had been
studying the subject for more than a quarter of a century, and with but
one known exception had proven mathematically and by close reasoning
that the "Subdivision of the Electric Light," as it was then termed, was
practically beyond attainment. Opinions of this nature have ever been
but a stimulus to Edison when he has given deep thought to a subject,
and has become impressed with strong convictions of possibility, and
in this particular case he was satisfied that the subdivision of the
electric light--or, more correctly, the subdivision of the electric
current--was not only possible but entirely practicable.
It will have been perceived from the foregoing chapters that from the
time of boyhood, when he first began to rub against the world, his
commercial instincts were alert and predominated in almost all of the
enterprises that he set in motion. This characteristic trait had grown
stronger as he matured, having received, as it did, fresh impetus and
strength from his one lapse in the case of his first patented invention,
the vote-recorder. The lesson he then learned was to devote his
inventive faculties only to things for which there was a real, genuine
demand, and that would subserve the actual necessities of humanity; and
it was probably a fortunate circumstance that this lesson was learned
at the outset of his career as an inventor. He has never assumed to be a
philosopher or "pure scientist."
In order that the reader may grasp an adequate idea of the magnitude and
importance of Edison's invention of the incandescent lamp, it will be
necessary to review briefly the "state of the art" at the time he
began his experiments on that line. After the invention of the voltaic
battery, early in the last century, experiments were made which
determined that heat could be produced by the passage of the electric
current through wires of platinum and other metals, and through pieces
of carbon, as noted already, and it was, of course, also observed that
if sufficient current were passed through these conductors they could be
brought from the lower stage of redness up to the brilliant white heat
of incandescence. As early as 1845 the results of these experiments were
taken advantage of when Starr, a talented American who died at the early
age of twenty-five, suggested, in his English patent of that year, two
forms of small incandescent electric lamps, one having a burner made
from platinum foil placed under a glass cover without excluding the air;
and the other composed of a thin plate or pencil of carbon enclosed in
a Torricellian vacuum. These suggestions of young Starr were followed
by many other experimenters, whose improvements consisted principally in
devices to increase the compactness and portability of the lamp, in
the sealing of the lamp chamber to prevent the admission of air, and
in means for renewing the carbon burner when it had been consumed. Thus
Roberts, in 1852, proposed to cement the neck of the glass globe into a
metallic cup, and to provide it with a tube or stop-cock for exhaustion
by means of a hand-pump. Lodyguine, Konn, Kosloff, and Khotinsky,
between 1872 and 1877, proposed various ingenious devices for perfecting
the joint between the metal base and the glass globe, and also provided
their lamps with several short carbon pencils, which were automatically
brought into circuit successively as the pencils were consumed. In 1876
or 1877, Bouliguine proposed the employment of a long carbon pencil, a
short section only of which was in circuit at any one time and formed
the burner, the lamp being provided with a mechanism for automatically
pushing other sections of the pencil into position between the contacts
to renew the burner. Sawyer and Man proposed, in 1878, to make
the bottom plate of glass instead of metal, and provided ingenious
arrangements for charging the lamp chamber with an atmosphere of pure
nitrogen gas which does not support combustion.
These lamps and many others of similar character, ingenious as they
were, failed to become of any commercial value, due, among other things,
to the brief life of the carbon burner. Even under the best conditions
it was found that the carbon members were subject to a rapid
disintegration or evaporation, which experimenters assumed was due to
the disrupting action of the electric current; and hence the conclusion
that carbon contained in itself the elements of its own destruction, and
was not a suitable material for the burner of an incandescent lamp. On
the other hand, platinum, although found to be the best of all materials
for the purpose, aside from its great expense, and not combining with
oxygen at high temperatures as does carbon, required to be brought
so near the melting-point in order to give light, that a very slight
increase in the temperature resulted in its destruction. It was assumed
that the difficulty lay in the material of the burner itself, and not in
its environment.
It was not realized up to such a comparatively recent date as 1879 that
the solution of the great problem of subdivision of the electric current
would not, however, be found merely in the production of a durable
incandescent electric lamp--even if any of the lamps above referred to
had fulfilled that requirement. The other principal features necessary
to subdivide the electric current successfully were: the burning of an
indefinite number of lights on the same circuit; each light to give
a useful and economical degree of illumination; and each light to
be independent of all the others in regard to its operation and
extinguishment.
The opinions of scientific men of the period on the subject are well
represented by the two following extracts--the first, from a lecture at
the Royal United Service Institution, about February, 1879, by Mr. (Sir)
W. H. Preece, one of the most eminent electricians in England,
who, after discussing the question mathematically, said: "Hence the
sub-division of the light is an absolute ignis fatuus." The other
extract is from a book written by Paget Higgs, LL.D., D.Sc., published
in London in 1879, in which he says: "Much nonsense has been talked
in relation to this subject. Some inventors have claimed the power to
'indefinitely divide' the electric current, not knowing or forgetting
that such a statement is incompatible with the well-proven law of
conservation of energy."
"Some inventors," in the last sentence just quoted, probably--indeed,
we think undoubtedly--refers to Edison, whose earlier work in electric
lighting (1878) had been announced in this country and abroad, and
who had then stated boldly his conviction of the practicability of
the subdivision of the electrical current. The above extracts are good
illustrations, however, of scientific opinions up to the end of
1879, when Mr. Edison's epoch-making invention rendered them entirely
untenable. The eminent scientist, John Tyndall, while not sharing these
precise views, at least as late as January 17, 1879, delivered a lecture
before the Royal Institution on "The Electric Light," when, after
pointing out the development of the art up to Edison's work, and showing
the apparent hopelessness of the problem, he said: "Knowing something of
the intricacy of the practical problem, I should certainly prefer seeing
it in Edison's hands to having it in mine."
The reader may have deemed this sketch of the state of the art to be
a considerable digression; but it is certainly due to the subject to
present the facts in such a manner as to show that this great invention
was neither the result of improving some process or device that was
known or existing at the time, nor due to any unforeseen lucky chance,
nor the accidental result of other experiments. On the contrary, it was
the legitimate outcome of a series of exhaustive experiments founded
upon logical and original reasoning in a mind that had the courage and
hardihood to set at naught the confirmed opinions of the world,
voiced by those generally acknowledged to be the best exponents of the
art--experiments carried on amid a storm of jeers and derision, almost
as contemptuous as if the search were for the discovery of perpetual
motion. In this we see the man foreshadowed by the boy who, when he
obtained his books on chemistry or physics, did not accept any statement
of fact or experiment therein, but worked out every one of them himself
to ascertain whether or not they were true.
Although this brings the reader up to the year 1879, one must turn back
two years and accompany Edison in his first attack on the electric-light
problem. In 1877 he sold his telephone invention (the carbon
transmitter) to the Western Union Telegraph Company, which had
previously come into possession also of his quadruplex inventions,
as already related. He was still busily engaged on the telephone,
on acoustic electrical transmission, sextuplex telegraphs, duplex
telegraphs, miscellaneous carbon articles, and other inventions of a
minor nature. During the whole of the previous year and until late in
the summer of 1877, he had been working with characteristic energy and
enthusiasm on the telephone; and, in developing this invention to a
successful issue, had preferred the use of carbon and had employed it in
numerous forms, especially in the form of carbonized paper.
Eighteen hundred and seventy-seven in Edison's laboratory was a
veritable carbon year, for it was carbon in some shape or form for
interpolation in electric circuits of various kinds that occupied the
thoughts of the whole force from morning to night. It is not surprising,
therefore, that in September of that year, when Edison turned his
thoughts actively toward electric lighting by incandescence, his early
experiments should be in the line of carbon as an illuminant. His
originality of method was displayed at the very outset, for one of the
first experiments was the bringing to incandescence of a strip of carbon
in the open air to ascertain merely how much current was required.
This conductor was a strip of carbonized paper about an inch long,
one-sixteenth of an inch broad, and six or seven one-thousandths of an
inch thick, the ends of which were secured to clamps that formed the
poles of a battery. The carbon was lighted up to incandescence, and, of
course, oxidized and disintegrated immediately. Within a few days this
was followed by experiments with the same kind of carbon, but in vacuo
by means of a hand-worked air-pump. This time the carbon strip burned
at incandescence for about eight minutes. Various expedients to prevent
oxidization were tried, such, for instance, as coating the carbon with
powdered glass, which in melting would protect the carbon from the
atmosphere, but without successful results.
Edison was inclined to concur in the prevailing opinion as to the easy
destructibility of carbon, but, without actually settling the point in
his mind, he laid aside temporarily this line of experiment and entered
a new field. He had made previously some trials of platinum wire as
an incandescent burner for a lamp, but left it for a time in favor of
carbon. He now turned to the use of almost infusible metals--such as
boron, ruthenium, chromium, etc.--as separators or tiny bridges between
two carbon points, the current acting so as to bring these separators
to a high degree of incandescence, at which point they would emit a
brilliant light. He also placed some of these refractory metals directly
in the circuit, bringing them to incandescence, and used silicon in
powdered form in glass tubes placed in the electric circuit. His notes
include the use of powdered silicon mixed with lime or other very
infusible non-conductors or semi-conductors. Edison's conclusions on
these substances were that, while in some respects they were within the
bounds of possibility for the subdivision of the electric current, they
did not reach the ideal that he had in mind for commercial results.
Edison's systematized attacks on the problem were two in number, the
first of which we have just related, which began in September, 1877, and
continued until about January, 1878. Contemporaneously, he and his
force of men were very busily engaged day and night on other important
enterprises and inventions. Among the latter, the phonograph may be
specially mentioned, as it was invented in the late fall of 1877. From
that time until July, 1878, his time and attention day and night were
almost completely absorbed by the excitement caused by the invention and
exhibition of the machine. In July, feeling entitled to a brief vacation
after several years of continuous labor, Edison went with the expedition
to Wyoming to observe an eclipse of the sun, and incidentally to test
his tasimeter, a delicate instrument devised by him for measuring
heat transmitted through immense distances of space. His trip has been
already described. He was absent about two months. Coming home rested
and refreshed, Mr. Edison says: "After my return from the trip to
observe the eclipse of the sun, I went with Professor Barker, Professor
of Physics in the University of Pennsylvania, and Doctor Chandler,
Professor of Chemistry in Columbia College, to see Mr. Wallace, a large
manufacturer of brass in Ansonia, Connecticut. Wallace at this time was
experimenting on series arc lighting. Just at that time I wanted to take
up something new, and Professor Barker suggested that I go to work and
see if I could subdivide the electric light so it could be got in small
units like gas. This was not a new suggestion, because I had made a
number of experiments on electric lighting a year before this. They had
been laid aside for the phonograph. I determined to take up the search
again and continue it. On my return home I started my usual course of
collecting every kind of data about gas; bought all the transactions
of the gas-engineering societies, etc., all the back volumes of gas
journals, etc. Having obtained all the data, and investigated gas-jet
distribution in New York by actual observations, I made up my mind that
the problem of the subdivision of the electric current could be solved
and made commercial." About the end of August, 1878, he began his second
organized attack on the subdivision of the current, which was steadily
maintained until he achieved signal victory a year and two months later.
The date of this interesting visit to Ansonia is fixed by an inscription
made by Edison on a glass goblet which he used. The legend in diamond
scratches runs: "Thomas A. Edison, September 8, 1878, made under the
electric light." Other members of the party left similar memorials,
which under the circumstances have come to be greatly prized. A number
of experiments were witnessed in arc lighting, and Edison secured
a small Wallace-Farmer dynamo for his own work, as well as a set of
Wallace arc lamps for lighting the Menlo Park laboratory. Before leaving
Ansonia, Edison remarked, significantly: "Wallace, I believe I can beat
you making electric lights. I don't think you are working in the right
direction." Another date which shows how promptly the work was resumed
is October 14, 1878, when Edison filed an application for his first
lighting patent: "Improvement in Electric Lights." In after years,
discussing the work of Wallace, who was not only a great pioneer
electrical manufacturer, but one of the founders of the wire-drawing and
brass-working industry, Edison said: "Wallace was one of the earliest
pioneers in electrical matters in this country. He has done a great deal
of good work, for which others have received the credit; and the
work which he did in the early days of electric lighting others
have benefited by largely, and he has been crowded to one side and
forgotten." Associated in all this work with Wallace at Ansonia was
Prof. Moses G. Farmer, famous for the introduction of the fire-alarm
system; as the discoverer of the self-exciting principle of the modern
dynamo; as a pioneer experimenter in the electric-railway field; as a
telegraph engineer, and as a lecturer on mines and explosives to
naval classes at Newport. During 1858, Farmer, who, like Edison, was a
ceaseless investigator, had made a series of studies upon the production
of light by electricity, and had even invented an automatic regulator
by which a number of platinum lamps in multiple arc could be kept at
uniform voltage for any length of time. In July, 1859, he lit up one of
the rooms of his house at Salem, Massachusetts, every evening with such
lamps, using in them small pieces of platinum and iridium wire, which
were made to incandesce by means of current from primary batteries.
Farmer was not one of the party that memorable day in September, but his
work was known through his intimate connection with Wallace, and there
is no doubt that reference was made to it. Such work had not led
very far, the "lamps" were hopelessly short-lived, and everything was
obviously experimental; but it was all helpful and suggestive to one
whose open mind refused no hint from any quarter.
At the commencement of his new attempts, Edison returned to his
experiments with carbon as an incandescent burner for a lamp, and made
a very large number of trials, all in vacuo. Not only were the ordinary
strip paper carbons tried again, but tissue-paper coated with tar and
lampblack was rolled into thin sticks, like knitting-needles, carbonized
and raised to incandescence in vacuo. Edison also tried hard carbon,
wood carbons, and almost every conceivable variety of paper carbon in
like manner. With the best vacuum that he could then get by means of the
ordinary air-pump, the carbons would last, at the most, only from ten to
fifteen minutes in a state of incandescence. Such results were evidently
not of commercial value.
Edison then turned his attention in other directions. In his earliest
consideration of the problem of subdividing the electric current, he had
decided that the only possible solution lay in the employment of a lamp
whose incandescing body should have a high resistance combined with a
small radiating surface, and be capable of being used in what is called
"multiple arc," so that each unit, or lamp, could be turned on or off
without interfering with any other unit or lamp. No other arrangement
could possibly be considered as commercially practicable.
The full significance of the three last preceding sentences will not be
obvious to laymen, as undoubtedly many of the readers of this book may
be; and now being on the threshold of the series of Edison's experiments
that led up to the basic invention, we interpolate a brief explanation,
in order that the reader may comprehend the logical reasoning and work
that in this case produced such far-reaching results.
If we consider a simple circuit in which a current is flowing, and
include in the circuit a carbon horseshoe-like conductor which it is
desired to bring to incandescence by the heat generated by the current
passing through it, it is first evident that the resistance offered to
the current by the wires themselves must be less than that offered by
the burner, because, otherwise current would be wasted as heat in the
conducting wires. At the very foundation of the electric-lighting art is
the essentially commercial consideration that one cannot spend very much
for conductors, and Edison determined that, in order to use wires of a
practicable size, the voltage of the current (i.e., its pressure or
the characteristic that overcomes resistance to its flow) should be one
hundred and ten volts, which since its adoption has been the standard.
To use a lower voltage or pressure, while making the solution of the
lighting problem a simple one as we shall see, would make it necessary
to increase the size of the conducting wires to a prohibitive extent.
To increase the voltage or pressure materially, while permitting
some saving in the cost of conductors, would enormously increase the
difficulties of making a sufficiently high resistance conductor to
secure light by incandescence. This apparently remote consideration
--weight of copper used--was really the commercial key to the problem,
just as the incandescent burner was the scientific key to that problem.
Before Edison's invention incandescent lamps had been suggested as
a possibility, but they were provided with carbon rods or strips of
relatively low resistance, and to bring these to incandescence required
a current of low pressure, because a current of high voltage would pass
through them so readily as not to generate heat; and to carry a current
of low pressure through wires without loss would require wires of
enormous size. [8] Having a current of relatively high pressure to
contend with, it was necessary to provide a carbon burner which, as
compared with what had previously been suggested, should have a very
great resistance. Carbon as a material, determined after patient search,
apparently offered the greatest hope, but even with this substance the
necessary high resistance could be obtained only by making the burner
of extremely small cross-section, thereby also reducing its radiating
surface. Therefore, the crucial point was the production of a hair-like
carbon filament, with a relatively great resistance and small radiating
surface, capable of withstanding mechanical shock, and susceptible of
being maintained at a temperature of over two thousand degrees for a
thousand hours or more before breaking. And this filamentary conductor
required to be supported in a vacuum chamber so perfectly formed and
constructed that during all those hours, and subjected as it is to
varying temperatures, not a particle of air should enter to disintegrate
the filament. And not only so, but the lamp after its design must not
be a mere laboratory possibility, but a practical commercial article
capable of being manufactured at low cost and in large quantities. A
statement of what had to be done in those days of actual as well as
scientific electrical darkness is quite sufficient to explain Tyndall's
attitude of mind in preferring that the problem should be in Edison's
hands rather than in his own. To say that the solution of the problem
lay merely in reducing the size of the carbon burner to a mere hair, is
to state a half-truth only; but who, we ask, would have had the temerity
even to suggest that such an attenuated body could be maintained at a
white heat, without disintegration, for a thousand hours? The solution
consisted not only in that, but in the enormous mass of patiently
worked-out details--the manufacture of the filaments, their uniform
carbonization, making the globes, producing a perfect vacuum, and
countless other factors, the omission of any one of which would probably
have resulted eventually in failure.
[Footnote 8: As a practical illustration of these facts it
was calculated by Professor Barker, of the University of
Pennsylvania (after Edison had invented the incandescent
lamp), that if it should cost $100,000 for copper conductors
to supply current to Edison lamps in a given area, it would
cost about $200,000,000 for copper conductors for lighting
the same area by lamps of the earlier experimenters--such,
for instance, as the lamp invented by Konn in 1875. This
enormous difference would be accounted for by the fact that
Edison's lamp was one having a high resistance and
relatively small radiating surface, while Konn's lamp was
one having a very low resistance and large radiating
surface.]
Continuing the digression one step farther in order to explain the term
"multiple arc," it may be stated that there are two principal systems
of distributing electric current, one termed "series," and the other
"multiple arc." The two are illustrated, diagrammatically, side by side,
the arrows indicating flow of current. The series system, it will be
seen, presents one continuous path for the current. The current for the
last lamp must pass through the first and all the intermediate lamps.
Hence, if any one light goes out, the continuity of the path is broken,
current cannot flow, and all the lamps are extinguished unless a loop
or by-path is provided. It is quite obvious that such a system would be
commercially impracticable where small units, similar to gas jets, were
employed. On the other hand, in the multiple-arc system, current may be
considered as flowing in two parallel conductors like the vertical sides
of a ladder, the ends of which never come together. Each lamp is placed
in a separate circuit across these two conductors, like a rung in the
ladder, thus making a separate and independent path for the current in
each case. Hence, if a lamp goes out, only that individual subdivision,
or ladder step, is affected; just that one particular path for the
current is interrupted, but none of the other lamps is interfered with.
They remain lighted, each one independent of the other. The reader will
quite readily understand, therefore, that a multiple-arc system is the
only one practically commercial where electric light is to be used in
small units like those of gas or oil.
Such was the nature of the problem that confronted Edison at the outset.
There was nothing in the whole world that in any way approximated a
solution, although the most brilliant minds in the electrical art had
been assiduously working on the subject for a quarter of a century
preceding. As already seen, he came early to the conclusion that the
only solution lay in the use of a lamp of high resistance and small
radiating surface, and, with characteristic fervor and energy, he
attacked the problem from this standpoint, having absolute faith in
a successful outcome. The mere fact that even with the successful
production of the electric lamp the assault on the complete problem
of commercial lighting would hardly be begun did not deter him in the
slightest. To one of Edison's enthusiastic self-confidence the long
vista of difficulties ahead--we say it in all sincerity--must have been
alluring.
After having devoted several months to experimental trials of carbon,
at the end of 1878, as already detailed, he turned his attention to the
platinum group of metals and began a series of experiments in which he
used chiefly platinum wire and iridium wire, and alloys of refractory
metals in the form of wire burners for incandescent lamps. These metals
have very high fusing-points, and were found to last longer than the
carbon strips previously used when heated up to incandescence by the
electric current, although under such conditions as were then possible
they were melted by excess of current after they had been lighted a
comparatively short time, either in the open air or in such a vacuum as
could be obtained by means of the ordinary air-pump.
Nevertheless, Edison continued along this line of experiment with
unremitting vigor, making improvement after improvement, until about
April, 1879, he devised a means whereby platinum wire of a given length,
which would melt in the open air when giving a light equal to four
candles, would emit a light of twenty-five candle-power without fusion.
This was accomplished by introducing the platinum wire into an all-glass
globe, completely sealed and highly exhausted of air, and passing a
current through the platinum wire while the vacuum was being made.
In this, which was a new and radical invention, we see the first step
toward the modern incandescent lamp. The knowledge thus obtained that
current passing through the platinum during exhaustion would drive out
occluded gases (i.e., gases mechanically held in or upon the metal), and
increase the infusibility of the platinum, led him to aim at securing
greater perfection in the vacuum, on the theory that the higher the
vacuum obtained, the higher would be the infusibility of the platinum
burner. And this fact also was of the greatest importance in making
successful the final use of carbon, because without the subjection of
the carbon to the heating effect of current during the formation of the
vacuum, the presence of occluded gases would have been a fatal obstacle.
Continuing these experiments with most fervent zeal, taking no account
of the passage of time, with an utter disregard for meals, and but
scanty hours of sleep snatched reluctantly at odd periods of the day
or night, Edison kept his laboratory going without cessation. A great
variety of lamps was made of the platinum-iridium type, mostly with
thermal devices to regulate the temperature of the burner and prevent
its being melted by an excess of current. The study of apparatus for
obtaining more perfect vacua was unceasingly carried on, for Edison
realized that in this there lay a potent factor of ultimate success.
About August he had obtained a pump that would produce a vacuum up to
about the one-hundred-thousandth part of an atmosphere, and some time
during the next month, or beginning of October, had obtained one that
would produce a vacuum up to the one-millionth part of an atmosphere.
It must be remembered that the conditions necessary for MAINTAINING this
high vacuum were only made possible by his invention of the one-piece
all-glass globe, in which all the joints were hermetically sealed during
its manufacture into a lamp, whereby a high vacuum could be retained
continuously for any length of time.
In obtaining this perfection of vacuum apparatus, Edison realized that
he was approaching much nearer to a solution of the problem. In his
experiments with the platinum-iridium lamps, he had been working all
the time toward the proposition of high resistance and small radiating
surface, until he had made a lamp having thirty feet of fine platinum
wire wound upon a small bobbin of infusible material; but the desired
economy, simplicity, and durability were not obtained in this manner,
although at all times the burner was maintained at a critically high
temperature. After attaining a high degree of perfection with these
lamps, he recognized their impracticable character, and his mind
reverted to the opinion he had formed in his early experiments two years
before--viz., that carbon had the requisite resistance to permit a very
simple conductor to accomplish the object if it could be used in the
form of a hair-like "filament," provided the filament itself could be
made sufficiently homogeneous. As we have already seen, he could not use
carbon successfully in his earlier experiments, for the strips of carbon
he then employed, although they were much larger than "filaments,"
would not stand, but were consumed in a few minutes under the imperfect
conditions then at his command.
Now, however, that he had found means for obtaining and maintaining high
vacua, Edison immediately went back to carbon, which from the first
he had conceived of as the ideal substance for a burner. His next step
proved conclusively the correctness of his old deductions. On October
21, 1879, after many patient trials, he carbonized a piece of cotton
sewing-thread bent into a loop or horseshoe form, and had it sealed
into a glass globe from which he exhausted the air until a vacuum up to
one-millionth of an atmosphere was produced. This lamp, when put on
the circuit, lighted up brightly to incandescence and maintained its
integrity for over forty hours, and lo! the practical incandescent lamp
was born. The impossible, so called, had been attained; subdivision
of the electric-light current was made practicable; the goal had
been reached; and one of the greatest inventions of the century
was completed. Up to this time Edison had spent over $40,000 in his
electric-light experiments, but the results far more than justified the
expenditure, for with this lamp he made the discovery that the FILAMENT
of carbon, under the conditions of high vacuum, was commercially
stable and would stand high temperatures without the disintegration and
oxidation that took place in all previous attempts that he knew of
for making an incandescent burner out of carbon. Besides, this lamp
possessed the characteristics of high resistance and small radiating
surface, permitting economy in the outlay for conductors, and requiring
only a small current for each unit of light--conditions that were
absolutely necessary of fulfilment in order to accomplish commercially
the subdivision of the electric-light current.
This slender, fragile, tenuous thread of brittle carbon, glowing
steadily and continuously with a soft light agreeable to the eyes,
was the tiny key that opened the door to a world revolutionized in
its interior illumination. It was a triumphant vindication of Edison's
reasoning powers, his clear perceptions, his insight into possibilities,
and his inventive faculty, all of which had already been productive of
so many startling, practical, and epoch-making inventions. And now he
had stepped over the threshold of a new art which has since become so
world-wide in its application as to be an integral part of modern human
experience. [9]
[Footnote 9: The following extract from Walker on Patents
(4th edition) will probably be of interest to the reader:
"Sec. 31a. A meritorious exception, to the rule of the last
section, is involved in the adjudicated validity of the
Edison incandescent-light patent. The carbon filament, which
constitutes the only new part of the combination of the
second claim of that patent, differs from the earlier carbon
burners of Sawyer and Man, only in having a diameter of one-
sixty-fourth of an inch or less, whereas the burners of
Sawyer and Man had a diameter of one-thirty-second of an
inch or more. But that reduction of one-half in diameter
increased the resistance of the burner FOURFOLD, and reduced
its radiating surface TWOFOLD, and thus increased eightfold,
its ratio of resistance to radiating surface. That eightfold
increase of proportion enabled the resistance of the
conductor of electricity from the generator to the burner to
be increased eightfold, without any increase of percentage
of loss of energy in that conductor, or decrease of
percentage of development of heat in the burner; and thus
enabled the area of the cross-section of that conductor to
be reduced eightfold, and thus to be made with one-eighth of
the amount of copper or other metal, which would be required
if the reduction of diameter of the burner from one-thirty-
second to one-sixty-fourth of an inch had not been made. And
that great reduction in the size and cost of conductors,
involved also a great difference in the composition of the
electric energy employed in the system; that difference
consisting in generating the necessary amount of electrical
energy with comparatively high electromotive force, and
comparatively low current, instead of contrariwise. For this
reason, the use of carbon filaments, one-sixty-fourth of an
inch in diameter or less, instead of carbon burners one-
thirty-second of an inch in diameter or more, not only
worked an enormous economy in conductors, but also
necessitated a great change in generators, and did both
according to a philosophy, which Edison was the first to
know, and which is stated in this paragraph in its simplest
form and aspect, and which lies at the foundation of the
incandescent electric lighting of the world."]
No sooner had the truth of this new principle been established than
the work to establish it firmly and commercially was carried on
more assiduously than ever. The next immediate step was a further
investigation of the possibilities of improving the quality of the
carbon filament. Edison had previously made a vast number of experiments
with carbonized paper for various electrical purposes, with such good
results that he once more turned to it and now made fine filament-like
loops of this material which were put into other lamps. These proved
even more successful (commercially considered) than the carbonized
thread--so much so that after a number of such lamps had been made and
put through severe tests, the manufacture of lamps from these paper
carbons was begun and carried on continuously. This necessitated first
the devising and making of a large number of special tools for cutting
the carbon filaments and for making and putting together the various
parts of the lamps. Meantime, great excitement had been caused in this
country and in Europe by the announcement of Edison's success. In the
Old World, scientists generally still declared the impossibility of
subdividing the electric-light current, and in the public press Mr.
Edison was denounced as a dreamer. Other names of a less complimentary
nature were applied to him, even though his lamp were actually in
use, and the principle of commercial incandescent lighting had been
established.
Between October 21, 1879, and December 21, 1879, some hundreds of these
paper-carbon lamps had been made and put into actual use, not only in
the laboratory, but in the streets and several residences at Menlo Park,
New Jersey, causing great excitement and bringing many visitors from
far and near. On the latter date a full-page article appeared in the
New York Herald which so intensified the excited feeling that Mr. Edison
deemed it advisable to make a public exhibition. On New Year's Eve,
1879, special trains were run to Menlo Park by the Pennsylvania
Railroad, and over three thousand persons took advantage of the
opportunity to go out there and witness this demonstration for
themselves. In this great crowd were many public officials and men of
prominence in all walks of life, who were enthusiastic in their praises.
In the mean time, the mind that conceived and made practical this
invention could not rest content with anything less than perfection,
so far as it could be realized. Edison was not satisfied with paper
carbons. They were not fully up to the ideal that he had in mind. What
he sought was a perfectly uniform and homogeneous carbon, one like the
"One-Hoss Shay," that had no weak spots to break down at inopportune
times. He began to carbonize everything in nature that he could lay
hands on. In his laboratory note-books are innumerable jottings of the
things that were carbonized and tried, such as tissue-paper, soft paper,
all kinds of cardboards, drawing-paper of all grades, paper saturated
with tar, all kinds of threads, fish-line, threads rubbed with tarred
lampblack, fine threads plaited together in strands, cotton soaked in
boiling tar, lamp-wick, twine, tar and lampblack mixed with a proportion
of lime, vulcanized fibre, celluloid, boxwood, cocoanut hair and shell,
spruce, hickory, baywood, cedar and maple shavings, rosewood, punk,
cork, bagging, flax, and a host of other things. He also extended his
searches far into the realms of nature in the line of grasses, plants,
canes, and similar products, and in these experiments at that time
and later he carbonized, made into lamps, and tested no fewer than six
thousand different species of vegetable growths.
The reasons for such prodigious research are not apparent on the face of
the subject, nor is this the occasion to enter into an explanation, as
that alone would be sufficient to fill a fair-sized book. Suffice it
to say that Edison's omnivorous reading, keen observation, power of
assimilating facts and natural phenomena, and skill in applying the
knowledge thus attained to whatever was in hand, now came into full play
in determining that the results he desired could only be obtained in
certain directions.
At this time he was investigating everything with a microscope, and one
day in the early part of 1880 he noticed upon a table in the laboratory
an ordinary palm-leaf fan. He picked it up and, looking it over,
observed that it had a binding rim made of bamboo, cut from the outer
edge of the cane; a very long strip. He examined this, and then gave it
to one of his assistants, telling him to cut it up and get out of it
all the filaments he could, carbonize them, put them into lamps, and try
them. The results of this trial were exceedingly successful, far better
than with anything else thus far used; indeed, so much so, that after
further experiments and microscopic examinations Edison was convinced
that he was now on the right track for making a thoroughly stable,
commercial lamp; and shortly afterward he sent a man to Japan to procure
further supplies of bamboo. The fascinating story of the bamboo hunt
will be told later; but even this bamboo lamp was only one item of
a complete system to be devised--a system that has since completely
revolutionized the art of interior illumination.
Reference has been made in this chapter to the preliminary study that
Edison brought to bear on the development of the gas art and industry.
This study was so exhaustive that one can only compare it to the careful
investigation made in advance by any competent war staff of the elements
of strength and weakness, on both sides, in a possible campaign. A
popular idea of Edison that dies hard, pictures a breezy, slap-dash,
energetic inventor arriving at new results by luck and intuition, making
boastful assertions and then winning out by mere chance. The native
simplicity of the man, the absence of pose and ceremony, do much to
strengthen this notion; but the real truth is that while gifted with
unusual imagination, Edison's march to the goal of a new invention is
positively humdrum and monotonous in its steady progress. No one ever
saw Edison in a hurry; no one ever saw him lazy; and that which he did
with slow, careful scrutiny six months ago, he will be doing with just
as much calm deliberation of research six months hence--and six years
hence if necessary. If, for instance, he were asked to find the most
perfect pebble on the Atlantic shore of New Jersey, instead of hunting
here, there, and everywhere for the desired object, we would no doubt
find him patiently screening the entire beach, sifting out the most
perfect stones and eventually, by gradual exclusion, reaching the
long-sought-for pebble; and the mere fact that in this search years
might be taken, would not lessen his enthusiasm to the slightest extent.
In the "prospectus book" among the series of famous note-books, all the
references and data apply to gas. The book is numbered 184, falls into
the period now dealt with, and runs along casually with items spread
out over two or three years. All these notes refer specifically to
"Electricity vs. Gas as General Illuminants," and cover an astounding
range of inquiry and comment. One of the very first notes tells the
whole story: "Object, Edison to effect exact imitation of all done by
gas, so as to replace lighting by gas by lighting by electricity. To
improve the illumination to such an extent as to meet all requirements
of natural, artificial, and commercial conditions." A large programme,
but fully executed! The notes, it will be understood, are all in
Edison's handwriting. They go on to observe that "a general system of
distribution is the only possible means of economical illumination," and
they dismiss isolated-plant lighting as in mills and factories as of so
little importance to the public--"we shall leave the consideration of
this out of this book." The shrewd prophecy is made that gas will be
manufactured less for lighting, as the result of electrical competition,
and more and more for heating, etc., thus enlarging its market and
increasing its income. Comment is made on kerosene and its cost, and all
kinds of general statistics are jotted down as desirable. Data are to be
obtained on lamp and dynamo efficiency, and "Another review of the whole
thing as worked out upon pure science principles by Rowland, Young,
Trowbridge; also Rowland on the possibilities and probabilities of
cheaper production by better manufacture--higher incandescence without
decrease of life of lamps." Notes are also made on meters and motors.
"It doesn't matter if electricity is used for light or for power";
while small motors, it is observed, can be used night or day, and small
steam-engines are inconvenient. Again the shrewd comment: "Generally
poorest district for light, best for power, thus evening up whole
city--the effect of this on investment."
It is pointed out that "Previous inventions failed--necessities
for commercial success and accomplishment by Edison. Edison's great
effort--not to make a large light or a blinding light, but a small light
having the mildness of gas." Curves are then called for of iron
and copper investment--also energy line--curves of candle-power and
electromotive force; curves on motors; graphic representation of
the consumption of gas January to December; tables and formulae;
representations graphically of what one dollar will buy in different
kinds of light; "table, weight of copper required different distance,
100-ohm lamp, 16 candles"; table with curves showing increased
economy by larger engine, higher power, etc. There is not much that is
dilettante about all this. Note is made of an article in April, 1879,
putting the total amount of gas investment in the whole world at that
time at $1,500,000,000; which is now (1910) about the amount of the
electric-lighting investment in the United States. Incidentally a note
remarks: "So unpleasant is the effect of the products of gas that in the
new Madison Square Theatre every gas jet is ventilated by special tubes
to carry away the products of combustion." In short, there is no aspect
of the new problem to which Edison failed to apply his acutest powers;
and the speed with which the new system was worked out and introduced
was simply due to his initial mastery of all the factors in the older
art. Luther Stieringer, an expert gas engineer and inventor, whose
services were early enlisted, once said that Edison knew more about gas
than any other man he had ever met. The remark is an evidence of the
kind of preparation Edison gave himself for his new task.
CHAPTER XII
MEMORIES OF MENLO PARK
FROM the spring of 1876 to 1886 Edison lived and did his work at Menlo
Park; and at this stage of the narrative, midway in that interesting and
eventful period, it is appropriate to offer a few notes and jottings on
the place itself, around which tradition is already weaving its fancies,
just as at the time the outpouring of new inventions from it invested
the name with sudden prominence and with the glamour of romance.
"In 1876 I moved," says Edison, "to Menlo Park, New Jersey, on the
Pennsylvania Railroad, several miles below Elizabeth. The move was due
to trouble I had about rent. I had rented a small shop in Newark, on the
top floor of a padlock factory, by the month. I gave notice that I
would give it up at the end of the month, paid the rent, moved out,
and delivered the keys. Shortly afterward I was served with a paper,
probably a judgment, wherein I was to pay nine months' rent. There was
some law, it seems, that made a monthly renter liable for a year. This
seemed so unjust that I determined to get out of a place that permitted
such injustice." For several Sundays he walked through different parts
of New Jersey with two of his assistants before he decided on Menlo
Park. The change was a fortunate one, for the inventor had married Miss
Mary E. Stillwell, and was now able to establish himself comfortably
with his wife and family while enjoying immediate access to the new
laboratory. Every moment thus saved was valuable.
To-day the place and region have gone back to the insignificance from
which Edison's genius lifted them so startlingly. A glance from the
car windows reveals only a gently rolling landscape dotted with modest
residences and unpretentious barns; and there is nothing in sight by way
of memorial to suggest that for nearly a decade this spot was the scene
of the most concentrated and fruitful inventive activity the world has
ever known. Close to the Menlo Park railway station is a group of
gaunt and deserted buildings, shelter of the casual tramp, and slowly
crumbling away when not destroyed by the carelessness of some ragged
smoker. This silent group of buildings comprises the famous old
laboratory and workshops of Mr. Edison, historic as being the birthplace
of the carbon transmitter, the phonograph, the incandescent lamp,
and the spot where Edison also worked out his systems of electrical
distribution, his commercial dynamo, his electric railway, his
megaphone, his tasimeter, and many other inventions of greater or lesser
degree. Here he continued, moreover, his earlier work on the quadruplex,
sextuplex, multiplex, and automatic telegraphs, and did his notable
pioneer work in wireless telegraphy. As the reader knows, it had been a
master passion with Edison from boyhood up to possess a laboratory,
in which with free use of his own time and powers, and with command of
abundant material resources, he could wrestle with Nature and probe her
closest secrets. Thus, from the little cellar at Port Huron, from the
scant shelves in a baggage car, from the nooks and corners of dingy
telegraph offices, and the grimy little shops in New York and Newark,
he had now come to the proud ownership of an establishment to which
his favorite word "laboratory" might justly be applied. Here he could
experiment to his heart's content and invent on a larger, bolder scale
than ever--and he did!
Menlo Park was the merest hamlet. Omitting the laboratory structures, it
had only about seven houses, the best looking of which Edison lived in,
a place that had a windmill pumping water into a reservoir. One of the
stories of the day was that Edison had his front gate so connected with
the pumping plant that every visitor as he opened or closed the gate
added involuntarily to the supply in the reservoir. Two or three of the
houses were occupied by the families of members of the staff; in the
others boarders were taken, the laboratory, of course, furnishing all
the patrons. Near the railway station was a small saloon kept by an old
Scotchman named Davis, where billiards were played in idle moments,
and where in the long winter evenings the hot stove was a centre of
attraction to loungers and story-tellers. The truth is that there
was very little social life of any kind possible under the strenuous
conditions prevailing at the laboratory, where, if anywhere, relaxation
was enjoyed at odd intervals of fatigue and waiting.
The main laboratory was a spacious wooden building of two floors. The
office was in this building at first, until removed to the brick library
when that was finished. There S. L. Griffin, an old telegraph friend
of Edison, acted as his secretary and had charge of a voluminous and
amazing correspondence. The office employees were the Carman brothers
and the late John F. Randolph, afterwards secretary. According to Mr.
Francis Jehl, of Budapest, then one of the staff, to whom the writers
are indebted for a great deal of valuable data on this period: "It
was on the upper story of this laboratory that the most important
experiments were executed, and where the incandescent lamp was born.
This floor consisted of a large hall containing several long tables,
upon which could be found all the various instruments, scientific and
chemical apparatus that the arts at that time could produce. Books
lay promiscuously about, while here and there long lines of
bichromate-of-potash cells could be seen, together with experimental
models of ideas that Edison or his assistants were engaged upon. The
side walls of this hall were lined with shelves filled with bottles,
phials, and other receptacles containing every imaginable chemical and
other material that could be obtained, while at the end of this hall,
and near the organ which stood in the rear, was a large glass case
containing the world's most precious metals in sheet and wire form,
together with very rare and costly chemicals. When evening came on, and
the last rays of the setting sun penetrated through the side windows,
this hall looked like a veritable Faust laboratory.
"On the ground floor we had our testing-table, which stood on two large
pillars of brick built deep into the earth in order to get rid of all
vibrations on account of the sensitive instruments that were upon it.
There was the Thomson reflecting mirror galvanometer and electrometer,
while nearby were the standard cells by which the galvanometers were
adjusted and standardized. This testing-table was connected by means
of wires with all parts of the laboratory and machine-shop, so that
measurements could be conveniently made from a distance, as in those
days we had no portable and direct-reading instruments, such as now
exist. Opposite this table we installed, later on, our photometrical
chamber, which was constructed on the Bunsen principle. A little way
from this table, and separated by a partition, we had the chemical
laboratory with its furnaces and stink-chambers. Later on another
chemical laboratory was installed near the photometer-room, and this Dr.
A. Haid had charge of."
Next to the laboratory in importance was the machine-shop, a large and
well-lighted building of brick, at one end of which there was the boiler
and engine-room. This shop contained light and heavy lathes, boring and
drilling machines, all kinds of planing machines; in fact, tools of all
descriptions, so that any apparatus, however delicate or heavy, could be
made and built as might be required by Edison in experimenting. Mr. John
Kruesi had charge of this shop, and was assisted by a number of skilled
mechanics, notably John Ott, whose deft fingers and quick intuitive
grasp of the master's ideas are still in demand under the more recent
conditions at the Llewellyn Park laboratory in Orange.
Between the machine-shop and the laboratory was a small building of wood
used as a carpenter-shop, where Tom Logan plied his art. Nearby was the
gasoline plant. Before the incandescent lamp was perfected, the
only illumination was from gasoline gas; and that was used later
for incandescent-lamp glass-blowing, which was done in another small
building on one side of the laboratory. Apparently little or no lighting
service was obtained from the Wallace-Farmer arc lamps secured from
Ansonia, Connecticut. The dynamo was probably needed for Edison's own
experiments.
On the outskirts of the property was a small building in which lampblack
was crudely but carefully manufactured and pressed into very small
cakes, for use in the Edison carbon transmitters of that time. The
night-watchman, Alfred Swanson, took care of this curious plant, which
consisted of a battery of petroleum lamps that were forced to burn to
the sooting point. During his rounds in the night Swanson would find
time to collect from the chimneys the soot that the lamps gave. It was
then weighed out into very small portions, which were pressed into cakes
or buttons by means of a hand-press. These little cakes were delicately
packed away between layers of cotton in small, light boxes and shipped
to Bergmann in New York, by whom the telephone transmitters were being
made. A little later the Edison electric railway was built on the
confines of the property out through the woods, at first only a third
of a mile in length, but reaching ultimately to Pumptown, almost three
miles away.
Mr. Edison's own words may be quoted as to the men with whom he
surrounded himself here and upon whose services he depended principally
for help in the accomplishment of his aims. In an autobiographical
article in the Electrical World of March 5, 1904, he says: "It is
interesting to note that in addition to those mentioned above (Charles
Batchelor and Frank Upton), I had around me other men who ever since
have remained active in the field, such as Messrs. Francis Jehl, William
J. Hammer, Martin Force, Ludwig K. Boehm, not forgetting that good
friend and co-worker, the late John Kruesi. They found plenty to do in
the various developments of the art, and as I now look back I sometimes
wonder how we did so much in so short a time." Mr. Jehl in his
reminiscences adds another name to the above--namely, that of John W.
Lawson, and then goes on to say: "These are the names of the pioneers of
incandescent lighting, who were continuously at the side of Edison day
and night for some years, and who, under his guidance, worked upon the
carbon-filament lamp from its birth to ripe maturity. These men all had
complete faith in his ability and stood by him as on a rock, guarding
their work with the secretiveness of a burglar-proof safe. Whenever it
leaked out in the world that Edison was succeeding in his work on the
electric light, spies and others came to the Park; so it was of the
utmost importance that the experiments and their results should be kept
a secret until Edison had secured the protection of the Patent Office."
With this staff was associated from the first Mr. E. H. Johnson, whose
work with Mr. Edison lay chiefly, however, outside the laboratory,
taking him to all parts of the country and to Europe. There were also
to be regarded as detached members of it the Bergmann brothers,
manufacturing for Mr. Edison in New York, and incessantly experimenting
for him. In addition there must be included Mr. Samuel Insull, whose
activities for many years as private secretary and financial manager
were devoted solely to Mr. Edison's interests, with Menlo Park as a
centre and main source of anxiety as to pay-rolls and other constantly
recurring obligations. The names of yet other associates occur from
time to time in this narrative--"Edison men" who have been very proud
of their close relationship to the inventor and his work at old Menlo.
"There was also Mr. Charles L. Clarke, who devoted himself mainly to
engineering matters, and later on acted as chief engineer of the Edison
Electric Light Company for some years. Then there were William Holzer
and James Hipple, both of whom took an active part in the practical
development of the glass-blowing department of the laboratory, and,
subsequently, at the first Edison lamp factory at Menlo Park. Later on
Messrs. Jehl, Hipple, and Force assisted Mr. Batchelor to install the
lamp-works of the French Edison Company at Ivry-sur-Seine. Then there
were Messrs. Charles T. Hughes, Samuel D. Mott, and Charles T. Mott, who
devoted their time chiefly to commercial affairs. Mr. Hughes conducted
most of this work, and later on took a prominent part in Edison's
electric-railway experiments. His business ability was on a high level,
while his personal character endeared him to us all."
Among other now well-known men who came to us and assisted in various
kinds of work were Messrs. Acheson, Worth, Crosby, Herrick, and Hill,
while Doctor Haid was placed by Mr. Edison in charge of a special
chemical laboratory. Dr. E. L. Nichols was also with us for a short time
conducting a special series of experiments. There was also Mr. Isaacs,
who did a great deal of photographic work, and to whom we must be
thankful for the pictures of Menlo Park in connection with Edison's
work.
"Among others who were added to Mr. Kruesi's staff in the machine-shop
were Messrs. J. H. Vail and W. S. Andrews. Mr. Vail had charge of the
dynamo-room. He had a good general knowledge of machinery, and very
soon acquired such familiarity with the dynamos that he could skip about
among them with astonishing agility to regulate their brushes or to
throw rosin on the belts when they began to squeal. Later on he took
an active part in the affairs and installations of the Edison Light
Company. Mr. Andrews stayed on Mr. Kruesi's staff as long as the
laboratory machine-shop was kept open, after which he went into the
employ of the Edison Electric Light Company and became actively engaged
in the commercial and technical exploitation of the system. Another man
who was with us at Menlo Park was Mr. Herman Claudius, an Austrian, who
at one time was employed in connection with the State Telegraphs of his
country. To him Mr. Edison assigned the task of making a complete model
of the network of conductors for the contemplated first station in New
York."
Mr. Francis R. Upton, who was early employed by Mr. Edison as his
mathematician, furnishes a pleasant, vivid picture of his chief
associates engaged on the memorable work at Menlo Park. He says: "Mr.
Charles Batchelor was Mr. Edison's principal assistant at that time. He
was an Englishman, and came to this country to set up the thread-weaving
machinery for the Clark thread-works. He was a most intelligent,
patient, competent, and loyal assistant to Mr. Edison. I remember
distinctly seeing him work many hours to mount a small filament; and
his hand would be as steady and his patience as unyielding at the end
of those many hours as it was at the beginning, in spite of repeated
failures. He was a wonderful mechanic; the control that he had of his
fingers was marvellous, and his eyesight was sharp. Mr. Batchelor's
judgment and good sense were always in evidence.
"Mr. Kruesi was the superintendent, a Swiss trained in the best Swiss
ideas of accuracy. He was a splendid mechanic with a vigorous temper,
and wonderful ability to work continuously and to get work out of men.
It was an ideal combination, that of Edison, Batchelor, and Kruesi. Mr.
Edison with his wonderful flow of ideas which were sharply defined in
his mind, as can be seen by any of the sketches that he made, as he
evidently always thinks in three dimensions; Mr. Kruesi, willing to take
the ideas, and capable of comprehending them, would distribute the work
so as to get it done with marvellous quickness and great accuracy.
Mr. Batchelor was always ready for any special fine experimenting or
observation, and could hold to whatever he was at as long as Mr. Edison
wished; and always brought to bear on what he was at the greatest
skill."
While Edison depended upon Upton for his mathematical work, he was wont
to check it up in a very practical manner, as evidenced by the following
incident described by Mr. Jehl: "I was once with Mr. Upton calculating
some tables which he had put me on, when Mr. Edison appeared with a
glass bulb having a pear-shaped appearance in his hand. It was the kind
that we were going to use for our lamp experiments; and Mr. Edison asked
Mr. Upton to please calculate for him its cubic contents in centimetres.
Now Mr. Upton was a very able mathematician, who, after he finished his
studies at Princeton, went to Germany and got his final gloss under that
great master, Helmholtz. Whatever he did and worked on was executed in
a pure mathematical manner, and any wrangler at Oxford would have been
delighted to see him juggle with integral and differential equations,
with a dexterity that was surprising. He drew the shape of the bulb
exactly on paper, and got the equation of its lines with which he was
going to calculate its contents, when Mr. Edison again appeared and
asked him what it was. He showed Edison the work he had already done on
the subject, and told him that he would very soon finish calculating
it. 'Why,' said Edison, 'I would simply take that bulb and fill it
with mercury and weigh it; and from the weight of the mercury and its
specific gravity I'll get it in five minutes, and use less mental energy
than is necessary in such a fatiguing operation.'"
Menlo Park became ultimately the centre of Edison's business life as
it was of his inventing. After the short distasteful period during the
introduction of his lighting system, when he spent a large part of his
time at the offices at 65 Fifth Avenue, New York, or on the actual work
connected with the New York Edison installation, he settled back again
in Menlo Park altogether. Mr. Samuel Insull describes the business
methods which prevailed throughout the earlier Menlo Park days of "storm
and stress," and the curious conditions with which he had to deal as
private secretary: "I never attempted to systematize Edison's business
life. Edison's whole method of work would upset the system of any
office. He was just as likely to be at work in his laboratory at
midnight as midday. He cared not for the hours of the day or the days
of the week. If he was exhausted he might more likely be asleep in the
middle of the day than in the middle of the night, as most of his work
in the way of inventions was done at night. I used to run his office on
as close business methods as my experience admitted; and I would get at
him whenever it suited his convenience. Sometimes he would not go over
his mail for days at a time; but other times he would go regularly to
his office in the morning. At other times my engagements used to be with
him to go over his business affairs at Menlo Park at night, if I was
occupied in New York during the day. In fact, as a matter of convenience
I used more often to get at him at night, as it left my days free to
transact his affairs, and enabled me, probably at a midnight luncheon,
to get a few minutes of his time to look over his correspondence and get
his directions as to what I should do in some particular negotiation or
matter of finance. While it was a matter of suiting Edison's convenience
as to when I should transact business with him, it also suited my own
ideas, as it enabled me after getting through my business with him to
enjoy the privilege of watching him at his work, and to learn something
about the technical side of matters. Whatever knowledge I may have of
the electric light and power industry I feel I owe it to the tuition of
Edison. He was about the most willing tutor, and I must confess that he
had to be a patient one."
Here again occurs the reference to the incessant night-work at Menlo
Park, a note that is struck in every reminiscence and in every record
of the time. But it is not to be inferred that the atmosphere of grim
determination and persistent pursuit of the new invention characteristic
of this period made life a burden to the small family of laborers
associated with Edison. Many a time during the long, weary nights of
experimenting Edison would call a halt for refreshments, which he had
ordered always to be sent in when night-work was in progress. Everything
would be dropped, all present would join in the meal, and the last good
story or joke would pass around. In his notes Mr. Jehl says: "Our lunch
always ended with a cigar, and I may mention here that although Edison
was never fastidious in eating, he always relished a good cigar, and
seemed to find in it consolation and solace.... It often happened that
while we were enjoying the cigars after our midnight repast, one of the
boys would start up a tune on the organ and we would all sing together,
or one of the others would give a solo. Another of the boys had a voice
that sounded like something between the ring of an old tomato can and
a pewter jug. He had one song that he would sing while we roared with
laughter. He was also great in imitating the tin-foil phonograph....
When Boehm was in good-humor he would play his zither now and then, and
amuse us by singing pretty German songs. On many of these occasions the
laboratory was the rendezvous of jolly and convivial visitors, mostly
old friends and acquaintances of Mr. Edison. Some of the office
employees would also drop in once in a while, and as everybody present
was always welcome to partake of the midnight meal, we all enjoyed
these gatherings. After a while, when we were ready to resume work, our
visitors would intimate that they were going home to bed, but we fellows
could stay up and work, and they would depart, generally singing some
song like Good-night, ladies! . . . It often happened that when Edison
had been working up to three or four o'clock in the morning, he would
lie down on one of the laboratory tables, and with nothing but a couple
of books for a pillow, would fall into a sound sleep. He said it did
him more good than being in a soft bed, which spoils a man. Some of the
laboratory assistants could be seen now and then sleeping on a table in
the early morning hours. If their snoring became objectionable to those
still at work, the 'calmer' was applied. This machine consisted of
a Babbitt's soap box without a cover. Upon it was mounted a broad
ratchet-wheel with a crank, while into the teeth of the wheel there
played a stout, elastic slab of wood. The box would be placed on the
table where the snorer was sleeping and the crank turned rapidly. The
racket thus produced was something terrible, and the sleeper would jump
up as though a typhoon had struck the laboratory. The irrepressible
spirit of humor in the old days, although somewhat strenuous at times,
caused many a moment of hilarity which seemed to refresh the boys, and
enabled them to work with renewed vigor after its manifestation." Mr.
Upton remarks that often during the period of the invention of the
incandescent lamp, when under great strain and fatigue, Edison would go
to the organ and play tunes in a primitive way, and come back to crack
jokes with the staff. "But I have often felt that Mr. Edison never could
comprehend the limitations of the strength of other men, as his own
physical and mental strength have always seemed to be without limit.
He could work continuously as long as he wished, and had sleep at his
command. His sleep was always instant, profound, and restful. He
has told me that he never dreamed. I have known Mr. Edison now for
thirty-one years, and feel that he has always kept his mind direct and
simple, going straight to the root of troubles. One of the peculiarities
I have noticed is that I have never known him to break into a
conversation going on around him, and ask what people were talking
about. The nearest he would ever come to it was when there had evidently
been some story told, and his face would express a desire to join in the
laugh, which would immediately invite telling the story to him."
Next to those who worked with Edison at the laboratory and were with
him constantly at Menlo Park were the visitors, some of whom were his
business associates, some of them scientific men, and some of them
hero-worshippers and curiosity-hunters. Foremost in the first category
was Mr. E. H. Johnson, who was in reality Edison's most intimate friend,
and was required for constant consultation; but whose intense activity,
remarkable grasp of electrical principles, and unusual powers of
exposition, led to his frequent detachment for long trips, including
those which resulted in the introduction of the telephone, phonograph,
and electric light in England and on the Continent. A less frequent
visitor was Mr. S. Bergmann, who had all he needed to occupy his time
in experimenting and manufacturing, and whose contemporaneous Wooster
Street letter-heads advertised Edison's inventions as being made there,
Among the scientists were Prof. George F. Barker, of Philadelphia, a
big, good-natured philosopher, whose valuable advice Edison esteemed
highly. In sharp contrast to him was the earnest, serious Rowland, of
Johns Hopkins University, afterward the leading American physicist of
his day. Profs. C. F. Brackett and C. F. Young, of Princeton University,
were often received, always interested in what Edison was doing, and
proud that one of their own students, Mr. Upton, was taking such a
prominent part in the development of the work.
Soon after the success of the lighting experiments and the installation
at Menlo Park became known, Edison was besieged by persons from all
parts of the world anxious to secure rights and concessions for their
respective countries. Among these was Mr. Louis Rau, of Paris, who
organized the French Edison Company, the pioneer Edison lighting
corporation in Europe, and who, with the aid of Mr. Batchelor,
established lamp-works and a machine-shop at Ivry sur-Seine, near Paris,
in 1882. It was there that Mr. Nikola Tesla made his entree into the
field of light and power, and began his own career as an inventor; and
there also Mr. Etienne Fodor, general manager of the Hungarian General
Electric Company at Budapest, received his early training. It was he who
erected at Athens the first European Edison station on the now universal
three-wire system. Another visitor from Europe, a little later, was
Mr. Emil Rathenau, the present director of the great Allgemeine
Elektricitaets Gesellschaft of Germany. He secured the rights for the
empire, and organized the Berlin Edison system, now one of the largest
in the world. Through his extraordinary energy and enterprise the
business made enormous strides, and Mr. Rathenau has become one of the
most conspicuous industrial figures in his native country. From Italy
came Professor Colombo, later a cabinet minister, with his friend Signor
Buzzi, of Milan. The rights were secured for the peninsula; Colombo and
his friends organized the Italian Edison Company, and erected at Milan
the first central station in that country. Mr. John W. Lieb, Jr., now
a vice-president of the New York Edison Company, was sent over by Mr.
Edison to steer the enterprise technically, and spent ten years in
building it up, with such brilliant success that he was later decorated
as Commander of the Order of the Crown of Italy by King Victor. Another
young American enlisted into European service was Mr. E. G. Acheson,
the inventor of carborundum, who built a number of plants in Italy and
France before he returned home. Mr. Lieb has since become President of
the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Association of
Edison Illuminating Companies, while Doctor Acheson has been President
of the American Electrochemical Society.
Switzerland sent Messrs. Turrettini, Biedermann, and Thury, all
distinguished engineers, to negotiate for rights in the republic; and
so it went with regard to all the other countries of Europe, as well as
those of South America. It was a question of keeping such visitors away
rather than of inviting them to take up the exploitation of the Edison
system; for what time was not spent in personal interviews was required
for the masses of letters from every country under the sun, all making
inquiries, offering suggestions, proposing terms. Nor were the
visitors merely those on business bent. There were the lion-hunters and
celebrities, of whom Sarah Bernhardt may serve as a type. One visit
of note was that paid by Lieut. G. W. De Long, who had an earnest and
protracted conversation with Edison over the Arctic expedition he was
undertaking with the aid of Mr. James Gordon Bennett, of the New York
Herald. The Jeannette was being fitted out, and Edison told De Long
that he would make and present him with a small dynamo machine, some
incandescent lamps, and an arc lamp. While the little dynamo was being
built all the men in the laboratory wrote their names on the paper
insulation that was wound upon the iron core of the armature. As the
Jeannette had no steam-engine on board that could be used for the
purpose, Edison designed the dynamo so that it could be worked by man
power and told Lieutenant De Long "it would keep the boys warm up in the
Arctic," when they generated current with it. The ill-fated ship never
returned from her voyage, but went down in the icy waters of the North,
there to remain until some future cataclysm of nature, ten thousand
years hence, shall reveal the ship and the first marine dynamo as
curious relics of a remote civilization.
Edison also furnished De Long with a set of telephones provided with
extensible circuits, so that parties on the ice-floes could go long
distances from the ship and still keep in communication with her. So
far as the writers can ascertain this is the first example of "field
telephony." Another nautical experiment that he made at this time,
suggested probably by the requirements of the Arctic expedition, was a
buoy that was floated in New York harbor, and which contained a small
Edison dynamo and two or three incandescent lamps. The dynamo was driven
by the wave or tide motion through intermediate mechanism, and thus the
lamps were lit up from time to time, serving as signals. These were the
prototypes of the lighted buoys which have since become familiar, as in
the channel off Sandy Hook.
One notable afternoon was that on which the New York board of aldermen
took a special train out to Menlo Park to see the lighting system
with its conductors underground in operation. The Edison Electric
Illuminating Company was applying for a franchise, and the aldermen,
for lack of scientific training and specific practical information, were
very sceptical on the subject--as indeed they might well be. "Mr. Edison
demonstrated personally the details and merits of the system to them.
The voltage was increased to a higher pressure than usual, and all the
incandescent lamps at Menlo Park did their best to win the approbation
of the New York City fathers. After Edison had finished exhibiting all
the good points of his system, he conducted his guests upstairs in the
laboratory, where a long table was spread with the best things that one
of the most prominent New York caterers could furnish. The laboratory
witnessed high times that night, for all were in the best of humor,
and many a bottle was drained in toasting the health of Edison and the
aldermen." This was one of the extremely rare occasions on which Edison
has addressed an audience; but the stake was worth the effort. The
representatives of New York could with justice drink the health of the
young inventor, whose system is one of the greatest boons the city has
ever had conferred upon it.
Among other frequent visitors was Mr, Edison's father, "one of those
amiable, patriarchal characters with a Horace Greeley beard, typical
Americans of the old school," who would sometimes come into the
laboratory with his two grandchildren, a little boy and girl called
"Dash" and "Dot." He preferred to sit and watch his brilliant son at
work "with an expression of satisfaction on his face that indicated
a sense of happiness and content that his boy, born in that distant,
humble home in Ohio, had risen to fame and brought such honor upon the
name. It was, indeed, a pathetic sight to see a father venerate his son
as the elder Edison did." Not less at home was Mr. Mackenzie, the Mt.
Clemens station agent, the life of whose child Edison had saved when
a train newsboy. The old Scotchman was one of the innocent, chartered
libertines of the place, with an unlimited stock of good jokes and
stories, but seldom of any practical use. On one occasion, however, when
everything possible and impossible under the sun was being carbonized
for lamp filaments, he allowed a handful of his bushy red beard to
be taken for the purpose; and his laugh was the loudest when the
Edison-Mackenzie hair lamps were brought up to incandescence--their
richness in red rays being slyly attributed to the nature of the
filamentary material! Oddly enough, a few years later, some inventor
actually took out a patent for making incandescent lamps with carbonized
hair for filaments!
Yet other visitors again haunted the place, and with the following
reminiscence of one of them, from Mr. Edison himself, this part of the
chapter must close: "At Menlo Park one cold winter night there came into
the laboratory a strange man in a most pitiful condition. He was nearly
frozen, and he asked if he might sit by the stove. In a few moments
he asked for the head man, and I was brought forward. He had a head of
abnormal size, with highly intellectual features and a very small and
emaciated body. He said he was suffering very much, and asked if I
had any morphine. As I had about everything in chemistry that could be
bought, I told him I had. He requested that I give him some, so I got
the morphine sulphate. He poured out enough to kill two men, when I told
him that we didn't keep a hotel for suicides, and he had better cut the
quantity down. He then bared his legs and arms, and they were literally
pitted with scars, due to the use of hypodermic syringes. He said he had
taken it for years, and it required a big dose to have any effect. I let
him go ahead. In a short while he seemed like another man and began to
tell stories, and there were about fifty of us who sat around listening
until morning. He was a man of great intelligence and education. He
said he was a Jew, but there was no distinctive feature to verify
this assertion. He continued to stay around until he finished every
combination of morphine with an acid that I had, probably ten ounces all
told. Then he asked if he could have strychnine. I had an ounce of the
sulphate. He took enough to kill a horse, and asserted it had as good an
effect as morphine. When this was gone, the only thing I had left was a
chunk of crude opium, perhaps two or three pounds. He chewed this up and
disappeared. I was greatly disappointed, because I would have laid in
another stock of morphine to keep him at the laboratory. About a week
afterward he was found dead in a barn at Perth Amboy."
Returning to the work itself, note of which has already been made
in this and preceding chapters, we find an interesting and unique
reminiscence in Mr. Jehl's notes of the reversion to carbon as a
filament in the lamps, following an exhibition of metallic-filament
lamps given in the spring of 1879 to the men in the syndicate advancing
the funds for these experiments: "They came to Menlo Park on a late
afternoon train from New York. It was already dark when they were
conducted into the machine-shop, where we had several platinum lamps
installed in series. When Edison had finished explaining the principles
and details of the lamp, he asked Kruesi to let the dynamo machine run.
It was of the Gramme type, as our first dynamo of the Edison design
was not yet finished. Edison then ordered the 'juice' to be turned
on slowly. To-day I can see those lamps rising to a cherry red, like
glowbugs, and hear Mr. Edison saying 'a little more juice,' and the
lamps began to glow. 'A little more' is the command again, and then one
of the lamps emits for an instant a light like a star in the distance,
after which there is an eruption and a puff; and the machine-shop is in
total darkness. We knew instantly which lamp had failed, and Batchelor
replaced that by a good one, having a few in reserve near by. The
operation was repeated two or three times with about the same results,
after which the party went into the library until it was time to catch
the train for New York."
Such an exhibition was decidedly discouraging, and it was not a jubilant
party that returned to New York, but: "That night Edison remained in the
laboratory meditating upon the results that the platinum lamp had given
so far. I was engaged reading a book near a table in the front, while
Edison was seated in a chair by a table near the organ. With his head
turned downward, and that conspicuous lock of hair hanging loosely on
one side, he looked like Napoleon in the celebrated picture, On the
Eve of a Great Battle. Those days were heroic ones, for he then
battled against mighty odds, and the prospects were dim and not very
encouraging. In cases of emergency Edison always possessed a keen
faculty of deciding immediately and correctly what to do; and the
decision he then arrived at was predestined to be the turning-point
that led him on to ultimate success.... After that exhibition we had a
house-cleaning at the laboratory, and the metallic-filament lamps were
stored away, while preparations were made for our experiments on carbon
lamps."
Thus the work went on. Menlo Park has hitherto been associated in the
public thought with the telephone, phonograph, and incandescent
lamp; but it was there, equally, that the Edison dynamo and system of
distribution were created and applied to their specific purposes. While
all this study of a possible lamp was going on, Mr. Upton was busy
calculating the economy of the "multiple arc" system, and making a great
many tables to determine what resistance a lamp should have for the best
results, and at what point the proposed general system would fall off
in economy when the lamps were of the lower resistance that was then
generally assumed to be necessary. The world at that time had not the
shadow of an idea as to what the principles of a multiple arc system
should be, enabling millions of lamps to be lighted off distributing
circuits, each lamp independent of every other; but at Menlo Park at
that remote period in the seventies Mr. Edison's mathematician was
formulating the inventor's conception in clear, instructive figures;
"and the work then executed has held its own ever since." From the
beginning of his experiments on electric light, Mr. Edison had a
well-defined idea of producing not only a practicable lamp, but also
a SYSTEM of commercial electric lighting. Such a scheme involved the
creation of an entirely new art, for there was nothing on the face of
the earth from which to draw assistance or precedent, unless we except
the elementary forms of dynamos then in existence. It is true, there
were several types of machines in use for the then very limited field of
arc lighting, but they were regarded as valueless as a part of a great
comprehensive scheme which could supply everybody with light. Such
machines were confessedly inefficient, although representing the
farthest reach of a young art. A commission appointed at that time by
the Franklin Institute, and including Prof. Elihu Thomson, investigated
the merits of existing dynamos and reported as to the best of them: "The
Gramme machine is the most economical as a means of converting motive
force into electricity; it utilizes in the arc from 38 to 41 per cent.
of the motive work produced, after deduction is made for friction
and the resistance of the air." They reported also that the Brush arc
lighting machine "produces in the luminous arc useful work equivalent to
31 per cent. of the motive power employed, or to 38 1/2 per cent. after
the friction has been deducted." Commercial possibilities could not
exist in the face of such low economy as this, and Mr. Edison realized
that he would have to improve the dynamo himself if he wanted a better
machine. The scientific world at that time was engaged in a controversy
regarding the external and internal resistance of a circuit in which
a generator was situated. Discussing the subject Mr. Jehl, in his
biographical notes, says: "While this controversy raged in the
scientific papers, and criticism and confusion seemed at its height,
Edison and Upton discussed this question very thoroughly, and Edison
declared he did not intend to build up a system of distribution in which
the external resistance would be equal to the internal resistance.
He said he was just about going to do the opposite; he wanted a large
external resistance and a low internal one. He said he wanted to sell
the energy outside of the station and not waste it in the dynamo and
conductors, where it brought no profits.... In these later days, when
these ideas of Edison are used as common property, and are applied in
every modern system of distribution, it is astonishing to remember that
when they were propounded they met with most vehement antagonism from
the world at large." Edison, familiar with batteries in telegraphy,
could not bring himself to believe that any substitute generator of
electrical energy could be efficient that used up half its own possible
output before doing an equal amount of outside work.
Undaunted by the dicta of contemporaneous science, Mr. Edison attacked
the dynamo problem with his accustomed vigor and thoroughness. He chose
the drum form for his armature, and experimented with different kinds
of iron. Cores were made of cast iron, others of forged iron; and still
others of sheets of iron of various thicknesses separated from each
other by paper or paint. These cores were then allowed to run in an
excited field, and after a given time their temperature was measured and
noted. By such practical methods Edison found that the thin, laminated
cores of sheet iron gave the least heat, and had the least amount of
wasteful eddy currents. His experiments and ideas on magnetism at that
period were far in advance of the time. His work and tests regarding
magnetism were repeated later on by Hopkinson and Kapp, who then
elucidated the whole theory mathematically by means of formulae and
constants. Before this, however, Edison had attained these results by
pioneer work, founded on his original reasoning, and utilized them in
the construction of his dynamo, thus revolutionizing the art of building
such machines.
After thorough investigation of the magnetic qualities of different
kinds of iron, Edison began to make a study of winding the cores,
first determining the electromotive force generated per turn of wire at
various speeds in fields of different intensities. He also considered
various forms and shapes for the armature, and by methodical and
systematic research obtained the data and best conditions upon which
he could build his generator. In the field magnets of his dynamo he
constructed the cores and yoke of forged iron having a very large
cross-section, which was a new thing in those days. Great attention was
also paid to all the joints, which were smoothed down so as to make a
perfect magnetic contact. The Edison dynamo, with its large masses of
iron, was a vivid contrast to the then existing types with their meagre
quantities of the ferric element. Edison also made tests on his field
magnets by slowly raising the strength of the exciting current, so that
he obtained figures similar to those shown by a magnetic curve, and in
this way found where saturation commenced, and where it was useless to
expend more current on the field. If he had asked Upton at the time to
formulate the results of his work in this direction, for publication, he
would have anticipated the historic work on magnetism that was executed
by the two other investigators; Hopkinson and Kapp, later on.
The laboratory note-books of the period bear abundant evidence of the
systematic and searching nature of these experiments and investigations,
in the hundreds of pages of notes, sketches, calculations, and tables
made at the time by Edison, Upton, Batchelor, Jehl, and by others who
from time to time were intrusted with special experiments to
elucidate some particular point. Mr. Jehl says: "The experiments on
armature-winding were also very interesting. Edison had a number of
small wooden cores made, at both ends of which we inserted little brass
nails, and we wound the wooden cores with twine as if it were wire on an
armature. In this way we studied armature-winding, and had matches where
each of us had a core, while bets were made as to who would be the first
to finish properly and correctly a certain kind of winding. Care had
to be taken that the wound core corresponded to the direction of the
current, supposing it were placed in a field and revolved. After Edison
had decided this question, Upton made drawings and tables from which the
real armatures were wound and connected to the commutator. To a
student of to-day all this seems simple, but in those days the art
of constructing dynamos was about as dark as air navigation is at
present.... Edison also improved the armature by dividing it and the
commutator into a far greater number of sections than up to that time
had been the practice. He was also the first to use mica in insulating
the commutator sections from each other."
In the mean time, during the progress of the investigations on the
dynamo, word had gone out to the world that Edison expected to invent a
generator of greater efficiency than any that existed at the time. Again
he was assailed and ridiculed by the technical press, for had not the
foremost electricians and physicists of Europe and America worked for
years on the production of dynamos and arc lamps as they then existed?
Even though this young man at Menlo Park had done some wonderful things
for telegraphy and telephony; even if he had recorded and reproduced
human speech, he had his limitations, and could not upset the settled
dictum of science that the internal resistance must equal the external
resistance.
Such was the trend of public opinion at the time, but "after Mr. Kruesi
had finished the first practical dynamo, and after Mr. Upton had tested
it thoroughly and verified his figures and results several times--for he
also was surprised--Edison was able to tell the world that he had made
a generator giving an efficiency of 90 per cent." Ninety per cent. as
against 40 per cent. was a mighty hit, and the world would not believe
it. Criticism and argument were again at their height, while Upton,
as Edison's duellist, was kept busy replying to private and public
challenges of the fact.... "The tremendous progress of the world in
the last quarter of a century, owing to the revolution caused by the
all-conquering march of 'Heavy Current Engineering,' is the outcome of
Edison's work at Menlo Park that raised the efficiency of the dynamo
from 40 per cent. to 90 per cent."
Mr. Upton sums it all up very precisely in his remarks upon this period:
"What has now been made clear by accurate nomenclature was then very
foggy in the text-books. Mr. Edison had completely grasped the effect
of subdivision of circuits, and the influence of wires leading to such
subdivisions, when it was most difficult to express what he knew in
technical language. I remember distinctly when Mr. Edison gave me the
problem of placing a motor in circuit in multiple arc with a fixed
resistance; and I had to work out the problem entirely, as I could
find no prior solution. There was nothing I could find bearing upon
the counter electromotive force of the armature, and the effect of the
resistance of the armature on the work given out by the armature. It was
a wonderful experience to have problems given me out of the intuitions
of a great mind, based on enormous experience in practical work, and
applying to new lines of progress. One of the main impressions left upon
me after knowing Mr. Edison for many years is the marvellous accuracy of
his guesses. He will see the general nature of a result long before it
can be reached by mathematical calculation. His greatness was always to
be clearly seen when difficulties arose. They always made him cheerful,
and started him thinking; and very soon would come a line of suggestions
which would not end until the difficulty was met and overcome, or found
insurmountable. I have often felt that Mr. Edison got himself purposely
into trouble by premature publications and otherwise, so that he would
have a full incentive to get himself out of the trouble."
This chapter may well end with a statement from Mr. Jehl, shrewd and
observant, as a participator in all the early work of the development of
the Edison lighting system: "Those who were gathered around him in the
old Menlo Park laboratory enjoyed his confidence, and he theirs. Nor was
this confidence ever abused. He was respected with a respect which only
great men can obtain, and he never showed by any word or act that he was
their employer in a sense that would hurt the feelings, as is often the
case in the ordinary course of business life. He conversed, argued, and
disputed with us all as if he were a colleague on the same footing. It
was his winning ways and manners that attached us all so loyally to his
side, and made us ever ready with a boundless devotion to execute any
request or desire." Thus does a great magnet, run through a heap of sand
and filings, exert its lines of force and attract irresistibly to itself
the iron and steel particles that are its affinity, and having sifted
them out, leaving the useless dust behind, hold them to itself with
responsive tenacity.
CHAPTER XIII
A WORLD-HUNT FOR FILAMENT MATERIAL
IN writing about the old experimenting days at Menlo Park, Mr. F. R.
Upton says: "Edison's day is twenty-four hours long, for he has always
worked whenever there was anything to do, whether day or night, and
carried a force of night workers, so that his experiments could go on
continually. If he wanted material, he always made it a principle to
have it at once, and never hesitated to use special messengers to get
it. I remember in the early days of the electric light he wanted a
mercury pump for exhausting the lamps. He sent me to Princeton to get
it. I got back to Metuchen late in the day, and had to carry the pump
over to the laboratory on my back that evening, set it up, and work all
night and the next day getting results."
This characteristic principle of obtaining desired material in the
quickest and most positive way manifested itself in the search that
Edison instituted for the best kind of bamboo for lamp filaments,
immediately after the discovery related in a preceding chapter. It is
doubtful whether, in the annals of scientific research and experiment,
there is anything quite analogous to the story of this search and the
various expeditions that went out from the Edison laboratory in 1880 and
subsequent years, to scour the earth for a material so apparently simple
as a homogeneous strip of bamboo, or other similar fibre. Prolonged
and exhaustive experiment, microscopic examination, and an intimate
knowledge of the nature of wood and plant fibres, however, had led
Edison to the conclusion that bamboo or similar fibrous filaments were
more suitable than anything else then known for commercial incandescent
lamps, and he wanted the most perfect for that purpose. Hence, the
quickest way was to search the tropics until the proper material was
found.
The first emissary chosen for this purpose was the late William H.
Moore, of Rahway, New Jersey, who left New York in the summer of 1880,
bound for China and Japan, these being the countries preeminently noted
for the production of abundant species of bamboo. On arrival in the
East he quickly left the cities behind and proceeded into the interior,
extending his search far into the more remote country districts,
collecting specimens on his way, and devoting much time to the study of
the bamboo, and in roughly testing the relative value of its fibre in
canes of one, two, three, four, and five year growths. Great bales of
samples were sent to Edison, and after careful tests a certain variety
and growth of Japanese bamboo was determined to be the most satisfactory
material for filaments that had been found. Mr. Moore, who was
continuing his searches in that country, was instructed to arrange for
the cultivation and shipment of regular supplies of this particular
species. Arrangements to this end were accordingly made with a Japanese
farmer, who began to make immediate shipments, and who subsequently
displayed so much ingenuity in fertilizing and cross-fertilizing that
the homogeneity of the product was constantly improved. The use of this
bamboo for Edison lamp filaments was continued for many years.
Although Mr. Moore did not meet with the exciting adventures of some
subsequent explorers, he encountered numerous difficulties and novel
experiences in his many months of travel through the hinterland of Japan
and China. The attitude toward foreigners thirty years ago was not as
friendly as it has since become, but Edison, as usual, had made a happy
choice of messengers, as Mr. Moore's good nature and diplomacy attested.
These qualities, together with his persistence and perseverance and
faculty of intelligent discrimination in the matter of fibres, helped to
make his mission successful, and gave to him the honor of being the
one who found the bamboo which was adopted for use as filaments in
commercial Edison lamps.
Although Edison had satisfied himself that bamboo furnished the most
desirable material thus far discovered for incandescent-lamp filaments,
he felt that in some part of the world there might be found a natural
product of the same general character that would furnish a still more
perfect and homogeneous material. In his study of this subject, and
during the prosecution of vigorous and searching inquiries in various
directions, he learned that Mr. John C. Brauner, then residing in
Brooklyn, New York, had an expert knowledge of indigenous plants of the
particular kind desired. During the course of a geological survey which
he had made for the Brazilian Government, Mr. Brauner had examined
closely the various species of palms which grow plentifully in that
country, and of them there was one whose fibres he thought would be just
what Edison wanted.
Accordingly, Mr. Brauner was sent for and dispatched to Brazil in
December, 1880, to search for and send samples of this and such other
palms, fibres, grasses, and canes as, in his judgment, would be suitable
for the experiments then being carried on at Menlo Park. Landing at
Para, he crossed over into the Amazonian province, and thence proceeded
through the heart of the country, making his way by canoe on the rivers
and their tributaries, and by foot into the forests and marshes of
a vast and almost untrodden wilderness. In this manner Mr. Brauner
traversed about two thousand miles of the comparatively unknown interior
of Southern Brazil, and procured a large variety of fibrous specimens,
which he shipped to Edison a few months later. When these fibres arrived
in the United States they were carefully tested and a few of them found
suitable but not superior to the Japanese bamboo, which was then being
exclusively used in the manufacture of commercial Edison lamps.
Later on Edison sent out an expedition to explore the wilds of Cuba and
Jamaica. A two months' investigation of the latter island revealed a
variety of bamboo growths, of which a great number of specimens were
obtained and shipped to Menlo Park; but on careful test they were found
inferior to the Japanese bamboo, and hence rejected. The exploration of
the glades and swamps of Florida by three men extended over a period
of five months in a minute search for fibrous woods of the palmetto
species. A great variety was found, and over five hundred boxes of
specimens were shipped to the laboratory from time to time, but none of
them tested out with entirely satisfactory results.
The use of Japanese bamboo for carbon filaments was therefore continued
in the manufacture of lamps, although an incessant search was maintained
for a still more perfect material. The spirit of progress, so pervasive
in Edison's character, led him, however, to renew his investigations
further afield by sending out two other men to examine the bamboo and
similar growths of those parts of South America not covered by Mr.
Brauner. These two men were Frank McGowan and C. F. Hanington, both
of whom had been for nearly seven years in the employ of the Edison
Electric Light Company in New York. The former was a stocky, rugged
Irishman, possessing the native shrewdness and buoyancy of his race,
coupled with undaunted courage and determination; and the latter was
a veteran of the Civil War, with some knowledge of forest and field,
acquired as a sportsman. They left New York in September, 1887, arriving
in due time at Para, proceeding thence twenty-three hundred miles up the
Amazon River to Iquitos. Nothing of an eventful nature occurred during
this trip, but on arrival at Iquitos the two men separated; Mr. McGowan
to explore on foot and by canoe in Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, while
Mr. Hanington returned by the Amazon River to Para. Thence Hanington
went by steamer to Montevideo, and by similar conveyance up the River
de la Plata and through Uruguay, Argentine, and Paraguay to the
southernmost part of Brazil, collecting a large number of specimens of
palms and grasses.
The adventures of Mr. McGowan, after leaving Iquitos, would fill a book
if related in detail. The object of the present narrative and the space
at the authors' disposal, however, do not permit of more than a brief
mention of his experiences. His first objective point was Quito, about
five hundred miles away, which he proposed to reach on foot and by means
of canoeing on the Napo River through a wild and comparatively unknown
country teeming with tribes of hostile natives. The dangers of the
expedition were pictured to him in glowing colors, but spurning
prophecies of dire disaster, he engaged some native Indians and a canoe
and started on his explorations, reaching Quito in eighty-seven days,
after a thorough search of the country on both sides of the Napo River.
From Quito he went to Guayaquil, from there by steamer to Buenaventura,
and thence by rail, twelve miles, to Cordova. From this point he set out
on foot to explore the Cauca Valley and the Cordilleras.
Mr. McGowan found in these regions a great variety of bamboo, small and
large, some species growing seventy-five to one hundred feet in height,
and from six to nine inches in diameter. He collected a large number
of specimens, which were subsequently sent to Orange for Edison's
examination. After about fifteen months of exploration attended by much
hardship and privation, deserted sometimes by treacherous guides, twice
laid low by fevers, occasionally in peril from Indian attacks, wild
animals and poisonous serpents, tormented by insect pests, endangered
by floods, one hundred and nineteen days without meat, ninety-eight days
without taking off his clothes, Mr. McGowan returned to America, broken
in health but having faithfully fulfilled the commission intrusted to
him. The Evening Sun, New York, obtained an interview with him at that
time, and in its issue of May 2, 1889, gave more than a page to a brief
story of his interesting adventures, and then commented editorially upon
them, as follows:
"A ROMANCE OF SCIENCE"
"The narrative given elsewhere in the Evening Sun of the wanderings of
Edison's missionary of science, Mr. Frank McGowan, furnishes a new proof
that the romances of real life surpass any that the imagination can
frame.
"In pursuit of a substance that should meet the requirements of the
Edison incandescent lamp, Mr. McGowan penetrated the wilderness of the
Amazon, and for a year defied its fevers, beasts, reptiles, and deadly
insects in his quest of a material so precious that jealous Nature has
hidden it in her most secret fastnesses.
"No hero of mythology or fable ever dared such dragons to rescue some
captive goddess as did this dauntless champion of civilization. Theseus,
or Siegfried, or any knight of the fairy books might envy the victories
of Edison's irresistible lieutenant.
"As a sample story of adventure, Mr. McGowan's narrative is a marvel fit
to be classed with the historic journeyings of the greatest travellers.
But it gains immensely in interest when we consider that it succeeded in
its scientific purpose. The mysterious bamboo was discovered, and large
quantities of it were procured and brought to the Wizard's laboratory,
there to suffer another wondrous change and then to light up our
pleasure-haunts and our homes with a gentle radiance."
A further, though rather sad, interest attaches to the McGowan story,
for only a short time had elapsed after his return to America when he
disappeared suddenly and mysteriously, and in spite of long-continued
and strenuous efforts to obtain some light on the subject, no clew
or trace of him was ever found. He was a favorite among the Edison
"oldtimers," and his memory is still cherished, for when some of the
"boys" happen to get together, as they occasionally do, some one is
almost sure to "wonder what became of poor 'Mac.'" He was last seen at
Mouquin's famous old French restaurant on Fulton Street, New York, where
he lunched with one of the authors of this book and the late Luther
Stieringer. He sat with them for two or three hours discussing his
wonderful trip, and telling some fascinating stories of adventure. Then
the party separated at the Ann Street door of the restaurant, after
making plans to secure the narrative in more detailed form for
subsequent use--and McGowan has not been seen from that hour to this.
The trail of the explorer was more instantly lost in New York than in
the vast recesses of the Amazon swamps.
The next and last explorer whom Edison sent out in search of
natural fibres was Mr. James Ricalton, of Maplewood, New Jersey, a
school-principal, a well-known traveller, and an ardent student of
natural science. Mr. Ricalton's own story of his memorable expedition is
so interesting as to be worthy of repetition here:
"A village schoolmaster is not unaccustomed to door-rappings; for the
steps of belligerent mothers are often thitherward bent seeking redress
for conjured wrongs to their darling boobies.
"It was a bewildering moment, therefore, to the Maplewood teacher when,
in answering a rap at the door one afternoon, he found, instead of an
irate mother, a messenger from the laboratory of the world's greatest
inventor bearing a letter requesting an audience a few hours later.
"Being the teacher to whom reference is made, I am now quite willing to
confess that for the remainder of that afternoon, less than a problem
in Euclid would have been sufficient to disqualify me for the remaining
scholastic duties of the hour. I felt it, of course, to be no small
honor for a humble teacher to be called to the sanctum of Thomas A.
Edison. The letter, however, gave no intimation of the nature of the
object for which I had been invited to appear before Mr. Edison....
"When I was presented to Mr. Edison his way of setting forth the
mission he had designated for me was characteristic of how a great mind
conceives vast undertakings and commands great things in few words. At
this time Mr. Edison had discovered that the fibre of a certain bamboo
afforded a very desirable carbon for the electric lamp, and the variety
of bamboo used was a product of Japan. It was his belief that in other
parts of the world other and superior varieties might be found, and to
that end he had dispatched explorers to bamboo regions in the valleys
of the great South American rivers, where specimens were found of
extraordinary quality; but the locality in which these specimens were
found was lost in the limitless reaches of those great river-bottoms.
The great necessity for more durable carbons became a desideratum so
urgent that the tireless inventor decided to commission another explorer
to search the tropical jungles of the Orient.
"This brings me then to the first meeting of Edison, when he set forth
substantially as follows, as I remember it twenty years ago, the purpose
for which he had called me from my scholastic duties. With a quizzical
gleam in his eye, he said: 'I want a man to ransack all the tropical
jungles of the East to find a better fibre for my lamp; I expect it to
be found in the palm or bamboo family. How would you like that job?'
Suiting my reply to his love of brevity and dispatch, I said, 'That
would suit me.' 'Can you go to-morrow?' was his next question. 'Well,
Mr. Edison, I must first of all get a leave of absence from my Board of
Education, and assist the board to secure a substitute for the time of
my absence. How long will it take, Mr. Edison?' 'How can I tell? Maybe
six months, and maybe five years; no matter how long, find it.' He
continued: 'I sent a man to South America to find what I want; he found
it; but lost the place where he found it, so he might as well never have
found it at all.' Hereat I was enjoined to proceed forthwith to court
the Board of Education for a leave of absence, which I did successfully,
the board considering that a call so important and honorary was entitled
to their unqualified favor, which they generously granted.
"I reported to Mr. Edison on the following day, when he instructed me to
come to the laboratory at once to learn all the details of drawing and
carbonizing fibres, which it would be necessary to do in the Oriental
jungles. This I did, and, in the mean time, a set of suitable tools for
this purpose had been ordered to be made in the laboratory. As soon as
I learned my new trade, which I accomplished in a few days, Mr. Edison
directed me to the library of the laboratory to occupy a few days in
studying the geography of the Orient and, particularly, in drawing maps
of the tributaries of the Ganges, the Irrawaddy, and the Brahmaputra
rivers, and other regions which I expected to explore.
"It was while thus engaged that Mr. Edison came to me one day and said:
'If you will go up to the house' (his palatial home not far away) 'and
look behind the sofa in the library you will find a joint of bamboo, a
specimen of that found in South America; bring it down and make a study
of it; if you find something equal to that I will be satisfied.' At the
home I was guided to the library by an Irish servant-woman, to whom I
communicated my knowledge of the definite locality of the sample joint.
She plunged her arm, bare and herculean, behind the aforementioned sofa,
and holding aloft a section of wood, called out in a mood of discovery:
'Is that it?' Replying in the affirmative, she added, under an impulse
of innocent divination that whatever her wizard master laid hands upon
could result in nothing short of an invention, 'Sure, sor, and what's he
going to invint out o' that?'
"My kit of tools made, my maps drawn, my Oriental geography reviewed, I
come to the point when matters of immediate departure are discussed; and
when I took occasion to mention to my chief that, on the subject of life
insurance, underwriters refuse to take any risks on an enterprise so
hazardous, Mr. Edison said that, if I did not place too high a valuation
on my person, he would take the risk himself. I replied that I was born
and bred in New York State, but now that I had become a Jersey man I did
not value myself at above fifteen hundred dollars. Edison laughed and
said that he would assume the risk, and another point was settled. The
next matter was the financing of the trip, about which Mr. Edison asked
in a tentative way about the rates to the East. I told him the expense
of such a trip could not be determined beforehand in detail, but that I
had established somewhat of a reputation for economic travel, and that
I did not believe any traveller could surpass me in that respect. He
desired no further assurance in that direction, and thereupon ordered a
letter of credit made out with authorization to order a second when the
first was exhausted. Herein then are set forth in briefest space the
preliminaries of a circuit of the globe in quest of fibre.
"It so happened that the day on which I set out fell on Washington's
Birthday, and I suggested to my boys and girls at school that they make
a line across the station platform near the school at Maplewood,
and from this line I would start eastward around the world, and if
good-fortune should bring me back I would meet them from the westward at
the same line. As I had often made them 'toe the scratch,' for once they
were only too well pleased to have me toe the line for them.
"This was done, and I sailed via England and the Suez Canal to Ceylon,
that fair isle to which Sindbad the Sailor made his sixth voyage,
picturesquely referred to in history as the 'brightest gem in the
British Colonial Crown.' I knew Ceylon to be eminently tropical; I knew
it to be rich in many varieties of the bamboo family, which has been
called the king of the grasses; and in this family had I most hope of
finding the desired fibre. Weeks were spent in this paradisiacal isle.
Every part was visited. Native wood craftsmen were offered a premium on
every new species brought in, and in this way nearly a hundred species
were tested, a greater number than was found in any other country. One
of the best specimens tested during the entire trip around the world was
found first in Ceylon, although later in Burmah, it being indigenous
to the latter country. It is a gigantic tree-grass or reed growing in
clumps of from one to two hundred, often twelve inches in diameter, and
one hundred and fifty feet high, and known as the giant bamboo (Bambusa
gigantia). This giant grass stood the highest test as a carbon, and on
account of its extraordinary size and qualities I extend it this special
mention. With others who have given much attention to this remarkable
reed, I believe that in its manifold uses the bamboo is the world's
greatest dendral benefactor.
"From Ceylon I proceeded to India, touching the great peninsula first
at Cape Comorin, and continuing northward by way of Pondicherry, Madura,
and Madras; and thence to the tableland of Bangalore and the Western
Ghauts, testing many kinds of wood at every point, but particularly the
palm and bamboo families. From the range of the Western Ghauts I went to
Bombay and then north by the way of Delhi to Simla, the summer capital
of the Himalayas; thence again northward to the headwaters of the Sutlej
River, testing everywhere on my way everything likely to afford the
desired carbon.
"On returning from the mountains I followed the valleys of the Jumna
and the Ganges to Calcutta, whence I again ascended the Sub-Himalayas to
Darjeeling, where the numerous river-bottoms were sprinkled plentifully
with many varieties of bamboo, from the larger sizes to dwarfed species
covering the mountain slopes, and not longer than the grass of meadows.
Again descending to the plains I passed eastward to the Brahmaputra
River, which I ascended to the foot-hills in Assam; but finding nothing
of superior quality in all this northern region I returned to Calcutta
and sailed thence to Rangoon, in Burmah; and there, finding no samples
giving more excellent tests in the lower reaches of the Irrawaddy,
I ascended that river to Mandalay, where, through Burmese bamboo
wiseacres, I gathered in from round about and tested all that the
unusually rich Burmese flora could furnish. In Burmah the giant bamboo,
as already mentioned, is found indigenous; but beside it no superior
varieties were found. Samples tested at several points on the Malay
Peninsula showed no new species, except at a point north of Singapore,
where I found a species large and heavy which gave a test nearly equal
to that of the giant bamboo in Ceylon.
"After completing the Malay Peninsula I had planned to visit Java and
Borneo; but having found in the Malay Peninsula and in Ceylon a bamboo
fibre which averaged a test from one to two hundred per cent. better
than that in use at the lamp factory, I decided it was unnecessary to
visit these countries or New Guinea, as my 'Eureka' had already been
established, and that I would therefore set forth over the return
hemisphere, searching China and Japan on the way. The rivers in Southern
China brought down to Canton bamboos of many species, where this
wondrously utilitarian reed enters very largely into the industrial life
of that people, and not merely into the industrial life, but even into
the culinary arts, for bamboo sprouts are a universal vegetable
in China; but among all the bamboos of China I found none of
superexcellence in carbonizing qualities. Japan came next in the
succession of countries to be explored, but there the work was much
simplified, from the fact that the Tokio Museum contains a complete
classified collection of all the different species in the empire, and
there samples could be obtained and tested.
"Now the last of the important bamboo-producing countries in the globe
circuit had been done, and the 'home-lap' was in order; the broad
Pacific was spanned in fourteen days; my natal continent in six; and
on the 22d of February, on the same day, at the same hour, at the
same minute, one year to a second, 'little Maude,' a sweet maid of the
school, led me across the line which completed the circuit of the globe,
and where I was greeted by the cheers of my boys and girls. I at once
reported to Mr. Edison, whose manner of greeting my return was as
characteristic of the man as his summary and matter-of-fact manner of my
dispatch. His little catechism of curious inquiry was embraced in four
small and intensely Anglo-Saxon words--with his usual pleasant smile he
extended his hand and said: 'Did you get it?' This was surely a summing
of a year's exploration not less laconic than Caesar's review of his
Gallic campaign. When I replied that I had, but that he must be the
final judge of what I had found, he said that during my absence he
had succeeded in making an artificial carbon which was meeting the
requirements satisfactorily; so well, indeed, that I believe no
practical use was ever made of the bamboo fibres thereafter.
"I have herein given a very brief resume of my search for fibre through
the Orient; and during my connection with that mission I was at all
times not less astonished at Mr. Edison's quick perception of conditions
and his instant decision and his bigness of conceptions, than I had
always been with his prodigious industry and his inventive genius.
"Thinking persons know that blatant men never accomplish much, and
Edison's marvellous brevity of speech along with his miraculous
achievements should do much to put bores and garrulity out of fashion."
Although Edison had instituted such a costly and exhaustive search
throughout the world for the most perfect of natural fibres, he did not
necessarily feel committed for all time to the exclusive use of that
material for his lamp filaments. While these explorations were in
progress, as indeed long before, he had given much thought to the
production of some artificial compound that would embrace not only the
required homogeneity, but also many other qualifications necessary for
the manufacture of an improved type of lamp which had become desirable
by reason of the rapid adoption of his lighting system.
At the very time Mr. McGowan was making his explorations deep in South
America, and Mr. Ricalton his swift trip around the world, Edison,
after much investigation and experiment, had produced a compound which
promised better results than bamboo fibres. After some changes dictated
by experience, this artificial filament was adopted in the manufacture
of lamps. No radical change was immediately made, however, but the
product of the lamp factory was gradually changed over, during the
course of a few years, from the use of bamboo to the "squirted"
filament, as the new material was called. An artificial compound of one
kind or another has indeed been universally adopted for the purpose
by all manufacturers; hence the incandescing conductors in all
carbon-filament lamps of the present day are made in that way. The fact
remains, however, that for nearly nine years all Edison lamps (many
millions in the aggregate) were made with bamboo filaments, and many of
them for several years after that, until bamboo was finally abandoned in
the early nineties, except for use in a few special types which were so
made until about the end of 1908. The last few years have witnessed
a remarkable advance in the manufacture of incandescent lamps in the
substitution of metallic filaments for those of carbon. It will be
remembered that many of the earlier experiments were based on the use of
strips of platinum; while other rare metals were the subject of casual
trial. No real success was attained in that direction, and for many
years the carbon-filament lamp reigned supreme. During the last four
or five years lamps with filaments made from tantalum and tungsten have
been produced and placed on the market with great success, and are now
largely used. Their price is still very high, however, as compared with
that of the carbon lamp, which has been vastly improved in methods of
construction, and whose average price of fifteen cents is only one-tenth
of what it was when Edison first brought it out.
With the close of Mr. McGowan's and Mr. Ricalton's expeditions, there
ended the historic world-hunt for natural fibres. From start to finish
the investigations and searches made by Edison himself, and carried on
by others under his direction, are remarkable not only from the fact
that they entailed a total expenditure of about $100,000, (disbursed
under his supervision by Mr. Upton), but also because of their unique
inception and thoroughness they illustrate one of the strongest traits
of his character--an invincible determination to leave no stone unturned
to acquire that which he believes to be in existence, and which, when
found, will answer the purpose that he has in mind.
CHAPTER XIV
INVENTING A COMPLETE SYSTEM OF LIGHTING
IN Berlin, on December 11, 1908, with notable eclat, the seventieth
birthday was celebrated of Emil Rathenau, the founder of the great
Allgemein Elektricitaets Gesellschaft. This distinguished German,
creator of a splendid industry, then received the congratulations of his
fellow-countrymen, headed by Emperor William, who spoke enthusiastically
of his services to electro-technics and to Germany. In his interesting
acknowledgment, Mr. Rathenau told how he went to Paris in 1881, and at
the electrical exhibition there saw the display of Edison's inventions
in electric lighting "which have met with as little proper appreciation
as his countless innovations in connection with telegraphy, telephony,
and the entire electrical industry." He saw the Edison dynamo, and he
saw the incandescent lamp, "of which millions have been manufactured
since that day without the great master being paid the tribute to his
invention." But what impressed the observant, thoroughgoing German was
the breadth with which the whole lighting art had been elaborated and
perfected, even at that early day. "The Edison system of lighting was as
beautifully conceived down to the very details, and as thoroughly worked
out as if it had been tested for decades in various towns. Neither
sockets, switches, fuses, lamp-holders, nor any of the other accessories
necessary to complete the installation were wanting; and the generating
of the current, the regulation, the wiring with distributing boxes,
house connections, meters, etc., all showed signs of astonishing skill
and incomparable genius."
Such praise on such an occasion from the man who introduced incandescent
electric lighting into Germany is significant as to the continued
appreciation abroad of Mr. Edison's work. If there is one thing modern
Germany is proud and jealous of, it is her leadership in electrical
engineering and investigation. But with characteristic insight, Mr.
Rathenau here placed his finger on the great merit that has often been
forgotten. Edison was not simply the inventor of a new lamp and a
new dynamo. They were invaluable elements, but far from all that was
necessary. His was the mighty achievement of conceiving and executing
in all its details an art and an industry absolutely new to the world.
Within two years this man completed and made that art available in its
essential, fundamental facts, which remain unchanged after thirty years
of rapid improvement and widening application.
Such a stupendous feat, whose equal is far to seek anywhere in the
history of invention, is worth studying, especially as the task will
take us over much new ground and over very little of the territory
already covered. Notwithstanding the enormous amount of thought and
labor expended on the incandescent lamp problem from the autumn of
1878 to the winter of 1879, it must not be supposed for one moment that
Edison's whole endeavor and entire inventive skill had been given to the
lamp alone, or the dynamo alone. We have sat through the long watches
of the night while Edison brooded on the real solution of the swarming
problems. We have gazed anxiously at the steady fingers of the deft and
cautious Batchelor, as one fragile filament after another refused to
stay intact until it could be sealed into its crystal prison and there
glow with light that never was before on land or sea. We have calculated
armatures and field coils for the new dynamo with Upton, and held the
stakes for Jehl and his fellows at their winding bees. We have seen the
mineral and vegetable kingdoms rifled and ransacked for substances that
would yield the best "filament." We have had the vague consciousness of
assisting at a great development whose evidences to-day on every hand
attest its magnitude. We have felt the fierce play of volcanic effort,
lifting new continents of opportunity from the infertile sea, without
any devastation of pre-existing fields of human toil and harvest. But
it still remains to elucidate the actual thing done; to reduce it to
concrete data, and in reducing, to unfold its colossal dimensions.
The lighting system that Edison contemplated in this entirely new
departure from antecedent methods included the generation of electrical
energy, or current, on a very large scale; its distribution throughout
extended areas, and its division and subdivision into small units
converted into light at innumerable points in every direction from
the source of supply, each unit to be independent of every other and
susceptible to immediate control by the user.
This was truly an altogether prodigious undertaking. We need not
wonder that Professor Tyndall, in words implying grave doubt as to the
possibility of any solution of the various problems, said publicly that
he wou 
Edison, His Life and Inventions /