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THEsSTOEY-OF 
 
 THOMMA.EDLSON 
 
FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 FOR YOUNG READERS 
 
 Titles Ready 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON By Joseph Walker 
 
 JOHN PAUL JONES By C. C. Fraser 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON By Gene Stone 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN By J. Walker McSpadden 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN By Clare Tree Major 
 
 DAVID CROCKETT By Jane Corby 
 
 ROBERT FULTON By I. N. McFee 
 
 THOMAS A. EDISON By I. N. McFee 
 
 HARRIET B. STOWE By R. B. MacArthur 
 
 MARY LYON By H. O. Stengel 
 
 Other Titles in Preparation 
 
© Underwood & Underwood. 
 
 EDISON IN HIS LABORATORY 
 Hard at work, on his 7 tth birthday 
 
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 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 For^Youno Reader 
 
 * THE >STOEY • OF + 
 
 J THOMMA.EDLSOIN * 
 
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 * INEZ N.McFEE 
 
 
 
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 BAKSB eg, HOPKINS 
 
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 Copyright, 1922 
 BY BARSE & HOPKINS 
 
 PEIlfTED IX THE TT. S. A. 
 
 AUG -2 '22 
 
 ©CI.AB77733 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The life story of Edison abounds in sur- 
 prises. Not alone for his achievements, but 
 for his indomitable courage and ability to sur- 
 mount obstacles does his career read like a 
 fairy tale. In his boyhood he was "news 
 butcher" on a train, and even then was ex- 
 perimenting in chemistry. But his improvised 
 laboratory nearly burned up the baggage car, 
 and he was thrown out bodily. Later he was 
 a tramp telegrapher and earned the reputation 
 of being one of the fastest operators who ever 
 handled a key. A fortunate chance, for which 
 he was ready, enabled him to establish a mod- 
 est workshop at Menlo Park, N. J., which in 
 the years to come was to grow into the pres- 
 ent spacious plant at Orange. Here have 
 been produced many marvels, now familiar to 
 us all — the incandescent electric light, the 
 phonograph, the motion picture, the improved 
 storage battery, and literally hundreds of 
 other things — and back of them all has been 
 the genius of one man. He has been aptly 
 called "The Wizard," and many of his dis- 
 coveries seem magical, but he himself said 
 they were simply the result of "taking pains." 
 
 That we are still only on the threshold of 
 many wonderful things is evidenced by Edi- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 son's own emphatic declaration: "We are just 
 emerging from the chimpanzee state men- 
 tally. We don't know one-millionth of one 
 percent about anything. Why, we don't even 
 know what water is. We don't know what 
 light is. We don't know what gravitation is. 
 We don't know what enables us to keep on 
 our feet, to stand up. We don't know what 
 electricity is. We don't know what heat is. 
 We don't know anything about magnetism. 
 We have a lot of hypotheses, but that's all." 
 It lies perhaps for some of our readers to 
 go on beyond the province of this book, to fol- 
 low the great Wizard's zealous, untiring 
 course, and to aid perchance in solving the 
 mystery of some of these things, which are for 
 the most part so common that most of us are 
 incapable of recognizing them as problems 
 at all. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 II. 
 
 III. 
 IV. 
 
 V. 
 
 VI. 
 
 VII. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 IX. 
 
 X. 
 
 XI. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Boyhood Days 
 
 The Young Telegraph Operator 
 
 oljtcroppings of genius 
 
 Experiments in Electrical Teleg 
 raphy 
 
 Edison and the Telephone . 
 
 The Story op the Phonograph 
 
 The Electric Light 
 
 The Kinetoscope, or Moving Pic 
 ture Machine 
 
 Other Interesting Inventions . 
 Edison and His Workmen . 
 Edison and the Public . 
 Edison in His Home .... 
 
 9 
 26 
 
 40 
 
 50 
 62 
 
 72 
 84 
 
 114 
 125 
 146 
 161 
 173 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Edison in His Laboratory 
 Hard at work, on his 
 7Jf.th birthday 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Thomas A. Edison 64 
 
 From a photograph taken 
 in early manhood 
 
 The Young Edison and His First Phonograph 80 
 From a photograph 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Edison on an Outing . . . 174 
 Showing him on one of the rare 
 intervals when he was loafing 
 
THE STORY OF THOMAS A. 
 EDISON 
 
 BOYHOOD DAYS 
 
 The little town of Milan, Ohio, is to-day 
 noted chiefly as the birthplace of Thomas Alva 
 Edison. But on that cold winter afternoon, 
 February 11, 1847, when occurred this event 
 which was to have such influence in the lives of 
 all mankind, it was a hummingly prosperous 
 little grain-market, filled with bursting gran- 
 aries which were loaded out to Eastern ports 
 by way of the thrifty Milan canal. The 
 Edison home stood within close view of the 
 busy wharf, and something of its hustle and 
 bustle must have communicated itself to the 
 soul of the babe. 
 
 "A bonny boy he is," said the good neighbor 
 who came to apprise the waiting father of the 
 little one's safe arrival. "Fair and sweet, with 
 gray eyes — the very image of his mother." 
 
 "Good!" exclaimed Samuel Edison huskily, 
 
10 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 and his tall spare form seemed to add on an 
 inch or two to its six feet. "If he is only like 
 her in brains, and temper, too, he will indeed be 
 a blessing!" 
 
 And well might the husband and father 
 say this. Nancy Elliott, his Scotch-Canadian 
 school-teacher wife had never been aught but a 
 joy to him. 
 
 Little "Alvie" soon became all that his fond 
 father desired. The child seldom cried. His 
 temper, "from the moment he could distinguish 
 between pleasure and pain, was an angelic one. 
 He is said to have cracked jokes when a baby, 
 and from the time when he began to take notice 
 he was quite conscious of the humorous side of 
 a situation." And, as soon as he began to talk, 
 he started in on the endless series of Whys 
 which were to occupy all his days! About 
 the home, down the tow-path to the wharf, 
 where he escaped as soon as his toddling legs 
 would carry him, he was always meeting a 
 Why? And, when those he questioned an- 
 swered in sheer desperation, "I do not know!" 
 he increased their annoyance by asking, "Well, 
 why don't you know?" 
 
 Odd, yes and downright stupid were some of 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 11 
 
 those questions, or so it seemed to those who 
 failed to fathom his drift, and they thought him 
 not quite right mentally — "half-baked," as we 
 would term it to-day. And, indeed, some of 
 his own efforts at investigation gave truth to 
 this; for instance, when he wanted to know 
 how goose eggs turned into fluffy little gos- 
 lings, and he was found calmly hovering the 
 eggs himself, while the old goose hissed her 
 angriest. Nearby was cached a supply of 
 food for himself, in case the outcome proved 
 of long duration ! 
 
 He did not get on well at school. Few 
 teachers were able to satisfy his constant 
 queries, and they failed to understand him 
 through lack of sympathy. Indeed, one almost 
 broke the lad's heart by telling the school in- 
 spector right before him that there was no use 
 trying to explain anything to little Al Edison, 
 as the child was "too addled" to understand. 
 Home he rushed at top speed and flung him- 
 self into his mother's arms, crying out his grief. 
 Brave Nancy Edison! Her lips quivered and 
 her own eyes filled with tears, for she was hurt 
 to the quick and righteously indignant. Brains 
 there were in plenty behind that broad fore- 
 
12 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 head and those clear, questioning gray eyes, 
 that she knew very well. Why, the child had 
 mastered the alphabet and had learned to read 
 almost by his own efforts ! He was filled with 
 a strong desire to know things, and he needed 
 only to be guided in the right way. Forth- 
 with, she determined herself to become his 
 teacher. They would read and study together, 
 and this she told him in a burst of enthusiasm 
 which proved beyond a doubt what a champion 
 she could be, 
 
 "My mother was the making of me," says 
 Edison. "She was so true, so sure of me, that 
 I ever afterward felt that I had some one to 
 live for, some one whom I must not disap- 
 point." 
 
 About this time the prosperity of the little 
 community received its death blow. The Lake 
 Shore Railroad had been established ; it missed 
 the town of Milan and "killed" the canal. The 
 Edisons moved to Port Huron, Michigan, "a 
 prosperous town whose chief characteristics 
 were bustle and enterprise," and here they set- 
 tled in a fine old homestead, in the midst of an 
 apple and pear orchard, just at the edge of the 
 town. The large roomy house had delightful 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 13 
 
 porches, where Al and his mother might always 
 be found at certain hours, in pleasant weather, 
 hard at work on schoolroom tasks which Mrs. 
 Edison assigned and conducted with as much 
 regard for rule and punctuality as she would 
 have done had her pupils been fifty instead of 
 one. And the young lad repaid her well. He 
 needed never to be told a thing twice, and no 
 lesson was too long or too hard for him. Read- 
 ing and writing were soon mastered, but the 
 third "R" was a debatable point — Al had no 
 head for mathematics, and he would not try to 
 learn — a thing, by the way, which he has never 
 regretted. "I can always hire mathemati- 
 cians," he once said to a friend, "but they can't 
 hire me!" Geography, history and English 
 were readily approached through the broad 
 avenues of reading, the father contributing 
 here by giving young Al a substantial reward 
 for each new book mastered. Between the 
 ages of nine and twelve, the boy had read 
 Hume's "History of England," Sear's "His- 
 tory of the World," Gibbons's "Rome," "The 
 Penny Encyclopedia," and several works on 
 electricity and science. 
 
14 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 But these lessons and associations, happy as 
 they were, could not last. Tannie, the sister, 
 was continually writing stories and verses and 
 spoke quite confidently of the time when she 
 should be "an author." Will, the elder brother, 
 was exceedingly clever with his pencil and 
 there was talk of sending him to Europe for 
 an artist's training — a thing, by the way, which 
 never materialized. As for Alvie himself, a 
 chance book, Parker's "School Philosophy," 
 had determined his future career. He would 
 be a great chemist and an inventor. All his 
 share of the profits for work early and late in 
 his father's large market garden went for the 
 purchase of experimental supplies. A corner 
 of the cellar became his laboratory, and here 
 were set up some two hundred or more of the 
 bottles he had hunted and begged from all 
 quarters. As each one was filled, it was in turn 
 labeled "Poison" to insure its safe-keeping, for 
 often his mother, resenting the continual en- 
 croachments made on her part of the cellar, 
 was inclined to "clear out the trash!" 
 
 Presently the boy was familiar with all the 
 chemicals obtainable in the small town, and had 
 tried to his satisfaction many experiments 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 15 
 
 mentioned in his scientific reading. But this 
 was not enough; he wanted to dip into other 
 things. Just before his vision was the open 
 door into analytical chemistry, and why he did 
 not become a chemist to the exclusion of every- 
 thing else was due perchance to the progressive 
 order of the times. Every paper he picked up 
 had something to say of the new wonder of 
 the world — electricity. What was it? What 
 might it not accomplish? Experiments with 
 electrical batteries fired the boy with the en- 
 thusiasm of discovery. He must know more! 
 He must have more money for experimental 
 supplies ! With his rich heritage of hustle and 
 bustle, he determined to start some enterprise 
 to float himself independently, then no one 
 could complain of his wasting money, and he 
 at once confided the idea to his mother, who, a 
 trifle awed by the boy's sureness, asked almost 
 timidly what work he thought best suited to his 
 qualifications. 
 
 "Well," said young Al, with that character- 
 istic largeness and freedom which was always 
 his, "it does not matter much what I do, so 
 long as the work is honest and brings in the 
 cash!" 
 
16 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 After due deliberation, he decided to sell 
 newspapers. And he made known his plans 
 with a businesslike directness which argued 
 well for his future prosperity. 
 
 "I do not want to hawk papers on the 
 street," he said. "Why wouldn't it be a 
 good idea to apply for the job of selling on 
 the Grand Trunk road between here and 
 Detroit?" 
 
 A railway newsboy! His mother's vivid 
 imagination at once pictured the train in a 
 ditch, and her ambitious offspring lying killed 
 and bleeding beneath the debris. But young 
 Al laughed away her fears, and soon got her 
 to help write out his application. Then, be- 
 lieving that "everything comes round to him 
 who hustles while he waits," he set about find- 
 ing where he could obtain his supplies the most 
 advantageously. 
 
 Sure enough, his industry had its reward, 
 and Al was the happiest boy in the whole coun- 
 try. Needless to say, he was a quick success. 
 People liked his bright face and pleasant man- 
 ners ; his stock was neat and clean; he had what 
 people wanted, and they bought liberally. 
 
 The train left Port Huron about seven in 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 17 
 
 the morning and was three hours reaching its 
 destination; the return trip began at four- 
 thirty p. m. This left young Al with consider- 
 able time on his hands in Detroit. It only 
 took a few minutes to replenish his supplies; 
 so he went over to the public library, where he 
 at once determined to read the place through 
 in the days while he waited. But, he tells us 
 laughingly, in later years, "Other things inter- 
 fered before I had done!" 
 
 It was an easy time for a "newsy" to work 
 up a trade, but the story of Edison's first coup 
 is none the less interesting for all that. It was 
 his custom always to drop into the composing 
 room of the Detroit Free Press and look over 
 the proofs. In this way he could judge how 
 many papers to buy. The Civil War was then 
 in progress, and one day his quick eye caught 
 the news of the terrible disaster at Shiloh. 
 Racing around to the telegraph office he 
 begged a friendly operator to wire ahead to 
 the stations on his line, requesting the agents 
 to chalk up on their bulletin boards that papers 
 telling about a terrible battle would come in 
 on the next train. In return he offered the 
 operator newspaper service free for six months. 
 
18 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 Then young Al went back to the news office. 
 
 "I want one thousand papers on trust," he 
 said, looking the foreman squarely in the eye. 
 "I know I can sell 'em," and he proceeded to 
 detail his plan. 
 
 The man heard him through, and then 
 clapped the lad heartily on the shoulder. "You 
 are a genius, kid," he said. "But you'll have 
 to see the boss." 
 
 Upstairs, young Edison asked for fifteen 
 hundred papers ! He got them, too, and as he 
 said later, "Then I felt happier than I ever 
 have since!" 
 
 At the first stop, where he usually sold two 
 papers, he sold five hundred. The town had 
 turned out en masse! Taking his cue from 
 this, at the next station Edison asked ten cents 
 per copy, and the price reached twenty-five 
 cents before he got to the end of the run! 
 Then a few papers remained. He put these in 
 a cart and went up by the church where prayer 
 meeting was in session. Calling out the news 
 of the battle, he soon had the minister and all 
 the congregation clamoring about him, bidding 
 against one another for the precious sheets. 
 He had made a small fortune for a boy, but 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 19 
 
 best of all he had shown that he had shrewd 
 business sense. 
 
 While waiting around the composing room; 
 Al learned to set type. And then he had an- 
 other bright idea: he would himself edit and 
 publish the Grand Trunk Herald, and thus 
 add further to his precious hoard. Securing 
 the gift of a quantity of old type, and buying 
 for a small sum a press which one of his 
 numerous friends had taken on a bad debt, he 
 set about realizing this scheme. The result was 
 such an interesting little sheet that more than 
 once an item from it was copied in the London 
 Times! The paper sold readily, and not infre- 
 quently through the kindness of his telegrapher 
 friends young Al beat the newspapers to an 
 important scoop. In four years he had earned 
 something like $2,000, which, aside from the 
 sum he insisted on paying for his board, went 
 the way of all his funds. 
 
 To-day, so far as is known, the only existing 
 copy of the Weekly Herald hangs in the 
 library of the Edison home. Mrs. Edison has 
 proudly had it enclosed in a case-like glass 
 frame, and the well-preserved sheet, 12x16 
 inches in size, may thus be read on both its 
 
20 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 interesting sides. It is a pleasing memorial of 
 the activities of a fourteen-year-old boy, and 
 in spite of a few errors in spelling and English, 
 would challenge most youths of the present to 
 do as well. 
 
 The Herald and his duties as a newsboy still 
 left Edison with a margin of time on his hands. 
 True to his thrifty training, he at once turned 
 this to account by establishing a laboratory in 
 his end of the car. And here, as might have 
 been expected, he one day came to grief. A 
 bottle of phosphorus jarred from its shelf, and 
 igniting at once set fire to the car. The hot- 
 headed Irish conductor, incensed at the danger 
 to his train, soundly boxed the lad's ears, and 
 threw the precious chemicals and apparatus out 
 the window. It was a dire calamity, but the 
 worst feature was the permanent deafness 
 which developed in the boy's right ear, as a 
 result of the cuffing, an affliction which no 
 amount of surgical skill was ever able to 
 remedy, and from which Edison suffered all 
 his life, even though he himself regarded it 
 philosophically. 
 
 "Broadway is as quiet to me as a country 
 village is to a normal person," he once said. 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 21 
 
 "While working as a telegrapher, my deafness 
 was a distinct advantage. I could hear only 
 the instrument on my own table, and I had 
 not to contend with the noise that unstrung the 
 nerves of the other operators. In like man- 
 ner, my deafness helped me in working out the 
 telephone transmitter and the phonograph." 
 It also helped him to preserve poise all 
 through the years by giving him those blessed 
 moments of utter relaxation, frequently 
 snatched on the job, where sleep would other- 
 wise have been impossible. 
 
 Though he never dared reestablish his 
 laboratory on the train, young Al was not to be 
 discouraged. His spare time was given to 
 reading and to mapping out plans for home 
 experiments. In time his little corner in the 
 cellar came to occupy a very large share of the 
 boy's thoughts, for his publishing business 
 came to an inglorious end. Following the ill- 
 advised counsel of a lad who loved all manner 
 Df pranks and mischief, the title of the Herald 
 was changed to Paul Pry, and its contents be- 
 came mostly "take-offs" of prominent citizens 
 and the officials of the road. Whether merited 
 or not, these articles were never very well 
 
22 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 received, and the paper lost heavily in prestige. 
 The end came when one irate gentleman cor- 
 nered Al, and after telling him exactly what 
 he thought of his obnoxious paper, promptly 
 took the young editor by the coat collar and the 
 slack of his pants and threw him into the canal ! 
 As he swam ashore, Al sensibly decided that 
 the career of a sensational publisher was unde- 
 sirable, and he determined to abandon the busi- 
 ness in favor of electricity and telegraphy. 
 
 But the time for the necessary experiments 
 to make his work practical grew more and 
 more inadequate. He had to be off shortly 
 after six in the morning, and he did not get 
 home until after eight at night. Moreover, his 
 father, a stern disciple of the old maxim, 
 "Early to bed and early to rise," stoutly in- 
 sisted on his going to bed promptly at nine- 
 thirty. Nor was he to be cajoled or tricked; 
 such efforts always ended in disaster. What 
 was to be done? 
 
 A few evenings later the boy came home 
 without his customary supply of reading 
 matter. 
 
 "Where are the papers?" asked his father, 
 eyeing him disappointedly. 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 23 
 
 "We were pretty well sold up," Alvie re- 
 turned innocently, "and Dick took what was 
 left. I've had 'em aU lately." 
 
 "Was there anything of particular interest?" 
 
 Al mentioned a few topics. "I tell you 
 what, father," he said enthusiastically, "I 
 might have Dick send in the news as his dad 
 reads it aloud. We could all enjoy the paper 
 that way!" 
 
 "Hmm!" observed Mr. Edison dubiously. 
 He had small faith in Al's telegraphic ability, 
 having always regarded as more or less of a 
 nuisance the wire between the two homes, which 
 the boys had industriously fashioned at odd 
 moments, using an old river cable, some stove- 
 pipe wire, and glass-bottle insulators. How- 
 ever, it was this agency or a mighty dull eve- 
 ning; so he followed the lad, without a word, 
 even though the heedless old clock cut into the 
 procession with its very loudest chime, an- 
 nouncing nine-thirty! 
 
 Dick, of course, was all primed and waiting, 
 and the news soon began to come in. Indus- 
 triously Al scribbled off the items with flying 
 fingers and handed the slips to his father as 
 fast as each "special" was finished. It was 
 
24 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 exhilarating business, and for nearly two hours 
 Mr. Edison did not once bethink himself about 
 the time! 
 
 Al had won. This method of procedure held 
 for ten days or more, then the boy took to 
 bringing in papers again, and he and Dick 
 were left to their own devices. No longer did 
 the nine-thirty signal sound an extinguisher in 
 their midst ! 
 
 Other boys became interested, and soon half- 
 a-dozen or more houses in the neighborhood 
 were connected. One of these recruits was 
 always rather a duffer at the game. He 
 couldn't get the signals over the wire, and he 
 would stick his head out the window and yell 
 across to know what messages had been sent- — 
 a procedure which always roused young Edi- 
 son. He took it as a reflection on his telegraph, 
 and to be sure the line was not altogether above 
 reproach. How could it be, with the crude 
 materials with which the small inventor had to 
 work? 
 
 One night a stray cow played the part of a 
 miniature cyclone among the wires which 
 stretched hither and yon across the orchard, 
 and the damage was never made good. For 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 25 
 
 the principal investor shortly had the oppor- 
 tunity of telegraphing without the responsi- 
 bility of constructing and keeping up his line. 
 But this is another story. 
 
II 
 
 THE YOUNG TELEGRAPH OPERATOR 
 
 How young Edison became a real teleg- 
 rapher, instead of a boy experimenter, is an 
 interesting story. AFs train had taken the 
 siding for a fast freight, when the boy, step- 
 ping out for a breath of fresh air, was horrified 
 to see little Jimmie Mackenzie, the station 
 master's two-year-old son, come rushing laugh- 
 ingly into the path of the oncoming engine. 
 It was a matter of seconds, and the quick- 
 witted boy sprang for him headlong, while the 
 startled onlookers gasped shudderingly as the 
 shrieking engine tore by. All felt that the 
 brave young newsboy had made the leap in 
 vain. But, lo! when the scene cleared there 
 was Al on the opposite side of the gravel, with 
 the blood running down his face from a cut 
 he had received, but with the child safe in his 
 arms. Moreover, he was as cool as a cucum- 
 ber, and smiled away the father's incoherent 
 thanks as he thrust the baby toward him and 
 
 26 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 27 
 
 made for his own train, now beginning to 
 move. He had but done his duty, and so far 
 as Al was concerned the chapter was closed. 
 
 But not so with Mr. Mackenzie. All day 
 the circumstance flashed before his eyes, and 
 he turned over one after another considerations 
 as to how he might in a measure repay the 
 young newsy's quick-witted action. At last he 
 hit upon the proper thing, and when Al's train 
 appeared on the next run he sought the boy 
 out. 
 
 "See here," he said earnestly, "how would 
 you like to stop off here four nights out of the 
 week and study telegraphy with me?" 
 
 "Why — ee — " Al gazed at him in speech- 
 less delight, but the eagerness with which he 
 grasped the operator's outstretched hand 
 served better than words. 
 
 Forthwith began a friendship that ended 
 only with the death of the gray-haired agent 
 years later. For three months, according to 
 schedule, young Edison dropped off at Mt. 
 Clemons, and never did a teacher have a more 
 absorbed pupil. Not a detail escaped him, and 
 presently he knew even more about his sub- 
 ject than did his instructor. There was a 
 
28 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 vacancy as night operator at the Port Huron 
 station, and on Mackenzie's recommendation 
 young Edison applied for the position, and got 
 it. The salary was $25 a month, and seldom 
 has there been a happier boy than young Al 
 when he made known his good fortune at home. 
 He gave up his job on the train at once, and 
 set about his new duties with a gay good will. 
 Unfortunately, however, the work was not 
 very heavy. The boy had but to record the 
 passing of trains, and these were so infrequent 
 that the time hung heavily on his hands. More- 
 over, he soon became desperately sleepy. He 
 would not sleep daytimes, as other night oper- 
 ators did; for then he would have had to give 
 up his beloved shop work, a procedure not to be 
 considered even for a moment. So an alarm 
 clock was purchased, and set to arouse him 
 when trains were due. But sometimes the 
 trains were off schedule, and again and again 
 Al slept straight through all alarms. The 
 despatcher was uneasy, but he liked young 
 Edison and was disposed to be lenient. So, 
 as a safeguard, he ordered the boy to send in 
 the signal "A" every half hour. Al did so, 
 albeit he considered the proceeding rather fool- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 29 
 
 ish and that it was up to him to get round it. 
 A few nights later he arrived with a small box 
 in his pocket, and as soon as he had the office 
 to himself, proceeded to connect the rather 
 queer looking instrument he had brought by 
 wires with the clock and the telegraph. Then 
 he sat back with a broad grin and awaited de- 
 velopments. Nor had he long to wait. The 
 hour hand was almost on the half hour, and at 
 exactly that instant one lever of his ingenious 
 machine threw open the key and another 
 flashed the Morse "A" along to the despatcher. 
 The boy's inventive ability had served him 
 well ! But lest there be some hitch in the oper- 
 ations he drew up a chair and read until an- 
 other half hour had gone by. Promptly the 
 little "dummy" did its duty, and then young 
 Edison, with a boyish salute in the despatcher's 
 direction, as promptly composed himself for 
 slumber. He had two or three perfectly good 
 hours before a train was due. 
 
 All went well for some time. The des- 
 patcher, being signaled night after night, so 
 promptly on the hour, began to regain confi- 
 dence in Thomas A. Edison. There was good 
 timber in the boy after all! But murder will 
 
30 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 always out. One night the despatcher hap- 
 pened to be at a neighboring station. He 
 thought he would call up young Edison and 
 test out his abilities a little. He signaled time 
 and again and getting no answer began to fear 
 something had gone wrong at Port Huron. 
 So he jumped on a hand-car and went down, 
 arriving almost on the half-hour. Looking 
 in at the window he saw young Edison sound 
 asleep. At the same moment, the despatcher *s 
 quick eye was attracted to the clock and its 
 wired connections, and he stood spellbound 
 while the faithful little levers performed their 
 valuable services. Then, notwithstanding the 
 ingeniousness of the little machine and the 
 talent which it undoubtedly revealed, he 
 walked in and shook the boy into wakefulness, 
 telling him in no uncertain terms that he dared 
 not trust him further. There was too much 
 danger involved. So, breathless and not a little 
 chagrined, young Edison found himself out of 
 a job. 
 
 But he could not stay away from the station. 
 The telegraph instruments, the wires and their 
 complications, drew him as a magnet draws 
 steel. So many times did he ferret out trouble 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 31 
 
 and right matters that the lineman finally 
 threatened to give him a hearty licking if he 
 didn't quit trying to undermine his job! 
 
 Finally Edison got back into service as tele- 
 graph operator at Sarnia, over the Canadian 
 line. As it was day service, there was no dan- 
 ger of his sleeping on the job. But there was 
 another little fox which he was not proof 
 against. His love for mechanical devices, 
 short-cuts, would interfere, and one day he let 
 a train pass which he should have held, as there 
 was another train just ahead. Realizing his 
 mistake instantly, he rushed frantically down 
 the track in a perfectly useless effort to avert 
 the tragedy. Fortunately, however, the engi- 
 neers heard one another's whistles and were 
 able to stop in time. Young Edison was so 
 relieved at this that he did not much dread the 
 summons to the chief's office. However, when 
 he learned that he really stood in grave danger 
 of the penitentiary, he resolved to get away 
 while the going was good, and took a "tie- 
 pass" at once, presently arriving in Indian- 
 apolis, where he found little difficulty in 
 securing a job at $75 per month. 
 
 In those days, good telegraph operators 
 
32 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 were scarce and the ranks of what few skilled 
 men the country could boast had been sadly 
 depleted by the war. It was a condition which 
 bred "tramp" telegraphers, as it offered an 
 opportunity to see the country and earn one's 
 way en route. And Edison determined to 
 make the most of it. In the next few months 
 he handled important wires in Memphis, 
 Cincinnati, New Orleans and Louisville. One 
 who records this period says: "He lived in 
 the free-and-easy atmosphere of the tramp 
 operators — a boon companion with them, yet 
 absolutely refusing to join in their dissipa- 
 tions. So highly esteemed was he for his hon- 
 esty that when a spree was on hand the others 
 asked him to keep their money for them." 
 
 At Louisville, the young operator especially 
 distinguished himself by taking press reports. 
 He received Andrew Johnson's presidential 
 message in just one hour. He then para- 
 graphed the copy so that the printers could 
 take it in exactly three lines each, thus enabling 
 them to set up the whole thing in record time. 
 For this valuable service the Louisville press 
 gave him a state dinner ! 
 
 On one occasion young Edison arrived on 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 33 
 
 the new job looking so much like a veritable 
 hayseed that the office force decided to "salt" 
 him. Accordingly, a speedy man was duly 
 posted, and young Edison seated to take what 
 he sent. But "Tom" Edison, as he was now 
 called, "Al" and "Alvie" having been left 
 behind with his boyhood, was by no means as 
 green and easy as he looked! Almost imme- 
 diately he sensed what was in the wind, and 
 draping the old linen duster, which he wore in 
 lieu of a coat, over the back of his chair, he 
 took up a pen, examined it carefully, and 
 started in about fifty words behind. A broad 
 grin spread across the room in his rear, but it 
 didn't last long. The machine on the young 
 fellow's table began to hum "like an old style 
 Singer sewing machine," but "the jay" was 
 in no wise flustered. Swiftly and smoothly his 
 pen moved across the paper, leaving behind it 
 a trail neat and legible as copper-plate; he 
 crossed his "t's" and dotted his "i's" and punc- 
 tuated carefully, for the copy was to go to the 
 press room at once; while the plainly 
 numbered sheets flowed from his desk and scat- 
 tered like feathers in a gale. Presently the 
 Memphis man began to feel his spurt of speed 
 
34 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 and slowed down, and Edison quickly seized 
 his chance. Opening the key instantly, he cut 
 in: "Well, get a move on! Maybe you think 
 you are running a primer class !" 
 
 A murmur of admiration ran around the 
 room. Careless and untidy the newcomer 
 might he, but he was no slouch at the board, 
 that was certain! He must easily have been 
 averaging fifty to fifty-five words per minute, 
 and no doubt he could send as rapidly as he 
 could receive. Thenceforward not a man there 
 but was ready to stand by Tom Edison through 
 thick and thin ! 
 
 In Boston, young Edison took a different 
 tack. For some time the office had been terri- 
 bly pestered by cockroaches, especially in the 
 anteroom where the night operators kept their 
 lunches. Edison objected to sharing his 
 scanty rations with such a villainous horde, 
 and, one evening, he proceeded to lay an inge- 
 nious trap. By means of some tinfoil and fine 
 wire he placed a double "ribbon" around the 
 outer edge of the table top where the lunches 
 were kept, and then connected up with two 
 heavy batteries. News of the proceedings 
 went round, and the whole force gathered to 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 35 
 
 await results. The cockroaches were exceed- 
 ingly clever! They knew to an instant when 
 fresh supplies might be depended on, and 
 shortly after six-thirty, they always issued like 
 a mob of mill operatives, and made a raid on 
 the table. Scarcely had young Edison com- 
 pleted his work, when the advance guard made 
 its appearance, and the robbers came on full 
 tilt. Up the table legs they swarmed, each one 
 eager to be first, yet keeping in line as good 
 scouts should. The trail of ribbons halted the 
 advance corporals, but pushed and harried by 
 those in the rear, the crossing was attempted. 
 Tentative steps on the first ribbon brought no 
 dire results, and the second was attempted, 
 when presto ! over went the cockroach buddies, 
 "as dead as a free message." 
 
 It must not be inferred that Edison had 
 become so deeply engrossed in telegraphy as 
 to forget his old passion for experimenting. 
 On the contrary, to this he owed in part his 
 status of "tramp telegrapher." He simply 
 could not keep a job. His mind was too much 
 occupied with the thousand and one schemes 
 he had in hand. He was seldom on time; 
 for wherever he worked, he managed somehow 
 
86 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 to have a shop around the corner. It was nearly 
 always past the hour for him to be on duty, 
 before he recollected that he really had a 
 bread-and-butter job which he could not afford 
 to neglect. When hauled over the coals, he 
 always expressed his regret and promised to 
 reform. But he never did. And he was always 
 broke! Books and apparatus, and occasional 
 aid to some poor fellow-employee who was out 
 of luck, took all his capital. Whenever he 
 found himself minus a situation, he was usually 
 in such straits, that unless he could secure a 
 pass he had to walk to the new field, and when 
 this was a matter of a hundred miles or so, it 
 was anything but a laughing proposition. 
 
 His quest for supplies often led the young 
 experimenter into questionable situations, and 
 on one occasion came very near being serious. 
 On one occasion, Edison dropped into an 
 auction, and to his delight shortly became the 
 owner of a great stack of North American 
 Reviews, for the small outlay of two dollars. 
 They made a sizable bundle, but the young 
 man had no money to spend for delivery 
 charges, and besides he was already overdue 
 at the office. So he carried the load with him, 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 37 
 
 and no doubt had much ado to keep his mind 
 on his work until he was free. This was about 
 three o'clock in the morning. Then, with the 
 heavy burden on his shoulder, he set out at a 
 great rate for his lodging. As he emerged 
 from a dark alley which he had taken as a 
 short-cut, his weighted, stumbling appearance 
 aroused the suspicion of a policeman, and he 
 called out sharply, "Halt, there !" But Edison 
 did not hear him, and hastened onward. Con- 
 vinced now that it was a burglar making off 
 with his loot, the policeman drew his pistol and 
 fired, again repeating his command. Edison, 
 on account of his deafness, did not hear the 
 order, but the bullet whistled uncomfortably 
 close to his cheek, and he turned, seeking an 
 explanation. In an instant, the officer was 
 upon him, and Edison had to open his bundle 
 to clear himself. 
 
 "Well, my friend," grunted the policeman, 
 then, divided between chagrin and relief, "if I 
 was as deaf as you are, I'd go a little slow on 
 these kind of expeditions. Why, if I had been 
 a better shot, I might have killed you!" 
 
 "One day," records Milton Adams, who 
 chummed with Edison during his Boston 
 
38 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 sojourn, "he bought the whole of Faraday's 
 works on electricity, brought them home at 
 four o'clock in the morning, and read steadily 
 until I arose, when he made for Hanover 
 Street, about a mile distant (where we took 
 our meals) to secure breakfast. Edison's brain 
 was on fire with what he had read, and he sud- 
 denly remarked to me: 'Adams, I have got 
 so much to do and life is so short that I am 
 going to hustle,' and with that he started on a 
 run for breakfast." 
 
 Throughout all his career as a telegrapher, 
 Edison rarely accepted a day job. He wanted 
 these hours for his experiments, and it often 
 puzzled his friends to know when and where 
 he slept. Not in office hours, he had to give 
 that up, and when not on duty he was nearly 
 always to be found hard upon the heels of some 
 problem at his shop. When he was fifty-five, 
 a reporter asked him if he kept regular work- 
 ing hours. 
 
 "Oh," said Edison, "I do not work hard now. 
 I come to the laboratory about eight o'clock 
 every day and go home to tea at six, and then I 
 study or work on some problem until eleven, 
 which is mv hour for bed." 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 39 
 
 "Fourteen or fifteen hours a day can 
 scarcely be called loafing," suggested his in- 
 terviewer. 
 
 "Well," replied the Wizard, "for fifteen 
 years I worked on an average of twenty hours 
 a day." 
 
Ill 
 
 OTJTCR0PPINGS OF GENIUS 
 
 Anxious days, however, were still ahead. 
 Edison had given up his job as a telegrapher 
 to promote the vote machine, his first inven- 
 tion, and he did not intend to bind himself to 
 an operator's table again. There were plenty 
 of other schemes in his head waiting to be 
 worked out. What he needed was a laboratory 
 of his own, and skilled workmen to assist in 
 evolving his many projects! But he might as 
 well have wished for the moon. He had no 
 money, and without capital it was clearly im- 
 possible to be what he most desired to be — a 
 great inventor. 
 
 In the emergency, he did what many another 
 in search of a career has done — he somehow 
 made his way to "New York, arriving with 
 scarcely enough cash in hand to rent a respect- 
 able lodging, much less purchase the books and 
 apparatus which he must have. Good Luck, 
 Fortune, Invincible Determination — what you 
 
 40 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 41 
 
 will — led him shortly afterward into Wall 
 Street and to the head office of the Law Gold 
 Indicator, where he hoped he might find an 
 opening. And never was an arrival more 
 opportune. 
 
 The indicators or stock-tickers of this com- 
 pany furnished "Gold news" to five or six 
 hundred brokerage offices. And on this par- 
 ticular morning the machines had chosen to 
 balk. "Not only were all the repair men on 
 the job, but in waiting were the head officers, 
 and the uneasy messengers from each frantic 
 broker, who was thus put summarily out of 
 business. Edison walked into the hubbub, 
 and managing, at length, to get close up to the 
 "trouble finders," stood for a few moments an 
 interested observer, his quick eye taking in all 
 the complexities of the machinery, and some- 
 thing else. Then he made his way to Mr, Law. 
 
 "If you please, sir," he said quietly, "I be- 
 lieve I can put things to rights." 
 
 The great man stared, but his reply was 
 emphatic : "Go ahead !" 
 
 Without hesitation or bravado, quite in fact 
 as though he had been at work in that particu- 
 lar shop every morning for a year, Edison 
 
42 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 leaned over the machinery and connected up a 
 loose contact spring, and at once the indicators 
 began doing business with their usual chirpy 
 routine. The befuddled repairmen looked 
 foolish indeed. Mr. Law touched the shabby 
 stranger on the arm and said briefly: "Step 
 into the office, young man!" 
 
 Edison came out a full-fledged technical 
 overseer of the Law Gold Indicator Company, 
 at a salary of $300 per month, and thus the 
 first rung on the ladder was reached. Now, 
 with such a princely salary, he could begin in 
 earnest, and forthwith the young man's dream 
 — a real laboratory — began to take shape. 
 Bottles of chemicals lined the shelves, batteries 
 of various kinds were bought and made, and 
 "inventions" of many sorts got under way, 
 mostly along the lines of telegraphy and elec- 
 tricity. And here Edison was happy indeed! 
 Way into the "wee small hours" he worked, 
 and sometimes all night through; for then, as 
 now, he held Time in contempt, and would 
 never carry a watch. "The time to quit was 
 when the job was ended!" he maintained, and 
 woe to the man who sought to interrupt or dis- 
 tract him! Deeply imbedded in his marrow 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 43 
 
 was the axiom of an old Scottish editor who 
 had these words engraved above his desk: 
 "Nothing is worse for those who have business 
 than the visits of those who have none." 
 
 As might have been expected, however, one 
 of the first things to which the young inventor 
 turned his hand was an improvement of the 
 stock-ticker. Presently the president of the 
 company asked him what he wanted for his 
 devices. Modest in his demands, Edison was 
 about to say $5,000, when good sense came to 
 his aid — in those days no one had ever heard 
 the phrase '"'passing the buck" — and he sub- 
 stituted instead that he would rather the presi- 
 dent made him an offer. Thereupon, he almost 
 fell out of his chair; for the president named 
 $40,000 as the sum the company was willing 
 to pay! "My mouth flew open to voice my 
 astonishment," said Edison, later. "But I was 
 really too flabbergasted for speech, and the 
 general, misreading my expression, quickly 
 stated that it was the best they could do. I 
 rallied then and played my part, quietly 
 accepting the handsome sum." 
 
 Check in hand, Edison mechanically made 
 for the nearest bank, — he had always been used 
 
44 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 to cashing checks as soon as received. But 
 when he thrust the slip into the window, pay- 
 ment was refused. "He would have to be 
 identified" the teller said. In his muddled 
 condition, the real meaning of this failed to 
 seep into the inventor's brain. He felt only 
 that he had been "done," and he turned con- 
 fusedly away and was leaving the bank, when 
 he was met by an acquaintance, a man well- 
 known in commercial circles, who quickly con- 
 nected the young fellow's moody face with the 
 slip in his hand, and paused to ask the trouble. 
 How he laughed when Edison explained! But 
 he put his arm around the young man's shoul- 
 der and walked him over to the cashier's win- 
 dow. Edison was soon "identified" to that 
 individual's satisfaction, and the money was 
 promptly forthcoming. "A great stack of it," 
 as he afterward described the bundle of bills 
 which was handed out to him. Placing the 
 funds about his person, he got out, more in a 
 quandary than ever. What should he do with 
 such a vast sum? He knew how he wanted to 
 invest it all right, but that would take time. 
 Meanwhile, where could he keep the money? 
 Banks were none too stable in those days, and 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 45 
 
 he was afraid to trust them. "He carried the 
 money about with him for two days," says one 
 of his biographers, "and probably no one be- 
 fore or since has ever been so inconvenienced 
 by an overplus of wealth. In the end a friend 
 persuaded him to open an account at a reliable 
 institution." 
 
 Feeling himself now independent of a 
 monthly pay-check, Edison gave up his posi- 
 tion in the Law Gold Indicator Company, and 
 removed his workshop to Newark, New Jer- 
 sey, where he soon had a factory of his own in 
 operation, and an experimenting shop, and the 
 assistants he had so long desired. He began 
 by manufacturing his improved stocktickers, 
 for the substantial part of his business, and 
 this work met with very considerable success. 
 But Edison soon found that manufacturing 
 and invention did not go well together. "I was 
 a poor manufacturer," he says, "because I 
 could not let well enough alone. My first im- 
 pulse upon taking any apparatus into my 
 hand, from an egg-beater to an electric motor, 
 is to seek a way of improving it. Therefore, as 
 soon as I have finished a machine I am anxious 
 to take it apart again in order to make an 
 
46 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 experiment. That is a costly mania for a 
 manufacturer." 
 
 Shortly after the organization of his factory, 
 the friends who interested themselves in the 
 proceedings were surprised to find that the 
 inventor had not installed a book-keeper. 
 "Why," said they, "you can not hope to suc- 
 ceed without an accountant. You can not 
 yourself be bothered with all the little details 
 of profit and loss and keeping things straight." 
 So a book-keeper was hired, and after seeing 
 him installed in his proper niche the inventor 
 promptly forgot all about this part of his busi- 
 ness. For a year and a day he bought, in- 
 vented, manufactured, and sold, and then 
 suddenly the "man of figures" appeared be- 
 fore him with a sheet setting forth a "State- 
 ment of the Twelve Months' Business." Edi- 
 son took a hurried survey, and then gave a 
 boyish whoop of joy. For the figures showed 
 a gain of $8,000 during the year! 
 
 "That is fine!" cried the inventor, shaking 
 hands as enthusiastically as though all of this 
 good fortune had been brought about directly 
 by the book-keeper's own efforts. "We must 
 celebrate!" And he gave orders on the spot 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 47 
 
 for a great banquet to be spread in the stock- 
 room. 
 
 Such a gathering as the invitation assem- 
 bled ! All the members of the plant, from the 
 overseer down to the least errand boy, sat down 
 at the bountiful board, and no one was gayer 
 than the host, as the eats and drinks fast dis- 
 appeared and everyone talked and laughed 
 and jested at once. It was a great success — 
 a banquet long to be remembered! And Edi- 
 son paid the bills for it with a glad heart, 
 albeit a little cloud was rising in his own men- 
 tal offing. He had been pondering matters a 
 bit, and he couldn't quite see where the profits 
 had been secured, or what had become of them. 
 Accordingly the book-keeper was summoned 
 to the private office. A busy two hours they 
 made of it, and, as affairs progressed, Edi- 
 son's face grew sober and long and the 
 puffed-up accountant shrank into a nervous, 
 red-faced, totally overwhelmed official. For 
 divers errors had been made, and when the 
 debits and credits had been sorted, instead of 
 a profit of $8,000, there stood a plain loss of 
 something over $7,000. 
 
 So much for the usefulness of a book-keeper ! 
 
48 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 Edison had all along felt that such an individ- 
 ual was entirely superfluous, and he eased 
 himself of a few very tart remarks. Then his 
 own good sense conquered. He knew the 
 accountant could neither make nor mar the 
 business. So he indulged in a hearty, if some- 
 what rueful laugh, over what the grand ban- 
 quet had really celebrated, and heartened the 
 book-keeper with the cheerful remark that 
 "maybe they would do better next year!" 
 
 It was apparent to Edison that his factory 
 and his laboratory must be separated. He 
 could not put a quietus on his ever-recurring 
 "Why?" and "What iff, nor was it desirable 
 that he should, for his ambition was still un- 
 changed, he wanted to be a great inventor. 
 So, in due time, a capable manager was found 
 for the Newark factory, and the following year 
 really did show a very excellent profit. But 
 there was no banquet of rejoicing, for Edison 
 himself was now deep in many things. Sub- 
 sequently he moved out to Menlo Park, on 
 the New York and Philadelphia Railroad, 
 twenty-four miles from New York City, where 
 he built a wonderful workshop and laboratory, 
 and established a costly scientific library. But 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 49 
 
 this momentous event was not until after he 
 had achieved certain of the triumphs in tele- 
 graphy, which are recorded in the next chap- 
 ter, when all the world was following his work 
 with keenest interest, and the title of "The 
 Wizard of Electricity" had become stamped 
 upon him. 
 
IV 
 
 EXPERIMENTS IN ELECTRICAL TELEGRAPHY 
 
 Back in the days when he was employed 
 in a railroad office in Indianapolis, Edison 
 worked out his first telegraphic invention, and 
 says he, "Necessity was certainly the mother 
 of it!" Edison and a young fellow named 
 Parmley got into the habit of taking press 
 reports in their spare hours at night, in the 
 place of the regular man, who was thus hap- 
 pily enabled to enjoy a little "vacation." 
 
 "I would sit down," says Edison, "for ten 
 minutes, and 'take' as much as I could from 
 the instrument, carrying the rest in my head. 
 Then while I wrote out, my pard. would serve 
 his turn, and so on. This worked very well 
 until they put on a new man at the Cincinnati 
 end. He was one of the quickest senders in 
 the business, and we soon found ourselves 
 totally at sea. We simply could not keep up 
 with him. Clearly something had to be done, 
 and I presently solved the difficulty. I got 
 
 50 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 51 
 
 two old Morse registers and arranged them 
 in such a way that by running a strip of paper 
 through them the dots and dashes were re- 
 corded on it by the first instrument as fast as 
 they were delivered from the Cincinnati end, 
 and were transmitted to us through the other 
 instrument at any desired rate of speed. They 
 would come in one instrument at the rate of 
 forty words a minute, and would be ground 
 out of our instrument at the rate of twenty- 
 five. Then weren't we proud ! Our copy used 
 to be so clean and beautiful that we hung it 
 up on exhibition; and our manager used to 
 come and gaze at it silently with a puzzled 
 expression. He could not understand it, 
 neither could any of the other operators, for 
 we used to hide my impromptu automatic re- 
 corder when our toil was over. But the crash 
 came when there was a big night's work — a 
 presidential vote, I think it was — and copy 
 kept pouring in at the top rate of speed until 
 we fell an hour and a half or two hours behind. 
 The newspapers sent in frantic complaints, 
 an investigation was made, and our little 
 scheme was discovered. We couldn't use it 
 any more." 
 
52 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 Another little labor-saver cropped out in 
 the office at Memphis. Here messages that 
 came in from New Orleans for New York had 
 to be sent on to Louisville, taken again, and 
 so forwarded by half a dozen relays to their 
 destination. Of course in so many repetitions 
 boundless errors were prone to creep in, and 
 the service left a good deal to be desired. Nat- 
 urally, too, the clumsiness of the system at- 
 tracted Edison's eye. In a short time he had 
 perfected an automatic repeater, which could 
 be attached to the line, and so send the mes- 
 sages on of its own accord. The device 
 worked very well, and might have been ad- 
 vantageously taken up by the company. But 
 it happened that a relative of one of his em- 
 ployers had a similar instrument on the way to 
 completion; so, instead of advancing his own 
 interests, Edison's ingenuity cost him his job! 
 
 Here again, however, failure served only to 
 teach the young inventor a lesson. If he 
 meant to succeed he must somehow install 
 himself in the favor of the Western Union, 
 for any telegraphical device which he invented 
 must be taken up by them to insure its profit- 
 ability. So, as he set to work in earnest in his 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 53 
 
 Newark shop, on a scheme which he had long 
 had in mind, he kept a weather eye open to 
 the main chance. And Fortune favored him: 
 shortly news drifted in that there was a seri- 
 ous breakdown in the line between New York 
 and Albany. Tom Edison at once dropped 
 everything, and presented himself before the 
 president of the company. 
 
 "Look here," he said, "if I fix up this dif- 
 ficulty within two or three hours, will you take 
 up an invention I have in hand and give it 
 honest consideration?" 
 
 "Yes, sir," returned the president heartily, 
 "we will consider anything you care to send 
 us now or any time, if you get us out of this 
 fix within two days!" 
 
 Away went young Edison at a speed 
 equaled only by his zeal. Down at the main 
 office he called up Pittsburg and asked for 
 their best operator. When he had him, he told 
 him to get hold of the best man at Albany, and 
 to have him wire down along the line and see 
 how near he could come to New York. In- 
 side of an hour came the message: "Can wire 
 down to within two miles of Poughkeepsie." 
 It was only a short run to this point, and a 
 
54 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 train was just due. Inside of his own time 
 limit, Edison had the line in operation, and 
 the way paved for his next triumph — an in- 
 vention called the duplex telegraph, which 
 had resulted from the query, "Why can't two 
 messages go over the same wire in opposite 
 directions at the same time?" 
 
 Gladly indeed did the Western Union take 
 this up, for it would not only double the ca- 
 pacity of the single wire, but it would save the 
 company thousands of dollars. Edison, how- 
 ever, was not satisfied with the performance 
 of his invention : for another query had imme- 
 diately intervened. Why couldn't four mes- 
 sages be sent just as well? He felt sure that 
 they could. And presently he had evolved the 
 quadruplex device, by which two messages 
 could travel simultaneously in each direction. 
 !N~ow two sending and two receiving operators 
 were employed at each end of a single wire, 
 and the value of each line was multiplied by 
 four. The principle involved was simple 
 enough: the electrical currents used were of 
 differing strength and each receiving machine 
 would record only from the current specially 
 adapted to it. This invention saved unreckon- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 55 
 
 able millions to the Western Union in wire and 
 repairs, for now by the use of the quadruplex 
 a thousand miles of wire was changed presto 
 into four thousand. Edison was paid $30,000 
 for his triumph. But he spent it all trying to 
 invent a plan to carry six messages simultane- 
 ously on one wire! This attempt was never 
 a commercial success, so that, while the quad- 
 ruplex telegraph was the greatest invention so 
 far conceived in connection with electrical 
 telegraphy, it did not add one cent to the in- 
 ventor's finances. However, it was the inven- 
 tion and not the money which concerned 
 Thomas A. Edison; for, even after he had lost 
 the $30,000 in experimenting upon further tri- 
 umphs for one wire, he was not ready to give 
 up. 
 
 And again his perseverance won! He pro- 
 duced the harmonic multiplex telegraph. By 
 this invention tuning-forks, or "reeds," moved 
 by electro-magnets, serve as keys to transmit 
 impulses over the wire. At the opposite end 
 are more tuning-forks, which vibrating with 
 the same frequency, "pick up" the current 
 which belongs to them, and give no heed what- 
 ever to stronger or weaker currents. A num- 
 
56 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 ber of tuning-forks can be operated at the same 
 time, and as many as sixteen messages have 
 gone over the wire together, eight each way, 
 by means of the harmonic multiplex system. 
 
 All this time Edison had been steadily im- 
 proving the main telegraph system, patenting 
 various little devices one after another, which 
 the Western Union eagerly took up and ex- 
 ploited, and he now turned himself to the ques- 
 tion of speed. The best of operators could 
 turn out but thirty or forty words per minute, 
 while the characteristics of both line and re- 
 ceiving apparatus allowed of a much greater 
 rapidity. "We ought to have automatic send- 
 ers and receivers, capable of transcribing three 
 or four hundred words per minute," Edison 
 concluded, and set himself to the problem. 
 
 He worked out a scheme of perforating 
 paper tape with Morse characters, the tapes 
 being afterward run through a transmitter at 
 a great speed. The message was to be received 
 by means of an inking device which recorded 
 the same in Morse code upon a receiving tape. 
 But the ink: that was the real problem. ~No 
 fluid had then been manufactured which would 
 serve the purpose. So Edison turned chemist ! 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 57 
 
 And how hard and untiring he worked at this 
 new stunt is best told in the words of Charles 
 Bachelor, his friend and chief -assistant in those 
 all-absorbing days : 
 
 "I came in one night," he says, "and there 
 sat Edison with a pile of chemistries and chem- 
 ical books five feet high. He had ordered them 
 from New York, London and Paris. He stud- 
 ied them night and day. He ate at his desk and 
 slept in his chair. In six weeks he had gone 
 through the books, written a volume of ab- 
 stracts, made two thousand experiments on the 
 formulas, and had produced a solution (the 
 only one in the world) which would do the very 
 thing he wanted done — record over two hun- 
 dred words a minute on a wire 250 miles long. 
 He ultimately succeeded in recording 3,100 
 words a minute. " 
 
 And still the half has not been told! For 
 many of these scientific works over which Edi- 
 son pored so industriously were in French and 
 German — languages in which he was self- 
 taught and still far from perfect. He literally 
 had to grub his way through them. But he 
 mastered these as he did his other problems. 
 
 Edison's next invention, the autographic 
 
58 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 telegraph, might never have sprung into being 
 had the telephone then been the thing of per- 
 fection and general use that it is to-day. The 
 object of the autographic telegraph was to re- 
 produce in one place the counterpart of a mes- 
 sage written by the sender in another place. 
 It rose from the necessity for communication 
 between the different departments in business 
 concerns, and it served further to supply writ- 
 ten orders which might be filed away for fu- 
 ture reference. To-day there are various forms 
 of writing telegraphs, that devised by Elisha 
 Gray and known as the telautograph being the 
 most complete. The instruments find their 
 chief use in banking houses, department stores, 
 clubs, and government institutions for the 
 transmission of orders from the various depart- 
 ment heads. Edison's scheme provided that 
 the message be written with a pencil on a spe- 
 cially prepared paper. And here again he 
 delved into chemistry to produce what he re- 
 quired. 
 
 Edison's "grasshopper telegraph" was his 
 most unique work in the telegraphic field. It 
 arose from the query: "Why can't messages 
 be sent from the fast-flying train ?" And while 
 
) 
 
 THOMAS A. EDISON 59 
 
 it provided successfully for communication be- 
 tween telegraphic stations and moving trains, 
 it was never much of a commercial success, for 
 the reason that few people found such messages 
 necessary. This system, which transmitted 
 messages across an air space of as high as 560 
 feet between the wires and the cars, probably 
 gave Edison his first inkling of wireless teleg- 
 raphy. He had unbounded faith in this tri- 
 umph and applied for a patent as early as 
 1885. 
 
 "Wireless is going to be the telegraph of the 
 sea," he said, then. "The time will come when 
 anyone on the maritime exchange may send out 
 a wireless message and catch any vessel afloat 
 in any part of the world and change her rout- 
 ing. I don't think so much about the outlook 
 for the wireless system on land. That field is 
 practically occupied. But the ocean field is 
 open. I think it will be only a question of a 
 few years before wireless is developed to a point 
 where it will be a practical and important fac- 
 tor in the industrial world." 
 
 But other things were claiming Edison's at- 
 tention and he was not free to push the matter 
 with his customary zeal. The Government 
 
60 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 with its slow and tardy precision, took six 
 years to act upon his claim and finally allowed 
 him patent rights in 1891, but now others had 
 entered the lists. Marconi in particular had 
 taken up the subject, and Edison was quite 
 content to give way to the young Italian, for 
 whom he held the deepest admiration and con- 
 fidence, feeling that in him rested the ability 
 to perfect the scheme and bring it into prac- 
 tical working order round the world. 
 
 Edison's last telegraph message, with him- 
 self as the operator, was sent in 1896, during 
 the Electrical Exhibition in New York. For 
 twenty-six years he had scarcely given a 
 thought to telegraphy, and the friends who 
 now jokingly asked him to take a turn at press 
 reporting were of the opinion that he would 
 not know a dot from a dash. Indeed, Edison 
 himself was a little dubious as to the outcome, 
 but he accepted the challenge, and the little 
 company went down to the telegraph room of 
 the New York Journal. Once inside the place, 
 however, a smile swept the Wizard's face, as 
 he stood listening to the machines nearest him, 
 clicking out their messages from all parts of 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 61 
 
 the world, and he observed genially: "Oh, I 
 guess I'm all right yet." 
 
 Then, to the amazement of all, the old cham- 
 pion calmly sat himself down in the appointed 
 place and began speedily to reel off in his in- 
 imitable "copper plate style," the message that 
 poured in rapidly from the main office, while 
 he selected and lighted a cigar with his disen- 
 gaged hand, and went on without a break to the 
 end; then he commenced to repeat the mes- 
 sage just to see how he could send. This, too, 
 was accomplished with speed and accuracy, and 
 the inventor rose in delight. 
 
 "I believe I could receive or send if I live to 
 be a thousand," he said smilingly. "It is not 
 a thing one forgets. It read as easily as book 
 print, but it kept me scratching to set it down." 
 
V 
 
 EDISON AND THE TELEPHONE 
 
 *No modern invention has had a more rapid 
 and interesting evolution than the telephone. 
 To-day it is a household and business necessity. 
 Yet, less than forty-five years ago the public 
 had never heard of such a thing. On its first 
 appearance, the Western Union was asked to 
 buy the telephone, but they laughingly said 
 that they had no use for an electrical toy ! To- 
 day there are ten times more telephone than 
 telegraph wires and their earnings are eight 
 times more. As many messages are telephoned 
 as are sent by the combined service of tele- 
 graph, post, and messenger. 
 
 The wonder now is that the telephone was 
 not discovered by the many who sought to im- 
 prove the telegraph, for nearly all of these men 
 sensed the possibility of transmitting speech 
 by wire. Only one of them, however, followed 
 up the trail and put out a working model. This 
 
 62 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 63 
 
 was Alexander Graham Bell. "Had I known 
 more about electricity, and less about sound," 
 he is reported to have said, "I would never 
 have invented the telephone." And this is the 
 real reason the telegraph inventors did not se- 
 cure this triumph : they were working to make 
 an instrument to carry the voice, but they went 
 at it by telegraphic methods. 
 
 So slowly did things move at first that it was 
 almost a year after its invention before the tele- 
 phone showed any business activity. Then the 
 wave of popularity rose; in three months 778 
 telephones were in use, and the Bell Telephone 
 Company was organized. 
 
 Now, indeed, the Western Union began to 
 realize the value of an opportunity lost. To 
 their dismay, business men demanded the tele- 
 phone. What could they do about it? The 
 answer was plain: get out a competitive in- 
 strument. They at once formed the American 
 "Speaking-Telephone" Company, and took 
 their difficulty to Thomas A. Edison, the man 
 who had for so long spelled success and popu- 
 larity for them. 
 
 "See here," they said. "We want you to get 
 us out a telephone." 
 
64 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 "Very well," returned Edison. 
 
 No sooner did he begin than his practised eye 
 speedily detected the thing that was barring 
 the progress of the telephone — the transmitter. 
 Indeed, there was "no such animile!" The 
 Bell people were talking into a magneto re- 
 ceiver. "And," says Edison, "you never heard 
 such a noise and buzzing as there was in that old 
 machine! I went to work and monkeyed 
 around, and finally struck the notion of the 
 carbon button and the induction coil." 
 
 Simple enough it sounds in the telling ! We 
 can only guess at the number of hours of 
 thought and experiment that went into it. One 
 strong ally Edison had in the beginning, the 
 knowledge of the variable resistance of carbon 
 under pressure. He had made use of this in 
 various inventions. And it stood him again in 
 good stead. The carbon transmitter improved 
 Bell's invention a hundred-fold, and the West- 
 ern Union was delighted. 
 
 "We will give you $100,000 for your rights," 
 said the president. 
 
 "Very well," returned Edison, by now so 
 used to flattering terms that he was skilfully 
 able to conceal his surprise. It had been such 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 
 From a photograph taken in early manhood 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 65 
 
 a comparatively easy job that he had fixed 
 $25,000 in his own mind as about right. "But," 
 he continued, "there is one condition: that is 
 that you do not pay me a lump sum. I want 
 $6,000 every year for seventeen years — -the life 
 of the patent." 
 
 Then was Mr. Or ton's turn to be surprised. 
 But he agreed with equal promptness. 
 
 "By that stroke," Mr. Edison naively re- 
 corded later, "I saved seventeen years of 
 worry! If I had taken the cash all at once, it 
 would have gone the way of all my money. 
 My ambition in those days was about four 
 times ahead of my capital!" 
 
 And small wonder, with as high as fifty in- 
 ventions on hand at one time, and as many em- 
 ployees, often high-priced men, working at 
 piece work. 
 
 But to return to the carbon transmitter. 
 Imagine the chagrin of the Western Union 
 when it was found that Edison could not fit 
 his invention to a telephone instrument of his 
 own. There were certain points where he could 
 not help but infringe upon Bell's claims. The 
 thing simply could not be done. Likewise 
 Bell tried to adopt Edison's scheme in a dif- 
 
66 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 ferent way, but he could not do it. Each had 
 an invention of little use standing alone, but 
 invaluable when combined. The Western 
 Union tried to build Bell 'phones with Edison 
 transmitters, but this couldn't be done either. 
 Nor did anything but heavy lawsuits result 
 from their attempt to buy up and establish 
 claims prior to Bell's. In the end a com- 
 promise was effected, whereby the Bell Tele- 
 phone Company became the sole owners of the 
 telephone system. 
 
 The carbon transmitter did not by any means 
 end Edison's usefulness in the field of tele- 
 phony. Once interested, he went on improving 
 receivers and transmitters and taking out one 
 patent after another for his various designs. 
 He also evolved many systems for the trans- 
 mission of speech which included all kinds of 
 carbon instruments — the chemical telephone, 
 the inertia telephone, the water telephone, vol- 
 taic pile telephone, mercury telephone, and 
 condenser telephone. The electro-motograph 
 receiver, involving what the Wizard termed his 
 "electro-motograph principle," is deemed Edi- 
 son's second triumphant contribution to tele- 
 phony. The Western Union paid him $100,- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 67 
 
 000 for its application to telegraphy, Edison 
 arranging the same novel terms of payment as 
 he had for his carbon transmitter. Curiously 
 enough, too, this invention also came at the 
 instigation of the company. 
 
 The Page patent, which related to the move- 
 ment of the lever at the other end of a telegraph 
 wire by magnet, had been bought up by a rival 
 concern, and Mr. Orton went to Edison in con- 
 siderable perturbation. Unless some way could 
 be found to get around this, the Western 
 Union's position was critical indeed. For, as 
 matters then stood, possession of this "relay 
 and sounder principle," as it was called, was 
 vital to telegraphy. 
 
 "It seemed a pretty hard job," said Edison. 
 "No one had ever conceived of withdrawing 
 an armature lever except by magnet. But I 
 went at it that night. And I had one thing 
 for a base: some years before I had chanced 
 upon an interesting and very peculiar phenom- 
 enon. I found that if a piece of metal con- 
 nected to a battery was rubbed over a mois- 
 tened piece of chalk resting on a metal con- 
 nected to the other pole, when the current 
 passed the friction was greatly diminished. 
 
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 When the current was reversed the friction 
 was greatly increased over what it was when 
 no current was passing. So I substituted a 
 piece of chalk turned by a small electric motor 
 for a magnet, and then connected a sounder to 
 a metallic finger resting on the chalk, when 
 presto ! the Page combination was as dust and 
 ashes in Jay Gould's covetous grasp!" x 
 
 Mr. Edison's remarkable instrument, the 
 electro-chemical or loud-speaking telephone, 
 which can be made to sound three or four times 
 as loud as a man can shout, rose from the con- 
 flict between the Bell and Edison patents in 
 England. "Send us a receiver without a mag- 
 net," cabled Edison's agent. "We are re- 
 strained from the use of Bell's device." A 
 large order ! Anyone but an Edison would have 
 been "stumped," for the magnet was a prime 
 factor in converting the sound waves into elec- 
 trical waves and vice versa. But not so the 
 Wizard. He turned triumphantly to his elec- 
 tro-motograph principle again, and shortly 
 had in hand his ingenious "chalk receiver," 
 which consisted simply of a cylinder of chalk 
 
 1 Mr. Gould was then the chief owner and director of the 
 Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Co., an organization which 
 harried the Western Union at every turn. 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 69 
 
 moistened with certain chemicals, a thin spring, 
 and a diaphragm of mica in a resonator. And 
 the result was wonderful! "A much too in- 
 genious invention," wrote Bernard Shaw, who 
 was then in the employ of the Edison Com- 
 pany, in the establishment of telephone ex- 
 changes abroad; "it is a telephone of such 
 stentorian efficiency that it bellows your most 
 private communications all over the house, in- 
 stead of whispering them with some sort of 
 discretion." But it saved Edison's foreign 
 trade, and eventually brought him a draft of 
 thirty thousand pounds for his English rights. 
 And here again the inventor had the laugh 
 on himself! He accepted the offer thinking 
 it was for thirty thousand dollars, and when 
 he found that it was for • thirty thousand 
 pounds instead, his surprise amounted almost 
 to consternation. 
 
 Marvelous performances were wrought with 
 the various developments of the loud-speaking 
 telephone, in the days when any kind of a tele- 
 phone was a curiosity, and people would as- 
 semble in great crowds to witness a demonstra- 
 tion. At the first public exhibition in New 
 York the hall was packed with a delighted 
 
70 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 audience who listened to "such enchanting nov- 
 elties" as Mary had a little lamb, Jack and Jill, 
 John Brown's Body, the alphabet, whistling, 
 laughter loud and long, and such other inspira- 
 tions as came to Mr. Charles Bachelor, who 
 was at the other end of the wire in a distant part 
 of the building. "A truly remarkable inven- 
 tion," everybody said, but nevertheless there 
 was some dubious head-shaking when it was 
 announced that by the use of the electro-chem- 
 ical telephone a man talking in New York had 
 been heard 1,000 feet from the receiver in an 
 open field at Menlo Park. 
 
 Few people sensed the workings of the tele- 
 phone. They had understood the telegraph 
 readily enough. It was easy to see that by 
 simply breaking and joining a current, dots 
 and dashes might be made ; but it was a differ- 
 ent matter to conjecture how the exact tone 
 and quality of the voice could be heard and 
 understood miles distant. Not many people 
 believed like the school teacher who was called 
 on for an explanation — that the wire was hol- 
 low and they talked through it — but they didn't 
 understand it, and they looked upon it simply 
 as an electrical freak, — a thing totally without 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 71 
 
 a future. That was forty odd years ago. To- 
 day 12,700,000 telephones are connected to the 
 Bell system. There are 25,700,000 miles of 
 wire, with a total investment of $1,450,000,- 
 000, and a force of employees numbering 
 235,000. 
 
 Aside from his valued services in training 
 countless telephone experts to establish ex- 
 changes both at home and abroad, — a story 
 which there is no space here to relate, — Edison 
 did another thing in its way as valuable as the 
 induction coil and the carbon button. When 
 telephones were first set up, it was customary 
 to ring the bell and ask ponderously "Are you 
 there?" or "Are you ready to talk?" Edison 
 did away with this, one day, so the story goes, 
 when he yelled "Hello!" into the transmitter, 
 in his delightfully brief and matter-of-fact 
 fashion. Hello! No other word could be so 
 altogether pat, and it has gone around the 
 world, as essential to telephony almost as elec- 
 tricity itself. 
 
VI 
 
 THE STORY OF THE PHONOGRAPH 
 
 It is to the phonograph, more perhaps than 
 to any other of his inventions, that Thomas A. 
 Edison owed his title of "Wizard." And small 
 wonder — there is something positively uncanny 
 in the ability to take a few pieces of metal and 
 preserve sound so that it may be kept for cen- 
 turies to come. Yet the inventor himself re- 
 gards the phonograph as one of the simplest of 
 his inventions. "Why," said he, "it all but dis- 
 covered itself." 
 
 It was back in those busy Menlo Park days, 
 of 1877, when he was busy with the telephone 
 transmitter. While working with a disk of 
 carbon, having a sharpened pin point on the 
 back of it, Edison noticed that when he spoke 
 against the disk, the sound vibrations made the 
 point prick his finger. Instantly the inventor 
 called to mind the phonautograph, a discovery 
 made by Leon Scott, some twenty years be- 
 fore. This consisted of a piece of bladder 
 
 72 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 73 
 
 stretched over a frame, with a hog's bristle fas- 
 tened stoutly in the center. When words were 
 spoken close against the frame, the membrane 
 vibrated with the motion of the sound waves, 
 causing the bristle to scratch a little wavy track 
 or sound picture of the human voice on a re- 
 volving cylinder which had been well-coated 
 with lamp black. 
 
 "Hmm!" mused Edison, as the pin point 
 gave him another jog. He saw that he had 
 gone a step farther than Scott. But he was too 
 engrossed with the work in hand to consider 
 anything else just then. 
 
 Another day he was absorbed in a device for 
 the automatic repetition of telegraph mes- 
 sages. Busy with feeding a strip of paper into 
 the sending machine, which recorded the dots 
 and dashes of the original message in a series of 
 indentations, "The Wizard" saw that he was 
 making pictures of the sounds communicated 
 by the telegraph message on paper. 
 
 Pictures of sound! There it was again! 
 And quickly the great inventor was on his 
 feet. "Boys," he cried excitedly, "I can make 
 a talking-machine!" 
 
 Eagerly reaching for pen and draughting 
 
74 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 paper, he began at once upon the specifica- 
 tions, while the boys, used as they were to their 
 chief's doing great things, stared at one another 
 with disbelief plain upon their faces. In ten 
 minutes the model was complete, even to the 
 piece-work price $8, in Edison's trim figures 
 in one corner, and he summoned John Kruesi, 
 the best workman then on his force. 
 
 "How soon can you get this out?" he asked. 
 
 Kruesi's keen eye took in the details with 
 lightning quickness. "I do not know exactly, 
 sir," he said, "but I will do my best." 
 
 Edison knew Kruesi's best. It was a force 
 as keen-edged and as tireless and indefatigable 
 as his own. Well he knew that neither time, 
 food nor water would interfere with the prog- 
 ress of the model, and he turned again to his 
 own work, dismissing the matter entirely. For 
 he had no great faith in this first draught. He 
 thought he might possibly "hear a word or so 
 that would give hope of a future for the idea." 
 
 Thirty hours passed, and then Kruesi pre- 
 sented himself with the completed device. And 
 a crude, clumsy enough affair it was — as little 
 like the perfect machines of to-day as one could 
 well imagine. The cylinder turned by hand 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 75 
 
 and the indentations were to be made on tin- 
 foil. For the first phonograph was planned 
 to make its own sound pictures and then to 
 reproduce the sound on the spot. 
 
 Edison looked at the machine a bit dubiously, 
 and the boys gathered laughingly around. "I'll 
 bet a box of cigars it don't work," observed 
 Carman, the foreman of the machine shop, 
 sotto voce. 
 
 But Edison, like most deaf people, often 
 hears when he is least expected to. "Done," 
 he returned, in the quick, sportsmanlike com- 
 radery which made him so beloved by his men, 
 and then, leaning forward and slowly turning 
 the handle, he spoke into the mouthpiece: 
 
 "Mary had a little lamb, 
 
 Its fleece was white as snow, 
 
 And everywhere that Mary went 
 
 The lamb was sure to go." 
 
 Then the cylinder was returned to the start- 
 ing place, and to the astonishment of all there 
 came sharp and distinct, in a curious metallic 
 voice, the little time-worn verse, just as Edi- 
 son had recited it. 
 
 Imagine the triumph of the moment! Few 
 inventions have ever been conceived and exe- 
 
76 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 cuted so swiftly. Kruesi's eight-dollar ma- 
 chine, the world's first phonograph, could not 
 be bought to-day at any price. It is in the 
 patent office at South Kensington, London. 
 
 Never before did an invention arouse a 
 quicker and more world-wide interest. News- 
 papers and magazines, both at home and 
 abroad, were quick to take it up, and Edison 
 himself, in an article in the North American 
 Review, set forth his ideas for the use of the 
 phonograph. He saw in it perfection for the 
 telephone and the telegraph; it could be used 
 in the court room for keeping an accurate rec- 
 ord of all proceedings — an item of no little 
 moment on occasion ; it would be invaluable for 
 the entertainment of patients in hospitals and 
 asylums, and as an elocution or language 
 teacher ; public speakers could by its use reach 
 unlimited audiences ; it would be a vast booster 
 for speed and accuracy in offices, — the boss 
 need only to open a drawer and speak into a 
 receiver. When the typist was ready, she could 
 adjust her ear- tubes and set the machine going, 
 and any time she failed to understand she could 
 reverse the record, and so right herself without 
 calling down wrath! 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 77 
 
 "Furthermore," said Edison, continuing his 
 prophecies in his own happy, whimsical fash- 
 ion, "the phonograph will undoubtedly be 
 largely devoted to music — either vocal or in- 
 strumental — and may possibly take the place 
 of the teacher. It will sing the child to sleep, 
 tell us what o'clock it is, summon us to dinner, 
 and warn the lover when it is time to vacate the 
 front porch. As a family record it will be 
 precious, for it will preserve the sayings of 
 those dear to us, and even recite the last mes- 
 sages of the dying. It will enable the chil- 
 dren to have dolls that really speak, laugh, 
 cry, and sing, and imitation dogs that bark, 
 cats that meow, lions that roar, roosters that 
 crow. It will preserve the voices of our great 
 men, and enable future generations to listen 
 to speeches by a Lincoln or a Gladstone." 
 
 Carrying out his idea of preserving the voices 
 of the great, Mr. Edison filed away, in his 
 beautiful country home at Llewellyn Park, a 
 wonderful collection of records embodying the 
 voices of Gladstone, Tennyson, Bismarck, 
 Browning, Henry Ward Beecher and countless, 
 other noted personages. The story is told that 
 once upon a time Edison was exhibiting these 
 
78 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 "Voices" for the benefit of Henry M. Stanley, 
 the explorer, and his wife. Mrs. Stanley inter- 
 estedly inquired whose voice he would choose 
 to record, if he might have the pick of all the 
 great men of the past, and Edison instantly 
 answered "Napoleon's," nor could any amount 
 of argument shake him from this decision. 
 
 Many years ago, Edison added a further 
 wise suggestion for the use of the phonograph : 
 that of recording the works of the great writ- 
 ers of fiction. He himself dictated a consider- 
 able extract of Nicholas Nichleby, thus finding 
 that six cylinders, twelve inches long and six 
 inches in diameter would record the entire 
 novel. As yet, however, this part of the phono- 
 graph business has not received the attention 
 that is bound to be given it. Think what such 
 a treat would mean to the blind, or to the one 
 who comes home with eyes worn out from the 
 day's strain, or even of the satisfaction to your- 
 self to put on the record of your favorite story, 
 the while you accomplish some task you have 
 been dreading! 
 
 Naturally, in its infancy the phonograph was 
 the subject of a good deal of curiosity. To 
 satisfy a universal demand for phonographs 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 79 
 
 for exhibition purposes, Edison had a number 
 of machines made and turned them over to 
 some of his force to exploit. Needless to say, 
 these fellows had the time of their lives! 
 Great receptions were accorded them wherever 
 they went. In London, for example, Glad- 
 stone, Lord Rowton, and the Earl of Aber- 
 deen were the hosts of the hour, and wonderful 
 indeed was the attentive interest, which 
 amounted almost to awe, in the varied program 
 that was given. 
 
 In Abyssinia, the record first produced 
 spoke a message of friendship and good-will in 
 Queen Victoria's own voice. Emperor Mene- 
 lik listened with profound attention, first as 
 the voice came from the trumpet, and then with 
 the ear tubes. After repeating the operation 
 two or three times, he stood for a long time in 
 profound silence; then roused himself and or- 
 dered a royal salute to be fired, while he stood 
 respectfully before "the speaking mechanical 
 beast." 
 
 In Thibet the phonograph first appeared in 
 Lhassa, the religious capital of the Buddhist 
 faith, in 1897. To this ancient town none but 
 Buddhists are supposed to have entrance. But 
 
80 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 hither, one day, traveled a Burmese merchant, 
 with an Edison phonograph to show to the 
 Grand Lama. He knew that in this land 
 prayerwheels were constantly employed to reel 
 off written or printed prayers, and he felt that 
 if he could introduce a machine to speak pray- 
 ers instead, his fortune would be made. Some- 
 how he had managed to get a record made of 
 one of the sacred Buddhist writings, and the 
 surprise and astonishment of the monarch and 
 his dignitaries may be imagined when they 
 heard the machine declaim what was to them a 
 miracle. Their delight knew no bounds when 
 the monarch himself spoke the beautiful 
 prayer, "Jewel in the Lotus," into the machine, 
 and the cylinder being reversed, the words 
 came back to them in the Grand Lama's own 
 tones ! Thereafter, for many days the phono- 
 graph was kept busy, and needless to say the 
 fondest dreams of the Burmese trader were 
 realized. 
 
 The boys in Edison's laboratory were not 
 slow in finding out that one record might be 
 run over another with astonishing results, and 
 "trick" records formed the side-splitting sport 
 of the noon hour. The possibilities of the 
 
THE YOUNG EDISON AND HIS FIRST PHONOGRAPH 
 From a photograph 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 81 
 
 phonograph as a practical joker, too, were not 
 neglected. Indeed, Edison himself set the pace 
 in this latter instance, for nothing has ever 
 given him keener enjoyment than to "get a 
 good one" on some of his friends. On a certain 
 occasion, he hid a phonograph in a guest's 
 room, and then timed the gentleman's retire- 
 ment to a nicety. Scarcely was he comfortably 
 settled in bed, when a clock struck eleven, 
 slowly and solemnly, and a hollow voice an- 
 nounced in measured tones: "One hour more!" 
 What in the world? The visitor sat up in 
 alarm. Had the hour of doom arrived? For 
 some minutes he waited motionless, and then 
 good sense conquered. He lay down again, 
 but try as he might he could not sleep. He 
 was waiting for the midnight hour! After a 
 century or so, as it seemed, the clock chimed 
 forth, and almost on the instant the awful 
 voice announced : "Twelve o'clock ! Prepare to 
 die !" The guest, however, was in anything but 
 a docile mood. Springing from his bed, he 
 leaped into the hall at one bound, there to be 
 confronted by Edison in convulsions of mirth! 
 Naturally, it is a wide step from the first 
 models of the phonograph to the beautiful mod- 
 
82 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 ern adaptations of the builders' art, and many 
 people have had a hand in it. But it is to Mr. 
 Edison and Mr. A. G. Bell, the inventor of the 
 telephone, that we are indebted for most of 
 the improvements in talking mechanism. Tin- 
 foil was found practically worthless — the im- 
 pressions were imperfectly made and by no 
 means durable. Wax was the next experiment, 
 but it, too, proved imperfect. Next Edison 
 delved into the subject of animal and vegetable 
 oils, trying every known element, both do- 
 mestic and foreign, and at last, after a pro- 
 tracted session of five days and nights, fixed 
 upon the material used to-day, which is in plain 
 language no more nor less than a special kind 
 of soap ! Having found the best material for 
 making records, the next step was to bring 
 their production up to a fine art. 
 
 And here again Mr. Edison spared neither 
 pains nor expense. Indeed, the phonograph 
 is the one invention in which he has never lost 
 interest, and upon it he has expended a prodig- 
 ious amount of energy, putting in night after 
 night in his laboratory in his efforts to secure 
 the most perfect reproduction of sound possi- 
 ble, in all taking out nearly one hundred pat- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 83 
 
 ents on improvements. Obviously, the greatest 
 shortcoming of the machine was its lack of 
 realism, and it is upon this point that most of 
 Mr. Edison's efforts have been directed, until 
 now it is baffling even to the most expert ears 
 to distinguish between living singers or instru- 
 mentalists and the reproduction or recreation 
 of their work. 
 
VII 
 
 THE ELECTEIC LIGHT 
 
 Edison had been working with electrical ap- 
 pliances for a decade, and had won his Wizard's 
 title, before the electric light seems even to have 
 remotely occurred to him, and then it came in 
 the form of a question to a statement which the 
 world of physicists and electricians had made 
 conclusive, that subdivision of the electric cur- 
 rent was impossible. 
 
 "Why?" asked Edison, and, following the 
 habit he had acquired long ago of testing the 
 truth of every assertion, no matter on what au- 
 thority, he "went to work and monkeyed 
 around," and presently satisfied himself that 
 the learned men were wrong. He was sure 
 that the electric current was not only possible 
 of subdivision, but that the result could be 
 made highly practicable. "There is no rea- 
 son," he said to himself, "why we can't light 
 our homes by incandescence. Moreover, by the 
 
 84 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 85 
 
 use of small motors, the same current which 
 furnishes light can be made to run the washing 
 machine, the sewing machine, the churn, and all 
 sorts of household machinery." 
 
 That year, 1877, was "carbon year" in Edi- 
 son's laboratory. The Wizard had just com- 
 pleted the carbon transmitter, and had on hand 
 a half dozen miscellaneous carbon articles. 
 Indeed, carbon of some sort, as we remember, 
 had served him in every one of his tele- 
 graph and telephone inventions. Naturally, he 
 turned to carbon at once for first aid. And 
 his initial trial marked the originality that was 
 his in every method of procedure: he lighted 
 a strip of carbonized paper up to incandescence 
 — white heat — in the open air, merely to see 
 how much current was required for the proc- 
 ess. Of course on becoming incandescent the 
 carbon oxidized and the paper went to pieces, 
 just as Edison had known it would. Various 
 inventors with an incandescent lamp in mind 
 had tried carbon with like results, and it had 
 been discarded by them as hopeless. But the 
 Wizard had accomplished what others had pro- 
 nounced impossible too often to put credence 
 in anyone's attempts but his own. So now, 
 
86 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 having determined the strength of current, he 
 put a like strip of carbon in a vacuum, dis- 
 charging the air by means of a handworked 
 pump, and this time the carbonized strip 
 burned at incandescence for about eight min- 
 utes. Then it oxidized and went to pieces as 
 before, and the Wizard straightway began a 
 contest to prevent this. Various expedients 
 were tried, the most ingenious being coating the 
 carbon with powdered glass, which in melting 
 would protect the carbon from the atmosphere. 
 But all attempts failed, and Edison, not yet 
 ready to give up his beloved carbon, was com- 
 pelled for the moment to set it aside and try 
 something else. 
 
 Experiments were now made with platinum 
 wire, and with such refractory metals as boron, 
 ruthenium and chromium, brought to incandes- 
 cence in the direct circuit, in connection with 
 powdered silicon and a mixture of silicon and 
 lime and other very infusible non-conductors 
 in glass tubes* Some of these offered possibili- 
 ties, but they were not simple enough for prac- 
 tical commercial purposes. 
 
 Then these interesting experiments were in- 
 terrupted by the unexpected discovery of the 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 87 
 
 phonograph. For a year and more Edison's 
 time and attention, day and night, were ab- 
 sorbed by the invention and exhibition of this 
 new miracle. Finally in July, 1878, feeling 
 the need of a vacation, and wishing also to test 
 his tasimeter, an instrument devised by him 
 for measuring heat transmitted through vast 
 distances of space, he joined an expedition to 
 the West to observe an eclipse of the sun. Two 
 delightful months of rest followed, and the 
 Wizard came home keen to take up something 
 new. What this should be was determined by 
 a visit which he now made, in company with 
 Professor Barker, of the University of Penn- 
 sylvania, to the brass manufacturing estab- 
 lishment of Wallace & Farmer, at Ansonia, 
 Connecticut. The members of this firm were 
 zealous pioneers in the field of electricity, and 
 Edison saw much about their plant to interest 
 him. For example, the place was lighted by 
 arc lamps — the first the Wizard had seen — but 
 the light was too glaring, too altogether big 
 and bright for indoor purposes. 
 
 "It was easy to see what it needed," said 
 Edison later. "It needed to be divided. And 
 Barker laughingly suggested that here was a 
 
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 problem for me. 'Why don't you go at it, Edi- 
 son, and subdivide the electric light so that it 
 can be got in small units like gas?' I said that 
 I had monkeyed with it a bit, and I was con- 
 vinced that the thing could be done. Then 
 you should have seen their faces ! They thought 
 it could not be managed, of course, in any prac- 
 tical way. Farmer had a room in his house, 
 at Salem, lit up by means of electricity, using 
 small pieces of platinum and iridium wire, 
 which were made to incandesce by means of 
 current from primary batteries. But the whole 
 system was crude, and the lamps hopelessly 
 short-lived. A real serviceable incandescent 
 lamp seemed but an inventor's dream. How- 
 ever, I went home fully determined to take 
 up the search, and make good my word." 
 
 Three things the inventor had already set- 
 tled as the essential features of a perfect in- 
 candescent lamp : 
 
 1. High resistance. 
 
 2. Small radiating surface. 
 
 3. Capability of working in "multiple arc," 
 or so that each lamp could be turned on or 
 off without interfering with any others on the 
 circuit. 
 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 89 
 
 Perhaps the first two items do not mean very- 
 much to you, but to the electrician they stand 
 as the commercial key to the whole problem. 
 For they spell the weight of the copper used, 
 and so determine the cost of the lamp. And 
 here again the business side of Edison came 
 to the fore. "We can't spend too much On con- 
 ductors," he had figured to himself. "And 
 if we are going to use wire of a practicable 
 size, the voltage of the current (the pressure 
 which overcomes resistance to its flow) will 
 have to be high." He determined that the de- 
 sired resistance could be secured at one hun- 
 dred and ten volts, and this voltage has since 
 been adopted as the standard electric light 
 current. 
 
 Now, with a current of relatively high pres- 
 sure to contend with, it would be necessary to 
 have a burner of a very great resistance. This 
 could only be obtained by reducing the radiat- 
 ing surface. Therefore, the real problem was 
 to produce a hair-like carbon, capable of with- 
 standing mechanical shock, and susceptible of 
 being held at a temperature of over 2000° for 
 a thousand hours or more before breaking. 
 Moreover, a vacuum chamber or globe, for 
 
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 holding the carbon, must he formed so per- 
 fectly and precisely, that, no matter what the 
 conditions throughout all these trying hours, 
 not a hint of air could enter to disintegrate 
 the carbon. And not only this, but the lamps 
 must be so simple in construction, carbon and 
 all, that they could be manufactured at a price 
 within the reach of the multitude. 
 
 Quite a problem, taken all in all! "One 
 which I had far rather was in Edison's hands 
 than in mine," said Tyndall, the great English 
 physicist and electrician. And this was by far 
 the most charitable remark made. "The sub- 
 division of the electric light is a problem be- 
 yond the power of man to solve," said a com- 
 mittee of scientists, appointed by the British 
 Parliament to canvass the subject. 
 
 However, Edison had by this time become 
 well-used to having wise men rise up and call 
 him a fool; so, notwithstanding that he was 
 flying in the face of the well-proven law of 
 conservation of energy which one and all cited, 
 he did not swerve one iota in his purpose, or 
 relax his efforts in the smallest degree. Tak- 
 ing up his experiments where he had dropped 
 them, he worked out various devices to pre- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 91 
 
 vent platinum, iridium and such infusible met- 
 als from melting. All of these attempts, how- 
 ever, proved useless. But Edison was still 
 optimistic. 
 
 He had not yet found the right clue, but he 
 was certain that he would come upon it in 
 time. So with utter disregard for meals, and 
 sleeping only at odd periods of the day or 
 night, the Wizard kept his laboratory going 
 without ceasing. Besides the struggle to find 
 the material for a proper radiating surface, 
 there was the lamp globe itself to be considered. 
 This must be made of glass and absolutely air- 
 tight, and there were, of course, no globes of 
 this style manufactured, and indeed no pumps 
 then in existence for obtaining the desired 
 vacuum. A pump, then, was the first requisite, 
 and to this the inventor gave prominence, for 
 he knew that in this one item lay success or 
 failure. By and by they had worked out a 
 pump that would produce a vacuum up to 
 about the one-hundred-thousandth part of 
 an atmosphere. But this was not yet per- 
 fect enough. More study and experiment 
 followed, and after some two months or more 
 of trials and disappointments at last the Wiz- 
 
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 ard evolved a model that would produce a 
 vacuum up to the one-millionth part of an 
 atmosphere. Now, too, he had perfected a one- 
 piece glass glohe, in which all the joints were 
 hermetically sealed during its manufacture 
 into a lamp. 
 
 All that remained was the proper material to 
 incandesce — the thing, by the way, which 
 everyone said could not be found! Again the 
 inventor turned to his platinum experiments, 
 and succeeded in producing a fair lamp of high 
 resistance. But it was neither practical nor 
 economical, for its construction involved some 
 thirty feet of platinum wire wound upon a 
 bobbin of infusible material. Moreover, Edi- 
 son now felt that platinum and all other metals 
 must be abandoned. 
 
 What was there left? His old friend car- 
 bon. All along he had been threshing this 
 around in the background, and he determined 
 to take up experiments again along this line. 
 It was late at night, and Edison sat alone in his 
 laboratory. As he pondered deeply, cogitat- 
 ing where and how he should begin, his fingers 
 absently strayed to a little pile of lampblack 
 and tar that had been left by one of his assist- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 93 
 
 ants. Unconsciously, as he puzzled, these same 
 busy fingers began to roll and fashion a bit of 
 the substance into a thin, wire-like thread, and 
 at length the Wizard, becoming conscious of 
 their action, glanced at what they had done: 
 "Ah!" he asked himself, "how would this serve 
 for a filament for my light?" 
 
 Filament! Just what did Mr. Edison mean? 
 He had coined a new word — "a definition-defy- 
 ing term," which puzzled all the scientists who 
 presently brought their great minds to bear 
 upon it. 
 
 And in this coinage was a germ which the 
 Wizard felt to be invaluable. Eagerly he 
 called his most valued assistant, Charles Bach- 
 elor, and then set to work to have a perfect fila- 
 ment rolled against his arrival. 
 
 This was carefully inserted in their now 
 almost absolute vacuum, and the current 
 turned on. An intense glow of light resulted, 
 but to the disappointment of the breathless 
 watchers it did not last. The carbon soon 
 burned out. 
 
 "Why V s queried the inventor. 
 
 He satisfied himself that it was because it 
 was impossible to get the air out of the lamp- 
 
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 black. Besides the thread was too brittle. 
 The slightest shock to the lamp would break 
 it. There was, however, proof positive that a 
 carbon filament would work, but not in the 
 form of lampblack and tar. 
 
 What should it be? 
 
 "Let's try a carbonized cotton thread," said 
 Edison. 
 
 Bachelor looked doubtful, but the experi- 
 ment was begun. A short piece of the pre- 
 pared thread, bent in the form of a hairpin, 
 was clamped into a nickel mold, and placed 
 in a muffle furnace where it was left five hours. 
 The mold was then removed and cooled. But 
 when it was opened the thread broke. An- 
 other thread was put through the same pro- 
 cess, only to break before it could be got into 
 the vacuum. And so began a struggle for a 
 perfect filament which lasted two days and two 
 nights. At last a filament was got safely into 
 the lamp, but in trying to attach it to the con- 
 ducting wire, it broke in two. Again they 
 tried, and finally on the night of their third 
 day of trial, during which one and most of the 
 time both had been on ceaseless vigil, they 
 succeeded in getting a thread in place and the 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 95 
 
 current turned on. A clear, beautiful light 
 shone forth to reward their patience and per- 
 sistence. 
 
 How happily they watched it! For they 
 knew they looked upon the light which was 
 henceforth to be the principal illumination of 
 the world. And most carefully did they cher- 
 ish it. Slowly, very slowly, more current was 
 added. The frail filament stood the test 
 bravely, and after a time it shone triumphant 
 in a heat that would instantly have melted 
 platinum wire. For forty-five hours it 
 gleamed with unabated brightness, and then 
 suddenly went out. But its purpose was 
 served. It had shown beyond the shadow of 
 a doubt that the incandescent lamp was en- 
 tirely possible and practical. 
 
 How warmly Edison grasped the hand of 
 his assistant! He felt that those skilled fin- 
 gers had accomplished what no one else on the 
 force could have done, not even excepting 
 himself. And no less wonderful than Bach- 
 elor's hands was his temper: during all the 
 nerve-racking hours over the filament, he had 
 showed not even the slightest hint of impa- 
 tience. Cheerful, good-natured and untiring, 
 
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 he was as zealous and interested as his chief 
 in the outcome. He put the first filament into 
 the incandescent lamp, and later he enjoyed 
 the distinction of being the first man to be 
 photographed in the new light. 
 
 The cotton filament, however, was not an 
 entire success. It possessed high resistance 
 and small radiating surface, it could be burned 
 in multiple arc, and the cost of production 
 would be comparatively slight. All the requi- 
 sites, then, had been met save one thing: it 
 had burned only forty-five hours. Edison felt 
 that a commercial beginning could not be 
 made with a lamp that lasted less than one 
 hundred hours. So, after a sleep which lasted 
 straight round the clock, the Wizard plunged 
 into the problem with a new zeal, setting his 
 entire force to carbonizing everything in 
 sight — paper, cardboard, wood splinters, 
 straw, and what not. "In fact," says one of 
 his biographers, "during these carbonizing 
 days nothing was safe — umbrellas, walking- 
 sticks, all vanished, and the probability is 
 that if a lame man had called about that 
 time his crutch would have gone the same 
 way!" 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 97 
 
 Strange as it seemed, carbonized paper was 
 finally made to stand the tests better than cot- 
 ton thread. But it did not satisfy the Wizard. 
 And the experiments went on. "Somewhere," 
 he argued, "is the right material, and we shall 
 chance upon it, if we keep up the search." 
 Meantime, the manufacture of incandescent 
 lamps using paper carbons was begun and car- 
 ried on with a good deal of industry, which 
 required the making of all sorts of special tools 
 for the cutting and safe handling of the fila- 
 ments, and the construction of the various 
 parts of the lamp itself. 
 
 One day the inventor got hold of a bamboo 
 fan, and it followed the way of all other things 
 which came into his hands in those days. 
 Straightway, too, great excitement swept the 
 laboratory. For the bamboo gave better re- 
 sults than anything which had been tried ! Im- 
 mediately Edison began posting himself on 
 bamboos, and soon made the interesting but 
 somewhat overwhelming discovery that there 
 were at least 1,200 varieties of bamboo known, 
 of which about 300 species were used com- 
 mercially. 
 
 Problem: What species had the fan been 
 
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 composed of? Were there other varieties 
 more peculiarly adapted to his purpose? 
 
 Already Edison had spent $40,000 on the 
 incandescent lamp, hut this was as nothing. 
 Always when there had been any item needed 
 in his business, he had got it if it was gettable. 
 ISTow he must have samples of every variety of 
 bamboo grown. And the quickest and best 
 way was to send men after them. 
 
 Picture the marvelous wealth of incident 
 and adventure that such a quest promised! 
 For the bamboo flourished in far-away tropi- 
 cal jungles, in the hinterland of China and 
 Japan, the West Indies, Mexico, Ceylon, 
 British Guiana, India, the wilderness of the 
 Amazon; through it lay the runways of the 
 deadly cobra, the trails of the Hon and the 
 tiger, and the fierce-trumpeting elephant. 
 Such natives as lived in its vicinity were 
 bound to be treacherous and unfriendly — for 
 we had few cordial international relations in 
 those days. Besides all this, there was the tor- 
 ment of insect pests, the danger from malaria, 
 lack of proper food, and so on and on. But 
 the boys at the laboratory were wild to go. 
 There was a glory in being a missionary of 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 99 
 
 science, beside which all dangers, disasters, 
 and menaces paled. Nor was this ardor 
 dampened when word came presently that the 
 young man who had rushed off to the West 
 Indies had died of yellow fever on the very 
 day of his arrival. No less than four others 
 immediately petitioned to be allowed to carry 
 on his work! So very soon there were emis- 
 saries from Edison in all quarters of the globe, 
 and samples of bamboo and other fibrous 
 plants began to arrive in great bales. People 
 everywhere were interested in the quest, and 
 not a few joined the hunt on their own ac- 
 count, sending in generous samples of the rare 
 specimens they found. 
 
 It was William Moore, a New Jersey man, 
 who finally located the species of bamboo 
 which had started the search. Leaving New 
 York in the summer of 1880, bound for China 
 and Japan, a locality especially noted for 
 bamboo, he traveled over some 30,000 miles, 
 pushing his way far into the remote country 
 districts, meeting with no end of exciting ex- 
 periences and collecting hundreds of speci- 
 mens, himself roughly testing those which he 
 thought might do before sending them on to his 
 
100 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 chief. At last, in Japan, a species was chanced 
 upon which seemed most fitting, and when 
 word came confirming its excellence, Moore at 
 once made a contract with an old Jap to sup- 
 ply the fiber. This man was considerable of 
 a plant wizard. He attacked the job with 
 hearty interest, cultivating and cross-fertiliz- 
 ing bamboo until he got exactly the quality 
 that was required. 
 
 None the less thrilling, but perhaps not so 
 hazardous, was the experience of the other 
 men who played a part in this "Romance of 
 Science." None of them, however, found the 
 wonder material, or indeed anything that quite 
 came up to the bamboo which the old Jap was 
 supplying. All in all, this world-wide search 
 for filament material cost Edison around 
 $100,000, and then, ere the last man reached 
 home, the Wizard himself had figured out an 
 artificial compound which seemed likely to be 
 better than any natural product. No imme- 
 diate change, however, was made in the fila- 
 ments, but gradually the imports from Japan 
 were cut down, and in a few years the bamboo 
 had wholly given place to a manufactured 
 product. 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 101 
 
 About ten years ago tungsten began to re- 
 place all other filaments in the incandescent 
 lamp. Then the average candle power per 
 lamp was 19; to-day it is 52. Tungsten cuts 
 the cost of the light about one-third and gives 
 a steadier, more perfect illumination than the 
 carbon-filament types. Two pounds of tung- 
 sten will supply about 50,000 electric bulbs, 
 for each filament is only 1-1200 of an inch in 
 diameter. The current passing through the 
 filament heats it to such an intense degree that 
 the red rays are eliminated, and it is the red 
 rays which make the ordinary electric light so 
 hard on the eyes. 
 
 Inventing the incandescent electric light 
 was, as it turned out, a mere bagatelle com- 
 pared with the herculean labors into which it 
 at once plunged the Wizard. But he had f or- 
 seen all this, and delighting as he always had 
 in obstacles, their triumph was to him the keen- 
 est enjoyment. And they also formed his 
 chief reward ! For no sooner was the light an 
 achieved success, than there sprang up a 
 mushroom growth of inventors, each of whom 
 labored under the delusion that he was the man 
 who had invented the incandescent electric 
 
102 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 light. Prior claims rose like magic every- 
 where. One indefatigable press-writer added 
 to the turmoil by stating that the electric light 
 had been in use as far back as the thirteenth 
 century, and in proof thereof quoted from a 
 volume of Sorcery and Magic, published in 
 1852. 
 
 From the first the public looked upon the in- 
 candescent electric light with favor ; but it had 
 two very stiff competitors — gas and the arc 
 light, in which politics and finance were pretty 
 heavily involved, and no end of bitter feeling 
 was shown. Eventually, however, it was made 
 clear, as Edison tried to point out in the be- 
 ginning, that the incandescent light was not a 
 hated rival which must be crushed. It did not 
 seek to take the place of the arc light where 
 that method was undoubtedly best and cheap- 
 est, such as in the lighting of streets, factories, 
 and large halls. This was a field in itself, as 
 the continual growth and improvement of the 
 arc light has proven. It did seek to supersede 
 gas for ordinary indoor lighting purposes: 
 why shouldn't it? It was incomparably better. 
 And gas still had ample space for operation. 
 Subsequently it was proven that the incandes- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 103 
 
 cent lamp was actually a booster for the gas 
 works, and to-day in most cities the two indus- 
 tries are combined. 
 
 All in all, Edison's incandescent light data 
 fills some two hundred note books, set down in 
 plain, unvarnished English, in the Wizard's 
 fine copper-plate writing. And almost in the 
 beginning of the first one, the "prospectus 
 book," is an entry which says much, viz; Object 
 of Incandescent Light: To effect exact imi- 
 tation of all done by gas, so as to replace light- 
 ing by gas by lighting by electricity. To im- 
 prove the illumination to such an extent as to 
 meet all requirements of natural, artificial and 
 commercial conditions." 
 
 A large program ! But one which never for 
 a moment "stumped" the Wizard, notwith- 
 standing the great number of obstacles which 
 must be overcome in setting his system in oper- 
 ation. As soon as possible after the discovery 
 of the paper-carbon filament, a row of lamps 
 was strung among the trees at Menlo Park, 
 and the contest was on. Almost at once the 
 attention of the world was attracted, and the 
 visiting thousands found it wonderful indeed 
 when told that one of the tiny lights — which 
 
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 needed no matches to set going — would burn 
 day and night for more than a week, and in all 
 that time the globe would not once get hot 
 enough to burn one's fingers! More than all 
 else, however, was the fact that the lamp would 
 burn in any position, and that any lamp in the 
 string might be turned on or off without inter- 
 fering with the others. 
 
 It was plain to all that this new light, free 
 from odor, sputtering, and danger from lire, 
 was the ideal home light. It promised no end 
 of comfort, convenience and beauty, and they 
 asked how they could go about to secure it. 
 And for this the Wizard was ready. He had 
 set his heart upon lighting the city of New 
 York, by way of setting the ball rolling, and 
 he presently invited the New York board of 
 aldermen out one evening to see his exhibit. 
 A special train was run for their benefit, and 
 the effect of the hundreds of brilliant incandes- 
 cent lamps glowing among the trees of Menlo 
 Park was beautiful and remarkable in the ex- 
 treme. It had a deep effect upon the visitors, 
 just as Edison meant that it should, and he 
 got what he wanted — permission to go ahead 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 105 
 
 and build a great central station where con- 
 sumers might obtain electricity. 
 
 Such a vista of problems as were now before 
 him! To begin with, there was little that he 
 could buy, or that anybody could make for him. 
 Outside of his own laboratory there was no one 
 who knew anything about incandescent electric 
 lighting. Factories for the manufacture of 
 new and novel apparatus — dynamos, switch- 
 boards, pressure and current indicators, me- 
 ters, lamps, underground conductors, service 
 boxes, man-holes, specially made wire, and 
 what not — must be built and equipped; arti- 
 sans must be trained, for even among his most 
 trusted men there were few who knew how to 
 get a filament in place and exhaust a globe. 
 He must, also, find just how much gas was 
 used in New York, in order to determine the 
 strength of station required, and this informa- 
 tion, which of course the gas company would 
 not supply, would have been for some difficult 
 indeed to secure, but for Edison it was, as he 
 says, "The simplest thing in the world!" He 
 hired men to canvass the city, and make a note 
 of the number of lights burning in the various 
 
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 days of the week. It was then easy to com- 
 pute the problem. 
 
 Having determined the strength of the sta- 
 tion required, and the amount and cost of the 
 materials necessary to put it in operation, he 
 turned the financing of the matter over to his 
 lawyer and warm personal advocate Governor 
 P. Lowry, who eventually succeeded in raising 
 the capital necessary, under the firm name of 
 the New York Edison Illuminating Company, 
 and the project was launched. Out at Menlo 
 Park a lamp factory sprang into being ; over in 
 Washington street, Kruesi set up the manu- 
 facture of tubes; a second-rate machine shop 
 was turned into a first-class dynamo estab- 
 lishment; another man who had been making 
 gas fixtures was glad to supply sockets and 
 some other necessary parts. Then negotia- 
 tions were begun for lots on which to build 
 the station. Edison hoped that by buying in 
 some out-of-the-way street the necessary site 
 might be obtained fairly cheap. But New 
 York real estate rose to alarming proportions, 
 and finally two old buildings, not at all what 
 he wanted, were bought for $150,000. Then 
 the inventor faced the next difficulty. 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 107 
 
 He must have a big output of electricity, 
 and being forced to put up with a small station, 
 a high-speed engine would be a necessity. But 
 there was none. Drafting what he thought 
 would meet his requirements, Edison went to 
 an engine factory to order a one hundred and 
 fifty horse-power engine that would run seven 
 hundred revolutions per minute. "It is im- 
 possible !" said the manufacturers. But, after 
 some argument, they finally agreed to build 
 such an engine, and in time the ungainly thing 
 arrived and was set up on a shale hill out at 
 Menlo Park. Then such a hubbub as arose! 
 The whole hill shook with the swift revolutions, 
 and there was all kinds of mischief to pay. At 
 length, however, the engine was tamed down to 
 three hundred and fifty revolutions, which was 
 all Mr. Edison really needed, and it seemed so 
 easy-going and practical that five more engines 
 were ordered. 
 
 Various delays followed, but at length the 
 order was filled and an attempt was then 
 made to run two of them in parallel. And 
 then chaos broke loose! "Of all the circuses 
 since Adam was born we had the worst then," 
 says Edison. "One engine would stop, and 
 
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 the other would run up to about a thousand 
 revolutions, and then they would see-saw. 
 What was the matter? One set of governors 
 was running the other as a motor. I then 
 put up a long shaft connecting all the gover- 
 nors together and thought this would end the 
 matter, but it didn't." 
 
 Nor were they ever able to get these engines 
 to work in satisfactory harmony. At length, 
 Edison, feeling that "he didn't want his cus- 
 tomers to count the heart-beats of his engine 
 in the flicker of their lamps," was forced to go 
 to another engine draughtsman, Gardiner C. 
 Sims, who built him a one hundred and 
 seventy-five horse-power engine, making three 
 hundred and fifty revolutions. This proved to 
 be what was needed. Indeed, there was small 
 chance of its going wrong, for Mr. Edison 
 had now made an exhaustive study of steam 
 engines. He knew their weak points to date, 
 and he was ready with suggestions to remedy 
 them. One thing was a poser. No engine of 
 the type they desired had ever been built for 
 continuous running. The oil cup for self- 
 lubricating was unknown; every four or five 
 hours it was necessary to stop and oil up. 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 109 
 
 Edison said this wouldn't do; any engine to 
 suit his purpose must keep going. Eventually 
 Sims solved the problem with the drop-feed oil 
 cup, a type of which is now generally used on 
 all engines. 
 
 At last all was ready. On Saturday night, 
 September 4, 1882, the current was first turned 
 on to the mains for regular light distribution 
 in the city of "New York, and it stayed on for 
 eight years with only one slight stoppage. One 
 of the original Sims engines first put on the 
 job ran twenty-four hours a day for three hun- 
 dred and sixty-five days before it was stopped. 
 Crude enough it was in many respects, but it 
 did the work, and served as the father of the 
 modern power-plant engine — another vast 
 field which thus owes its rise to Edison. 
 
 A glimpse of that first electric light station 
 would be an eye-opener to the modern elec- 
 trician. Few indeed of the instruments that 
 now seem indispensable were to be had. There 
 was not even a central switchboard! Each 
 dynamo was controlled by its own individual 
 switch. The feeder connections were all on the 
 first floor at the front of the building, and the 
 general voltage control apparatus was on the 
 
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 floor above. "In those days we used the old 
 chemical meters," wrote Edison, in an account 
 published long ago in the Electrical Review, 
 "and these gave us a lot of trouble, for, as 
 they contained two jars of a liquid solution, 
 there was always a danger of freezing in the 
 cold weather. So I set to work to negative 
 this difficulty and succeeded, as I thought, by 
 putting an incandescent lamp in each meter 
 with a thermostat strip, which would make 
 a contact through the lamp when the tempera- 
 ture fell to forty degrees. That idea, simple 
 as it was, caused us a whole lot of trouble. The 
 weather became cold, and then the telephone in 
 our office began to ring every five minutes and 
 people would say — 
 
 " 'Our meter's red hot. Is that all right?' 
 "Then someone else would call up and say, 
 'Our meter's on fire inside, and we poured 
 water on it. Did that hurt it?' 
 
 "As to voltmeters, we didn't have any. We 
 used lamps. And I hadn't much use for 
 mathematicians either, for I soon found that I 
 could guess a good deal closer than they could 
 figure, so I went on guessing. We used to 
 hang up a shingle nail, tie it on a string along- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 111 
 
 side one of the feeders, and used that for a 
 heavy current ammeter. It worked all right. 
 When the nail came close to the feeder we 
 screwed up the rheostat a little, and in this way 
 kept the lamps looking about right." 
 
 Eventually Edison worked out solutions to 
 the various problems which interfered with the 
 smooth running of his lighting system, but any- 
 thing like the number of these would be hard 
 even for the electrician of to-day to guess at : a 
 fine copper thread to serve as a fuse wire for 
 the prevention of short-circuiting ; instruments 
 of one sort and another for measuring the cur- 
 rent; the "three-wire" system; the "feed and 
 main" idea; dynamos, motors, and engines; 
 plans for underground wiring and for dis- 
 tributing systems, their control and regulation ; 
 the perfected incandescent lamp of to-day 
 which will run twelve hundred hours; and so 
 on and on. 
 
 "Broad as the prairies and free in thought as 
 the wind that sweeps them," Edison is yet 
 "fussy" and exacting to a degree. Much of 
 the work in giving light to the world might 
 have been delegated to subordinates. But this 
 was not the Wizard's way. Here, there and 
 
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 everywhere he superintended the work of in- 
 stallation in person. Nor did he merely stand 
 around and give orders ; day and night he lent 
 a hand wherever it was needed, and always he 
 was the busiest man on the job. No clock 
 regulated his hours ; he stayed by until physical 
 weariness absolutely compelled him to rest. 
 Then, as often as not, he lay down on a pile 
 of tubing in the cellar of the Pearl Street 
 station. 
 
 "It is worth pausing just a moment," we 
 are told in Edison: His Life and Inventions, 
 "to glance at this man taking a fitful rest on a 
 pile of iron pipe in a dingy building. His 
 name is on the tip of the world's tongue. Dis- 
 tinguished scientists from every part of 
 Europe seek him eagerly. He has just been 
 decorated and awarded high honors by the 
 French Government. He is the inventor of 
 wonderful new apparatus, and the exploiter of 
 novel and successful arts. The magic of his 
 achievements and the rumor of what is being 
 done have caused a wild drop in gas securities, 
 and a sensational rise in his own electric light 
 stock from $100 to $3,500 a share. Yet these 
 things do not at all affect his slumber or his 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 113 
 
 democratic simplicity, for in that, as in every- 
 thing else, he is attending strictly to business, 
 'doing the thing that is next to him.' " 
 
 But it was just this same careful attention 
 to detail that spelled the Great Wizard's suc- 
 cess. It needed an Edison not only to invent 
 the incandescent electric light system, but to 
 put it into working operation. And how won- 
 derful have been the subsequent results! In 
 the whole history of industrial progress there 
 has been nothing to compare with the far- 
 reaching sweep of the electric light. Twenty 
 years after the invention of the incandescent 
 lamp there were $750,000,000 invested in elec- 
 tric light plants in the United States alone, 
 while across the water the industry was ad- 
 vancing in world-wide strides. To-day we can 
 scarcely imagine what it would be to do with- 
 out the conveniences of the modern electric 
 lighting and power devices. They are the 
 daily, unobtrusive but useful servants in every 
 home. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE KINET0SC0PE, OR MOVING PICTURE 
 MACHINE 
 
 If Edison had no greater claim to fame, it 
 might still be said of him that he probably did 
 more to interest and amuse the world than any 
 other man. No sooner had he invented the 
 phonograph and made music possible for the 
 multitude, than his attention was attracted to 
 another problem: 
 
 "Surely," said he, "it ought to be possible to 
 do for the eye what has been done for the ear 
 — moving pictures should be entirely possible!" 
 
 It was not a new idea. Indeed, we often 
 hear it said that there is no new thing under 
 the sun, and this is especially true when applied 
 to "the movies." Though barely twenty years 
 have elapsed since the unrolling of the first 
 motion picture reel, the idea of motion pictures 
 goes back to the old Egyptians and their crude 
 picture writings. 
 
 Long before Edison was born, a beginning 
 
 114 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 115 
 
 of considerable moment in the moving picture 
 art had been made. This was the invention of 
 the zoetrope, or "wheel of life," an ingenious 
 little toy, consisting of a disc painted over with 
 pictures of some animal or figure, such as a 
 boy skating, in various stages of motion. Un- 
 derneath each picture was a narrow slit. By 
 slipping the wheel on a pin and whirling it 
 rapidly before a mirror, one might see through 
 the openings the object represented, appar- 
 ently moving forward by jumps. Often a very 
 laughable and realistic effect was secured, as 
 you may discover for yourself if you care to 
 experiment. 
 
 Simple as this contrivance was, from it came 
 the suggestion of the magic lantern and the 
 screen, and by and by somebody brought forth 
 a scheme that was rich in possibilities. This 
 was the method of passing a row of pictures 
 between the light and the lantern lens, and by 
 using a shutter to close the lens from the light 
 for an instant, while the picture was slipped 
 forward, to give the effect of motion. The 
 success of this plan and of the zoetrope, of 
 course, lay in moving the pictures fast enough 
 to deceive the eye into thinking that it regis- 
 
J16 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 tered constant unbroken movement. In short, 
 advantage was taken of a point which had long 
 been known to scientists : 
 
 "There is," said they, "such a thing as per* 
 sistence of vision, or a habit of our brains tq 
 see an object that is no longer there. This 
 impression lasts about one-twenty-fourth of a 
 second: if you can substitute the next picture 
 in that time the eye will not detect the brief 
 gap made by making the change." 
 
 The problem, then, lay not in counterfeiting 
 motion, but in taking exact pictures of things 
 in motion. And this proved difficult indeed. 
 For dry-plates and sensitized films were en- 
 tirely unknown, and the wet-plates then used 
 did not adapt themselves to speed. It seemed 
 impossible to work out any sort of commercial 
 scheme. 
 
 At length, in 1878, Edward Muybridge, an 
 English inventor living in San Francisco, hav- 
 ing secured some fairly rapid wet-plates, con- 
 ceived the idea of setting a number of cameras 
 in a row, and taking successive pictures of a 
 horse as it passed by. Later, following up this 
 silhouette idea, he took pictures of various 
 other animals, and of men running. Freakish 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 117 
 
 indeed were these pictures when viewed singly, 
 but whirled rapidly on a large "wheel of life" 
 they presented a fairly unbroken picture. The 
 defect was that the screen mechanism, while it 
 showed violent motion, yet registered no prog- 
 ress — the object remaining always exactly in 
 the center of the screen. 
 
 Early in the next decade dry-plates were 
 introduced. But still there was a decided 
 handicap. The plates were heavy, and only a 
 limited number could be used. "This difficulty 
 will be more readily understood," says one 
 authority, "when it is realized that a modern 
 motion-picture play lasting fifteen minutes 
 comprises about 16,000 separate and distinct 
 photographs." Clearly there was no possi- 
 bility of handling such a host of plates. What 
 was to be done? 
 
 "Ah!" mused Edison, standing now on 
 the outskirts of the field and looking over the 
 situation, "the thing promises to be decidedly 
 interesting. In order to portray natural move- 
 ment, pictures will have to be taken, say from 
 forty to sixty per second. And the pictures 
 once secured, a machine will be necessary to 
 show them. I think I'll take a hand!" 
 
118 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 And this, notwithstanding that the problem 
 involved a realm of science to which he was an 
 absolute stranger — photography. He had not 
 so much as taken a snapshot, or developed a 
 plate ; had, in fact, hardly seen a camera. But 
 this only made the problem more alluring ! 
 
 "We shall never get anywhere with cumber- 
 some glass plates, and a multiple of cameras," 
 he decided shortly. "What we need is a film, 
 capable of taking one impression after another 
 in quick succession." 
 
 Of course nothing of this sort was to be had, 
 and the Wizard immediately added a photo- 
 graphic laboratory to his establishment, and 
 set in motion a train of experiments to secure 
 what he wanted. From the first Edison felt 
 that celluloid — originally known as Parkesine, 
 from its inventor, Parkes — was the most likely 
 material for films. Two difficulties, however, 
 proved insurmountable barriers: it was not 
 manufactured in thin enough sheets, and one 
 of the substances used in developing ate up the 
 celluloid. At this juncture, Charles East- 
 man, the inventor of the Eastman kodak, who 
 had been struggling with the film problem for 
 five long years of the most indefatigable re- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 119 
 
 search and endeavor, came forward with the 
 first successful long strip of film. Now, in- 
 deed, the way was open for the movies : for the 
 celluloid film bears as much relation to the 
 moving pictures of to-day as the petrol-motor 
 does to the flying machine — it made success 
 possible. Without the celluloid film, cinema- 
 tography must have remained purely an ex- 
 periment ; it could never have reached its pres- 
 ent huge commercial importance. 
 
 Now, all that remained was to devise a 
 camera by means of which the required number 
 of pictures per second could be taken, and this 
 part of the problem would be solved. But do 
 not imagine that this feat was as easy as it 
 sounds ! All who have used a film camera will 
 have some appreciation of the problem. To 
 begin with, a long roll of film would have to 
 pass so smoothly behind the lens, that at every 
 inch it could be stopped, the shutter opened for 
 exposure, then closed again, and the film 
 passed on to the next halt. Moreover, this 
 operation must be done rapidly, not less than 
 twenty to forty times a second, and throughout 
 a long length of say perhaps a thousand feet 
 of film. 
 
120 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 Who but an Edison would undertake such a 
 problem, or guarantee at the outset that such a 
 device could be made with sufficient exactness 
 that each picture would join so perfectly one 
 with another that continued motion would be 
 shown? After much experimenting, however, 
 the trick was turned; in the summer of 1889, 
 the first modern motion picture camera came 
 into being. From that day to this the Edison 
 camera, with such improvements as time has 
 developed, has been the accepted standard for 
 securing pictures of objects in motion. 
 
 With its invention, things took a lively turn 
 at the Edison laboratories. "Black Maria," a 
 studio painted black inside and out, was set up 
 in the dooryard, and so arranged that it could 
 be swung around to face the sunlight, which 
 came in through a skylight in its sloping roof, 
 and the boys posed to get pictures for their 
 chief's working models. The machine for the 
 portrayal of the pictures was yet to perfect. 
 And such stunts as they pulled off! From 
 Fred Ott's luxurious ear-splitting sneeze, with 
 its ludicrous grimaces, on to somersaults, 
 standing on their heads, wrestling, playing 
 leap frog, dancing, feats of horsemanship, 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 121 
 
 divers working jobs, and what not, which pro- 
 duced no end of interest and amusement for 
 the force when thrown on the screen. Edison 
 himself was asked to take his turn before the 
 camera, but no amount of persuasion could get 
 him to do it. 
 
 Everyone is familiar with the Pathe feature 
 photoplays. But few know that Charles 
 Pathe was the first great pioneer in the moving 
 picture world as we know it now. To him be- 
 longs the honor of the first motion picture; 
 feature, a scant two hundred feet in length, 
 portraying the first story ever produced at a 
 movie. To him also must be credited the pro- 
 duction of the first comedy, the first drama, 
 and the first of the long picture reels. More 
 than fifteen years ago Pathe began repro- 
 ducing in picture form the works of the great 
 novelists and playwrights, and the story of the 
 difficulties which he met and overcame, could 
 they be set down here, would reveal the pro- 
 gress in motion picture art. 
 
 All this, however, would be setting the cart 
 before the horse, which was in truth the real 
 order of the development of the movies. First 
 the pictures, and at length after many trials 
 
122 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 and failures, the machine for projecting them 
 — the kinetoscope, as Edison christened it, but 
 dubbed "the peep hole machine" by the boys 
 and later by the people who saw it for the first 
 time at the Chicago World's Fair. The pic- 
 tures could be viewed by only one person at a 
 time, and that through a "peep hole ;" further- 
 more, there was a continuous movement, which 
 at times caused the image to be both faint and 
 blurred. An ingenious "toy" it seemed, with 
 little or no future before it. 
 
 But defective as it was, the kinetoscope yet 
 had in it the germs essential to produce the 
 modern motion picture machine, the cinemato- 
 graph of to-day. The story, however, of the 
 numerous improvements and inventions, the 
 hours of puzzlement and groping, by which it 
 was evolved, and the various people who had a 
 hand in it first and last, is too long and compli- 
 cated to tell here. Naturally it cost a good 
 deal of money, and it is probable that this 
 invention took at least a hundred thousand 
 dollars to make it a commercial success, and as 
 much more to get it going. Indeed, the Bronx 
 Park (New York) studio of the Edison Com- 
 pany, a magnificent structure built of glass, 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 123 
 
 with all the properties and stage settings of a 
 regular theater, of itself cost nearly that sum, 
 to say nothing of a second New York studio, 
 not nearly so elaborate, and the numerous 
 directors, actors, and minors necessary to pro- 
 duce the introductory films. 
 
 To-day photoplay has soared to heights un- 
 dreamed by the inventor. And the reason is 
 not far to seek, so wide and inexhaustible is 
 the range of material. "Making the movies" 
 opens up an interesting, and in some instances, 
 at least, most profitable business. Nowadays 
 parties setting out on hunting and exploring 
 expeditions aim to make their motion picture 
 outfits cover expenses and leave a comfortable 
 balance besides. One man on a big African 
 game tour is said to have netted $50,000; an- 
 other, exploring in the Northern icefields, 
 found himself, thanks to his motion picture 
 camera, richer by $30,000. While in the 
 studios of the various film companies are 
 starred divers interesting careers, and oppor- 
 tunities afforded to countless hundreds to make 
 a livelihood. All this is another story, of 
 course, but it shows the breadth of the ave- 
 nues thrown open by Thomas A. Edison, and 
 
124 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 another indebtedness of the world to this man 
 whose inquiring mind delighted in the upturn- 
 ing of problems and their subsequent solution 
 — the man who was never so pleased as when 
 facing a serious difficulty. "It seemed to 
 stiffen his backbone," said one of his co-work- 
 ers, "and made him more prolific of new 
 ideas." 
 
IX 
 
 OTHER INTERESTING INVENTIONS 
 
 Someone once asked Edison what he con- 
 sidered the secret of achievement. His reply 
 was terse and to the point: "Hard work, 
 based on hard thinking." Certainly this is the 
 foundation on which his own phenomenal suc- 
 cess was built. He knew no idle moments. 
 While on his trip to Wyoming with the astron- 
 omers, in 1878, he got the idea of building an 
 electric railway, and as soon as the tremendous 
 rush into which the incandescent lamp plunged 
 him had somewhat subsided, he began the con- 
 struction of a stretch of track at Menlo Park, 
 and at the same time started to build an electric 
 locomotive to furnish the power. 
 
 We have so long accepted electric railroads 
 as a matter of course, that it is difficult now 
 to understand how any engineering expert ever 
 could have doubted their practicality. Yet 
 such was the case. When Edison's short 
 stretch of road — barely a third of a mile — was 
 
 125 
 
126 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 opened for operation, May 3, 1880, the world 
 again flocked to his door, but it took a stout 
 heart to make an initial trip, for there were 
 some steep grades and sharp curves in that 
 brief course, and few had faith that the queer- 
 looking locomotive would or could keep to the 
 track. 
 
 Certainly there was some cause for doubt. 
 An odder looking train had never before 
 been coupled together. The locomotive itself 
 seemed such only by courtesy; it consisted of 
 an ordinary flat car on a four-wheeled iron 
 truck, with an Edison dynamo for a motor. 
 One had to take on faith the statement that it 
 had a capacity of twelve horse-power, and that 
 electric current was generated at the machine 
 shop, and carried to the rails by underground 
 conductors. There were three cars: one flat 
 freight car, one open awning-car, and another, 
 a box-car, which the boys sportively called the 
 "Pullman," on which Edison had fitted a sys- 
 tem of electromagnetic braking. 
 
 "I well remember," said the late Charles T. 
 Hughes, who was Edison's chief assistant on 
 the electric railway project, "a certain day 
 when Mr. Henry Villard, of the Northern 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 127 
 
 Pacific, sent one of his mechanical engineers, 
 Mr. J. C. Henderson, to see the road in opera- 
 tion. Edison, Henderson, and I rode on the 
 locomotive. Edison ran it, and just after we 
 started there was a trestle sixty feet long and 
 seven feet deep, and Edison put on all the 
 power. When we went over it we must have 
 been going forty miles an hour, and I could 
 see the perspiration come out on Henderson. 
 After we got over the trestle and started on 
 down the track, Henderson said: 'When we 
 go back I will walk. If there is any more of 
 that kind of running I won't be in it myself.' ' 
 
 And this seemed to be the sentiment gen- 
 erally! Few engineers could see utility and a 
 future in electricity for transportation, and 
 their doubts were shared by the capitalists to 
 such an extent that it was several years before 
 the project had any show whatever for busi- 
 ness. Edison, however, knew that it was 
 bound to come, and he went on improving the 
 scheme, planning a low-cost storage battery, 
 and taking out a great number of patents, 
 many of which showed foresight when the elec- 
 trifying of streets began in real earnest. 
 
 To-day the initial electric railway of the 
 
128 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 world lies in ruin and decay in the general 
 desertion of Menlo Park, but the locomotive 
 which finally succeeded in demonstrating its 
 worth has become the property of the Pratt 
 Institute, of Brooklyn, and here in prominent 
 display it preaches to the students a wordless 
 and incentive sermon of faith and never say 
 fail 
 
 "Not long after the kinetoscope had got 
 under way, Edison happened one day to be 
 walking along the seashore, when he came 
 across a patch of black sand, not unlike gun- 
 powder in appearance. Of course a query at 
 once bobbed up, and he carried home a pocket- 
 ful to see what its composition was. As he 
 poured it out upon the table, a passing work- 
 man accidentally dropped a big magnet across 
 the heap. At once, the tiny black grains 
 which had been mixed with the sand immedi- 
 ately left it and clung to the magnet. Exami- 
 nation proved the black grains to be the very 
 purest of magnetic iron. 
 
 "Ah," said Edison, slowly, turning over in 
 his mind the train of ideas which the incident 
 had set in motion, "I believe magnetic attrac- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 129 
 
 tion could be employed to separate metal from 
 low grade ores." 
 
 The more he thought about the project the 
 more feasible it seemed. Straightway he 
 began to block out a scheme that ultimately 
 resulted in what is now known as the magnetic 
 ore separator. But, like most of his other in- 
 ventions, this feat sounds easier in telling than 
 it was in doing. As a matter of fact, the 
 Wizard put nine solid years into this labor, 
 inventing not only the ore separator but a tre- 
 mendous amount of new and novel machinery 
 to aid in its operation, including gigantic 
 crushers and pulverizers for tearing down the 
 mountains bodily and reducing them to pow- 
 der, and marvelous conveyors, which wound in 
 and out, turning corners here and yonder, 
 delivering material from one bin to another, 
 making a number of loops in the drying-oven, 
 filling up bins, and passing on to the next one 
 when full, with an automatic action which 
 seemed almost human in intelligence, and 
 spoke volumes for the inventor's genius and 
 engineering skill. 
 
 Last but not least, Edison crowned his 
 labors by building the little town of Edison, in 
 
130 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 Sussex County, New Jersey — a town that 
 shortly came to be known as the most up-to- 
 date mining town in America. People came 
 from far and near to see in operation the 
 immense magnetic ore separators. There were 
 nearly five hundred of them in the plant, turn- 
 ing out something like two hundred and fifty 
 tons of finished product per hour — and to ad- 
 mire the model homes of the miners, lighted by 
 electricity and fitted with all modern con- 
 veniences. Here, in the vicinity of Edison, the 
 Wizard held 16,000 acres, his pick of the ore 
 regions, secured by a marvelous survey of 
 country twenty-five miles in width and from 
 Canada to North Carolina. And here, in the 
 3,000 acres immediately surrounding the mills, 
 it was estimated there were over 200,000,000 
 tons of low-grade ore — enough to supply the 
 whole United States iron trade, including 
 exports, for seventy years! A vast source of 
 wealth in hillc and mountains that had been 
 hitherto regarded as waste land! 
 
 And then came the first hitch in the proceed- 
 ings. When the separated ore was put on the 
 market in quantity, it was found that few fur- 
 naces could handle it in powder form. An- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 131 
 
 other invention would be necessary to make it 
 available, but this did not trouble the Wizard 
 for long. He solved the problem by making a 
 machine for molding the powdered ore into 
 "briquettes." Now the great rocks went in 
 at one end of the works, and a stream of 
 briquettes, at the rate of sixty per minute, 
 poured out at the other. Moreover, the trade 
 approved of the handy briquettes, and orders 
 came in most gratifyingly. Hard work, per- 
 sistence and deep thought had conquered. Fot 
 five years Edison had scarcely been at his 
 home in Orange, only on Sundays, so deep and 
 perplexing had been the difficulties that he was 
 obliged to meet and overcome. 
 
 Just as everything seemed exceedingly 
 bright and promising, and the Wizard was 
 beginning to look about him for a new field of 
 endeavor, suddenly out of a clear sky came a 
 fatal bolt. Rich mines of pure Bessemer ore 
 had been opened in Minnesota; this product 
 began to flood the market at a price that 
 absolutely killed Edison's manufactured ore — 
 $3.50 a ton against $6.50. It was useless to 
 go on, and the Wizard faced the hard fate that 
 had taken so many arduous years of labor and 
 
132 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 some two millions or more of funds all for 
 naught. 
 
 The magnetic ore separator was not a total 
 loss, however. It is still considered the hest 
 and simplest method of separating iron from 
 low-grade ore, and is in use in many parts of 
 the world. 
 
 Now, if ever, Edison showed his true 
 caliber. "No use crying over spilled milk," 
 said he. And in the very same moment that 
 he ordered his works shut down, and turned 
 his back upon the doomed town of Edison for- 
 ever, he was actively engaged in figuring what 
 to do next. It was imperative that some 
 money-making enterprise be set afloat at once; 
 for the ore-crushing plant had borrowed heav- 
 ily, and Edison proposed to see every debt 
 paid. 
 
 Two things seemed most feasible. He 
 would salvage what he could of the ore- 
 machinery and turn it to account in making 
 Portland cement — a project which he had been 
 contemplating for some time ; and he would get 
 out a storage battery which did not use lead 
 and sulphuric acid. 
 
 "Surely," he said, "nothing is more needed 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 133 
 
 than the latter invention. I don't think nature 
 would be so unkind as to withhold the secret of 
 a good storage battery, if a real earnest hunt 
 for it is made. I'm going to hunt." 
 
 Thus, with every thought fixed on the 
 future, Edison was soon too busy to bemoan 
 the past. Shortly he was engaged in reading 
 up everything he could find on cement, and 
 convinced himself that, with the splendid 
 crushing machinery he had on hand and some 
 further inventions which he knew he could 
 make, he would have no difficulty in putting 
 out a finer cement product than was on the 
 market. The next thing was to find a suitable 
 location for the plant, and the money to finance 
 it. While these were pending he experimented 
 with the storage battery. 
 
 First, with true Edisonian logic, he made a 
 study of the storage batteries then known, to 
 number their defects, thus arriving at a definite 
 idea for his own invention — "a battery that 
 should be cheap, light, compact, mechanically 
 strong, absolutely permanent, and generally 
 fool proof." Qualifications, perhaps, that 
 mean little to us, but which, in truth, 
 were to call out "more original thought, work, 
 
134. FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 perseverance, ingenuity, and monumental 
 patience," according to one of his biographers, 
 than any invention which he had yet tackled. 
 Indeed, says this authority, "if Edison's 
 experiments, investigations, and work on this 
 storage battery were all that he had ever done, 
 I should say that he was not only a notable 
 inventor, but also a great man. It is almost 
 impossible to appreciate the enormous diffi- 
 culties that have been overcome." 
 
 Edison had determined not to make an acid 
 battery, and so, in the very beginning he was 
 literally plunged in the dark and absolutely 
 without guide posts of any kind. What alka- 
 line should be used as an electrolyte, and what 
 should be the character of the active agents 
 used? He had no idea what materials to com- 
 bine, and at least ten thousand trials were 
 made without securing even a hint. Any one 
 but an Edison would have given up in 
 despair. To the Wizard, however, the failure 
 of one experiment simply meant something 
 else that he had eliminated, and he was that 
 much nearer his goal. 
 
 Seeing presently that he was apt to run the 
 whole gamut of chemical elements, he estab- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 135 
 
 lished a plant at Silver Lake, New Jersey, and 
 settled down to a day and night contest. And 
 here, in time, it was found that theoretically 
 iron and nickel possessed the desired proper- 
 ties; but how to get these elements into a 
 proper condition of activity for practical stor- 
 age battery purposes was a problem which took 
 countless experiments — years indeed of hopes 
 and fears, of many disappointments, and of 
 final successful realization. At last came the 
 Edison cell, containing a solution of potash, in 
 which were immersed steel plates containing 
 oxide of iron and oxide of nickel. 
 
 In connection with the storage battery, as 
 with other of his inventions, no end of ma- 
 chines and processes had to be designed and 
 built for the quick and easy manufacture and 
 assembly of the various parts, to say nothing 
 of all manner of rigid tests that the Wizard 
 designed to bring the work up to the high 
 degree of perfection which he had set as the 
 model of efficiency. And throughout it all he 
 never once lost hope nor patience, sure at all 
 times that victory was just around the corner, 
 and that he had only to persevere to win the 
 ultimate goal. 
 
136 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 Work upon this invention had to be set aside 
 many times. Edison always had countless 
 irons in the fire, and those were especially busy 
 years. One thing, at first, kept continually 
 bobbing up — the cement problem. Just as he 
 got deeply on the trail of the possibilities of 
 iron and nickel, he was advised that everything 
 was now ready for the engineers to lay out the 
 plans for the cement works. 
 
 "Humph!" said Edison, "I intend to do 
 that myself," and set busily to work with pen 
 and paper. 
 
 All day and all night and sometime into the 
 afternoon of the next day, he planned and 
 blocked, until at length there was before him 
 the full specifications for the plant, which was 
 subsequently built on just those lines. More- 
 over, it is said that if to-day it were necessary 
 to rebuild these immense works, no vital 
 change would be necessary. Taken altogether 
 this was an engineering feat which grows mar- 
 velous indeed, when we remember that Mr. 
 Edison was a novice at the business. None 
 else but the Wizard could in twenty-four 
 hours' planning have provided without an 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 137 
 
 error or oversight of any sort for that half- 
 mile series of buildings and machinery ar- 
 rangements, including not only the crushing, 
 mixing, weighing, grinding, drying, screening, 
 sizing, burning, packing and storing of the 
 finished product, but for an extensive system 
 of smaller details : such as a subway extending 
 from one end of the plant to the other for 
 carrying the steam, water and air pipes and 
 the electrical conductors; a system of needle 
 valves and clever gravity and filter contriv- 
 ances by which two men can manage the auto- 
 matic oiling of the tens of thousands of bear- 
 ings throughout the plant; and another 
 marvelous arrangement for accurately weigh- 
 ing out the proportions of cement-rock and 
 limestone. The latter, Edison figured, was 
 an item altogether too important to be left 
 to human agency, so thoroughly and so accu- 
 rately must it be done. No guesswork or hap- 
 hazardness could possibly be permitted, if uni- 
 form results were to prevail. 
 
 "Suppose," said he, "that the man at the 
 scales should get to thinking of the other fel- 
 low's best girl. Fifty or a hundred pounds 
 
138 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 of rock, more or less, wouldn't make much 
 difference to him, but it would play havoc with 
 the uniformity of the product." 
 
 So he devised a hopper-fed scale which is 
 set at certain figures, so that, the moment the 
 scale-beam tips, an electrical connection auto- 
 matically shuts off the stream of rock and 
 limestone, coming each in a certain quantity 
 from its own bin, and no more can be run until 
 the load is moved. 
 
 Cement-rock and limestone are crushed and 
 mixed together, then pulverized to the last de- 
 gree and burned in a kiln to form cement. It 
 comes out in the shape of balls or "clinkers," 
 about the size of lump sugar, which must again 
 be ground and screened to the finest possible 
 degree before the finished cement is ready to 
 be bagged and barreled by machinery for the 
 market. By the early methods, kilns were in- 
 variably built with a capacity for turning out 
 about two hundred barrels of clinkers every 
 twenty-four hours. This seemed too slow. 
 Edison decided to build kilns with a capacity 
 of one thousand barrels every twenty-four 
 hours — a determination that old cement 
 makers considered a colossal bluff. How 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 139 
 
 could he — a man who never in his life had made 
 a single barrel of cement — jump into the very 
 heart of things and increase the production 
 four hundred per cent? He would fall down 
 hard, that was all! 
 
 "Humph!" said Edison. And he went 
 ahead, building huge cylindrical shells or 
 kilns, one hundred and fifty feet long, of cast 
 iron lined with fire-brick. These, however, 
 when put into service, fell terribly short of 
 the mark set, though they doubled the number 
 of barrels the old style kilns were turning out 
 in the same length of time. But in the end the 
 Wizard triumphed ; indeed he went one better, 
 succeeding in turning out eleven hundred bar- 
 rels instead of one thousand as he had first 
 sought to do. 
 
 This chapter grows long, but we should fail 
 to show the wide scope of Edison's genius if 
 we closed the list of interesting inventions 
 without mention of his typewriters, mimeo- 
 graphs, electric pens, addressing machines, 
 compressed-air apparatus, methods of pre- 
 serving fruit, wire-drawing, circuit directors, 
 and telegraph signaling apparatus, among the 
 
140 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 more than thousand inventions and patents 
 which are set down officially to his credit. 
 
 In this connection it is interesting to note 
 Edison's term, "invention." Some things that 
 are commonly covered by this word are, he 
 tells us, mere "discoveries" or "scratches" — 
 something that might have been revealed to 
 anybody. The phonograph was a "scratch," 
 he avers; so, too, was the motograph or chalk 
 telephone receiver. But how many men, think 
 you, would have had the inventive genius to 
 have gone on and developed the "scratch"? 
 The "scratches" in Edison's list were few. 
 For the most part, his inventions were born 
 of hard thinking, close application, and a per- 
 sistence that was not satisfied until a tri- 
 umphant goal was reached. 
 
 "Edison," said one of his admirers once 
 upon a time, "could unerringly pick out the 
 most perfect pebble on the beach." 
 
 And so he could! But it would not have 
 been an instantaneous Wizard-like process. 
 He would have made a careful, painstaking 
 sorting of the pebbles one by one. It was in 
 this manner that most of his inventions were 
 developed. Any door that was double-locked 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 141 
 
 or barred with a "no admittance" tag had the 
 strongest possible attraction for him. There 
 was no such word as "fail" in his dictionary. 
 
 Two inventions of Edison's, the tasimeter 
 and the odoroscope have been invaluable in 
 the world of astronomy and hydrography. 
 The former has already been mentioned as of 
 value in measuring the distance of the plane- 
 tary bodies. It is also of extreme service in 
 determining heat rays. The odoroscope is 
 likewise particularly sensitive to heat and to 
 moisture. It is useful in determining the pres- 
 sure of gases and vapor, and its principles 
 are active in the making of barometers, hy- 
 drometers and such instruments. Edison has 
 also invaded the world of medicine, having 
 produced in his laboratory, primarily for the 
 relief of a friend suffering from gout, a rem- 
 edy that is now universally used in the treat- 
 ment of that disease, and which came into 
 being because the Wizard doubted the state- 
 ment that uric acid was insoluble. It was a 
 closed door that must be unbarred. 
 
 Mention has been made elsewhere of the 
 "Notion Books" which went hand in hand with 
 all of his inventions. These volumes — plain 
 
142 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 ordinary blank books originally — numbering 
 upwards of one thousand, are kept on the open 
 shelves of his library, and are free to the in- 
 spection of all those who are permitted the 
 intimacy of the house. Here in these pages in 
 his own handwriting, are to be found the in- 
 ventor's ideas, sketches, and memoranda, not 
 only on the inventions which have been made 
 patent to the world, but on countless other 
 lines that he touched upon and jotted down to 
 be taken up at a later day — material enough, 
 it is said, to fill several life-times — and here, 
 better than elsewhere, can be seen the great 
 range and activities of the Wizard's mind, 
 which was, as one of his co-workers pointed 
 out, a thing that defied cold print, and that, 
 indeed, could scarcely be comprehended, even 
 by those who were in daily association with 
 him. 
 
 Always before begimiing to work on any 
 subject, Edison studied all that was to be 
 known about it. Then, more likely than not, 
 he started just at the point where authorities 
 agreed that no entrance could be made. In 
 consequence, he reaped a reward where others 
 failed. 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 143 
 
 "Edison could find more ways of doing a 
 thing than any man I ever knew," said one of 
 his staff. And he cited an instance which oc- 
 curred during the ore-works period. One of 
 the engineers had come to Edison with a draw- 
 ing concerning the installation of a certain 
 piece of machinery. 
 
 "It is surely awkward enough," observed 
 the chief, at the first glance. 
 
 "I know it," the engineer replied; "but 
 there is absolutely no other way for it." 
 
 "Humph," grunted the Wizard, "do you 
 mean to tell me the thing can be done in no 
 other way?" 
 
 "I certainly do," returned the man. 
 
 Edison said no more, but the next day he 
 silently laid a sheet of paper on the engineer's 
 desk, showing forty-eight different ways to 
 solve the problem ! 
 
 Naturally, the wide scope of the inventor's 
 genius furnished unblushing space-writers 
 with a vast amount of copy from time to time. 
 For instance, there was the tale of his attempt 
 to illuminate the heavens, which came out 
 shortly after his exhibition of the electric 
 
1U FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 lamps at Menlo Park. It was averred that 
 what people thought was the evening star was 
 none other than an electric lamp Edison had 
 sent up in an invisible balloon! 
 
 Another equally absurd, but just as widely 
 believed report, was to the effect that the Wiz- 
 ard had practically completed a device for 
 melting snow as fast as it fell. "This," said 
 ihe versatile liar, "will make many a city boy, 
 who has to shovel snow from the sidewalk, very 
 happy, but it will at the same time rob many 
 a poor man of a meal that he would otherwise 
 get for doing that work. The invention will 
 have its greatest utility in clearing transcon- 
 tinental railway tracks." 
 
 Another "news" item, more ludicrous per- 
 haps than either of these just mentioned, was 
 a fictitious report, by one of the disgruntled 
 reporters whose card under the door was dis- 
 regarded, to the effect that Edison had just 
 invented an extremely practical shirt, which 
 was shortly to be placed on the market. This 
 remarkable garment had a bosom composed 
 of 365 shining layers, and was designed to last 
 a year — all that was necessary for the wearer 
 to present an immaculate front each morning, 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 145 
 
 being just to strip off the soiled top layer. 
 Edison himself, it was claimed, had worn one 
 of these shirts many months, and considered 
 it one of the most useful of his many inven- 
 tions. That there were men to whom such a 
 shirt would appeal was soon proved by the 
 letters, enclosing checks for a supply, that 
 came pouring in from all quarters of the globe, 
 until the office was fairly swamped, and the 
 inventor became so wroth that he declared if 
 he had hold of the author of the much-copied 
 skit, he "wouldn't need a shirt or anything 
 else on his back for some time." 
 
 X 
 
X 
 
 EDISON AND HIS WORKMEN 
 
 Someone has said that there is only one 
 thing Edison could not do: he could not stop 
 work. He himself put it naively, "I shouldn't 
 care to loaf!" Year in, year out, time was un- 
 noted, sleep forgotten, food untouched, and 
 rest practically unknown, while he pursued 
 some elusive problem. And so miraculous was 
 his resistance that he looked twenty years 
 younger than his age, at seventy-five, and 
 could still work twenty-four hours at a 
 stretch if need be, without feeling the strain. 
 Thus he perhaps failed in being able to under- 
 stand any lack of endurance in others. 
 
 "I have often felt," says Mr. Upton, Edi- 
 son's mathematician in the memorable work 
 at Menlo Park, "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 
 
 146 
 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 147 
 
 as he wished, and go to sleep the instant he 
 closed his eyes. . . . He always kept his mind 
 direct and simple, going straight to the root 
 of troubles." 
 
 And well might Upton add this last remark : 
 for the Wizard was prone to check up the 
 work he required of his mathematician in a 
 very practical manner. Here is a case in 
 point. One day Edison appeared at Upton's 
 office with a pear-shaped bulb in hand — the 
 forerunner of the electric light glob 
 
 "Please calculate the cubic contents of this 
 thing in centimeters," said he. 
 
 It was an abstruse problem, but Upton was 
 as much a genius at figures as his employer 
 was at invention. The more difficult a solu- 
 tion, the better he enjoyed it. He had taken 
 a degree at Princeton and finished in Germany 
 under Helmholtz, the renowned juggler of in- 
 tegral and differential equations. So he went 
 to work with skilful ease, drawing out the 
 shape of the bulb on paper and getting an 
 equation of its fines. Before he had half fin- 
 ished, however, Edison was back for the an- 
 swer. 
 
 "Huh!" said he, when he had taken note of 
 
148 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 the elaborate proceedings, "I would simply 
 take that bulb and fill it with mercury. Then 
 weigh it, and from the weight of the mercury 
 and its specific gravity, I'd get it in five min- 
 utes." 
 
 "A pretty good guesser," Edison styled 
 himself, by way of accounting for his rare abil- 
 ity of arriving instantaneously at correct solu- 
 tions, and he has had many a long and vic- 
 torious wrangle with those who sought to pit 
 their mathematical deductions against his com- 
 mon sense. "The greatest bugbear I had to 
 contend with in building the Central Electric 
 Light Station," he tells us, "were the mathe- 
 maticians. My first dynamos were all built 
 on guesswork. And they came pretty gen- 
 erally up to the required power !" 
 
 Guessing and rule o' thumb methods, how- 
 ever, are fit procedures only for a Wizard. 
 And the same held true of Edison's whole 
 method of work. He was more likely to be 
 found hard at it in his laboratory at midnight 
 than at midday. The hours of the day and the 
 days of the week did not enter into his sched- 
 ule. His heaviest work in the way of inven- 
 tions was done at night. It was then that the 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 149 
 
 best ideas came to him. Nor was this because 
 of the quiet of the surroundings — there was no 
 such thing as quiet around his laboratory. Al- 
 ways he maintained day and night shifts, and 
 the place resounded with ceaseless bustle and 
 activity at all hours. From much of the hub- 
 bub, however. Edison's deafness mercifully 
 freed him, and he further possessed the rare 
 and wonderful gift of absolute concentration. 
 He could settle upon some one point and re- 
 main fixed, though the house were to tumble 
 in ruins about him. 
 
 This same habit of concentration, coupled 
 with an extremely active "forgetting," often 
 got the Wizard into rather laughable compli- 
 cations. The story is told that once upon a 
 time the inventor went down to the town hall 
 to pay his taxes, and finding himself one of a 
 long line of strangers, he soon fell into a brown 
 study over a certain problem which was puz- 
 zling him. Mechanically stepping up as the 
 one in front moved on, he presently found 
 himself in front of the official, who asked his 
 name; and for the life of him Edison could 
 not tell! Whether he would have recollected 
 is not known, for as he stood, red and con- 
 
150 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 fused, a gentleman stepped up and held out 
 his hand, "Tom Edison, how are you?" he 
 cried, and the difficulty was over. 
 
 On another occasion, Mr. Bachelor took ad- 
 vantage of this combination to work a fine 
 practical joke on his employer. The Wizard 
 had been working for several hours on a cer- 
 tain problem, and having reached the limit of 
 endurance had stretched out on a table, with 
 two books for a pillow, and gone instantly to 
 sleep, first giving orders to be wakened at nine 
 o'clock with breakfast on hand. Mr. Bach- 
 elor, coming into the room shortly before that 
 hour to eat a breakfast which he himself had 
 ordered, smiled to himself over the remnants 
 of the meal and rose to immediate action when 
 Edison's basket appeared. Carefully bundling 
 it and his own dishes out of sight, he turned 
 on the "calmer." This was an instrument 
 usually used to stop the collapsed fellow- 
 worker from snoring. It consisted of a broad 
 ratchet-wheel, with a crank, into the teeth of 
 which played an elastic slab of wood. Turned 
 with a quick motion, the racket it produced 
 was worse than a cyclone. Not even Mr. Edi- 
 son's deafness was proof against it. Rising 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 151 
 
 with the perfect equanimity that is always his, 
 he turned toward the impromptu breakfast 
 table, and was told that his meal would be 
 forthcoming shortly. Being still very sleepy, 
 the Wizard promptly dozed off while he sat 
 waiting. Quietly Mr. Bachelor placed the 
 remnants of his own breakfast before the Wiz- 
 ard, and then made a noise that roused him. 
 Seeing the empty dishes, Mr. Edison straight- 
 ened up, regarded them absently, and taking 
 out his after breakfast cigar sat down to enjoy 
 his usual smoke, entirely oblivious of the fact 
 that he had not broken fast at all. 
 
 Apropos of Edison's evenness of temper, 
 one of his biographers states that "No man 
 in the laboratory has ever seen Edison 'let 
 himself go' ; and though his eyes may take on 
 the sternness of a Napoleon, his anger never 
 expresses itself outwardly." He had, more- 
 over, a considerable executive ability, and a re- 
 markable faculty for handling abrupt situa- 
 tions. In the old days of the Pearl Street 
 power house, the experts who had been trained 
 to seal the filaments into the globes formed a 
 union, and knowing that it was impossible to 
 manufacture lamps without them, took on all 
 
152 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 sorts of airs. The manager found it almost 
 impossible to control them, and he went to 
 Edison saying that something had to be done. 
 "Rest easy," said the chief, "I've seen this com- 
 ing." And the manager returned content. 
 Presently, because he refused to tolerate and 
 reinstate a smart- Aleck whom he had fired, 
 the union notified Edison that they were going 
 to quit. "Very well," said Edison, calmly, 
 "that will be all right!" And the nonplussed 
 men, taken at their word, could do no less 
 than make good on it. Then the Wizard 
 quietly brought down from the loft some ma- 
 chines which he had invented to take their 
 places, and the discomfited union stayed out 
 forever ! 
 
 Illustrative further of Edison's calm tem- 
 perament and unfailing patience, and the fact 
 that it was impossible to ruffle him, the follow- 
 ing tale has been many times repeated. For 
 days an experiment had been going on which 
 required the use of dozens of large tumblers. 
 In one experiment alone over four hundred 
 of these had been destroyed, and the experi- 
 ment itself had proven a complete failure. 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 153 
 
 "Well, Mr. Edison," said his tired assistant, 
 hoping against hope that this would be the 
 end, "what shall we do next?" 
 
 "Well," returned Mr. Edison, disturbed in 
 his thoughts for the moment, and looking re- 
 flectively at the mountain of broken glass, "I 
 guess the next thing will be to get some more 
 tumblers I" 
 
 In one of the main rooms in the laboratory 
 at Orange is the stockroom, where everything 
 that could possibly be used in scientific experi- 
 ments may be found, and some of it in quanti- 
 ties that will last for years. It is an aston- 
 ishing place, long and narrow and quite high, 
 with thousands and thousands of small draw- 
 ers reaching from the floor to the roof. And 
 judging from the labels on these drawers 
 what could even a wizard hope to do with such 
 an odd assortment? Needles, shells, maca- 
 roni, teeth, bones, hoofs, resin, glass, feathers, 
 peacock's tails, gums, every kind of rope, wire, 
 twine, and cord, varnish and oils of all sorts, 
 skins, human and animal hair, ten thousand 
 or more chemicals, and in short, almost every 
 known thing under the sun. Time was when 
 
154 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 new employees were attracted to the standing 
 offer of a prize for the mention of any sub- 
 stance used in science that was not among 
 those present. Now only the merest green- 
 horn thinks he can add to the list ! 
 
 One of the first essentials which Edison re- 
 quired in a workman was that he be able "to 
 keep his tongue between his teeth." Always 
 there are secrets in the laboratory that must 
 be guarded, and did his workmen gossip about 
 affairs outside, the trend of his investigations 
 would soon be known, and no end of harm be 
 worked thereby. There was one room, Edi- 
 son's sanctum, which no one might enter 
 without permission, and thereby hangs an- 
 other tale. 
 
 One day a new boy was hired to guard this 
 door. He was taken in hand by one of "the 
 boys" and instructed very seriously as to the 
 nature of his duties. He was a zealous lad, 
 who had been most carefully chosen, and he 
 took up his work full to the brim of its impor- 
 tance. Shortly after he had mounted on duty, 
 along came a shabbily-dressed man in a yellow 
 duster, who essayed to brush past him with 
 only a cheery "Hello!" 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 155 
 
 Instantly the boy had the stranger by the 
 arm: "You can't go in there," he said posi- 
 tively. 
 
 "Why not?" asked the man, regarding him 
 keenly. 
 
 "Because that's Mr. Edison's room — the 
 place where he does his most special thinkin' 
 and inventin'. No one can go in without a 
 written permission, else he sends out for 'em." 
 
 "I see," said the man. He turned quickly 
 away, and presently came back with the man 
 who had trained the boy. 
 
 "Bill," said that worthy hurriedly, himself 
 no little excited and confused, "what is the 
 matter with you? This man you have kept 
 out is Mr. Edison! I'm surprised " 
 
 But he got no further. The chief stopped 
 him instantly. "I won't have the boy scolded 
 for doing exactly what you told him to do," 
 he said laughingly. "He's a boy after my 
 own heart, and I'm sure he is going to be just 
 the fellow we want here." 
 
 Often people of note and friends of Edi- 
 son's of life-long standing felt themselves 
 aggrieved at the iron-clad rule of No Disturb- 
 ance when he had a knotty problem on hand. 
 
156 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 Not one of his employees, however, dared dis- 
 regard this placard, and the keeper of the door 
 was often put to his wits' end of diplomacy. 
 One day a very pompous gentleman chose to 
 be particularly irate at what he regarded as 
 the office boy's over-caution. 
 
 "Look here," he said, severely, "Tom Edi- 
 son and I were pals, years ago. I know he 
 will be glad to see me. I should say so ! Let 
 me pass, boy. I'll vouch for you, and no 
 trouble will result. There isn't any one 
 around here knows Edison as well as I do." 
 
 "I don't know about that," returned the lad 
 shrewdly. "Mrs. Edison was here this morn- 
 ing, and after waiting for two hours had to 
 go away without seeing him. Orders is or- 
 ders. You'll have to wait!" 
 
 One thing Edison would not tolerate among 
 his employees was a dreamer. Dreams are 
 impractical things, and seldom the output of 
 the man who hustles. Neither is a genius a 
 requisite. According to the Wizard's way of 
 thinking, there is more in an ounce of perse- 
 verance than in a pound of genius. "Genius," 
 says the proverb, "is an infinite capacity for 
 taking pains." Edison had a much better defi- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 157 
 
 nition. "Genius," said he, "is two per cent 
 inspiration, and ninety-eight per cent per- 
 spiration." And all those who have gone any 
 distance up the ladder of fame and fortune 
 agree with him. 
 
 "Some inventors are horn," said Edison, 
 "but a lot more of them are made." And as 
 proof of this he pointed with pride to the long 
 list of Edison employees who have themselves 
 become inventors of renown. 
 
 Recently the world was considerably stirred 
 over the publication of a list of examination 
 questions which Edison had submitted to a 
 host of applicants. Only thirty of the five 
 hundred passed through the ordeal with colors 
 flying, and there was a general f eeling among 
 those who failed — college graduates, most of 
 them — that the test had not been fair. For 
 the Wizard was not content with sticking to 
 general text-books and the subject in hand: 
 "He roamed up and down the ages, invaded 
 a dozen arts and sciences and ranged the heav- 
 ens from the sun to Betelgeuse. There was 
 no complaint because he asked, Who was 
 Leonidas ? But when he sought to fathom the 
 mysteries of the Chinese windlass, and de- 
 
158 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 manded to be told the kind of wood kerosene 
 barrels are made of, his college critics felt 
 that he was not playing the game according 
 to their rules. There was no harm in asking, 
 Who was Plutarch? But to make the same 
 inquiry in regard to the late Mr. Bessemer 
 was a very different matter." 
 
 And what was the inventor's object? Sim- 
 ply to test, not only what the young men had 
 learned in school, but what they had learned 
 out of it. Were they satisfied entirely with 
 their college degree, or did they keep up a 
 course of outside reading, covering the more 
 recent developments of science, invention and 
 the arts? Progress was ever Mr. Edison's 
 watchword. Broad as the plains in his own 
 thought and interests, and quick to branch out 
 into new trails, no one knew better than he 
 that the man who is not ever studying and 
 reading has lost something invaluable — the 
 first sharp craving to learn. Such a man has 
 no future : "A vital something in him has died, 
 and his intellectual finish is not far off." 
 
 Always Edison exhibited plain common- 
 sense and originality in testing men. When 
 J. H. Vail, of the old trusted Menlo Park 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 159 
 
 staff, first appeared before Edison, he had the 
 nerve to apply for the job of overseer in the 
 dynamo-room. The chief looked him over 
 quizzically and then with a curious little glint 
 in his eye, led him to a pile of junk heaped in 
 a corner. 
 
 "Put that together," he said, "and let me 
 know when it is running." 
 
 "All right, sir," said the would-be overseer 
 promptly, and he hung up his coat and went 
 to work. "I didn't have a shadow of an idea 
 what I was up against," he said later. "But 
 I got a liberal education finding out. The 
 mess proved to be a dynamo. And when I 
 had it together and in fine running order I 
 got the job." 
 
 Edison was often criticized as tyrannical to 
 a degree. He was, indeed, painstakingly ex- 
 acting. His business required every expendi- 
 ture of patience and care. With the man who 
 exercised thought and showed a desire to do 
 i well, he had unlimited patience. It was to 
 the careless, indifferent, and lazy individual 
 that he was a terror for the short time they 
 were permitted to stay with him. 
 
160 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 "Why did you let so and so go?" he was 
 once asked. 
 
 "Oh," replied the Wizard, soberly enough, 
 "he was so slow that it would take him half an 
 hour to get out of the field of a microscope L" 
 
XI 
 
 EDISON AND THE PUBLIC 
 
 "A thoroughly comfortable and undeniably 
 human man," — this was the characterization 
 long ago applied to Edison, and no coinage 
 of words could suit him more admirably. Says 
 one of his biographers, "Those portraits, so 
 f amiliar to all, showing the inventor with his 
 head resting upon his hand, and a solemn, 
 dreamy look in his eyes, as he listens to the 
 phonograph, are all wrong. Edison is the 
 exact reverse of a dreamer, and always has 
 been — he never gives himself time to dream, 
 and his chief characteristics through life have 
 been marvelous alertness, indomitable deter- 
 mination, and mercurial energy. His eyes are 
 more often laughing with suppressed humor 
 than solemn with thought. When he was a 
 young man, and no one knew him, he was 
 shy in disposition and seldom spoke of him- 
 self or his doings. When he became famous, 
 
 161 
 
162 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 he did not 'grow out of proportion to him- 
 self,' but was the same simple, unaffected 
 human being that he had always been. He 
 has about as much conceit and self-esteem as 
 there is air in one of his own electric globes, 
 and the thing he fears most in life is a 'swelled 
 head.'" 
 
 He was always glad to talk about his inven- 
 tions, but let the conversation sheer to him- 
 self rather than to his work and he shut up 
 like a clam, becoming shy and diffident to a 
 degree. Apropos of this, here is a bit of con- 
 versation that once followed an allusion to 
 Edison's genius, in his presence. 
 
 "Stuff!" said he emphatically. "Genius is 
 simply hard work, stick-to-it-iveness, and com- 
 mon sense." 
 
 "True enough," agreed the one corrected, 
 E. H. Johnson, Edison's manager at that 
 time; "but you must admit there is something 
 more. Batch here (Mr. Bachelor) and I both 
 have those qualifications. But, though we 
 knew quite a lot about telephones, and had 
 worked hard on 'em, we couldn't invent the 
 chalk-receiver, as you did, when our English 
 agent cabled for a non-infringement on Gra- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 163 
 
 ham's patent. Then, again, what do you call 
 the subdivision of the electric light?" 
 
 "Electric current," substituted Edison. 
 
 "To be sure," agreed Johnson quickly. 
 "And who made that distinction? The scien- 
 tific world had been struggling with subdi- 
 vision for years, using what all considered 
 common-sense. And what was the result? 
 They said the thing could not be done ! Then 
 you come along, look the ground over, and 
 start off in exactly the opposite direction. 
 Subsequently this proves the right way to turn 
 the trick. It seems to me that the procedure 
 comes pretty close to Webster's definition of 
 genius." 
 
 "Huh!" muttered the Wizard, and at once 
 changed the conversation. 
 
 Perhaps no man in all the world made a 
 poorer "lion," and yet few have had more illus- 
 trious and valuable medals and decorations 
 showered upon them. Some years ago a com- 
 mittee asked the privilege of showing this col- 
 lection at a certain function. "Why-ee," said 
 Edison, "I have no objection — none at all, 
 provided you think folks would find the gew- 
 gaws interesting, which I very much doubt." 
 
164 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 The committee were sure of this point, how- 
 ever, and the case containing the prizes was 
 brought. Some of these not being sufficiently 
 explanatory, the Wizard was asked to tell with 
 what invention they were connected, and, 
 though he tried to be obliging, it was soon 
 apparent that he had forgotten all about it! 
 For the life of him he couldn't tell the circum- 
 stances under which he had received at least 
 half of the honors, and it was then that Mrs. 
 Edison decided to take a hand. She appreci- 
 ated and valued the tokens, if her husband did 
 not ; and she quietly appropriated the case and 
 has since constituted herself its chief custo- 
 dian. No doubt but for her watchful care 
 most of the medals and decorations would have 
 been lost or stolen long ago. 
 
 In keeping with his objection to being lion- 
 ized, Edison abhorred banquets and public 
 dinners, and for the same reason he was chary 
 about taking foreign tours, observing that he 
 could not "stand all the kindnesses which are 
 showered upon him!" He, however, partici- 
 pated in a few events especially unique. One 
 of the most remarkable of these being given 
 by the American Institute of Electrical Engi- 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 165 
 
 neers, on the occasion of Edison's fifty-sev- 
 enth birthday and the twenty-fifth anniversary 
 of the incandescent electric-light, at which 
 time was founded the "Edison medal." Seven 
 hundred distinguished guests faced the Wiz- 
 ard as he sat, much to his embarrassment, in 
 front of a grand display of flags, lighted by 
 a brilliant pyramid of fifty-seven electric 
 bulbs. Above his head was a little painting of 
 his birthplace at Milan, Ohio, decorated with 
 the shield of the "Buckeye state," and the 
 escutcheons of New Jersey and New York. 
 Miniature models of his various inventions, 
 made of sugar, stood here and there about the 
 table; the menus were elaborate works of art, 
 stamped with a bronzed bust of the inventor 
 and bearing his autograph ; while the ices were 
 frozen in the shape of dainty electric bulbs 
 and borne in models of motors, dynamos, 
 switchboards, phonographs, and what not, 
 typical of the Wizard's marvelous array of 
 inventions. Thousands of electric bulbs 
 strung along the galleries, and festooned 
 about the walls lent a wondrous brilliance to 
 the scene. At the inventor's right hand was 
 the original duplex sender, the toastmaster, at 
 
166 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 the receiving end, having one of the early 
 quadruplex devices, and between the two went 
 the flashes of welcome and Edison's reply. A 
 special feature of the evening was the reading 
 of many fine messages of congratulation and 
 best wishes, received not only from various dis- 
 tinguished individuals in America, but from 
 England and the continent, and to which the 
 toastmaster added the following especially 
 well-chosen eulogy: 
 
 "As I am about to propose the health of 
 our guest, let me say there should be encour- 
 agement in the founding of this medal to-night 
 for every struggling, ambitious youth in Amer- 
 ica. Let our sons recall and applaud the 
 cheery little newsboy at Detroit ; the half-shod, 
 half -frozen operator seeking bravely a job 
 along the icy pikes of the Central States; the 
 embryonic inventor in New York grub-staked 
 by a famous Wall Street man for his first 
 stock-ticker; the deaf investigator at Menlo 
 Park who wreaked novel retaliation on his af- 
 fliction by preserving human speech forever 
 with his phonograph; the prolific patentee who 
 kept the pathway to the Patent Office hot with 
 his footsteps for nearly forty years ; the genius, 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 167 
 
 our comrade, who took this little crystal bulb 
 in his Promethean hand, and with it helped 
 to give the world a glorious new light which 
 never was before on land or sea — Thomas 
 Alva Edison." 
 
 Another banquet which perhaps exceeded 
 the one just mentioned in elaborateness was 
 that styled a "Magnetic Dinner," and given in 
 Edison's honor, at the Hotel Astor, April 15, 
 1905. Here the president of the club, acting 
 as toastmaster, made an exceedingly unique 
 and interesting speech, in which the guests and 
 certain Edisonian inventions helped out in a 
 pre-arranged tableaux, highly pleasing to the 
 inventor when he could forget his own modest 
 blushes. 
 
 The entertainment began when Colonel 
 Chandler named the quadruplex transmitter. 
 At once, to Edison's amazement, a concealed 
 instrument began to "dot" and "dash" in a 
 marvelously rapid style, while the three hun- 
 dred guests sang: 
 
 "When they tell the stories now of the way they used 
 to send, 
 And the record-breaking work they used to do ; 
 
168 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 And the way, every day, they would roast the other 
 end, 
 We are sorry that those happy days are 
 through." 
 
 It was the old air of "My Grandfather's 
 Clock," a favorite with Edison, and his ex- 
 pressive face fairly beamed with delight, as 
 he added his own voice in a spontaneous hum 
 to the melody. At the next signal came a 
 whirring ring of 'phone bells and "Helios," 
 both gruff and silvery, while once again the 
 whole company broke into song. And so it 
 ran down the pathway of the Wizard's inven- 
 tions, until finally the incandescent lamp was 
 reached, and then suddenly every light in the 
 room went out, save the wax candles, which 
 had hitherto stood almost unnoted, and once 
 more the voices of the company rose : 
 
 "It was just like this in the olden days, 
 Which have passed beyond recall; 
 In the rare old, fair old golden days 
 It was just like this, that's all." 
 
 Abroad, kings, noted scientists, distin- 
 guished men of all ranks have united to do 
 Edison honor, and while he appreciated their 
 efforts, it is certain that he would have been 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 169 
 
 far better pleased with less pomp and cere- 
 mony. Returning from one of these tours, he 
 is thus credited with describing his days in 
 Paris : 
 
 "Dinners, dinners, dinners, all the time! 
 But in spite of them all, they did not get me 
 to speak. Once I got Chauncey Depew to 
 make a speech for me, and I got Reid, our 
 Minister there, to make three or four. I could 
 never get used to so many dinners. At noon 
 I would sit down to what they called dejeuner. 
 That would last until nearly three o'clock, and 
 a few hours later would come a big dinner. It 
 was terrible. I looked down from the Eiffel 
 Tower (where he himself was the guest of 
 honor) on the biggest dinner I ever saw, given 
 by the Municipality of Paris. I saw 8900 peo- 
 ple eating at one time. Now I feel I must 
 starve for a few months in order to get straight 
 again after all those dinners. I wonder they 
 didn't kill me." 
 
 Simple food, moderately eaten, was ever his 
 rule, and he kept an eye on the scales. If he 
 found himself losing or gaming in flesh, he 
 promptly increased or decreased the food sup- 
 ply. Thus for nearly a quarter of a century, 
 
170 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 his weight stood approximately at 175 
 pounds, and the same tailor made his modest 
 suits without change from the measurements 
 furnished him years before. Edison cared little 
 for meat, but was "long" on fruit and pie. He 
 regarded as a necessity his after meals' cup of 
 coffee and a good cigar — "a good working 
 stimulant," he called them. As for cigarettes, 
 "they are deadly," said he. "It is not the to- 
 bacco, it is the acrolein produced by the burn- 
 ing paper that does the harm. We sometimes 
 develop acrolein in the laboratory in our ex- 
 periments with glycerine. I can hardly exag- 
 gerate its dangerous nature." 
 
 The Wizard was as chary of sleep as of 
 food. Six hours out the twenty-four was 
 enough. How could he stand it? Here is his 
 own answer: "Easily enough, because I am 
 vitally interested in what I do. I don't live 
 in the past." (A happy way of saying that 
 he did not worry.) "I am living for to-day 
 and to-morrow. I am interested in every de- 
 partment of science, art and manufacture. I 
 read all the time on astronomy, chemistry, 
 biology, physics, music, metaphysics, mechan- 
 ics, and other branches, in fact, all things that 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 171 
 
 are making for progress in the world. I get 
 all the proceedings of the scientific societies, 
 the principal scientific and trade journals, and 
 read them. I also read some theatrical and 
 sporting papers and a lot of similar publica- 
 tions, for I like to know what is going on. In 
 this way I keep up to date, and live in a great, 
 moving world of my own, and, what's more, 
 I enjoy every minute of it." 
 
 And here, in these few brief sentences, is 
 contained the reason why, when it was seen 
 that our country would be drawn into the 
 World War, Secretary Daniels turned to an 
 old white-haired man out in Orange, New 
 Jersey, — to Thomas A. Edison. And this is 
 why that to this man, "seventy years young," 
 must be credited perhaps the biggest "bit" 
 done by any one man for the service of his 
 country throughout the whole period of the 
 war — and that freely, gladly, without thought 
 of any further fame or reward. Putting aside 
 his own business affairs and giving up his be- 
 loved experiments and investigations, the Wiz- 
 ard turned single-heartedly to the call, accept- 
 ing the office of president of the Naval Con- 
 sulting Board, with the provision that he be 
 
172 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 intrusted with scientific investigation only. 
 Forty inventions, in the year and a half of 
 war, is the almost incredible total that he 
 and his assistants worked out for the solution 
 of the mechanical problems at sea. The record 
 of it all would make an interesting book in 
 itself. Again Edison had fared forth into 
 practically an unknown field: he was essen- 
 tially a landsman ; all his work so far had been 
 for the furtherance of progress on shore. But 
 with his usual self-confidence he did not for a 
 moment entertain any doubts of his ability in 
 this new field. His triumphs, accomplished at 
 an age when most men have retired to the 
 chimney-corner, are more wonderful than if 
 he had indeed, as some credulous persons ex- 
 pected, invented a marvelous electrical ma- 
 chine to annihilate at one stroke the armies of 
 our enemies. It is the record of a man of vigor 
 and activity, used to hard work and hard 
 thinking, and to depending with faith and 
 sureness on his own resourcefulness, — a man 
 who although the total of his gifts to the world 
 was already very great, still found his keenest 
 pleasure in meeting the vital problems of his 
 fellowmen. 
 
XII 
 
 EDISON IN HIS HOME 
 
 Surprising as it may seem, Edison was a 
 particularly domestic man. He retired to his 
 own home as to a castle when the hours at the 
 laboratory were over. It required consider- 
 able diplomacy to lure him forth again for the 
 evening, and no matter how important the en- 
 gagement he positively refused to don a dress 
 suit. As his telegrapher friends were once 
 fond of saying, Edison, whatever else he might 
 be, was no "dude"; clothes simply failed to 
 interest him, and he was democratic enough to 
 follow his own tastes. In deference to his 
 wife and family, he finally laid aside the old 
 linen duster, the "masculine Mother Hub- 
 bard," which was once his favorite working 
 garb, and his clothing became less noticeable 
 for hard usage. But he was always, as an 
 aggrieved assistant once declared, "The poor- 
 est man at dressing that ever lived, and 
 doesn't care what he wears, save that he will 
 
 173 
 
174 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 have spotless linen and an old-fashioned white 
 string tie." 
 
 Edison was twice married. His first wife, 
 Miss Mary E. Stilwell, was an intelligent, 
 sweet-tempered girl, one of his working force 
 at Newark and well-loved by all. She came 
 to him shortly after the death of his mother, 
 and the new home was presently set up in 
 "The Homestead" at Menlo Park, and here 
 were born their three children, Mary Estelle 
 and Thomas Alva Edison Jr., — lovingly nick- 
 named by their father and the staff as "Dot" 
 and "Dash" — and William Leslie, and here, 
 after her marriage and the family's removal 
 to Orange, Mary or "Marion Estelle," made 
 her home for some time before going to live in 
 Germany. The wife and mother died in 
 1884, at the most intensely busy period of Edi- 
 son's career, and for weeks and months there- 
 after his workshop and his chemical laboratory 
 held him as in a vise. Locked in, he worked 
 for sixty hours or more at a stretch, eating and 
 sleeping only when tired Nature refused 
 longer to withstand the strain. 
 
 Then Providence interfered. Business 
 called Edison to Akron, Ohio, to the home of 
 
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THOMAS A. EDISON 175 
 
 Lewis Miller, the pioneer inventor of the then 
 famous Miller harvesting and threshing ma- 
 chinery, a millionaire and a man of culture, 
 being the founder of the present Chautauqua 
 movement. And here Edison met the daugh- 
 ter, Miss Mina, a young and beautiful girl, 
 who was deeply interested in all that inter- 
 ested her father, and who had happily given 
 him more than one practically helpful idea as 
 they planned and worked together at the shop. 
 It was a case of love at first sight, and the two 
 were married within a year. Now, Edison's 
 hermit-days were over. No longer could he 
 busy himself in work "up to his eyes" and stay 
 hidden. Mrs. Edison took upon herself the 
 wife's part of keeping her illustrious husband 
 happy, healthy, and "human." She insisted 
 that he have a regular hour for lunch, and 
 leave the laboratory at a certain time in the 
 evening, and she held her point so gracefully 
 and tactfully that the Wizard, though he 
 laughingly dubbed her a nuisance, gave in, and 
 added quite truthfully that he was glad to 
 have some one to take care of him. Of course, 
 there have been lapses of "working-fever," but 
 it is doubtful if the Wizard, as the years went 
 
176 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 by, would have been able to accomplish so 
 much had not his wife staunchly insisted on 
 system and regularity, and kept the household 
 machinery running with a beautiful precision 
 which made their home a place of deep and 
 abiding peace. 
 
 An attractive home, indeed, is that of the 
 Edisons, one of the most beautiful in all New 
 Jersey. The house is of the style known as 
 Queen Anne, handsomely fashioned of brick 
 and wood. The wide porch is covered with 
 purple wistaria, and fairly radiates comfort 
 and repose. Inside is the cozy cheer and 
 beauty of the old English country house. 
 Glenmont, it is called, and the location is in 
 Llewellyn Park, at the foot of the Orange 
 Mountain. Edison was so fortunate as to 
 purchase the beautiful estate complete, includ- 
 ing the blooded stock in pasture and stables, 
 furniture, library, conservatories, and artistic 
 treasures which had taken ten years to col- 
 lect, from the former owner, just after his sec- 
 ond marriage. 
 
 "Of course it is much too nice for me," he 
 said, in showing his newly-purchased paradise 
 to a friend, "but it is not half nice enough for 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 177 
 
 the little wife!" Mrs. Edison, however, was 
 as well pleased as he, and quietly set about cer- 
 tain additions divined from her own capable 
 sense of beauty and fitness, until the whole 
 place was presently eloquent of matchless 
 taste and skilful management — Edisonian, in 
 short. 
 
 Mr. Edison's scientific library, one of the 
 most exhaustive to be found anywhere, is kept 
 at the laboratory within easy access of all. 
 And as a rule he left such books there. Mrs. 
 Edison helped him, early in their first days 
 together, to an understanding that the mind 
 profits by a little leisure. Edison was strug- 
 gling with a pretty hard problem — a problem 
 that insisted on going home with him, when 
 his wife came for him to take their usual little 
 before-dinner drive. Finally it drove him to 
 the library, and there he walked back and 
 forth, up and down, round and round, until 
 his unrest brought Mrs. Edison to his aid. 
 Catching up a book, she stopped before her 
 husband. 
 
 "Have you read this?" she asked, quietly. 
 
 Mr. Edison, always courteous, paused and 
 took the book. "The Count of Monte Cristo/* 
 
178 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 he said, reading the title. "No; is it good?" 
 
 Mrs. Edison enthusiastically declared that 
 it was a fine story, and she was sure he would 
 enjoy it. 
 
 "Well," smiled Edison, "I guess I'll start 
 it right away." 
 
 And forthwith he settled himself comfort- 
 ably, and soon became so absorbed in the fas- 
 cinating tale that he read straight on through 
 the night, reaching the last word just as the 
 morning sun peeped in at the window. Then 
 he fared forth to the laboratory. He did not 
 return to lunch, but at night he declared that 
 the Count of Monte Cristo was a mighty fine 
 fellow, he had certainly helped him to crack 
 an exceedingly hard nut. 
 
 Edison liked detective stories, of the kind 
 that "wasted no time getting down to busi- 
 ness." He liked to jump into an intricate plot 
 on the first page and to find the tale unfolding 
 with no abatement of interest until the climax 
 was reached. Emile Gaboriau, the French 
 novelist, who produced M. Lecoq, a pioneer 
 Sherlock Holmes, never failed to interest him, 
 and he was a sincere mourner when this king 
 of detective-story writers died. Edgar Allan 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 17? 
 
 Poe, too, was a favorite. He read over and 
 over the adventurous tales of Flammarion and 
 Jules Verne, and many of the masterpieces of 
 Scott, Dumas, Hawthorne, Dickens; and Rus- 
 kin. Dante also gave him many delightful 
 hours, and in one of the library windows is a 
 sash of stained glass, designed by Edison him- 
 self, from which the head of the great Italian 
 writer shines down in a wonderfully solemn 
 and realistic manner. A great fireplace takes 
 up one side of this charming room, and there 
 are all manner of cozy nooks and corners here 
 and there where one may pass delightful hours. 
 
 All in all, Edison's home and family life 
 was an ideal one, and in the fullest measure 
 he reaped a rich reward in happiness and con- 
 tentment. In his closing years he "quit the 
 inventing business," but he still had a "thou- 
 sand and one irons in the fire." 
 
 In the evening of his life, standing on the 
 threshold of a new, mysterious, fascinating and 
 so far unfathomable field, Edison toiled on a 
 final invention — an apparatus designed to en- 
 able those who have left this earth to communi- 
 cate with those who remain ! 
 
 Something of the nature of this instrument 
 
180 FAMOUS AMERICANS 
 
 and the theories he has evolved regarding life 
 have been given to interviewers, and they are 
 interesting in being what we would expect 
 from the Wizard of Electricity, who affirmed 
 that neither he nor any other human being 
 knew one-billionth part of what is likely to be 
 known about electricity ages hence, that we 
 must give a brief glimpse of them here, even 
 though Edison warned his interviewers: 
 "Mind you, I am promising no results. All 
 I'm saying is that if those who have 'passed 
 on' are so circumstanced that they can or want 
 to communicate with us, my instrument will 
 make it possible. And, should such a thing 
 take place, there is no doubt but that we would 
 be brought an important step nearer the foun- 
 tain-head of all knowledge, nearer the Intelli- 
 gence which directs all." 
 
 Scientists tell us that our bodies change once 
 in every seven years, that is, that no particle 
 that is in the make-up of our bodies at the be- 
 ginning of one seven-year period remains at 
 its end. "We are creatures of environment," 
 says the proverb. And from these two points 
 Edison made an interesting deduction. Our 
 bodies, according to him, are made up of 
 
THOMAS A. EDISON 181 
 
 myriads of small individuals — "life units" — so 
 tiny that a thousand of them gathered to- 
 gether would still be invisible to the highest 
 power microscope. These life units work in 
 squads, or "swarms," as Edison preferred to 
 call them, and he figured that there are lead- 
 ers among them, just as among humans, which 
 do the thinking and directing. Naturally cer- 
 tain conditions make it impossible for certain 
 swarms to exist. 
 
 We have much to learn regarding life and 
 death. And, says Edison, "The more we 
 learn, the more we understand that there is life 
 in things we have been accustomed to call life- 
 less." As an example, he cites the parts of 
 a chicken that went on living at the Rocke- 
 feller Medical Institute long after the chicken 
 of which they once formed a part had died. 
 
 All of the higher swarms are deathless, Edi- 
 son concluded. "When we die, these swarms 
 of units, like swarms of bees, so to speak, be- 
 take themselves elsewhere, and go on func- 
 tioning in some other form of environment." 
 
 His theory of communicating with the spirit 
 is based upon the supposition that the swarm 
 we call "personality" exists after death in a 
 
182 THOMAS A. EDISON 
 
 hereafter such as we all love to think about 
 and imagine. "And if it does," he affirmed, 
 "then it is strictly logical and scientific to as- 
 sume that it retains memory, intellect, and 
 other faculties and knowledge that we acquire 
 on earth. This being true, it is reasonable to 
 conclude that those who leave this earth would 
 like to communicate with those they have left 
 here. ~No doubt, however, the degree of mate- 
 rial or physical power which they possess must 
 be very slight. Accordingly, the thing to do 
 is to furnish the best conceivable means to 
 make it easy for them to open up communica- 
 tion with us, and then see what happens." 
 The avenue offered will, of course, be elec- 
 trical. 
 
 With this vision of the other world, we must 
 conclude the life story of a man who, perhaps 
 of all others who have ever lived, has made us 
 realize most fully the infinite powers accorded 
 to all mankind. 
 

 
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