Part 9 (2/2)
It was soon after this that Edison, already a swift and competent operator when he devoted himself to practical work, received promise of employment in the Boston office. The weather was quite cold and his peculiar dress, topped with a slouchy broad-brimmed hat, made something of a sensation. But Edison then cared as little for dress as he does to-day. So one raw wet day a tall man with a limp, wet duster clinging to his legs, stalked into the superintendent's room, and said:
”Here I am.”
The superintendent eyed him from head to foot, and said:
”Who are you?”
”Tom Edison.”
”And who on earth might Tom Edison be?”
The young man explained that he had been ordered to report for duty at the Boston office, and was finally told to sit down in the operating-room, where his advent created much merriment. The operators guyed him loudly enough for him to hear. He didn't care. A few moments later a New York sender noted for his swiftness called up the Boston office. There was no one at liberty.
”Well,” said the office chief, ”let that new fellow try him.” Edison sat down, and for four hours and a half wrote out messages in his peculiarly clear round hand, stuck a date and number on them and threw them on the floor for the office boy to pick up. The time he took in numbering and dating the sheets were the only seconds he was not writing out transmitted words. Faster and faster ticked the instrument, and faster and faster went Edison's fingers, until the rapidity with which the messages came tumbling on the floor attracted the attention of the other operators, who, when their work was done, gathered around to witness the spectacle. At the close of the four and a half hours' work there flashed from New York the salutation:
”h.e.l.lo!”
”h.e.l.lo yourself,” ticked back Edison.
”Who the devil are you?” rattled into the Boston office.
”Tom Edison.”
”You are the first man in the country,” ticked the instrument, ”that could ever take me at my fastest, and the only one who could ever sit at the other end of my wire for more than two hours and a half. I'm proud to know you.”
Edison was once asked with what invention he really began his career as an inventor.
”Well,” said he, in reply, ”my first appearance at the Patent Office was in 1868, when I was twenty-one, with an ingenious contrivance which I called the electrical vote recorder. I had been impressed with the enormous waste of time in Congress and in the State Legislatures by the taking of votes on any motion. More than half an hour was sometimes required to count the 'Ayes' and 'Noes.' So I devised a machine somewhat on the plan of the hotel annunciator that was invented long afterward, only mine was a great deal more complex. In front of each member's desk were to have been two b.u.t.tons, one for 'Aye,' the other for 'No,' and by the side of the Speaker's desk a frame with two dials, one showing the total of 'Ayes' and the other the total of 'Noes.' When the vote was called for, each member could press the b.u.t.ton he wished and the result would appear automatically before the Speaker, who could glance at the dials and announce the result. This contrivance would save several hours of public time every day in the session, and I thought my fortune was made. I interested a moneyed man in the thing and we went together to Was.h.i.+ngton, where we soon found the right man to get the machine adopted. I set forth its merits. Imagine my feelings when, in a horrified tone, he exclaimed:
[Ill.u.s.tration: Vote Recorder--Edison's First Patented Invention.]
”'Young man, that won't do at all. That is just what we do not want.
Your invention would destroy the only hope the minority have of influencing legislation. It would deliver them over, bound hand and foot, to the majority. The present system gives them time, a weapon which is invaluable, and as the ruling majority always knows that they may some day become a minority, they will be as much averse to any change as their opponents.' I saw the force of these remarks, and the vote recorder got no further than the Patent Office.”
But he began to believe in himself. His next work was upon the applications of the vibratory principle in telegraphing, upon which so many of his subsequent inventions were founded. His first ambitious attempt was in the direction of a multiplex system for sending several messages over one wire at the same time. It was not much of a success, however, and Edison drifted to New York, where, after a vain attempt to interest the telegraph companies in his inventions, he established himself as an electrical expert ready for odd jobs and making a specialty of telegraphy. One day the Western Union Company had trouble with its Albany Wire. The wire wasn't broken, but wouldn't work, and several days of experimenting on the part of the company's electricians only served to puzzle them the more. As a forlorn hope they sent for young Edison.
”How long will you give me?” he asked. ”Six hours?”
The manager laughed and told him he would need longer than that.
Edison sat down at the instrument, established communication with Albany by way of Pittsburgh, told the Albany office to put their best man at the instrument, and began a rapid series of tests with currents of all intensities. He directed the tests from both ends, and after two hours and a half told the company's officers that the trouble existed at a certain point he named on the line, and he told them what it was. They telegraphed the office nearest this point the necessary directions, and an hour later the wire was working properly. This incident first established his value in New York as an expert, and the business became profitable. Moreover, it led the different telegraph companies to give respectful attention to what he had to offer in the way of patented devices.
Edison's mechanical skill soon became so noted that he was made superintendent of the repair shop of one of the smaller telegraph companies then in existence, all of which were using what was known as the Page sounder, a device for signalling, the sole right to which was claimed by the Western Union Company. Owing to the latter company's success in a patent suit over this sounder, there came a time when an injunction was obtained, silencing all sounders of that type, and practically putting a serious obstacle in the way of rapid work. Edison was called into the president's office and the situation explained. For a long time, according to one who was present, he stood chewing vigorously upon a mouthful of tobacco, looking first at the sounder in his hand, and then falling into a brown study. At length he picked up a sheet of tin used as a ”back” for manifolding on thin sheets of paper, and began to twist and cut it into queer shapes; a group of persons gathered around and watched. Not a word was spoken. Finally Edison tore off the Page sounder on the instrument before him, and subst.i.tuting his bit of tin, began working. It was not so good as the patented arrangement discarded, but it worked. In four hours a hundred such devices were in use over the line, and what would have been a ruinous interruption to business was avoided.
Edison's first large sums of money came from the sale of an improvement in the instruments used to record stock quotations in brokers' offices, commonly known as ”tickers.” His success in this direction led him to take a contract to manufacture some hundreds of ”tickers,” and his only venture in this direction was carried out with considerable success at a shop he rented in Newark about 1875. But as he told me a few years later, in talking about this incident in his career, manufacturing was not in his line. Like Th.o.r.eau, who having succeeded in making a perfect lead-pencil, declared he should never make another, he hates routine. ”I was a poor manufacturer,” said he, ”because I could not let well enough alone. My first impulse 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 experiment. That is a costly mania for a manufacturer.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Edison in his Laboratory.]
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