I
From Memphis Edison went to Louisville. Here he remained for about two years. It was while he was there that he perfected the peculiar vertical style of writing which has since been his characteristic style. He says of this form of writing, an example of which is given above: "I developed this style in Louisville while taking press reports. My wire was connected to the 'blind' side of a repeater at Cincinnati, so that if I missed a word or sentence, or if the wire worked badly, I could not break in and get the last words, because the Cincinnati man had no instrument by which he could hear me. I had to take what came. When I got the job the cable across the Ohio River at Covington, connecting with the line to Louisville, had a variable leak in it, which caused the strength of the signaling current to make violent fluctuations. I obviated this by using several relays, each with a different adjustment, working several sounders all connected with one sounding-plate. The clatter was bad, but I could read it with fair ease. When, in addition to this infernal leak, the wires north to Cleveland worked badly it required a large amount of imagination to get the sense of what was being sent. An imagination requires an appreciable time for its exercise, and as the stuff was coming at the rate of thirty-five to forty words a minute, it was very difficult to write down what was coming and imagine what wasn't coming. Hence it was necessary to become a very rapid writer, so I started to find the fastest style. I found that the vertical style, with each letter separate and without any flourishes, was the most rapid, and that, the smaller the letter, the greater the rapidity. As I took on an average from eight to fifteen columns of news report every day, it did not take long to perfect this method."
The telegraph offices of those early days were very crude as compared with the equipments of modern times. The apparatus was generally in a very poor condition, and the wiring was of a haphazard kind. The conditions during the time of the Civil War all tended to demoralization, both of operators and apparatus.
Indeed, the following story, related by Edison, illustrates the lengths to which telegraphers could go at a time when they were in so much demand: "When I took the position there was a great shortage of operators. One night, at 2 A.M., another operator and I were on duty. I was taking press report, and the other man was working the New York wire. We heard a heavy tramp, tramp, tramp on the rickety stairs. Suddenly the door was thrown open with great violence, dislodging it from one of the hinges. There appeared in the doorway one of the best operators we had, who worked daytime, and who was of a very quiet disposition except when intoxicated. He was a great friend of the manager of the office. His eyes were bloodshot and wild, and one sleeve had been torn away from his coat. Without noticing either of us, he went up to the stove and kicked it over. The stove-pipe fell, dislocated at every joint. It was half full of exceedingly fine soot, which floated out and completely filled the room. This produced a momentary respite to his labors. When the atmosphere had cleared sufficiently to see he went around and pulled every table away from the wall, piling them on top of the stove in the middle of the room. Then he proceeded to pull the switchboard away from the wall. It was held tightly by screws. He succeeded, finally, and when it gave way he fell with the board, and, striking on a table, cut himself so that he soon became covered with blood. He then went to the battery-room and knocked all the batteries off on the floor. The nitric acid soon began to combine with the plaster in the room below, which was the public receiving-room for messengers and bookkeepers. The excess acid poured through and ate up the account-books. After having finished everything to his satisfaction, he left. I told the other operators to do nothing. We would leave things just as they were, and wait until the manager came. In the meantime, as I knew all the wires coming through to the switchboard, I rigged up a temporary set of instruments so that the New York business could be cleared up, and we also got the remainder of the press matter. At seven o'clock the day men began to appear. They were told to go downstairs and await the coming of the manager. At eight o'clock he appeared, walked around, went into the battery-room, and then came to me, saying: 'Edison, who did this?' I told him that Billy L. had come in full of soda-water and invented the ruin before him. He walked back and forth about a minute, then, coming up to my table, put his fist down, and said: 'If Billy L. ever does that again I will discharge him.' It was needless to say that there were other operators who took advantage of that kind of discipline, and I had many calls at night after that, but none with such destructive effects."
Incidents such as these, together with the daily life and work of an operator, presented one aspect of life to our young operator in Louisville. But there was another, more intellectual side, in the contact afforded with journalism and its leaders, on which Mr. Edison looks back with great satisfaction. "I remember," he says, "the discussions between the celebrated poet and journalist George D. Prentice, then editor of theCourier-Journal, and Mr. Tyler, of the Associated Press. I believe Prentice was the father of the humorous paragraph of the American newspaper. He was poetic, highly educated, and a brilliant talker. He was very thin and small. I do not think he weighed over one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Tyler was a graduate of Harvard, and had a very clear enunciation, and, in sharp contrast to Prentice, he was a large man. After the paper had gone to press Prentice would generally come over to Tyler's office, where I heard them arguing on the immortality of the soul, etc. I asked permission of Mr. Tyler if, after finishing the press matter, I might come in and listen to the conversation, which I did many times after. One thing I never could comprehend was that Tyler had a sideboard with liquors and generally crackers. Prentice would pour out half a glass of what they call corn whisky, and would dip the crackers in it and eat them. Tyler took itsansfood. One teaspoonful of that stuff would put me to sleep."
Mr. Edison throws also a curious side-light on the origin of the comic paragraph in the modern American newspaper, as distributed instantly throughout the country through the telegraph. "It was the practice of the press operators all over the country at that time, when a lull occurred, to start in and send jokes or stories the day men had collected; and these were copied and pasted up on the bulletin-board. Cleveland was the originating office for 'press,' which it received from New York and sent out simultaneously to Milwaukee, Chicago, Toledo, Detroit, Pittsburg, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Vincennes, Terre Haute, St. Louis and Louisville. Cleveland would call first on Milwaukee and ask if he had anything. If so, he would send it, and Cleveland would repeat it to all of us. Thus any joke or story originating anywhere in that area was known the next day all over. The press men would come in and copy anything which could be published, which was about three per cent. I collected, too, quite a large scrap-book of it, but, unfortunately, I have lost it."
Edison was always a great reader, and was in the habit of buying books at auctions and second-hand stores. One day at an auction he bought twenty unbound volumes of theNorth American Reviewfor two dollars. These he had bound and delivered at the telegraph office. One morning, about three o'clock, he started off for home at a rapid pace with ten volumes on his shoulder. Very soon he became conscious of the fact that bullets were flying around him. He stopped, and a breathless policeman came up and seized him as a suspicious character, ordering him to drop his parcel and explain matters. Opening the package, he showed the books, somewhat to the disgust of the officer, who imagined he had caught a burglar sneaking away with his booty. Edison explained that, being deaf, he had heard no challenge, and therefore had kept moving; and the policeman remarked, apologetically, it was well for Edison he was not a better shot.
Through all his travels Edison has preserved these books, and he has them now in his library at Llewelyn Park, Orange, New Jersey.
After two years at Louisville, Edison went back North as far as Detroit, but soon returned to Louisville. At this time there was a great deal of exaggerated talk and report about the sunny life and easy wealth of South America. This idea appealed especially to telegraph operators, and young Edison, with his fertile imagination, was readily inflamed with the glowing idea of these great possibilities.
Once more he threw up his work, and, with a couple of young friends, made his way to New Orleans, where they expected to catch a specially chartered steamer for Brazil.
They arrived in New Orleans just at the time of the great riot, when the city was in the hands of a mob. The government had seized the steamer for carrying troops. The young men therefore visited another shipping office to make inquiries about vessels for Brazil.
Here they got into conversation with an old Spaniard, to whom they explained their intentions. He had lived and worked in South America, and was very emphatic in advising them that the worst thing they could do was to leave the United States, whose freedom, calm, and opportunities could not be equaled anywhere on the face of the globe. Edison took the Spaniard's advice, and made his way North again. He heard later that his two companions had gone to Vera Cruz and had died there of yellow fever.
He returned to Louisville and resumed work there. He seems to have been fairly comfortable and happy at this time. He surrounded himself with books and various apparatus, and even indited a treatise on electricity.
It is well known that Edison is very studious and a great reader, but his associates sometimes felt surprised at his fund of general information. His own words throw some light upon this subject: "The second time I was in Louisville the Telegraph Company had moved into a new office, and the discipline was now good. I took the press job. In fact, I was a very poor sender, and therefore made the taking of press report a specialty. The newspaper men allowed me to come over, after the paper went to press, at 3 A.M., and get all the exchanges I wanted. These I would take home and lay at the foot of my bed. I never slept more than four or five hours, so that I would awake at nine or ten and read these papers until dinner-time. I thus kept posted, and knew from their activity every member of Congress, and what committees they were on, and all about the topical doings, as well as the prices of breadstuffs in all the primary markets. I was in a much better position than most operators to call on my imagination to supply missing words or sentences, which were frequent in those days of old, rotten wires, badly insulated, especially on stormy nights. Upon such occasions I had to supply in some cases one-fifth of the whole matter—pure guessing—but I got caught only once. There had been some kind of convention in Virginia, in which John Minor Botts was the leading figure. There was great excitement about it, and two votes had been taken in the convention on the two days. There was no doubt that the vote the next day would go a certain way. A very bad storm came up about ten o'clock, and my wire worked badly, and there was a cessation of all signals; then I made out the words 'Minor Botts.' The next was a New York item. I filled in a paragraph about the convention and how the vote had gone as I was sure it would go. But next day I learned that, instead of there being a vote, the convention had adjourned without action until the day after."
The insatiable thirst for knowledge beyond known facts again proved Edison's undoing. Operators were strictly forbidden to remove instruments or to use batteries except on extra work. This rule did not mean much to Edison, who had access to no other instruments except those of the company. "I went one night," he says, "into the battery-room to obtain some sulphuric acid for experimenting. The carboy tipped over, the acid ran out, went through to the manager's room below, and ate up his desk and all the carpet. The next morning I was summoned before him, and told that what the company wanted was operators, not experimenters. I was at liberty to take my pay and get out."
Thus he was once more thrown upon the world. He went back to Cincinnati, and began his second term there as an operator. He was again put on night duty, much to his satisfaction. He rented a room on the top floor of an office building, bought a cot and an oil-stove, a foot lathe, and some tools.
He became acquainted with Mr. Sommers, superintendent of telegraph of the Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad, who gave him permission to take such scrap apparatus as he might desire that was of no use to the company.
Edison and Sommers became very friendly, and were congenial in many ways. Both of them enjoyed jokes of a practical nature, and Edison relates one of them as follows: "Sommers was a very witty man," he says, "and fond of experimenting. We worked on a self-adjusting telegraph relay, which would have been very valuable if we could have got it. I soon became the possessor of a second-hand Ruhmkorff induction coil, which, although it would only give a small spark, would twist the arms and clutch the hands of a man so that he could not let go of the apparatus. One day we went down to the roundhouse of the Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad and connected up the long wash-tank in the room with the coil, one electrode being connected to earth. Above this wash-room was a flat roof. We bored a hole through the roof, and could see the men as they came in. The first man as he entered dipped his hands in the water. The floor, being wet, formed a circuit, and up went his hands. He tried it the second time, with the same result. He then stood against the wall with a puzzled expression. We surmised that he was waiting for somebody else to come in, which occurred shortly after, with the same result. Then they went out, and the place was soon crowded and there was considerable excitement. Various theories were broached to explain the curious phenomenon. We enjoyed the sport immensely."
The reader must remember this occurred forty years ago, when electricity was not popularly understood. Had it occurred to-day the mystery would have soon been explained.
It is interesting to note that the germ of Edison's quadruplex originated while he was at the Cincinnati office. There he became acquainted with George Ellsworth, a telegraph operator who left the regular telegraph service to become an operator for the Confederate guerilla Morgan.
"We soon became acquainted," says Edison of this period in Cincinnati, "and he wanted me to invent a secret method of sending despatches, so that an intermediate operator could not tap the wire and understand it. He said that if it could be accomplished he could sell it to the government for a large sum of money. This suited me, and I started in and succeeded in making such an instrument, which had in it the germ of my quadruplex now used throughout the world, permitting the despatch of four messages over one wire simultaneously. By the time I had succeeded in getting the apparatus to work Ellsworth suddenly disappeared. Many years afterward I used this little device again for the same purpose. At Menlo Park, New Jersey, I had my laboratory. There were several Western Union wires cut into the laboratory and used by me in experimenting at night. One day I sat near an instrument which I had left connected during the night. I soon found it was a private wire between New York and Philadelphia, and I heard among a lot of stuff a message that surprised me. A week after that I had occasion to go to New York, and, visiting the office of the lessee of the wire, I asked him if he hadn't sent such and such a message. The expression that came over his face was a sight. He asked me how I knew of such message. I told him the circumstances, and suggested that he had better cipher such communications, or put on a secret sounder. The result of the interview was that I installed for him my old Cincinnati apparatus, which was used thereafter for many years."
Edison's second term in Cincinnati was not a very long one. After a while he left and went home to Port Huron, where he stayed a short time. He soon became tired of comparative idleness and communicated with his old friend, Milton Adams, who was then working in Boston, and whom he wished to rejoin if he could get work promptly in the East.
Edison himself gives the details of this eventful move, when he went East to grow up with the new art of electricity. "I had left Louisville the second time, and went home to see my parents. After stopping at home for some time, I got restless, and thought I would like to work in the East. Knowing that a former operator named Adams, who had worked with me in the Cincinnati office, was in Boston, I wrote him that I wanted a job there. He wrote back that if I came on immediately he could get me in the Western Union office. I had helped out the Grank Trunk Railroad telegraph people by a new device when they lost one of the two submarine cables they had across the river, making the remaining cable act just as well for their purpose as if they had two. I thought I was entitled to a pass, which they conceded, and I started for Boston. After leaving Toronto a terrific blizzard came up and the train got snowed under in a cut. After staying there twenty-four hours, the trainmen made snow-shoes of fence-rail splints and started out to find food, which they did about a half mile away. They found a roadside inn, and by means of snow-shoes all the passengers were taken to the inn. The train reached Montreal four days late. A number of the passengers and myself went to the military headquarters to testify in favor of a soldier who had been two days late in returning from a furlough, which was a serious matter with military people, I learned. We willingly did this, for this soldier was a great story-teller, and made the time pass quickly. I met here a telegraph operator named Stanton, who took me to his boarding-house, the most cheerless I have ever been in. Nobody got enough to eat; the bedclothes were too short and too thin; it was twenty-eight degrees below zero, and the washwater was frozen solid. The board was cheap, being only one dollar and fifty cents a week.
"Stanton said that the usual live-stock accompaniment of operators' boarding-houses was absent; he thought the intense cold had caused them to hibernate. Stanton, when I was working in Cincinnati, left his position and went out on the Union Pacific to work at Julesburg, which was a cattle town at that time and very tough. I remember seeing him off on the train, never expecting to meet him again. Six months afterward, while working press wire in Cincinnati, about 2 A.M., there was flung into the middle of the operating-room a large tin box. It made a report like a pistol, and we all jumped up startled. In walked Stanton. 'Gentlemen,' he said, 'I have just returned from a pleasure trip to the land beyond the Mississippi. All my wealth is contained in my metallic traveling-case, and you are welcome to it.' The case contained one paper collar. He sat down, and I noticed that he had a woolen comforter around his neck, with his coat buttoned closely. The night was intensely warm. He then opened his coat and revealed the fact that he had nothing but the bare skin. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'you see before you an operator who has reached the limit of impecuniosity.'"
When Milton Adams received Edison's letter from Port Huron he at once went over to the Western Union Office and asked the manager, Mr. George F. Milliken, if he did not want a good operator from the West.
"What kind of copy does he make?" was the cautious response. Adams says: "I passed Edison's letter through the window for his inspection. Milliken read it and a look of surprise came over his countenance as he asked me if he could take it off the line like that. I said he certainly could, and that there was nobody who could stick him. Milliken said if he was that kind of an operator I could send for him; and I wrote Edison to come on, as I had a job for him in the main office of the Western Union."
On reporting to Mr. Milliken in Boston, Edison secured a "job" very quickly. As he tells the story, he says: "The manager asked me when I was ready to go to work. 'Now,' I replied. I was then told to return at 5.30 P.M., and punctually at that hour I entered the main operating-room and was introduced to the night manager. The weather being cold, and being clothed poorly, my peculiar appearance caused much mirth, and, as I afterward learned, the night operators had consulted together how they might 'put up a job on the jay from the woolly West.' I was given a pen and assigned to the New York No. 1 wire. After waiting an hour, I was told to come over to a special table and take a special report for theBoston Herald, the conspirators having arranged to have one of the fastest senders in New York send the despatch and 'salt' the new man. I sat down unsuspiciously at the table, and the New York man started slowly. Soon he increased his speed, to which I easily adapted my pace. This put my rival on his mettle, and he put on his best powers, which, however, were soon reached. At this point I happened to look up, and saw the operators all looking over my shoulder, with their faces shining with fun and excitement. I knew then that they were trying to put up a job on me, but kept my own counsel. The New York man then commenced to slur over his words, running them together and sticking the signals; but I had been used to this style of telegraphy in taking report, and was not in the least discomfited. Finally, when I thought the fun had gone far enough, and having about completed the special, I quietly opened the key and remarked, telegraphically, to my New York friend, 'Say, young man, change off and send with your other foot.' This broke the New York man all up, and he turned the job over to another man to finish."
Edison did not devote his whole life at this time to the routine work of a telegraph office. His insatiable desire for knowledge led him to study deeply the underlying principles of electricity that made telegraphy possible, and he was constantly experimenting to improve the apparatus he handled daily, as well as pursuing his studies in chemistry.
One day he was more than delighted to pick up a complete set of Faraday's works. Mr. Adams says that when Edison brought home these books, at 4 A.M., he read steadily until breakfast time, and then he remarked, enthusiastically, "Adams, I have got so much to do and life is so short I am going to hustle." And thereupon he started on a run for breakfast. Edison himself says: "It was in Boston I bought Faraday's works. I think I must have tried about everything in those books. His explanations were simple. He used no mathematics. He was the master experimenter. I don't think there were many copies of Faraday's works sold in those days. The only people who did anything in electricity were the telegraphers and the opticians, making simple school aparatus to demonstrate the principles."
At this time there was a number of practical investigators and electrical workers in Boston, and Edison with his congenial tastes soon became very much at home with them. He spent a great deal of time among them, and especially in the electrical workshop of the late Charles Williams, who afterward became an associate of Alexander Graham Bell.
It was in this workshop that Edison worked out into an operative model his first patented invention, a vote recorder. This forms the subject of Edison's first patent, for which application was signed on October 11, 1868, the patent itself being taken out June 1, 1869, No. 90,646.
The purpose of this particular device was to permit a vote in the National House of Representatives to be taken in a minute or so. Edison took the vote recorder to Washington and exhibited it before a committee. In recalling the circumstance, he says: "The chairman of the committee, after seeing how quickly and perfectly it worked, said: 'Young man, if there is any invention on earth that we don't want down here it is this. One of the greatest weapons in the hands of a minority to prevent bad legislation is filibustering on votes, and this instrument would prevent it.' I saw the truth of this, because as press operator I had taken miles of Congressional proceedings, and to this day an enormous amount of time is wasted during each session of the House in foolishly calling the members' names and recording, and then adding, their votes, when the whole operation could be done in almost a moment by merely pressing a particular button at each desk. For filibustering purposes, however, the present methods are most admirable."
The outcome of this exhibition was a great disappointment to the young inventor, but it proved to be a wholesome lesson, for he determined from that time forth to devote his inventive faculties only to things for which there was a real, genuine demand. We shall see later that he has ever since lived up to the decision then made.
After the above incident Edison, with increased earnestness, resumed his study of electricity, especially in its application to telegraphy. He did not neglect his chemistry, however, but indulged his tastes freely in that direction, thus laying the foundation for the remarkable chemical knowledge that enabled him later to make some of his great inventions.
He tells an amusing incident of one of his chemical experiments of this early period: "I had read in a scientific paper the method of making nitroglycerin, and was so fired by the wonderful properties it was said to possess that I determined to make some of the compound. We tested what we considered a very small quantity, but this produced such terrible and unexpected results that we became alarmed, the fact dawning upon us that we had a very large white elephant in our possession. At 6 A.M. I put the explosive into a sarsaparilla bottle, tied a string to it, wrapped it in a paper, and gently let it down into the sewer at the corner of State and Washington Streets."
The daily routine of a telegraph office and the busy hours of reading and experimenting employed Edison's time for eighteen to twenty hours a day. Life, however, was never too strenuous for him to indulge his humor, especially if it called for the exercise of some ingenuity, as shown in the following incident related by him: "The office was on the ground floor, and had been a restaurant previous to its occupation by the Western Union Telegraph Company. It was literally loaded with cockroaches, which lived between the wall and the board running around the room at the floor, and which came after the lunch. These were such a bother on my table that I pasted two strips of tin-foil on the wall at my desk, connecting one piece to the positive pole of the big battery supplying current to the wires and the negative pole to the other strip. The cockroaches moving up on the wall would pass over the strips. The moment they got their legs across both strips there was a flash of light and the cockroaches went into gas. This automatic electrocuting device got half a column in an evening paper, and attracted so much attention that the manager made me stop it." About this time an innocent use of his chemical knowledge gave Edison a narrow escape from injury which might have shortened his career. He tells the story as follows: "After being in Boston several months, working New York wire No. 1, I was requested to work the press wire, called the 'milk route,' as there were so many towns on it taking press simultaneously. New York office had reported great delays on the wire, due to operators constantly interrupting, or 'breaking,' as it was called, to have words repeated which they had failed to get; and New York claimed that Boston was one of the worst offenders. It was a rather hard position for me, for if I took the report without breaking, it would prove the previous Boston operator incompetent. The results made the operator have some hard feelings against me. He was put back on the wire, and did much better after that. It seems that the office boy was down on this man. One night he asked me if I could tell him how to fix a key so that it would not 'break,' even if the circuit-breaker was open, and also so that it could not be easily detected. I told him to jab a penful of ink on the platinum points, as there was sugar enough in it to make it sufficiently thick to hold up when the operator tried to break—the current still going through the ink, so that he could not break.
"The next night about 1 A.M. this operator, on the press wire, while I was standing near a House printer studying it, pulled out a glass insulator, then used upside down as a substitute for an ink-bottle, and threw it with great violence at me, just missing my head. It would certainly have killed me if it had not missed. The cause of the trouble was that this operator was doing the best he could not to break, but, being compelled to open his key, he found he couldn't. The press matter came right along, and he could not stop it. The office boy had put the ink in a few minutes before, when the operator had turned his head during a lull. He blamed me instinctively as the cause of the trouble. Later we became good friends. He took his meals at the same 'emaciator' that I did. His main object in life seemed to be acquiring the art of throwing up wash-pitchers and catching them without breaking them. About a third of his salary was used up in paying for pitchers."
One of the most amusing incidents of Edison's life in Boston, occurred through a request received at the Western Union office one day from the principal of a select school for young ladies. The principal desired to have some one sent up to the school to exhibit and describe the Morse telegraph to her "children."
Edison, who was always ready to earn some extra money for his experiments, and was already known as the best-informed operator in the office, accepted the task, inviting Adams to accompany him. What happened is described by Adams as follows: "We gathered up a couple of sounders, a battery, and some wire, and at the appointed time called on her to do the stunt. Her school-room was about twenty by twenty feet, not including a small platform. We rigged up the line between the two ends of the room, Edison taking the stage, while I was at the other end of the room. All being in readiness, the principal was told to bring in her children. The door opened, and in came about twenty young ladies elegantly gowned, not one of whom was under seventeen. When Edison saw them I thought he would faint. He called me on the line and asked me to come to the stage and explain the mysteries of the Morse system. I replied that I thought he was in the right place, and told him to get busy with his talk on dots and dashes. Always modest, Edison was so overcome he could hardly speak, but he managed to say finally that, as his friend, Mr. Adams, was better equipped with cheek than he was, we would change places, and he would do the demonstrating while I explained the whole thing. This caused the bevy to turn to see where the lecturer was. I went on the stage, said something, and we did some telegraphing over the line. I guess it was satisfactory; we got the money, which was the main point to us."
Edison tells the story in a similar manner, but insists that it was he who saved the situation. "I managed to say that I would work the apparatus, and Mr. Adams would make the explanations. Adams was so embarrassed that he fell over an ottoman. The girls tittered, and this increased his embarrassment until he couldn't say a word. The situation was so desperate that for a reason I never could explain I started in myself and talked and explained better than I ever did before or since. I can talk to two or three persons, but when there are more they radiate some unknown form of influence which paralyzes my vocal cords. However, I got out of this scrape, and many times afterward when I chanced with other operators to meet some of the young ladies on their way home from school they would smile and nod, much to the mystification of the operators, who were ignorant of this episode." The purchase of supplies and apparatus for his constant experiments and studies kept Edison's pocket-money at low ebb. He never had a surplus of cash, and tells this amusing story of those impecunious days:
"My friend Adams was working in the Franklin Telegraph Company, which competed with the Western Union. Adams was laid off, and as his financial resources had reached absolute zero centigrade, I undertook to let him sleep in my hall bedroom. I generally had hall bedrooms, because they were cheap and I needed money to buy apparatus. I also had the pleasure of his genial company at the boarding-house about a mile distant, but at the sacrifice of some apparatus. One morning, as we were hastening to breakfast, we came into Tremont Row, and saw a large crowd in front of two small 'gents'' furnishing goods stores. We stopped to ascertain the cause of the excitement. One store put up a paper sign in the display window which said, 'Three hundred pairs of stockings received this day, five cents a pair—no connection with the store next door.' Presently the other store put up a sign stating they had received three hundred pairs, price three cents a pair, also that they had no connection with the store next door. Nobody went in. The crowd kept increasing. Finally, when the price had reached three pairs for one cent, Adams said to me: I can't stand this any longer; give me a cent.' I gave him a cent, and he elbowed his way in; and throwing the money on the counter, the store being filled with women clerks, he said, 'Give me three pairs.' The crowd was breathless, and the girl took down a box and drew out three pairs of baby socks. 'Oh!' said Adams, 'I want men's size.' 'Well, sir, we do not permit one to pick sizes for that amount of money.' And the crowd roared, and this broke up the sales."
During Edison's first stay in Boston he began to weary of the monotonous routine of a telegraph operator's life and took steps to establish himself in an independent business. It was at this point that he began his career as an inventor.
He says: "After the vote recorder I invented a stock ticker, and started a ticker service in Boston, had thirty or forty subscribers, and operated from a room over the Gold Exchange. This was about a year after Callahan started in New York."
It has been generally supposed that Edison did not take up stock ticker work until he left Boston finally and went to New York in 1869. But the above shows that he actually started a ticker service in Boston in 1868.
The stock ticker had been invented about a year before, 1867, by E. A. Callahan, and had then been introduced into service in New York. Its success was immediate, and it became the common ambition of every operator to invent a new ticker, as there seemed to be a promise of great wealth in this direction. Edison, however, was about the only one in Boston who seems to have achieved any tangible result.
This was not by any means all the practical work he did in Boston at this time, as we learn from his own words. He says: "I also engaged in putting up private lines, upon which I used an alphabetical dial instrument for telegraphing between business establishments, a forerunner of modern telephony. This instrument was very simple and practical, and any one could work it after a few minutes' explanation. I had these instruments made at Mr. Hamblet's, who had a little shop where he was engaged in experimenting with electric clocks. Mr. Hamblet was the father and introducer in after years of the Western Union Telegraph system of time distribution. My laboratory was the headquarters for the men, and also of tools and supplies for those private lines. They were put up cheaply, as I used the roofs of houses, just as the Western Union did. It never occurred to me to ask permission from the owners; all we did was to go to the store, etc., say we were telegraph men, and wanted to go up to the wires on the roof; and permission was always granted.
"In this laboratory I had a large induction coil which I had borrowed to make some experiments with. One day I got hold of both electrodes of the coil, and it clinched my hands on them so that I couldn't let go. The battery was on a shelf. The only way I could get free was to back off and pull the coil, so that the battery wires would pull the cells off the shelf and thus break the circuit. I shut my eyes and pulled, but the nitric acid splashed all over my face and ran down my back. I rushed to a sink, which was only half big enough, and got in as well as I could and wiggled around for several minutes to permit the water to dilute the acid and stop the pain. My face and back were streaked with yellow; the skin was thoroughly oxidized. I did not go on the street by daylight for two weeks, as the appearance of my face was dreadful. The skin, however, peeled off, and new skin replaced it without any damage."
With all the practical work he was now doing, Boston seemed to be too limited a sphere, and Edison longed for the greater opportunities of New York. His friend Adams went West to continue a life of roving and adventure, but the serious-minded Edison had had more than enough of aimless roaming, and had determined to forge ahead on the lines on which he was working.
Realizing that he must look to New York to better his fortunes, Edison, deep in debt for his new inventions, but with high hope and courage, now made the next momentous step in his career.
Edison came first to New York in 1868, with his early stock printer, which he tried unsuccessfully to sell. He went back to Boston, and, quite undismayed, got up a duplex telegraph. "Toward the end of my stay in Boston," he says, "I obtained a loan of money, amounting to eight hundred dollars, to build up a peculiar kind of duplex telegraph for sending two messages over a single wire simultaneously. The apparatus was built, and I left the Western Union employ and went to Rochester, New York, to test the apparatus on the lines of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph between that city and New York. But the assistant at the other end could not be made to understand anything, notwithstanding I had written out a very minute description of just what to do. After trying for a week I gave it up and returned to New York with but a few cents in my pocket."
No one could have been in direr poverty than Edison when the steamboat landed him in New York in 1869. He was in debt, and his few belongings in books and instruments had to be left behind. He was not far from starving.
After leaving the boat his first thought was for breakfast; but he was without money to obtain it. He walked the streets, and in passing a wholesale tea house saw a man "tasting" tea, so he went in and asked the "taster" if he might have some tea. His request was granted, and this was his first breakfast in New York.
He knew a telegraph operator in the city, and in the course of the day succeeded in finding him, but he also was out of work, and the best he could do was to lend Edison one dollar.
By this time Edison was extremely hungry, and he gave most serious consideration as to what he should buy in the way of food that would be most satisfying. He finally decided upon apple dumplings and coffee, which he obtained at Smith & McNeil's restaurant. He says he never ate anything more appetizing.
He applied to the Western Union Company for a position as operator, but as there was no immediate vacancy he was obliged to wait for an opening. Having only the remainder of the borrowed dollar, he did not want to spend it for lodging, so he got permission to stay overnight in the battery-room of the Gold Indicator Company. Thus he kept what little change he had to buy food.
This was four years after the Civil War, but its effects were felt everywhere, and notably in the depreciation of government securities and our paper money. Gold, being the standard, was regarded as much more valuable than a paper promise to pay issued by a government heavily in debt. A gold dollar, therefore, would buy much more than a paper dollar, at times a dollar and a quarter, or a dollar and a half in value. In a word, gold commanded a high premium. For several years afterward there was a great deal of speculation in the precious metal, and a "Gold Room" had been established in Wall Street, where the transactions took place. At first the prices were exhibited on a blackboard there, but before long this plan was found to be too slow for the brokers. Then Dr. S. S. Laws, vice president and presiding officer of the Gold Exchange, invented a system of indicators to be placed in the offices of brokers. These indicators were operated from a complicated transmitting instrument at the Exchange, and each one showed the fluctuations of price as transactions took place. Dr. Laws resigned from the Exchange and organized the Gold Indicator Company, which put the system into operation.
At the time when Edison took shelter at night in the battery-room of the company there were about three hundred instruments in the offices of subscribers. While waiting to hear from the Western Union, Edison spent his days studying the indicators and the complicated transmitting instrument in the office, controlled from the keyboard of the operator on the floor of the Gold Exchange.
What happened next has been the basis of many inaccurate stories, but the following is Mr. Edison's own version: "On the third day of my arrival, and while sitting in the office, the complicated general instrument for sending on all the lines, and which made a very great noise, suddenly came to a stop with a crash. Within two minutes over three hundred boys—a boy from every broker in the street—rushed up-stairs and crowded the long aisle and office, that hardly had room for one hundred, all yelling that such and such a broker's wire was out of order and to fix it at once. It was pandemonium, and the man in charge became so excited that he lost control of all the knowledge he ever had. I went to the indicator, and, having studied it thoroughly, knew where the trouble ought to be, and found it. One of the innumerable contact springs had broken off and had fallen down between the two gearwheels and stopped the instrument; but it was not very noticeable. As I went out to tell the man in charge what the matter was Dr. Laws appeared on the scene, the most excited person I had seen. He demanded of the man the cause of the trouble, but the man was speechless. I ventured to say that I knew what the trouble was, and he said, 'Fix it! Fix it! Be quick!' I removed the spring and set the contact wheels at zero; and the line, battery, and inspecting men all scattered through the financial district to set the instruments. In about two hours things were working again. Dr. Laws came in to ask my name and what I was doing. I told him, and he asked me to come to his private office the following day. His office was filled with stacks of books all relating to metaphysics and kindred matters. He asked me a great many questions about the instruments and his system, and I showed him how he could simplify things generally. He then requested that I should call next day. On arrival, he stated at once that he had decided to put me in charge of the whole plant, and that my salary would be three hundred dollars a month! This was such a violent jump from anything I had ever had before that it rather paralyzed me for a while. I thought it was too much to be lasting; but I determined to try and live up to that salary if twenty hours a day of hard work would do it. I kept this position, made many improvements, devised several stock tickers, until the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company consolidated with the Gold Indicator Company."
Certainly few changes in fortune have been more sudden and dramatic in any notable career than this which thus placed an ill-clad, unkempt, half-starved, eager lad in a position of such responsibility in days when the fluctuations in the price of gold at every instant meant fortune or ruin to thousands.
There was at this time a very active period of speculation, and not a great while afterward came the attempt of Jay Gould and his associates to corner the gold market by buying all the available supply. This brought about the panic of Black Friday, September 24, 1869.
Edison, then but twenty-two years old, was a keen observer, and his recollection of this episode is interesting. "On Black Friday," he says, "we had a very exciting time with the indicators. The Gould and Fisk crowd had cornered gold, and had run the quotations up faster than the indicator could follow. The indicator was composed of several wheels; on the circumference of each wheel were the numerals; and one wheel had fractions. It worked in the same way as an ordinary counter; one wheel made ten revolutions, and at the tenth it advanced the adjacent wheel; and this, in its turn having gone ten revolutions, advanced the next wheel, and so on. On the morning of Black Friday the indicator was quoting one hundred and fifty premium, whereas the bids by Gould's agents in the Gold Room were one hundred and sixty-five for five millions or any part. We had a paper-weight at the transmitter (to speed it up), and by one o'clock reached the right quotation. The excitement was prodigious. New Street, as well as Broad Street, was jammed with excited people. I sat on the top of the Western Union telegraph booth to watch the surging, crazy crowd. One man came to the booth, grabbed a pencil, and attempted to write a message to Boston. The first stroke went clear off the blank; he was so excited that he had the operator write the message for him. Amid great excitement Speyer, the banker, went crazy, and it took five men to hold him; and everybody lost their heads. The Western Union operator came to me and said: 'Shake, Edison, we are O. K. We haven't got a cent.' I felt very happy because we were poor. These occasions are very enjoyable to a poor man; but they occur rarely."
Edison in those days rather liked the modest coffee-shops and mentions visiting one. "When on the New York No. 1 wire that I worked in Boston there was an operator named Jerry Borst at the other end. He was a first-class receiver and rapid sender. We made up a scheme to hold this wire, so he changed one letter of the alphabet and I soon got used to it; and finally we changed three letters. If any operator tried to receive from Borst he couldn't do it, so Borst and I always worked together. Borst did less talking than any operator I ever knew. Never having seen him, I went, while in New York, to call upon him. I did all the talking. He would listen, stroke his beard, and say nothing. In the evening I went over to an all-night lunch-house in Printing House Square, in a basement—Oliver's. Night editors, including Horace Greeley, and Henry Raymond, of the New YorkTimes, took their midnight lunch there. When I went with Borst and another operator they pointed out two or three men who were then celebrated in the newspaper world. The night was intensely hot and close. After getting our lunch and upon reaching the sidewalk, Borst opened his mouth, and said: 'That's a great place; a plate of cakes, a cup of coffee, and a Russian bath for ten cents.' This was about fifty per cent, of his conversation for two days."
The work of Edison on the gold indicator had thrown him into close relationship with Mr. Franklin L. Pope, a young telegraph engineer, and afterward a distinguished expert and technical writer. Each recognized the special ability of the other, and barely a week after Black Friday the announcement of their partnership appeared in theTelegrapherof October 1, 1869.
This was the first "professional card," if it may be so described, ever issued in America by a firm of electrical engineers.
In order to be near his new friend, Edison boarded with Pope at Elizabeth, New Jersey, for some time living the "strenuous life" in the performance of his duties and following up his work on telegraph printers with marked success.
In regard to this Mr. Edison says: "While with them" (Pope and J. N. Ashley) "I devised a printer to print gold quotations instead of indicating them. The lines were started, and the whole was sold out to the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company. My experimenting was all done in the small shop of a Dr. Bradley, located near the station of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Jersey City. Every night I left for Elizabeth on the 1 A.M. train, then walked half a mile to Mr. Pope's house, and up at 6 A.M. for breakfast, to catch the 7 A.M. train. This continued all winter, and many were the occasions when I was nearly frozen in the Elizabeth walk."
After the Edison and Pope printer was bought out by the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company, its president, Gen. Marshall Lefferts, requested Edison to go to work on improving the stock ticker, he, Lefferts, to furnish the money.
Edison tackled the subject enthusiastically, and as one result produced the "Universal" ticker, which came into wide-spread use in its day. This and some other inventions had a startling effect on his fortunes. Mr. Edison says: "I made a great many inventions; one was the special ticker used for many years outside of New York in the large cities. This was made exceedingly simple, as they did not have the experts we had in New York to handle anything complicated. The same ticker was used on the London Stock Exchange. After I had made a great number of inventions and obtained patents, the General seemed anxious that the matter should be closed up. One day I exhibited and worked a successful device whereby, if a ticker should get out of unison in a broker's office and commence to print wild figures, it could be brought to unison from the central station, which saved the labor of many men and much trouble to the broker. He called me into his office, and said: 'Now, young man, I want to close up the matter of your inventions. How much do you think you should receive?' I had made up my mind that, taking into consideration the time and killing pace I was working at, I should be entitled to five thousand dollars, but could get along with three thousand dollars. When the psychological moment arrived, I hadn't the nerve to name such a large sum, so I said: 'Well, General, suppose you make me an offer.' Then he said: 'How would forty thousand dollars strike you?' This caused me to come as near fainting as I ever got. I was afraid he would hear my heart beat. I managed to say that I thought it was fair. 'All right, I will have a contract drawn; come around in three days and sign it, and I will give you the money.' I arrived on time, but had been doing some considerable thinking on the subject. The sum seemed to be very large for the amount of work, for, at that time I determined the value by the time and trouble, and not by what the invention was worth to others. I thought there was something unreal about it. However, the contract was handed to me. I signed without reading it"
Edison was then handed the first check he had ever received, one for forty thousand dollars. He went down to the bank and passed the check in to the paying teller, who handed it back to him with some remarks which in his deafness he did not hear. Fancying for a moment he had been cheated, Edison went outside "to let the cold sweat evaporate."
He went back to the General, who, with his secretary, had a good laugh over the matter, and told him the check must be endorsed, and sent with him a clerk to identify him.
The ceremony of identification performed with the paying teller, who was quite merry over the incident, Edison was given the amount in bundles of small bills "until there certainly seemed to be one cubic foot." Unaware that he was the victim of a practical joke, Edison proceeded gravely to stow away the money in his overcoat pockets and all his other pockets. He then went to Newark and sat up all night with the money for fear it might be stolen. Once more he sought help next morning, when the General laughed heartily, and, telling the clerk that the joke must not be carried any further, enabled him to deposit the currency in the bank and open an account—his first bank account.
Thus in a very brief time Edison had passed from poverty to independence. Not only that, but he had made a deep impression as to his originality and ability on important people, and had brought out valuable inventions. Thus he lifted himself at one hound out of the ranks and away from the drudgery of the key.
Many young men of twenty-two would have been so dazzled by coming suddenly into possession of forty thousand dollars after a period of poverty, struggle, and hard work, that their main ideas would have been of recreation and pleasure. Not so with Edison, however. Naturally enterprising and a pioneer, this money meant to him nothing but means to an end.
He bought some machinery and opened a small shop and got work for it. Very quickly he was compelled to move to larger quarters. Nos. 10 and 12 Ward Street, Newark, New Jersey. He secured large orders from General Lefferts to build stock tickers, and employed fifty men.
As business increased he put on a night force, and was his own foreman in both shifts. Half an hour of sleep three or four times in the twenty-four hours was all he needed. His force increased to one hundred and fifty men, and, besides superintending all the work day and night, he was constantly making new inventions in the lines on which he was then working, which was chiefly stock tickers.
A glimpse at some of young Edison's first methods as a manufacturer is interesting. He says: "Nearly all my men were on piece-work, and I allowed them to make good wages, and never cut until the pay became absurdly high as they got more expert. I kept no books. I had two hooks. All the bills and accounts I owed I jabbed on one hook, and memoranda of all owed to myself I put on the other. When some of the bills fell due, and I couldn't deliver tickers to get a supply of money, I gave a note. When the notes were due a messenger came around from the bank with the note and a protest pinned to it for one dollar and twenty-five cents. Then I would go to New York and get an advance or pay the note if I had the money. This method of giving notes for my accounts and having all notes protested I kept up over two years, yet my credit was fine. Every store I traded with was always glad to furnish goods, perhaps in amazed admiration of my system of doing business, which was certainly new."
After a while Edison got a bookkeeper, whose vagaries made him look back with regret on the earlier, primitive method. "The first three months I had him go over the books to find out how much we had made. He reported three thousand dollars. I gave a supper to some of my men to celebrate this, only to be told two days afterward that he had made a mistake, and that we had lost five hundred dollars; and then a few days after that he came to me again and said he was all mixed up, and now found that we had made over seven thousand dollars." Edison changed bookkeepers, but never afterward counted anything real profit until he had paid all his debts and had the profits in the bank.
Among the men who have worked with Edison in his various shops from time to time, there have always been those who later have risen to some notable degree of prominence in the electrical arts. This early shop was no exception.
At a single bench there worked three men since rich or prominent. One was Sigmund Bergmann, for a time partner with Edison in his lighting developments in the United States, and now head and principal owner of electrical works in Berlin, employing ten thousand men. The next man adjacent was John Kruesi, afterward engineer of the great General Electric Works at Schenectady. A third was Schuckert, who left the bench to settle up his father's little estate at Nuremberg, stayed there and founded electrical factories which became the third largest in Germany, their proprietor dying very wealthy.
"I gave them a good training as to working hours and hustling," says Edison. And this is equally true as applied to many scores of others who have worked with him.
Edison had now plunged into the intensely active life that has never since ceased. Some idea of his activity may be gained from the fact that he started no fewer than three manufacturing shops in Newark during 1870-71. All of these he directed personally, besides busying himself with many of his own schemes.
Speaking of those days, he says: "Soon after starting the large shop (10 and 12 Ward Street, Newark), I rented shop-room to the inventor of a new rifle. I think it was the Berdan. In any event, it was a rifle which was subsequently adopted by the British army. The inventor employed a tool-maker who was the finest and best I had ever seen. I noticed that he worked pretty near the whole of the twenty-four hours. This kind of application I was looking for. He was getting $21.50 a week, and was also paid for overtime. I asked him if he could run the shop. 'I don't know; try me!' he said. 'All right, I will give you sixty dollars a week to run both shifts.' He went at it. His executive ability was greater than that of any other man I have yet seen. His memory was prodigious, conversation laconic, and movements rapid. He doubled the production inside three months, without materially increasing the pay-roll, by increasing the cutting speed of tools and by the use of various devices. When in need of rest he would lie down on a work-bench, sleep twenty or thirty minutes, and wake up fresh. As this was just what I could do, I naturally conceived a great pride in having such a man in charge of my work. But almost everything has trouble connected with it. He disappeared one day, and, although I sent men everywhere that it was likely he could be found, he was not discovered. After two weeks he came into the factory in a terrible condition as to clothes and face. He sat down, and, turning to me, said: 'Edison, it's no use, this is the third time; I can't stand prosperity. Put my salary back and give me a job.' I was very sorry to learn that it was whisky that spoiled such a career. I gave him an inferior job and kept him for a long time."
Those were indeed busy days, when, at one time, Edison, besides directing the work of his shops, was working on no less than forty-five separate inventions of his own. He had thus entered definitely upon that career as an inventor which has left so deep an imprint on the records of the Patent Office.
Soon after he commenced manufacturing he was engaged by the Automatic Telegraph Company, of New York, to help it out of its difficulties. An Englishman named George Little had brought over a system of automatic telegraphy which worked well on a short line, but was a failure when put upon the longer circuits, for which automatic methods are best adapted.
This principle of automatic telegraphy, briefly described, was somewhat as follows: A narrow paper ribbon was perforated with groups of holes corresponding to Morse characters. This ribbon was passed over a cylinder, and a metallic pen was so connected that it would drop into the holes as they passed. The pen and cylinder being connected with the telegraph line, a current would pass over the line whenever the pen touched the cylinder. At the other end of the line the electrical impulses passed through another metallic pen, which rested upon another ribbon of paper chemically prepared, and, through electro-chemical action, would mark dots and dashes upon the paper.
There were a great many very serious difficulties to be overcome in order to make this system practical on long lines, but Edison applied himself to the work with tremendous energy. His laboratory note-books of the period show many thousands of experiments in the three years that he was working on his problem, and during this time he also took out a long list of patents on the subject.
So successful were his efforts that with his apparatus it became possible to send and record one thousand words a minute between New York and Washington, and thirty-five hundred words a minute between New York and Philadelphia.
Later on, Edison improved this system by further inventions, by means of which the message at the receiving end was automatically printed upon the paper ribbon in Roman letters instead of dots and dashes. Thus, the paper on which the message was received could be torn off and sent out immediately to the person for whom it was intended. This saved time and expense, for under the previous system a clerk must first translate the dots and dashes into words and write it out before delivery. The apparatus worked so perfectly that three thousand words a minute were sent between New York and Philadelphia and recorded in Roman letters.
After Edison's automatic system was put into successful use in America by the Automatic Telegraph Company, an arrangement was made for a trial of the system in England, involving its probable adoption if successful. Edison went to England in 1873 to make the demonstration. He was to report there to Col. George E. Gouraud, through whom the arrangement had been made.
With one small satchel of clothes, three large boxes of instruments, and a bright fellow-telegrapher named Jack Wright, he took voyage on theJumping Java, as she was humorously known, of the Cunard line. The voyage was rough, and the littleJavajustified her reputation by jumping all over the ocean. "At the table," says Edison, "there were never more than ten or twelve people. I wondered at the time how it could pay to run an ocean steamer with so few people; but when we got into calm water and could see the green fields, I was astounded to see the number of people who appeared. There were certainly two or three hundred. Only two days could I get on deck, and on one of these a gentleman had a bad scalp wound from being thrown against the iron wall of a small smoking-room erected over a freight hatch."
Arrived in London, Edison set up his apparatus at the Telegraph Street headquarters, and sent his companion to Liverpool with the instruments for that end. The condition of the test was that he was to record at the rate of one thousand words a minute, five hundred words to be sent every half hour for six hours. Edison was given a wire and batteries to operate with, but a preliminary test soon showed that he was going to fail. Both wire and batteries were poor, and one of the men detailed by the authorities to watch the test remarked quietly, in a friendly way: "You are not going to have much show. They are going to give you an old Bridgewater Canal wire that is so poor we don't work it, and a lot of 'sand batteries' at Liverpool."[1]
The situation was rather depressing to the young American, but "I thanked him," says Edison, "and hoped to reciprocate somehow. I knew I was in a hole. I had been staying at a little hotel in Covent Garden called the Hummums, and got nothing but roast beef and flounders, and my imagination was getting into a coma. What I needed was pastry. That night I found a French pastry shop in High Holborn Street and filled up. My imagination got all right. Early in the morning I saw Gouraud, stated my case, and asked if he would stand for the purchase of a powerful battery to send to Liverpool. He said 'Yes.' I went immediately to Apps, on the Strand, and asked if he had a powerful battery. He said he hadn't; that all that he had was Tyndall's Royal Institution battery, which he supposed would not serve. I saw it—one hundred cells—and getting the price—one hundred guineas—hurried to Gouraud. He said 'Go ahead.' I telegraphed to the man in Liverpool. He came on, and got the battery to Liverpool, set up and ready just two hours before the test commenced. One of the principal things that made the system a success was that the line was put to earth at the sending end through a magnet, and the extra current from this passed to the line served to sharpen the recording waves. This new battery was strong enough to pass a powerful current through the magnet without materially diminishing the strength of the current." The test under these more favorable circumstances was a success. "The record was as perfect as copper plate, and not a single remark was made in the 'time lost' column." Edison was now asked if he thought he could get a better speed through submarine cables with this system, and replied that he would like a chance to try it. For this purpose twenty-two hundred miles of cable stored under water in tanks was placed at his disposal from 8 P.M. until 6 A.M. He says: "This just suited me, as I preferred night work. I got my apparatus down and set up, and then to get a preliminary idea of what the distortion of the signal would be I sent a single dot, which should have been recorded upon my automatic paper by a mark about one thirty-second of an inch long. Instead of that it was twenty-seven feet long. If I ever had any conceit, it vanished from my boots up! I worked on this cable more than two weeks, and the best I could do was two words per minute, which was only one-seventh of what the guaranteed speed of the cable should be when laid. What I did not know at the time was that a coiled cable, owing to induction, was infinitely worse than when laid out straight, and that my speed was as good as, if not better than, the regular system, but no one told me this."
After a short stay in England Edison returned to America. He states that the automatic was finally adopted in England and used for many years; indeed, it is still in use there. But they took whatever they needed from his system, and he "has never had a cent from them."
On arriving home he resumed arduous work on many of his inventions—chiefly those relating to duplex telegraphy. This subject had interested him at various times for four or five years previously, and he now returned to it with great vigor.
Many inventors had been working on multiple transmission, and at this period a system of sending two messages in opposite directions at the same time over one wire had been invented by Joseph Stearns, and had then lately come into use.
The subject of multiple transmission gave plenty of play for ingenuity and was one that had great fascination for Edison. He worked out many plans, and in April, 1873, two applications for patents. One of these covered an invention by which not only could two messages be sent in opposite directions over one wire at the same time, but, if desired, two separate messages could be sent simultaneouslyin the same directionover a single wire. The former method was called the "duplex," and the latter the "diplex."
Duplexing was accomplished by varying thestrengthof the current, and diplexing byalsovarying thedirectionof the current. In this invention there was the germ of the quadruplex, and now Edison redoubled his efforts toward completing the latter system, for, while duplexing doubled the capacity of a line, the quadruplex would increase it four times.
He was working also on other inventions, but the quadruplex claimed most of his attention. He says: "This problem was of the most difficult and complicated kind, and I bent all my energies toward its solution. It required a peculiar effort of the mind, such as the imagining of eight different things moving simultaneously on a mental plane without anything to demonstrate their efficiency."
It is, perhaps, hardly to be wondered at that, when notified he would have to pay twelve and one-half per cent, extra if his taxes in Newark were not at once paid, he actually forgot his own name when asked for it suddenly at the City Hall, and lost his place in the line!
He succeeded, however, in inventing a successful quadruplex system by a skilful combination of the duplex and diplex with other ingenious devices. The immense value of this invention may be realized when it is stated that it has been estimated to have saved from fifteen million to twenty million dollars in the cost of line construction in America. But Mr. Edison received only a small amount for it. We will let him tell the story in his own words:
"About this time I invented the quadruplex. I wanted to interest the Western Union Telegraph Company in it, with a view of selling it, but was unsuccessful until I made an arrangement with the chief electrician of the company, so that he could be known as a joint inventor and receive a portion of the money. At that time I was very short of money, and needed it more than glory. This electrician appeared to want glory more than money, so it was an easy trade. I brought my apparatus over and was given a separate room with a marble-tiled floor—which, by the way, was a very hard kind of floor to sleep on—and started in putting on the finishing touches.
"After two months of very hard work I got a detail at regular times of eight operators, and we got it working nicely from one room to another over a wire which ran to Albany and back. Under certain conditions of weather one side of the quadruplex would work very shakily, and I had not succeeded in ascertaining the cause of the trouble. On a certain day, when there was a board meeting of the company, I was to make an exhibition test. The day arrived. I had picked the best operators in New York, and they were familiar with the apparatus. I arranged that, if a storm occurred and the bad side got shaky, they should do the best they could and draw freely on their imaginations. They were sending old messages. About twelve o'clock everything went wrong, as there was a storm somewhere near Albany, and the bad side got shaky. Mr. Orton, the president, and William H. Vanderbilt and the other directors came in. I had my heart trying to climb up around my œsophagus. I was paying a sheriff five dollars a day to withhold execution of judgment which had been entered against me in a case which I had paid no attention to; and if the quadruplex had not worked before the president I knew I was to have trouble and might lose my machinery. The New YorkTimescame out next day with a full account. I was given five thousand dollars as part payment for the invention, which made me easy, and I expected the whole thing would be closed up. But Mr. Orton went on an extended tour just about that time. I had paid for all the experiments on the quadruplex and exhausted the money, and I was again in straits. In the meantime I had introduced the apparatus on the lines of the company, where it was very successful.
"At that time the general superintendent of the Western Union was Gen. T. T. Eckert (who had been Assistant Secretary of War with Stanton). Eckert was secretly negotiating with Gould to leave the Western Union and take charge of the Atlantic and Pacific—Gould's company. One day Eckert called me into his office and made inquiries about money matters. I told him Mr. Orton had gone off and left me without means, and I was in straits. He told me I would never get another cent, but that he knew a man who would buy it. I told him of my arrangement with the electrician, and said I could not sell it as a whole to anybody; but if I got enough for it I would sell all my interest in any share I might have. He seemed to think his party would agree to this. I had a set of quadruplex over in my shop, 10 and 12 Ward Street, Newark, and he arranged to bring him over next evening to see the apparatus. So the next day Eckert came over with Jay Gould and introduced him to me. This was the first time I had ever seen him. I exhibited and explained the apparatus, and they departed. The next day Eckert sent for me, and I was taken up to Gould's house, which was near the Windsor Hotel, Fifth Avenue. In the basement he had an office. It was in the evening, and we went in by the servants' entrance, as Eckert probably feared that he was watched. Gould started in at once and asked me how much I wanted. I said, 'Make me an offer.' Then he said, 'I will give you thirty thousand dollars.' I said, 'I will sell any interest I may have for that money,' which was something more than I thought I could get. The next morning I went with Gould to the office of his lawyers, Sherman & Sterling, and received a check for thirty thousand dollars, with a remark by Gould that I had got the steamboatPlymouth Rock, as he had sold her for thirty thousand dollars, and had just received the check. There was a big fight on between Gould's company and the Western Union, and this caused litigation. The electrician, on account of the testimony involved, lost his glory. The judge never decided the case, but went crazy a few months afterward."
Mr. Gould controlled the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company and was aiming to get control of the Western Union Company, and his purchase of Edison's share in the quadruplex was an important move in this direction.
Having learned of the success of Edison's automatic system, mentioned in the early part of this chapter, Mr. Gould's next move was to get control of that. It was owned by Mr. Edison and his associates of the Automatic Telegraph Company, and that company was bought by Mr. Gould under an agreement to pay four million dollars in stock. As to this, Mr. Edison says: "After this, Gould wanted me to help install the automatic system in the Atlantic and Pacific Company, of which General Eckert had been elected president, the company having bought the Automatic Telegraph Company. I did a lot of work for this company making automatic apparatus in my shop at Newark."
Unfortunately for the inventor and his associates, the terms of the contract have never been carried out. Mr. Edison remarks in regard to this: "He" (Gould) "took no pride in building up an enterprise. He was after money, and money only. Whether the company was a success or a failure mattered not to him. After he had hammered the Western Union through his opposition company and had tired out Mr. Vanderbilt, the latter retired from control, and Gould went in and consolidated his company and controlled the Western Union. He then repudiated the contract with the Automatic Telegraph people, and they never received a cent for their wires or patents, and I lost three years of very hard labor. But I never had any grudge against him, because he was so able in his line, and as long as my part was successful the money with me was a secondary consideration. When Gould got the Western Union I knew no further progress in telegraphy was possible, and I went into other lines."
One of the most remarkable suits in the history of American jurisprudence arose out of this transaction. Mr. Edison and his associates sued Mr. Gould in 1876 for the recovery of the contract price of these inventions, and, at this writing, thirty-five years later, the suit has not been finally decided. It is now on appeal to the United States Supreme Court.
A busier shop than that of the young inventor during the years 1870 to 1874 would be difficult to find. Not only was he and it engaged on the tremendous problems of the automatic and quadruplex systems, but the shop was also busy making stock tickers. The hours were endless; and on one occasion when an order was on hand for a large quantity of these instruments Edison locked the men in until the job had been finished of making the machine perfect, and "all the bugs taken out," which meant sixty hours of hard work before the difficulties were overcome.