ARDUOUS YEARS IN THE CENTRAL WEST
IN 1903, when accepting the position of honorary electrician to the
International Exposition held in St. Louis in 1904, to commemorate the
centenary of the Louisiana Purchase, Mr. Edison spoke in his letter
of the Central West as a "region where as a young telegraph operator I
spent many arduous years before moving East." The term of probation
thus referred to did not end until 1868, and while it lasted Edison's
wanderings carried him from Detroit to New Orleans, and took him, among
other cities, to Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Memphis, some
of which he visited twice in his peregrinations to secure work. From
Canada, after the episodes noted in the last chapter, he went to Adrian,
Michigan, and of what happened there Edison tells a story typical of
his wanderings for several years to come. "After leaving my first job
at Stratford Junction, I got a position as operator on the Lake Shore &
Michigan Southern at Adrian, Michigan, in the division superintendent's
office. As usual, I took the 'night trick,' which most operators
disliked, but which I preferred, as it gave me more leisure to
experiment. I had obtained from the station agent a small room, and had
established a little shop of my own. One day the day operator wanted to
get off, and I was on duty. About 9 o'clock the superintendent handed me
a despatch which he said was very important, and which I must get off at
once. The wire at the time was very busy, and I asked if I should
break in. I got orders to do so, and acting under those orders of the
superintendent, I broke in and tried to send the despatch; but the
other operator would not permit it, and the struggle continued for ten
minutes. Finally I got possession of the wire and sent the message. The
superintendent of telegraph, who then lived in Adrian and went to his
office in Toledo every day, happened that day to be in the Western Union
office up-town--and it was the superintendent I was really struggling
with! In about twenty minutes he arrived livid with rage, and I was
discharged on the spot. I informed him that the general superintendent
had told me to break in and send the despatch, but the general
superintendent then and there repudiated the whole thing. Their families
were socially close, so I was sacrificed. My faith in human nature got a
slight jar."
Edison then went to Toledo and secured a position at Fort Wayne, on the
Pittsburg, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad, now leased to the Pennsylvania
system. This was a "day job," and he did not like it. He drifted two
months later to Indianapolis, arriving there in the fall of 1864, when
he was at first assigned to duty at the Union Station at a salary of $75
a month for the Western Union Telegraph Company, whose service he
now entered, and with which he has been destined to maintain highly
important and close relationships throughout a large part of his life.
Superintendent Wallick appears to have treated him generously and to
have loaned him instruments, a kindness that was greatly appreciated,
for twenty years later the inventor called on his old employer, and
together they visited the scene where the borrowed apparatus had been
mounted on a rough board in the depot. Edison did not stay long in
Indianapolis, however, resigning in February, 1865, and proceeding to
Cincinnati. The transfer was possibly due to trouble caused by one of
his early inventions embodying what has been characterized by an expert
as "probably the most simple and ingenious arrangement of connections
for a repeater." His ambition was to take "press report," but finding,
even after considerable practice, that he "broke" frequently, he
adjusted two embossing Morse registers--one to receive the press
matter, and the other to repeat the dots and dashes at a lower speed, so
that the message could be copied leisurely. Hence he could not be rushed
or "broken" in receiving, while he could turn out "copy" that was a
marvel of neatness and clearness. All was well so long as ordinary
conditions prevailed, but when an unusual pressure occurred the little
system fell behind, and the newspapers complained of the slowness with
which reports were delivered to them. It is easy to understand that with
matter received at a rate of forty words per minute and worked off at
twenty-five words per minute a serious congestion or delay would result,
and the newspapers were more anxious for the news than they were for
fine penmanship.
Of this device Mr. Edison remarks: "Together we took press for several
nights, my companion keeping the apparatus in adjustment and I copying.
The regular press operator would go to the theatre or take a nap, only
finishing the report after 1 A.M. One of the newspapers complained of
bad copy toward the end of the report--that, is from 1 to 3 A.M., and
requested that the operator taking the report up to 1 A.M.--which was
ourselves--take it all, as the copy then was perfectly unobjectionable.
This led to an investigation by the manager, and the scheme was
forbidden.
"This instrument, many years afterward, was applied by me for
transferring messages from one wire to any other wire simultaneously,
or after any interval of time. It consisted of a disk of paper, the
indentations being formed in a volute spiral, exactly as in the disk
phonograph to-day. It was this instrument which gave me the idea of the
phonograph while working on the telephone."
Arrived in Cincinnati, where he got employment in the Western Union
commercial telegraph department at a wage of $60 per month, Edison
made the acquaintance of Milton F. Adams, already referred to as facile
princeps the typical telegrapher in all his more sociable and brilliant
aspects. Speaking of that time, Mr. Adams says: "I can well recall when
Edison drifted in to take a job. He was a youth of about eighteen years,
decidedly unprepossessing in dress and rather uncouth in manner. I was
twenty-one, and very dudish. He was quite thin in those days, and his
nose was very prominent, giving a Napoleonic look to his face, although
the curious resemblance did not strike me at the time. The boys did not
take to him cheerfully, and he was lonesome. I sympathized with him, and
we became close companions. As an operator he had no superiors and very
few equals. Most of the time he was monkeying with the batteries and
circuits, and devising things to make the work of telegraphy less
irksome. He also relieved the monotony of office-work by fitting up the
battery circuits to play jokes on his fellow-operators, and to deal with
the vermin that infested the premises. He arranged in the cellar what he
called his 'rat paralyzer,' a very simple contrivance consisting of two
plates insulated from each other and connected with the main battery.
They were so placed that when a rat passed over them the fore feet on
the one plate and the hind feet on the other completed the circuit and
the rat departed this life, electrocuted."
Shortly after Edison's arrival at Cincinnati came the close of the Civil
War and the assassination of President Lincoln. It was natural that
telegraphers should take an intense interest in the general struggle,
for not only did they handle all the news relating to it, but many of
them were at one time or another personal participants. For example, one
of the operators in the Cincinnati office was George Ellsworth, who was
telegrapher for Morgan, the famous Southern Guerrilla, and was with him
when he made his raid into Ohio and was captured near the Pennsylvania
line. Ellsworth himself made a narrow escape by swimming the Ohio
River with the aid of an army mule. Yet we can well appreciate the
unimpressionable way in which some of the men did their work, from an
anecdote that Mr. Edison tells of that awful night of Friday, April 14,
1865: "I noticed," he says, "an immense crowd gathering in the street
outside a newspaper office. I called the attention of the other
operators to the crowd, and we sent a messenger boy to find the cause
of the excitement. He returned in a few minutes and shouted 'Lincoln's
shot.' Instinctively the operators looked from one face to another to
see which man had received the news. All the faces were blank, and every
man said he had not taken a word about the shooting. 'Look over your
files,' said the boss to the man handling the press stuff. For a few
moments we waited in suspense, and then the man held up a sheet of
paper containing a short account of the shooting of the President. The
operator had worked so mechanically that he had handled the news without
the slightest knowledge of its significance." Mr. Adams says that at the
time the city was en fete on account of the close of the war, the name
of the assassin was received by telegraph, and it was noted with a
thrill of horror that it was that of a brother of Edwin Booth and of
Junius Brutus Booth--the latter of whom was then playing at the old
National Theatre. Booth was hurried away into seclusion, and the next
morning the city that had been so gay over night with bunting was draped
with mourning.
Edison's diversions in Cincinnati were chiefly those already observed.
He read a great deal, but spent most of his leisure in experiment. Mr.
Adams remarks: "Edison and I were very fond of tragedy. Forrest and John
McCullough were playing at the National Theatre, and when our capital
was sufficient we would go to see those eminent tragedians alternate in
Othello and Iago. Edison always enjoyed Othello greatly. Aside from an
occasional visit to the Loewen Garden 'over the Rhine,' with a glass of
beer and a few pretzels, consumed while listening to the excellent music
of a German band, the theatre was the sum and substance of our innocent
dissipation."
The Cincinnati office, as a central point, appears to have been
attractive to many of the clever young operators who graduated from it
to positions of larger responsibility. Some of them were conspicuous for
their skill and versatility. Mr. Adams tells this interesting story as
an illustration: "L. C. Weir, or Charlie, as he was known, at that
time agent for the Adams Express Company, had the remarkable ability of
taking messages and copying them twenty-five words behind the sender.
One day he came into the operating-room, and passing a table he heard
Louisville calling Cincinnati. He reached over to the key and answered
the call. My attention was arrested by the fact that he walked off after
responding, and the sender happened to be a good one. Weir coolly asked
for a pen, and when he sat down the sender was just one message ahead
of him with date, address, and signature. Charlie started in, and in a
beautiful, large, round hand copied that message. The sender went right
along, and when he finished with six messages closed his key. When Weir
had done with the last one the sender began to think that after all
there had been no receiver, as Weir did not 'break,' but simply gave
his O. K. He afterward became president of the Adams Express, and was
certainly a wonderful operator." The operating-room referred to was on
the fifth floor of the building with no elevators.
Those were the early days of trade unionism in telegraphy, and the
movement will probably never quite die out in the craft which has always
shown so much solidarity. While Edison was in Cincinnati a delegation
of five union operators went over from Cleveland to form a local branch,
and the occasion was one of great conviviality. Night came, but the
unionists were conspicuous by their absence, although more circuits than
one were intolerant of delay and clamorous for attention---eight local
unionists being away. The Cleveland report wire was in special need, and
Edison, almost alone in the office, devoted himself to it all through
the night and until 3 o'clock the next morning, when he was relieved.
He had previously been getting $80 a month, and had eked this out
by copying plays for the theatre. His rating was that of a "plug" or
inferior operator; but he was determined to lift himself into the class
of first-class operators, and had kept up the practice of going to the
office at night to "copy press," acting willingly as a substitute for
any operator who wanted to get off for a few hours--which often meant
all night. Speaking of this special ordeal, for which he had thus been
unconsciously preparing, Edison says: "My copy looked fine if viewed
as a whole, as I could write a perfectly straight line across the wide
sheet, which was not ruled. There were no flourishes, but the individual
letters would not bear close inspection. When I missed understanding a
word, there was no time to think what it was, so I made an illegible one
to fill in, trusting to the printers to sense it. I knew they could read
anything, although Mr. Bloss, an editor of the Inquirer, made such bad
copy that one of his editorials was pasted up on the notice-board in the
telegraph office with an offer of one dollar to any man who could 'read
twenty consecutive words.' Nobody ever did it. When I got through I
was too nervous to go home, so waited the rest of the night for the day
manager, Mr. Stevens, to see what was to be the outcome of this Union
formation and of my efforts. He was an austere man, and I was afraid of
him. I got the morning papers, which came out at 4 A. M., and the press
report read perfectly, which surprised me greatly. I went to work on
my regular day wire to Portsmouth, Ohio, and there was considerable
excitement, but nothing was said to me, neither did Mr. Stevens examine
the copy on the office hook, which I was watching with great interest.
However, about 3 P. M. he went to the hook, grabbed the bunch and
looked at it as a whole without examining it in detail, for which I
was thankful. Then he jabbed it back on the hook, and I knew I was all
right. He walked over to me, and said: 'Young man, I want you to work
the Louisville wire nights; your salary will be $125.' Thus I got from
the plug classification to that of a 'first-class man.'"
But no sooner was this promotion secured than he started again on his
wanderings southward, while his friend Adams went North, neither
having any difficulty in making the trip. "The boys in those days
had extraordinary facilities for travel. As a usual thing it was only
necessary for them to board a train and tell the conductor they were
operators. Then they would go as far as they liked. The number of
operators was small, and they were in demand everywhere." It was in this
way Edison made his way south as far as Memphis, Tennessee, where the
telegraph service at that time was under military law, although the
operators received $125 a month. Here again Edison began to invent and
improve on existing apparatus, with the result of having once more to
"move on." The story may be told in his own terse language: "I was not
the inventor of the auto repeater, but while in Memphis I worked on
one. Learning that the chief operator, who was a protege of the
superintendent, was trying in some way to put New York and New Orleans
together for the first time since the close of the war, I redoubled my
efforts, and at 2 o'clock one morning I had them speaking to each other.
The office of the Memphis Avalanche was in the same building. The paper
got wind of it and sent messages. A column came out in the morning about
it; but when I went to the office in the afternoon to report for duty I
was discharged with out explanation. The superintendent would not even
give me a pass to Nashville, so I had to pay my fare. I had so little
money left that I nearly starved at Decatur, Alabama, and had to stay
three days before going on north to Nashville. Arrived in that city,
I went to the telegraph office, got money enough to buy a little solid
food, and secured a pass to Louisville. I had a companion with me who
was also out of a job. I arrived at Louisville on a bitterly cold day,
with ice in the gutters. I was wearing a linen duster and was not much
to look at, but got a position at once, working on a press wire. My
travelling companion was less successful on account of his 'record.'
They had a limit even in those days when the telegraph service was so
demoralized."
Some reminiscences of Mr. Edison are of interest as bearing not only
upon the "demoralized" telegraph service, but the conditions from
which the New South had to emerge while working out its salvation. "The
telegraph was still under military control, not having been turned over
to the original owners, the Southern Telegraph Company. In addition to
the regular force, there was an extra force of two or three operators,
and some stranded ones, who were a burden to us, for board was high.
One of these derelicts was a great source of worry to me, personally. He
would come in at all hours and either throw ink around or make a lot
of noise. One night he built a fire in the grate and started to throw
pistol cartridges into the flames. These would explode, and I was twice
hit by the bullets, which left a black-and-blue mark. Another night he
came in and got from some part of the building a lot of stationery with
'Confederate States' printed at the head. He was a fine operator, and
wrote a beautiful hand. He would take a sheet of this paper, write
capital 'A', and then take another sheet and make the 'A' differently;
and so on through the alphabet; each time crumpling the paper up in his
hand and throwing it on the floor. He would keep this up until the room
was filled nearly flush with the table. Then he would quit.
"Everything at that time was 'wide open.' Disorganization reigned
supreme. There was no head to anything. At night myself and a companion
would go over to a gorgeously furnished faro-bank and get our midnight
lunch. Everything was free. There were over twenty keno-rooms running.
One of them that I visited was in a Baptist church, the man with the
wheel being in the pulpit, and the gamblers in the pews.
"While there the manager of the telegraph office was arrested for
something I never understood, and incarcerated in a military prison
about half a mile from the office. The building was in plain sight from
the office, and four stories high. He was kept strictly incommunicado.
One day, thinking he might be confined in a room facing the office, I
put my arm out of the window and kept signalling dots and dashes by the
movement of the arm. I tried this several times for two days. Finally
he noticed it, and putting his arm through the bars of the window he
established communication with me. He thus sent several messages to his
friends, and was afterward set free."
Another curious story told by Edison concerns a fellow-operator on night
duty at Chattanooga Junction, at the time he was at Memphis: "When it
was reported that Hood was marching on Nashville, one night a Jew came
into the office about 11 o'clock in great excitement, having heard the
Hood rumor. He, being a large sutler, wanted to send a message to save
his goods. The operator said it was impossible--that orders had been
given to send no private messages. Then the Jew wanted to bribe my
friend, who steadfastly refused for the reason, as he told the Jew, that
he might be court-martialled and shot. Finally the Jew got up to $800.
The operator swore him to secrecy and sent the message. Now there was
no such order about private messages, and the Jew, finding it out,
complained to Captain Van Duzer, chief of telegraphs, who investigated
the matter, and while he would not discharge the operator, laid him
off indefinitely. Van Duzer was so lenient that if an operator were
discharged, all the operator had to do was to wait three days and then
go and sit on the stoop of Van Duzer's office all day, and he would be
taken back. But Van Duzer swore he would never give in in this case.
He said that if the operator had taken $800 and sent the message at the
regular rate, which was twenty-five cents, it would have been all right,
as the Jew would be punished for trying to bribe a military operator;
but when the operator took the $800 and then sent the message deadhead,
he couldn't stand it, and he would never relent."
A third typical story of this period deals with a cipher message for
Thomas. Mr. Edison narrates it as follows: "When I was an operator in
Cincinnati working the Louisville wire nights for a time, one night a
man over on the Pittsburg wire yelled out: 'D. I. cipher,' which meant
that there was a cipher message from the War Department at Washington
and that it was coming--and he yelled out 'Louisville.' I started
immediately to call up that place. It was just at the change of shift in
the office. I could not get Louisville, and the cipher message began to
come. It was taken by the operator on the other table direct from the
War Department. It was for General Thomas, at Nashville. I called for
about twenty minutes and notified them that I could not get Louisville.
I kept at it for about fifteen minutes longer, and notified them that
there was still no answer from Louisville. They then notified the War
Department that they could not get Louisville. Then we tried to get it
by all kinds of roundabout ways, but in no case could anybody get them
at that office. Soon a message came from the War Department to send
immediately for the manager of the Cincinnati office. He was brought to
the office and several messages were exchanged, the contents of which,
of course, I did not know, but the matter appeared to be very serious,
as they were afraid of General Hood, of the Confederate Army, who was
then attempting to march on Nashville; and it was very important that
this cipher of about twelve hundred words or so should be got through
immediately to General Thomas. I kept on calling up to 12 or 1 o'clock,
but no Louisville. About 1 o'clock the operator at the Indianapolis
office got hold of an operator on a wire which ran from Indianapolis to
Louisville along the railroad, who happened to come into his office. He
arranged with this operator to get a relay of horses, and the message
was sent through Indianapolis to this operator who had engaged horses to
carry the despatches to Louisville and find out the trouble, and get the
despatches through without delay to General Thomas. In those days the
telegraph fraternity was rather demoralized, and the discipline was very
lax. It was found out a couple of days afterward that there were
three night operators at Louisville. One of them had gone over to
Jeffersonville and had fallen off a horse and broken his leg, and was
in a hospital. By a remarkable coincidence another of the men had
been stabbed in a keno-room, and was also in hospital while the third
operator had gone to Cynthiana to see a man hanged and had got left by
the train."
I think the most important line of
investigation is the production of
Electricity direct from carbon.
Edison
Young Edison remained in Louisville for about two years, quite a long
stay for one with such nomadic instincts. It was there that he perfected
the peculiar vertical style of writing which, beginning with him in
telegraphy, later became so much of a fad with teachers of penmanship
and in the schools. He says of this form of writing, a current example
of which is given above: "I developed this style in Louisville while
taking press reports. My wire was connected to the 'blind' side of a
repeater at Cincinnati, so that if I missed a word or sentence, or if
the wire worked badly, I could not break in and get the last words,
because the Cincinnati man had no instrument by which he could hear me.
I had to take what came. When I got the job, the cable across the
Ohio River at Covington, connecting with the line to Louisville, had a
variable leak in it, which caused the strength of the signalling current
to make violent fluctuations. I obviated this by using several relays,
each with a different adjustment, working several sounders all connected
with one sounding-plate. The clatter was bad, but I could read it with
fair ease. When, in addition to this infernal leak, the wires north to
Cleveland worked badly, it required a large amount of imagination to get
the sense of what was being sent. An imagination requires an appreciable
time for its exercise, and as the stuff was coming at the rate of
thirty-five to forty words a minute, it was very difficult to write down
what was coming and imagine what wasn't coming. Hence it was necessary
to become a very rapid writer, so I started to find the fastest style. I
found that the vertical style, with each letter separate and without
any flourishes, was the most rapid, and that the smaller the letter
the greater the rapidity. As I took on an average from eight to fifteen
columns of news report every day, it did not take long to perfect
this method." Mr. Edison has adhered to this characteristic style of
penmanship down to the present time.
As a matter of fact, the conditions at Louisville at that time were not
much better than they had been at Memphis. The telegraph operating-room
was in a deplorable condition. It was on the second story of a
dilapidated building on the principal street of the city, with the
battery-room in the rear; behind which was the office of the agent of
the Associated Press. The plastering was about one-third gone from the
ceiling. A small stove, used occasionally in the winter, was connected
to the chimney by a tortuous pipe. The office was never cleaned. The
switchboard for manipulating the wires was about thirty-four inches
square. The brass connections on it were black with age and with the
arcing effects of lightning, which, to young Edison, seemed particularly
partial to Louisville. "It would strike on the wires," he says, "with
an explosion like a cannon-shot, making that office no place for an
operator with heart-disease." Around the dingy walls were a dozen
tables, the ends next to the wall. They were about the size of those
seen in old-fashioned country hotels for holding the wash-bowl and
pitcher. The copper wires connecting the instruments to the switchboard
were small, crystallized, and rotten. The battery-room was filled
with old record-books and message bundles, and one hundred cells of
nitric-acid battery, arranged on a stand in the centre of the room. This
stand, as well as the floor, was almost eaten through by the destructive
action of the powerful acid. Grim and uncompromising as the description
reads, it was typical of the equipment in those remote days of the
telegraph at the close of the war.
Illustrative of the length to which telegraphers could go at a time when
they were so much in demand, Edison tells the following story: "When I
took the position there was a great shortage of operators. One night at
2 A.M. another operator and I were on duty. I was taking press report,
and the other man was working the New York wire. We heard a heavy tramp,
tramp, tramp on the rickety stairs. Suddenly the door was thrown
open with great violence, dislodging it from one of the hinges. There
appeared in the doorway one of the best operators we had, who
worked daytime, and who was of a very quiet disposition except when
intoxicated. He was a great friend of the manager of the office. His
eyes were bloodshot and wild, and one sleeve had been torn away from his
coat. Without noticing either of us he went up to the stove and kicked
it over. The stove-pipe fell, dislocated at every joint. It was half
full of exceedingly fine soot, which floated out and filled the room
completely. This produced a momentary respite to his labors. When the
atmosphere had cleared sufficiently to see, he went around and pulled
every table away from the wall, piling them on top of the stove in the
middle of the room. Then he proceeded to pull the switchboard away from
the wall. It was held tightly by screws. He succeeded, finally, and when
it gave way he fell with the board, and striking on a table cut
himself so that he soon became covered with blood. He then went to the
battery-room and knocked all the batteries off on the floor. The nitric
acid soon began to combine with the plaster in the room below, which
was the public receiving-room for messengers and bookkeepers. The excess
acid poured through and ate up the account-books. After having finished
everything to his satisfaction, he left. I told the other operator to
do nothing. We would leave things just as they were, and wait until the
manager came. In the mean time, as I knew all the wires coming through
to the switchboard, I rigged up a temporary set of instruments so that
the New York business could be cleared up, and we also got the remainder
of the press matter. At 7 o'clock the day men began to appear. They were
told to go down-stairs and wait the coming of the manager. At 8 o'clock
he appeared, walked around, went into the battery-room, and then came to
me, saying: 'Edison, who did this?' I told him that Billy L. had come in
full of soda-water and invented the ruin before him. He walked backward
and forward, about a minute, then coming up to my table put his fist
down, and said: 'If Billy L. ever does that again, I will discharge
him.' It was needless to say that there were other operators who took
advantage of that kind of discipline, and I had many calls at night
after that, but none with such destructive effects."
This was one aspect of life as it presented itself to the sensitive
and observant young operator in Louisville. But there was another,
more intellectual side, in the contact afforded with journalism and its
leaders, and the information taken in almost unconsciously as to the
political and social movements of the time. Mr. Edison looks back on
this with great satisfaction. "I remember," he says, "the discussions
between the celebrated poet and journalist George D. Prentice, then
editor of the Courier-Journal, and Mr. Tyler, of the Associated Press.
I believe Prentice was the father of the humorous paragraph of the
American newspaper. He was poetic, highly educated, and a brilliant
talker. He was very thin and small. I do not think he weighed over one
hundred and twenty five pounds. Tyler was a graduate of Harvard, and had
a very clear enunciation, and, in sharp contrast to Prentice, he was a
large man. After the paper had gone to press, Prentice would generally
come over to Tyler's office and start talking. Having while in Tyler's
office heard them arguing on the immortality of the soul, etc., I asked
permission of Mr. Tyler if, after finishing the press matter, I might
come in and listen to the conversation, which I did many times after.
One thing I never could comprehend was that Tyler had a sideboard with
liquors and generally crackers. Prentice would pour out half a glass of
what they call corn whiskey, and would dip the crackers in it and eat
them. Tyler took it sans food. One teaspoonful of that stuff would put
me to sleep."
Mr. Edison throws also a curious side-light on the origin of the comic
column in the modern American newspaper, the telegraph giving to a new
joke or a good story the ubiquity and instantaneity of an important
historical event. "It was the practice of the press operators all over
the country at that time, when a lull occurred, to start in and send
jokes or stories the day men had collected; and these were copied and
pasted up on the bulletin-board. Cleveland was the originating
office for 'press,' which it received from New York, and sent it out
simultaneously to Milwaukee, Chicago, Toledo, Detroit, Pittsburg,
Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Vincennes, Terre Haute, St.
Louis, and Louisville. Cleveland would call first on Milwaukee, if he
had anything. If so, he would send it, and Cleveland would repeat it to
all of us. Thus any joke or story originating anywhere in that area
was known the next day all over. The press men would come in and copy
anything which could be published, which was about three per cent. I
collected, too, quite a large scrap-book of it, but unfortunately have
lost it."
Edison tells an amusing story of his own pursuits at this time. Always
an omnivorous reader, he had some difficulty in getting a sufficient
quantity of literature for home consumption, and was in the habit
of buying books at auctions and second-hand stores. One day at an
auction-room he secured a stack of twenty unbound volumes of the North
American Review for two dollars. These he had bound and delivered at the
telegraph office. One morning, when he was free as usual at 3 o'clock,
he started off at a rapid pace with ten volumes on his shoulder. He
found himself very soon the subject of a fusillade. When he stopped, a
breathless policeman grabbed him by the throat and ordered him to drop
his parcel and explain matters, as a suspicious character. He opened the
package showing the books, somewhat to the disgust of the officer, who
imagined he had caught a burglar sneaking away in the dark alley with
his booty. Edison explained that being deaf he had heard no challenge,
and therefore had kept moving; and the policeman remarked apologetically
that it was fortunate for Edison he was not a better shot.
The incident is curiously revelatory of the character of the man, for
it must be admitted that while literary telegraphers are by no means
scarce, there are very few who would spend scant savings on back numbers
of a ponderous review at an age when tragedy, beer, and pretzels are far
more enticing. Through all his travels Edison has preserved those books,
and has them now in his library at Llewellyn Park, on Orange Mountain,
New Jersey.
Drifting after a time from Louisville, Edison made his way as far north
as Detroit, but, like the famous Duke of York, soon made his way back
again. Possibly the severer discipline after the happy-go-lucky regime
in the Southern city had something to do with this restlessness, which
again manifested itself, however, on his return thither. The end of the
war had left the South a scene of destruction and desolation, and
many men who had fought bravely and well found it hard to reconcile
themselves to the grim task of reconstruction. To them it seemed better
to "let ill alone" and seek some other clime where conditions would
be less onerous. At this moment a great deal of exaggerated talk was
current as to the sunny life and easy wealth of Latin America, and under
its influences many "unreconstructed" Southerners made their way
to Mexico, Brazil, Peru, or the Argentine. Telegraph operators were
naturally in touch with this movement, and Edison's fertile
imagination was readily inflamed by the glowing idea of all these vague
possibilities. Again he threw up his steady work and, with a couple of
sanguine young friends, made his way to New Orleans. They had the
notion of taking positions in the Brazilian Government telegraphs, as
an advertisement had been inserted in some paper stating that operators
were wanted. They had timed their departure from Louisville so as to
catch a specially chartered steamer, which was to leave New Orleans for
Brazil on a certain day, to convey a large number of Confederates and
their families, who were disgusted with the United States and were
going to settle in Brazil, where slavery still prevailed. Edison and his
friends arrived in New Orleans just at the time of the great riot, when
several hundred negroes were killed, and the city was in the hands of
a mob. The Government had seized the steamer chartered for Brazil, in
order to bring troops from the Yazoo River to New Orleans to stop the
rioting. The young operators therefore visited another shipping-office
to make inquiries as to vessels for Brazil, and encountered an old
Spaniard who sat in a chair near the steamer agent's desk, and to
whom they explained their intentions. He had lived and worked in South
America, and was very emphatic in his assertion, as he shook his yellow,
bony finger at them, that the worst mistake they could possibly make
would be to leave the United States. He would not leave on any account,
and they as young Americans would always regret it if they forsook their
native land, whose freedom, climate, and opportunities could not be
equalled anywhere on the face of the globe. Such sincere advice as this
could not be disdained, and Edison made his way North again. One cannot
resist speculation as to what might have happened to Edison himself and
to the development of electricity had he made this proposed plunge into
the enervating tropics. It will be remembered that at a somewhat similar
crisis in life young Robert Burns entertained seriously the idea of
forsaking Scotland for the West Indies. That he did not go was certainly
better for Scottish verse, to which he contributed later so many
immortal lines; and it was probably better for himself, even if he died
a gauger. It is simply impossible to imagine Edison working out the
phonograph, telephone, and incandescent lamp under the tropical climes
he sought. Some years later he was informed that both his companions had
gone to Vera Cruz, Mexico, and had died there of yellow fever.
Work was soon resumed at Louisville, where the dilapidated old office
occupied at the close of the war had been exchanged for one much more
comfortable and luxurious in its equipment. As before, Edison was
allotted to press report, and remembers very distinctly taking the
Presidential message and veto of the District of Columbia bill
by President Johnson. As the matter was received over the wire he
paragraphed it so that each printer had exactly three lines, thus
enabling the matter to be set up very expeditiously in the newspaper
offices. This earned him the gratitude of the editors, a dinner, and all
the newspaper "exchanges" he wanted. Edison's accounts of the sprees and
debauches of other night operators in the loosely managed offices enable
one to understand how even a little steady application to the work in
hand would be appreciated. On one occasion Edison acted as treasurer for
his bibulous companions, holding the stakes, so to speak, in order that
the supply of liquor might last longer. One of the mildest mannered of
the party took umbrage at the parsimony of the treasurer and knocked
him down, whereupon the others in the party set upon the assailant and
mauled him so badly that he had to spend three weeks in hospital. At
another time two of his companions sharing the temporary hospitality of
his room smashed most of the furniture, and went to bed with their boots
on. Then his kindly good-nature rebelled. "I felt that this was running
hospitality into the ground, so I pulled them out and left them on the
floor to cool off from their alcoholic trance."
Edison seems on the whole to have been fairly comfortable and happy in
Louisville, surrounding himself with books and experimental apparatus,
and even inditing a treatise on electricity. But his very thirst for
knowledge and new facts again proved his undoing. The instruments in the
handsome new offices were fastened in their proper places, and operators
were strictly forbidden to remove them, or to use the batteries except
on regular work. This prohibition meant little to Edison, who had access
to no other instruments except those of the company. "I went one night,"
he says, "into the battery-room to obtain some sulphuric acid for
experimenting. The carboy tipped over, the acid ran out, went through
to the manager's room below, and ate up his desk and all the carpet. The
next morning I was summoned before him, and told that what the company
wanted was operators, not experimenters. I was at liberty to take my pay
and get out."
The fact that Edison is a very studious man, an insatiate lover and
reader of books, is well known to his associates; but surprise is often
expressed at his fund of miscellaneous information. This, it will be
seen, is partly explained by his work for years as a "press" reporter.
He says of this: "The second time I was in Louisville, they had moved
into a new office, and the discipline was now good. I took the press
job. In fact, I was a very poor sender, and therefore made the taking
of press report a specialty. The newspaper men allowed me to come over
after going to press at 3 A.M. and get all the exchanges I wanted. These
I would take home and lay at the foot of my bed. I never slept more than
four or five hours' so that I would awake at nine or ten and read
these papers until dinner-time. I thus kept posted, and knew from their
activity every member of Congress, and what committees they were on; and
all about the topical doings, as well as the prices of breadstuffs
in all the primary markets. I was in a much better position than
most operators to call on my imagination to supply missing words or
sentences, which were frequent in those days of old, rotten wires, badly
insulated, especially on stormy nights. Upon such occasions I had to
supply in some cases one-fifth of the whole matter--pure guessing--but
I got caught only once. There had been some kind of convention in
Virginia, in which John Minor Botts was the leading figure. There
was great excitement about it, and two votes had been taken in the
convention on the two days. There was no doubt that the vote the next
day would go a certain way. A very bad storm came up about 10 o'clock,
and my wire worked very badly. Then there was a cessation of all
signals; then I made out the words 'Minor Botts.' The next was a New
York item. I filled in a paragraph about the convention and how the vote
had gone, as I was sure it would. But next day I learned that instead of
there being a vote the convention had adjourned without action until the
day after." In like manner, it was at Louisville that Mr. Edison got
an insight into the manner in which great political speeches are more
frequently reported than the public suspects. "The Associated Press
had a shorthand man travelling with President Johnson when he made his
celebrated swing around the circle in a private train delivering hot
speeches in defence of his conduct. The man engaged me to write out
the notes from his reading. He came in loaded and on the verge of
incoherence. We started in, but about every two minutes I would have to
scratch out whole paragraphs and insert the same things said in
another and better way. He would frequently change words, always to the
betterment of the speech. I couldn't understand this, and when he got
through, and I had copied about three columns, I asked him why those
changes, if he read from notes. 'Sonny,' he said, 'if these politicians
had their speeches published as they deliver them, a great many
shorthand writers would be out of a job. The best shorthanders and the
holders of good positions are those who can take a lot of rambling,
incoherent stuff and make a rattling good speech out of it.'"
Going back to Cincinnati and beginning his second term there as an
operator, Edison found the office in new quarters and with greatly
improved management. He was again put on night duty, much to his
satisfaction. He rented a room in the top floor of an office building,
bought a cot and an oil-stove, a foot lathe, and some tools. He
cultivated the acquaintance of Mr. Sommers, superintendent of telegraph
of the Cincinnati & Indianapolis Railroad, who gave him permission to
take such scrap apparatus as he might desire, that was of no use to the
company. With Sommers on one occasion he had an opportunity to indulge
his always strong sense of humor. "Sommers was a very witty man,"
he says, "and fond of experimenting. We worked on a self-adjusting
telegraph relay, which would have been very valuable if we could have
got it. I soon became the possessor of a second-hand Ruhmkorff induction
coil, which, although it would only give a small spark, would twist the
arms and clutch the hands of a man so that he could not let go of the
apparatus. One day we went down to the round-house of the Cincinnati &
Indianapolis Railroad and connected up the long wash-tank in the room
with the coil, one electrode being connected to earth. Above this
wash-room was a flat roof. We bored a hole through the roof, and could
see the men as they came in. The first man as he entered dipped his
hands in the water. The floor being wet he formed a circuit, and up went
his hands. He tried it the second time, with the same result. He then
stood against the wall with a puzzled expression. We surmised that
he was waiting for somebody else to come in, which occurred shortly
after--with the same result. Then they went out, and the place was soon
crowded, and there was considerable excitement. Various theories
were broached to explain the curious phenomenon. We enjoyed the sport
immensely." It must be remembered that this was over forty years ago,
when there was no popular instruction in electricity, and when its
possibilities for practical joking were known to very few. To-day such a
crowd of working-men would be sure to include at least one student of
a night school or correspondence course who would explain the mystery
offhand.
Note has been made of the presence of Ellsworth in the Cincinnati
office, and his service with the Confederate guerrilla Morgan, for whom
he tapped Federal wires, read military messages, sent false ones, and
did serious mischief generally. It is well known that one operator can
recognize another by the way in which he makes his signals--it is his
style of handwriting. Ellsworth possessed in a remarkable degree the
skill of imitating these peculiarities, and thus he deceived the Union
operators easily. Edison says that while apparently a quiet man in
bearing, Ellsworth, after the excitement of fighting, found the tameness
of a telegraph office obnoxious, and that he became a bad "gun man"
in the Panhandle of Texas, where he was killed. "We soon became
acquainted," says Edison of this period in Cincinnati, "and he wanted me
to invent a secret method of sending despatches so that an intermediate
operator could not tap the wire and understand it. He said that if it
could be accomplished, he could sell it to the Government for a large
sum of money. This suited me, and I started in and succeeded in making
such an instrument, which had in it the germ of my quadruplex now used
throughout the world, permitting the despatch of four messages over
one wire simultaneously. By the time I had succeeded in getting the
apparatus to work, Ellsworth suddenly disappeared. Many years afterward
I used this little device again for the same purpose. At Menlo Park, New
Jersey, I had my laboratory. There were several Western Union wires cut
into the laboratory, and used by me in experimenting at night. One day
I sat near an instrument which I had left connected during the night. I
soon found it was a private wire between New York and Philadelphia, and
I heard among a lot of stuff a message that surprised me. A week after
that I had occasion to go to New York, and, visiting the office of
the lessee of the wire, I asked him if he hadn't sent such and such a
message. The expression that came over his face was a sight. He asked me
how I knew of any message. I told him the circumstances, and suggested
that he had better cipher such communications, or put on a secret
sounder. The result of the interview was that I installed for him my old
Cincinnati apparatus, which was used thereafter for many years."
Edison did not make a very long stay in Cincinnati this time, but went
home after a while to Port Huron. Soon tiring of idleness and isolation
he sent "a cry from Macedonia" to his old friend "Milt" Adams, who was
in Boston, and whom he wished to rejoin if he could get work promptly in
the East.
Edison himself gives the details of this eventful move, when he went
East to grow up with the new art of electricity. "I had left Louisville
the second time, and went home to see my parents. After stopping at home
for some time, I got restless, and thought I would like to work in the
East. Knowing that a former operator named Adams, who had worked with me
in the Cincinnati office, was in Boston, I wrote him that I wanted a job
there. He wrote back that if I came on immediately he could get me in
the Western Union office. I had helped out the Grand Trunk Railroad
telegraph people by a new device when they lost one of the two submarine
cables they had across the river, making the remaining cable act just as
well for their purpose, as if they had two. I thought I was entitled
to a pass, which they conceded; and I started for Boston. After leaving
Toronto a terrific blizzard came up and the train got snowed under in a
cut. After staying there twenty-four hours, the trainmen made snowshoes
of fence-rail splints and started out to find food, which they did about
a half mile away. They found a roadside inn, and by means of snowshoes
all the passengers were taken to the inn. The train reached Montreal
four days late. A number of the passengers and myself went to the
military headquarters to testify in favor of a soldier who was on
furlough, and was two days late, which was a serious matter with
military people, I learned. We willingly did this, for this soldier
was a great story-teller, and made the time pass quickly. I met here a
telegraph operator named Stanton, who took me to his boarding-house,
the most cheerless I have ever been in. Nobody got enough to eat; the
bedclothes were too short and too thin; it was 28 degrees below zero,
and the wash-water was frozen solid. The board was cheap, being only
$1.50 per week.
"Stanton said that the usual live-stock accompaniment of operators'
boarding-houses was absent; he thought the intense cold had caused
them to hibernate. Stanton, when I was working in Cincinnati, left his
position and went out on the Union Pacific to work at Julesburg, which
was a cattle town at that time and very tough. I remember seeing him off
on the train, never expecting to see him again. Six months afterward,
while working press wire in Cincinnati, about 2 A.M., there was flung
into the middle of the operating-room a large tin box. It made a
report like a pistol, and we all jumped up startled. In walked Stanton.
'Gentlemen,' he said 'I have just returned from a pleasure trip to the
land beyond the Mississippi. All my wealth is contained in my metallic
travelling case and you are welcome to it.' The case contained one
paper collar. He sat down, and I noticed that he had a woollen comforter
around his neck with his coat buttoned closely. The night was intensely
warm. He then opened his coat and revealed the fact that he had nothing
but the bare skin. 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'you see before you an operator
who has reached the limit of impecuniosity.'" Not far from the limit of
impecuniosity was Edison himself, as he landed in Boston in 1868 after
this wintry ordeal.
This chapter has run to undue length, but it must not close without one
citation from high authority as to the service of the military telegraph
corps so often referred to in it. General Grant in his Memoirs,
describing the movements of the Army of the Potomac, lays stress on the
service of his telegraph operators, and says: "Nothing could be more
complete than the organization and discipline of this body of brave and
intelligent men. Insulated wires were wound upon reels, two men and a
mule detailed to each reel. The pack-saddle was provided with a rack
like a sawbuck, placed crosswise, so that the wheel would revolve
freely; there was a wagon provided with a telegraph operator,
battery, and instruments for each division corps and army, and for my
headquarters. Wagons were also loaded with light poles supplied with an
iron spike at each end to hold the wires up. The moment troops were in
position to go into camp, the men would put up their wires. Thus in a
few minutes' longer time than it took a mule to walk the length of
its coil, telegraphic communication would be effected between all the
headquarters of the army. No orders ever had to be given to establish
the telegraph."