This book, designed for boys and girls, is published with my consent.
[Illustration: Thomas Edison's signature]
[Illustration: EDISON AT WORK IN ONE OF THE CHEMICAL ROOMS AT THE
ORANGE LABORATORY]
THE BOYS' LIFE OF EDISON
BY
WILLIAM H. MEADOWCROFT
OF THE EDISON LABORATORY.
AUTHOR OF "ABC OF ELECTRICITY," "ABC OF THE X-RAYS"
WITH AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
BY MR. EDISON
_ILLUSTRATED_
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
Introduction............................. ix
I. The Early Days of Electricity............ 1
II. Edison's Family.......................... 5
III. Edison's Early Boyhood................... 15
IV. The Young Newsboy........................ 21
V. A Few Stories of Edison's Newsboy Days... 32
VI. The Young Telegraph Operator............. 41
VII. Adventures of a Telegraph Operator....... 49
VIII. Work and Invention in Boston............. 75
IX. From Poverty to Independence............. 88
X. A Busy Young Inventor.................... 101
XI. The Telephone, Motograph, and Microphone. 117
XII. Making a Machine Talk.................... 129
XIII. A New Light in the World................. 135
XIV. Menlo Park............................... 145
XV. Beginning the Electric Light Business.... 153
XVI. The First Edison Central Station......... 161
XVII. Edison's Electric Railway................ 169
XVIII. Grinding Mountains to Dust............... 177
XIX. Edison Makes Portland Cement............. 187
XX. Motion-Pictures.......................... 195
XXI. Edison Invents a New Storage Battery..... 202
XXII. Edison's Miscellaneous Inventions........ 209
XXIII. Edison's Method in Inventing............. 216
XXIV. Edison's Laboratory at Orange............ 224
XXV. Edison Himself........................... 233
XXVI. Edison's New Phonograph.................. 240
XXVII. Edison's Work During the War............. 250
Events and Achievements of Edison........ 265
ILLUSTRATIONS
EDISON AT WORK IN ONE OF THE CHEMICAL ROOMS AT THE ORANGE LABORATORY
EDISON WHEN ABOUT FOURTEEN OR FIFTEEN YEARS OF AGE
MR. EDISON AT THE CLOSE OF FIVE DAYS AND NIGHTS OF CONTINUED WORK IN
PERFECTING THE EARLY WAX-CYLINDER TYPE OF PHONOGRAPH--JUNE 16, 1888
THE EDISON ELECTRIC RAILWAY AT MENLO PARK--1880
EDISON AT THE OFFICE DOOR OF THE ORE-CONCENTRATING PLANT AT EDISON, NEW
JERSEY, IN THE 'NINETIES
THOMAS ALVA EDISON--1911
"THE INSOMNIA SQUAD"
EDISON AT WORK ON RUBBER EXPERIMENTS. FROM A MOVING PICTURE TAKEN
DECEMBER, 1928
INTRODUCTION
This is the story of a great inventor, the most conspicuous figure of
the age of electricity.
The story is largely autobiography, for, through the author's
association with Mr. Edison, it has been possible often to obtain his
own narrative of his life. For nearly thirty-one years the author
has had the privilege of a connection with Mr. Edison and the Edison
companies, and at present he is acting as Mr. Edison's assistant.
Every page of the book has been read by Mr. Edison himself, and it is
published with his approval as the authoritative story of his life to
the present time.
It is probably as a worker of wonders, an interpreter of the secrets
of Nature, an actual wizard of science, that Edison fascinates the
imagination of almost every boy. In this picture of the actual facts
of the inventor's life the reader will find that while Edison is just
as great as imagined, yet this greatness has not been reached by
chance, but honestly earned by the hardest kind of hard work and the
most intense and earnest application. The wonderful things that he has
accomplished have been the things that he purposely set out to do, and
are not the result of some happy thought, or blind luck, or chance.
There has been but little abatement in Mr. Edison's activities. The
flight of time has not dimmed his vivid imagination; has brought no
change to his clear broad mental vision; nor has his capacity for
intensive, forceful work perceptibly lessened. There is no telling what
other inventions he may yet make to benefit the world, but if he never
added anything to what he has already done, his life and achievements
afford the telling of one of the most remarkable stories in the history
of the world.
The author has had the honor and pleasure of assisting in the
preparation of a large and comprehensive biography entitled, _Edison:
His Life and Inventions_, by Frank L. Dyer and T. Commerford Martin,
published by the publishers of the present volume. He gratefully
acknowledges the fact that certain features of this book have been
adapted from the pages of that elaborate biography. For the permission
to do this he tenders his thanks to his friends Frank L. Dyer and the
late T. Commerford Martin.
WILLIAM H. MEADOWCROFT.
THE BOYS' LIFE OF EDISON
I
THE EARLY DAYS OF ELECTRICITY
This is the life story of the greatest of inventors in the field of
electricity. It is true that Thomas A. Edison has helped the progress
of the world by many other inventions and discoveries quite outside
of electricity, but it is in this field that he is best known. Now,
in this age of electricity, it happens very fortunately that a close
personal association with Mr. Edison makes it possible at last to tell
younger readers the real story of Mr. Edison's life, partly in his
own words. It has been a life full of surprises as well as of great
achievements, and one of the surprises which we meet at the start is
that, unlike Mozart, who showed his musical genius in infancy, and
unlike others devoted to one thing from the outset, Edison took up
electricity almost by accident.
Yet this is not so strange when we think how little electricity there
was to take up in the middle of the nineteenth century. Electricity
was not studied in the schools. It was not a separate art or business.
Men of science had occupied themselves with electricity for a long
time, but they really did not know as much about it as a bright boy in
the upper grammar grades to-day. Speaking in a very general way, we
may say that simple frictional electricity[1] was an old story, that
Franklin had discovered the identity of electricity and lightning, and
that Galvani had discovered in 1790 and Volta had developed in 1801 the
generating of electric currents from batteries composed of zinc and
copper plates immersed in sulphuric acid.
But it was not until 1835, only twelve years before Edison was born,
that Samuel F. B. Morse applied electrical currents to the sending of
an alphabet of dots and dashes by wire. Thus it was in the infancy of
telegraphy that Edison first saw the light.
Telegraph apparatus in those early days was of a crude and cumbersome
kind--quite different from that which young students experiment with at
the present time. For instance, the receiving magnets of the earliest
telegraphs, which performed the same office as the modern sounders,
weighed seventy-five pounds instead of a few ounces.
It was a very difficult undertaking for Morse to establish the
telegraph after he had invented it. It was such a new idea that the
public could not seem to understand its use and possibilities. People
would not believe that it was possible to send messages regularly over
a long stretch of wire, and, even if it were possible, that it would
be of much use anyway. It took him a long time to raise money to put
up a telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington. Before this, he
had offered to sell the whole invention outright to the United States
Government for one hundred thousand dollars; but the Government did not
buy, as the invention was not thought to be worth that much money.
In 1847, the year Edison was born, there were only a few telegraph
circuits in existence. The farthest line to the west was in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. It was in this early telegraph office that Andrew
Carnegie was a messenger boy. We could name a great many more notable
men in our country who began their careers in a similar way, or as
telegraph operators, in the early days of telegraphy, but space forbids.
Within a few years after Edison was born there came a great boom in
telegraphy, and new lines were put up all over the country. Thus, by
the time he had grown to boyhood the telegraph was a well-established
business, and the first great electrical industry became a pronounced
success.
There were no other electrical industries at this time, except
electro-plating to a limited extent. The chief reason of this was
probably that the only means of obtaining electrical current was by
means of chemical batteries, as mechanical generators had not been
developed at that time.
While the principles of the dynamo-electric machine had been
discovered, and a few of these machines and small electric motors had
been made by scientists, in the middle of the nineteenth century such
machines were little more than scientific toys, and not to be compared
with the generators of modern days.
Edison, therefore, was born at the very beginning of "The Age of
Electricity," which can be said to have actually begun about 1840, or
soon after.
It is not too much to say that the many important and practical
inventions that he has since contributed to the electrical arts have
had no small weight in causing the present time to be known as "The Age
of Electricity."
[Footnote 1: Made by rubbing certain objects together, like amber and
silk, the original discovery over two thousand years ago.]
II
EDISON'S FAMILY
Had there not been a family difference of opinion about the War of
Independence, we might never have had Edison the great inventor.
The first Edisons in this country came over from Holland about the year
1730. They were descendants of a family of millers on the Zuyder Zee,
and when they came to America they first settled near Caldwell, New
Jersey.
Later on they removed to some land along the Passaic River. It is a
curious and interesting coincidence that a hundred and sixty years
later Mr. Edison established the home he now occupies in the Orange
Mountains, which is in the same general neighborhood.
The family must have gotten along well in the world, for we find
the name of Thomas Edison, as a bank official on Manhattan Island,
signed to Continental currency in 1778. This was Mr. Edison's
great-grandfather, who lived to be one hundred and four years of age.
It will be seen from the date, 1778, that this was during the time of
the War of Independence. This Thomas Edison was a stanch patriot, who
thoroughly believed in American independence. He had a son named John,
who differed with his father in political principles and favored a
continuance of British rule.
After the war was over John left the country, and, with many other
Loyalists, emigrated to Nova Scotia and settled there. While he still
lived there a son was born to him, at Digby, in 1804. This son was
named Samuel, who became the father of Thomas Alva Edison, the inventor.
Seven years later John Edison, as a Loyalist, became entitled under
the laws of Canada to a grant of six hundred acres of land, and moved
westward with his family to take possession of it. He made his way
through the State of New York in wagons drawn by oxen to the township
of Bayfield, in upper Canada, on Lake Huron, and there settled down.
Some time afterward John Edison moved from Bayfield to Vienna,
Ontario, on the northern bank of Lake Erie. As will be understood
from the above, he was the grandfather of Mr. Edison, who gives this
recollection of the old man in those early Canadian days:
"When I was five years old I was taken by my father and mother on a
visit to Vienna. We were driven by a carriage from Milan, Ohio, to
a railroad, then to a port on Lake Erie, thence by a canal-boat in
a tow of several miles to Port Burwell, in Canada, across the lake,
and from there we drove to Vienna, a short distance away. I remember
my grandfather perfectly as he appeared at one hundred and two years
of age, when he died. In the middle of the day he sat under a large
tree in front of the house, facing a well-traveled road. His head
was covered completely with a large quantity of very white hair, and
he chewed tobacco incessantly, nodding to friends as they passed by.
He used a very large cane, and walked from the chair to the house,
resenting any assistance. I viewed him from a distance, and could never
get very close to him. I remember some large pipes, and especially a
molasses jug, a trunk, and several other things that came from Holland."
John Edison was long-lived, like his father, and died at the age of
one hundred and two. Little is known of the early manhood of his
son Samuel (Thomas A. Edison's father), until we find him keeping a
hotel at Vienna, and in 1828 marrying Miss Nancy Elliott, who was a
school-teacher there.
He was six feet in height, and was possessed of great strength and
vigor. He took a lively share in the troublous politics of the period.
In 1837 the Canadian Rebellion broke out. The cause of it was the same
as that which led to the War of Independence in America--taxation
without representation.
Samuel Edison was so ardently interested and of such strong character
that he became a captain in the insurgent forces that rallied under the
banners of Papineau and Mackenzie.
The rebellion failed, however, and those who had taken part in it were
severely dealt with. Many of the insurgents went in exile to Bermuda,
but Samuel Edison preferred the perils of a flight to the United
States. He therefore departed from Canada with his wife, hurriedly and
secretly.
There was a romantic and thrilling journey of one hundred and
eighty-two miles toward safety. The country through which they passed
was then very wild and infested with Indians of unfriendly disposition,
and the journey was made almost entirely without food or sleep.
They arrived safely in the United States, however, and, after a few
years spent in various towns along the shores of Lake Erie, finally
came to Milan, Ohio, in 1842. Here they settled down and made their
home, for the place gave great promise of abundance of business and
prosperity.
In those days railroads were few and far between, and there was none
near Milan. The great quantities of grain that were grown in the
surrounding country were sent to Eastern ports by sailing vessels over
the lake. Milan was connected by a wide canal with the Huron River,
which emptied into Lake Erie. Thus the town became a busy port, with
grain warehouses and elevators, at which as many as twenty sailing
vessels were loaded in a single day.
There also sprang up a brisk ship-building industry, for which the
abundant forests of the region supplied the necessary lumber.
You will see, therefore, that Mr. Edison's father gave evidence of
shrewd judgment when he decided to make his permanent home at Milan,
for there was plenty of occupation, with every prospect of prosperity.
He was always ready to look on the brightest side of everything, and
could and did turn his hand to many occupations.
He decided to make his chief business the manufacture of shingles, for
which there was a large demand, both in the neighborhood and along the
shores of the lake. The shingles were made mostly of Canadian wood,
which was imported for the purpose. They were made entirely by hand and
of first-class wood, and so well did they last that a house in Milan on
which these shingles were put in 1844 was still in excellent condition
forty-two years later. Samuel Edison did well in this business and
employed a number of men.
In a few years after the family had made their home at Milan, Thomas
Alva Edison was born there, on February 11, 1847.
His mother was an attractive and highly educated woman, and her
influence upon his disposition has been profound and lasting. She was
born in Chenango County, New York, in 1810, and was the daughter of
the Rev. John Elliott, a Baptist minister, and descendant of an old
Revolutionary soldier, Capt. Ebenezer Elliott, of Scotch descent.
The Elliott family was evidently one of considerable culture and deep
religious feeling, for two of Mrs. Elliott's uncles and two brothers
were also in the Baptist ministry. As a young woman she became a
teacher in the public high school at Vienna, Ontario, and thus met her
husband, who was residing there.
The Edison family consisted of three children, two boys and a girl.
Besides Thomas Alva, there was an elder brother, William Pitt, and a
sister named Tannie. Both brother and sister had considerable ability,
although in different lines. William Pitt Edison was clever with his
pencil, and there was at one time an idea of having him become an art
student; but evidently the notion was not carried out, for later in
life he was manager of the local street-railway lines at Port Huron,
Michigan, in which he was heavily interested.
This talent for sketching seems to run in the family, for Thomas A.
Edison's first impulse in discussing any mechanical question is to take
up the nearest piece of paper and make drawings. Scarcely a day passes
that this does not happen. His immense number of note-books contain
thousands of such sketches.
His sister, who in later life became Mrs. Tannie Edison Bailey, had, on
the other hand, a great deal of literary ability, and spent much of her
time in writing.
As a child the great inventor was not at all strong, and was of fragile
appearance. His head was well shaped but very large, and it is said
that local doctors feared he might have brain trouble.
On account of his supposed delicacy, he was not allowed to go to school
at as early an age as is usual. And when he did go, it was not for a
long time. He was usually at the foot of his class, and the teacher had
spoken of the boy to a school inspector as being "addled."
Perhaps the reader can imagine the indignation of his mother on hearing
of this teacher's report. She had watched and studied her boy closely,
and knew that he had a mind unusually receptive and mental powers far
beyond those of other children. So she resolved to take him out of
school and educate him herself.
It was fortunate that Mr. Edison had a mother who was not only loving,
observing, and wise, but at the same time well informed and ambitious.
From her experience as a teacher, she was able to give him an education
better than could be had in the local schools of that day.
Under her care the boy formed studious habits and a taste for good
literature that have lasted to this day. He is a great reader, and what
has once been read by him is never forgotten if it is in any way useful.
When Edison was a child he was deeply interested in the busy scenes of
the canal and grain warehouses, and particularly in the ship-building
yards.
He asked so many questions that he fairly tired out his father,
although the older man had no small ability. It has been reported
that other members of the family regarded the boy as being mentally
unbalanced and likely to be a lifelong care to his parents.
Even while he was quite a young child his mechanical tendencies showed
themselves in his fondness for building little plank roads from the
pieces of wood thrown out by the ship-building yards and the sawmills.
One day he was found in the village square laboriously copying the
signs of the stores.
To this day Mr. Edison is not inclined to accept a statement unless he
can prove it for himself by experiment. Once, when he was about six
years old, he watched a goose sitting on her eggs and saw them hatch.
Soon after he was missing. By and by, after an anxious search, his
father found him sitting in a nest he had made in the barn filled with
goose and hen eggs he had collected, trying to hatch them out.
His remarkable memory was noticeable even when he was a child, for
before he was five years old he had learned all the songs of the lumber
gangs and of the canal men. Even now his recollection goes back to
1850, when, as a child three or four years old, he saw camped in front
of his home six covered wagons, "prairie schooners," and witnessed
their departure for California, where gold had just been discovered.
Another of his recollections of childhood is of a sadder nature. He
went off one day with another boy to bathe in the creek. Soon after
they entered the water the other boy disappeared. Young Edison waited
around for about half an hour, and then, as it was growing dark, went
home, puzzled and lonely, but said nothing about the matter. About two
hours afterward, when the missing boy was being searched for, a man
came to the Edison home to make anxious inquiry of the companion with
whom he had last been seen. Edison told all the circumstances with
a painful sense of being in some way guilty. The creek was at once
dragged, and then the body was recovered.
Edison himself had more than one narrow escape. Of course, he fell into
the canal and was nearly drowned--few boys in Milan worth their salt
omitted that performance. On another occasion he fell into a pile of
wheat in a grain elevator and was almost smothered. Holding the end of
a skate-strap, that another lad might cut it with an ax, he lost the
top of a finger. Fire also had its peril. He built a fire in a barn,
but the flames spread so rapidly that, although he escaped himself,
the barn was wholly destroyed. He was publicly whipped in the village
square as a warning to other youths. Equally well remembered is a
dangerous encounter with a ram which attacked him while he was busily
engaged digging out a bumblebee's nest near an orchard fence, and was
about to butt him again when he managed to drop over on the safe side
and escape. He was badly hurt and bruised, and no small quantity of
arnica was needed for his wounds.
Meanwhile railroad building had been going on rapidly, and the new
Columbus, Sandusky & Hocking Railroad had reached Milan and quickly
deprived it of its flourishing grain trade. The town, formerly so
bustling and busy, no longer offered to so active a man as Mr. Edison's
father the opportunity of conducting a prosperous business, so he
decided to move away. He was well-to-do, but he determined to do better
elsewhere. In 1854 he and his family removed to Port Huron, Michigan,
where they occupied a large Colonial house standing in the middle of an
old Government fort reservation of ten acres, overlooking the St. Clair
River just after it leaves Lake Huron.
The old house at Milan where Mr. Edison was born is still in existence,
and is occupied at this time (1911) by Mr. S. O. Edison, a half-brother
of Edison's father, and a man of much ability.
This birthplace of Edison still remains the plain, substantial brick
house it was originally, one-storied, with rooms finished on the attic
floor.
III
EDISON'S EARLY BOYHOOD
It was when he was about seven years old that Edison's parents moved
to Port Huron, Michigan, and it was there, a few years later, that he
began his active life by becoming a newsboy.
With his mother he found study easy and pleasant. The quality of the
education she gave him may be judged from the fact that before he was
twelve years old he had studied the usual rudiments and had read, with
his mother's help, Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_,
Hume's _History of England_, Sear's _History of the World_, Burton's
_Anatomy of Melancholy_, and the _Dictionary of Sciences_.
They even tried to struggle through Newton's _Principia_, but the
mathematics were too much for both teacher and student. To this day
Edison has little personal use for arithmetic beyond that which
is called "mental." He said to a friend, "I can always hire some
mathematicians, but they can't hire me."
His father always encouraged his literary tastes, and paid him a small
sum for each book which he mastered. Although there is no fiction in
the list, Edison has all his life enjoyed it, particularly the works
of such writers as Victor Hugo. Indeed, later on, when he became a
telegraph operator, he was nicknamed by his associates "Victor Hugo
Edison"--possibly because of his great admiration for that writer.
When he was about eleven years old he became greatly interested in
chemistry. He got a copy of Parker's _School Philosophy_, an elementary
book on physics, and tried almost every experiment in it. He also
experimented on his own account. It is said that he once persuaded a
boy employed by the family to swallow a large quantity of Seidlitz
powders in the belief that the gases penetrated would enable him to
fly. The awful agonies of the victim attracted attention, and Edison's
mother marked her displeasure by an application of the switch kept
behind the old Seth Thomas "grandfather's clock."
It was as early as this that young Alva, or "Al," as he was called,
displayed a passion for chemistry, which has never left him. He used
the cellar of the house for his experiments and collected there no
fewer than two hundred bottles from various places. They contained the
chemicals with which he was constant experimenting, and were all marked
"Poison," so that no one else would disturb them.
He soon became familiar with all the chemicals to be had at the local
drug stores, for he did not believe the statements made in his books
until he had tested them for himself.
Edison used such a large part of his mother's cellar for this, his
first laboratory, that, becoming tired of the "mess," she once ordered
him to clear out everything. The boy was so much distressed at this
that she relented, but insisted that he must keep things under lock and
key when he was not there.
Most of his spare time was spent in the cellar, for he did not share to
any extent in the sports of the boys of the neighborhood. His chum and
chief companion at this time was a Dutch boy, much older than himself,
named Michael Oates, who did chores around the house. It was Michael
upon whom the Seidlitz powder experiment was tried.
As Edison got deeper into his chemical studies his limited pocket-money
disappeared rapidly. He was being educated by his mother, and,
therefore, not attending a regular school, and he had read all the
books within reach. So he thought the matter out and decided that if
he became a train newsboy he could earn all the money he wanted for
his experiments and also get fresh reading from papers and magazines.
Besides, if he could get permission to go on the train he had in mind,
he would have some leisure hours in Detroit and would be able to spend
them at the public library free of charge. His parents objected,
particularly his mother, but finally he obtained their consent.
It has been thought by many people that his family was poor, and
that it was on account of their poverty that young Edison came to
sell newspapers on the train. This is not true, for his father was a
prosperous dealer in grain and feed, and was also actively interested
in the lumber industry and other things. While he was not rich, he
made money in his business, and, having a well-stocked farm and a
large orchard besides, was in comfortable circumstances. Socially the
family stood high in the town, where at the time many well-to-do people
resided.
It was of his own choice and because of his never-satisfied desire for
experiment and knowledge that Edison became a newsboy.
In 1859, when he was twelve years old, he applied for the privilege of
selling newspapers on the trains of the Grand Trunk Railroad between
Port Huron and Detroit. After a short delay the necessary permission
was obtained.
Even before this he had had some business experience. His father had
laid out a "market-garden" on the farm, and young Edison, at eleven
years of age, and Michael Oates had worked in it pretty steadily. In
the season the two boys would load up a wagon with onions, lettuce,
peas, etc., and drive through the town to sell their produce. As much
as $600 was turned over to Mrs. Edison in one year from this source.
Edison was industrious, but he did not take kindly to farming. He tells
us about this himself:
"After a while I tired of this work. Hoeing corn in a hot sun is
unattractive, and I did not wonder that boys had left the farm for the
city. Soon the Grand Trunk Railroad was extended from Toronto to Port
Huron, at the foot of Lake Huron, and thence to Detroit, at about the
same time the War of the Rebellion broke out. By a great amount of
persistence I got permission from my mother to go on the local train
as newsboy. The local train from Port Huron to Detroit, a distance of
sixty-three miles, left at 7 A.M. and arrived again at 9.30 P.M. After
being on the train for several months, I started two stores at Port
Huron--one for periodicals and the other for vegetables, butter, and
berries in the season. These were attended by two boys, who shared in
the profits. The periodical store I soon closed, as the boy in charge
could not be trusted. The vegetable store I kept up for nearly a
year. After the railroad had been opened a short time they put on an
express, which left Detroit in the morning and returned in the evening.
I received permission to put a newsboy on this train. Connected with
this train was a car, one part for baggage and the other part for
United States mail, but for a long time it was not used. Every morning
I had two large baskets of vegetables from the Detroit market loaded
in the mail car and sent to Port Huron, when the boy would take them
to the store. They were much better than those grown locally, and sold
readily. I never was asked for freight, and to this day cannot explain
why, except that I was so small and industrious and the nerve to
appropriate a United States mail car to do a free freight business was
so monumental. However, I kept this up for a long time, and in addition
bought butter from the farmers along the line and an immense amount of
blackberries in the season. I bought wholesale and at a low price, and
permitted the wives of the engineers and trainmen to have the benefit
of the discount. After a while there was a daily immigrant train put
on. This train generally had from seven to ten coaches, filled always
with Norwegians, all bound for Iowa and Minnesota. On these trains I
employed a boy who sold bread, tobacco, and stick candy. As the war
progressed the daily newspaper sales became very profitable, and I gave
up the vegetable store."
This shrewd commercial instinct, and the capacity for carrying on
successfully several business undertakings at the same time, were
certainly remarkable in a boy only thirteen years old. And now, having
had a glimpse of Edison's very early youth, let us begin a new chapter
and follow his further adventures as a newsboy on a railway train.
IV
THE YOUNG NEWSBOY
Edison's train left Port Huron at seven o'clock in the morning and
arrived at Detroit in about three hours. It did not leave Detroit
again until quite late in the afternoon, arriving at Port Huron
about nine-thirty at night. This made a long day for the boy, but
it gave him an opportunity to do just what he wanted, which was to
read, to buy chemicals and apparatus, and to indulge in his favorite
occupation--chemical experimentation.
The train was made up of three coaches--baggage, smoking, and ordinary
passenger. The baggage-car was divided into three compartments--one for
trunks and packages, one for the mail, and one for smoking.
As there was no ventilation in this smoking-compartment, no use was
made of it. It was therefore turned over to young Edison, who not only
kept his papers there and his stock of goods as a "candy butcher," but
he also transferred to it the contents of the precious laboratory from
his mother's cellar. He found plenty of leisure on the two daily runs
of the train to follow up his study of chemistry.
His earnings on the train were excellent, for he often took in eight
or ten dollars a day. One dollar a day always went to his mother, and,
as he was thus supporting himself, he felt entitled to spend any other
profit left over on chemicals and apparatus. Detroit being a large
city, he could obtain a greater variety there than in his own small
town. He spent a great deal of time in reading up on his favorite
subject at the public library, where he could find plenty of technical
books. Thus he gave up most of his time and all his money to chemistry.
He did not confine himself entirely to chemistry in his reading at the
Detroit public library, but sought to gain knowledge on other subjects.
It is a matter of record that in the beginning of his reading he
started in with a certain section of the library and tried to read it
through, shelf by shelf, regardless of subject.
Edison went along in this manner for quite a long time. When the
Civil War broke out he noticed that there was a much greater demand
for newspapers. He became ambitious to publish a local journal of his
own. So his little laboratory in the smoking-compartment received some
additions which made it also a newspaper office.
He picked up a second-hand printing-press in Detroit and bought some
type. With his mechanical ability, it was not a difficult matter to
learn the rudiments of the printing art, and as some of the type was
kept on the train he could set it up in moments of leisure. Thus he
became the compositor, pressman, editor, proprietor, publisher, and
newsdealer of the _Weekly Herald_. The price was three cents a copy, or
eight cents a month for regular subscribers and the circulation ran up
to over four hundred copies an issue. Only one or two copies of this
journal are now to be found.
It was the first newspaper in the world printed on a train in motion.
It received the patronage of the famous English engineer, Stephenson,
and was also noted by the _London Times_. As the production of a boy of
fourteen it was certainly a clever sheet, and many people were willing
subscribers, for, by the aid of the railway telegraph, Edison was often
able to print late news of local importance which could not be found in
regular papers, like those of Detroit.
Edison's business grew so large that he employed a boy friend to help
him. There was often plenty of work for both in the early days of the
war, when the news of battle caused great excitement.
In order to increase the sales of newspapers, Edison would telegraph
the news ahead to the agents of stations where the train stopped and
get them to put up bulletins, so that, when the stations were reached,
there would usually be plenty of purchasers waiting.
He recalls in particular the sensation caused by the great battle of
Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, in April, 1862, in which both Grant and
Sherman were engaged, in which the Confederate General Johnston was
killed, and in which there was a great number of men killed and wounded.
The bulletin-boards of the Detroit newspapers were surrounded by dense
crowds, which read that there were about sixty thousand killed and
wounded, and that the result was uncertain. Edison, in relating his
experience of that day, says:
"I knew if the same excitement was shown at the various small towns
along the road, and especially at Port Huron, the sale of papers would
be great. I then conceived the idea of telegraphing the news ahead,
went to the operator in the depot, and, on my giving him _Harper's
Weekly_ and some other papers for three months, he agreed to telegraph
to all the stations the matter on the bulletin-board. I hurriedly
copied it, and he sent it, requesting the agents to display it on the
blackboards used for stating the arrival and departure of trains. I
decided that, instead of the usual one hundred papers, I could sell one
thousand; but not having sufficient money to purchase that number, I
determined in my desperation to see the editor himself and get credit.
The great paper at that time was the _Detroit Free Press_. I walked
into the office marked 'Editorial' and told a young man that I wanted
to see the editor on important business--important to me, anyway.
"I was taken into an office where there were two men, and I stated what
I had done about telegraphing, and that I wanted a thousand papers, but
only had money for three hundred, and I wanted credit. One of the men
refused it, but the other told the first spokesman to let me have them.
This man, I afterward learned, was Wilbur F. Storey, who subsequently
founded the _Chicago Times_ and became celebrated in the newspaper
world. With the aid of another boy I lugged the papers to the train
and started folding them. The first station, called Utica, was a small
one, where I generally sold two papers. I saw a crowd ahead on the
platform, and thought it was some excursion, but the moment I landed
there was a rush for me; then I realized that the telegraph was a great
invention. I sold thirty-five papers there. The next station was Mount
Clemens, now a watering-place, but then a town of about one thousand
population. I usually sold six to eight papers there. I decided that if
I found a corresponding crowd there the only thing to do to correct my
lack of judgment in not getting more papers was to raise the price from
five cents to ten. The crowd was there, and I raised the price. At the
various towns there were corresponding crowds. It had been my practice
at Port Huron to jump from the train at a point about one-fourth of
a mile from the station, where the train generally slackened speed.
I had drawn several loads of sand to this point to jump on, and had
become quite expert. The little Dutch boy with the horse met me at this
point. When the wagon approached the outskirts of the town I was met by
a large crowd. I then yelled: 'Twenty-five cents apiece, gentlemen! I
haven't enough to go around!' I sold out, and made what to me then was
an immense sum of money."
But this and similar gains of money did not increase Edison's savings,
for all his spare cash was spent for new chemicals and apparatus. He
had bought a copy of Fresenius's _Qualitative Analysis_, and, with
his ceaseless testing and study of its advanced problems, his little
laboratory on the train was now becoming crowded with additional
equipment, especially as he now added electricity to his studies.
"While a newsboy on the railroad," says Edison, "I got very much
interested in electricity, probably from visiting telegraph offices
with a chum who had tastes similar to mine."
We have already seen that he was shrewd enough to use the telegraph
to get news items for his own little journal and also to bulletin his
special news of the Civil War along the line. To such a ceaseless
experimenter as he was, it was only natural that electricity should
come in for a share of his attention. With his knowledge of chemistry,
he had no trouble in "setting up" batteries, but his difficulty lay in
obtaining instruments and material for circuits.
To-day any youth who desires to experiment with telegraphy or telephony
can find plenty of stores where apparatus can be bought ready made,
or he can make many things himself by following the instructions in
_Harper's Electricity Book for Boys_. But in Edison's boyish days
it was quite different. Telegraph supplies were hard to obtain, and
amateurs were usually obliged to make their own apparatus.
However, he and his chum had a line between their homes, built of
common stove-pipe wire. The insulators were bottles set on nails driven
into trees and short poles. The magnet wire was wound with rags for
insulation, and pieces of spring brass were used for telegraph keys.
With the idea of securing current cheaply, Edison applied the little
he knew about static electricity, and actually experimented with cats.
He treated them vigorously as frictional machines until the animals
fled in dismay, leaving their marks to remind the young inventor of
his first great lesson in the relative value of sources of electrical
energy. Resorting to batteries, however, the line was made to work, and
the two boys exchanged messages.
[Illustration: EDISON WHEN ABOUT FOURTEEN OR FIFTEEN YEARS OF AGE]
Edison wanted lots of practice, and secured it in an ingenious manner.
If he could have had his way he would have sat up until the small hours
of the morning, but his father insisted on eleven-thirty as the proper
bed-time, which left but a short interval after a long day on the train.
Now, each evening, when the boy went home with newspapers that had not
been sold, his father would sit up to read them. So Edison on some
excuse had his friend take the papers, but suggested to his father that
he could get the news from the chum by telegraph bit by bit. The scheme
interested the father, and was put into effect, the messages over the
wire being written down by Edison and handed to the old gentleman to
read.
This gave good practice every night until twelve or one o'clock, and
was kept up for some time, until the father became willing that his son
should sit up for a reasonable time. The papers were then brought home
again, and the boys practised to their hearts' content, until the line
was pulled down by a stray cow wandering through the orchard.
Now we come to the incident which may be regarded as turning Edison's
thoughts more definitely to electricity. One August morning, in 1862,
the mixed train on which he worked as newsboy was doing some shunting
at Mount Clemens station. A laden box-car had been pushed out of a
siding, when Edison, who was loitering about the platform, saw the
little son of the station agent, Mr. J. U. Mackenzie, playing with the
gravel on the main track, along which the car, without a brakeman, was
rapidly approaching.
Edison dropped his papers and his cap and made a dash for the child,
whom he picked up and lifted to safety without a second to spare, as
the wheel struck his heel. Both were cut about the face and hands by
the gravel ballast on which they fell.
The two boys were picked up by the train-hands and carried to the
platform, and the grateful father, who knew and liked the rescuer,
offered to teach him the art of train telegraphy and to make an
operator of him. It is needless to say that the proposal was most
eagerly accepted.
Edison found time for his new studies by letting one of his friends
look after the newsboy work on the train for part of the trip, keeping
for himself the run between Port Huron and Mount Clemens. We have
already seen that he was qualified as a beginner, and, besides, he was
able to take to the station a neat little set of instruments he had
just finished at a gun shop in Detroit.
What with his business as newsboy, his publication of the _Weekly
Herald_, his reading and chemical and electrical experiments, Edison
was leading a busy life and making rapid progress, but unexpectedly
there came disaster, which brought about a sudden change. One day, as
the train was running swiftly over a piece of poorly laid track, there
was a sudden lurch, and a stick of phosphorus was jarred from its
shelf, fell to the floor and burst into flame.
The car took fire, and Edison was trying in vain to put out the blaze
when the conductor rushed in with water and saved the car. On arriving
at the next station the enraged conductor put the boy off with his
entire outfit, including his laboratory and printing-plant.
The origin of Edison's deafness may be told in his own words: "My train
was standing by the platform at Smith's Creek station. I was trying
to climb into the freight car with both arms full of papers when the
conductor took me by the ears and lifted me. I felt something snap
inside my head, and my deafness started from that time and has ever
since progressed."
"This deafness has been a great advantage to me in various ways. When
in a telegraph office I could hear only the instrument directly on
the table at which I sat, and, unlike the other operators, I was not
bothered by the other instruments. Again, in experimenting on the
telephone, I had to improve the transmitter so that I could hear it.
This made the telephone commercial, as the magneto telephone receiver
of Bell was too weak to be used as a transmitter commercially. It was
the same with the phonograph. The great defect of that instrument was
the rendering of the overtones in music and the hissing consonants in
speech. I worked over one year, twenty hours a day, Sundays and all,
to get the word "specie" perfectly recorded and reproduced on the
phonograph. When this was done I knew that everything else could be
done--which was a fact. Again, my nerves have been preserved intact.
Broadway is as quiet to me as a country village is to a person with
normal hearing."
But we left young Edison on the station platform, sorrowful and
indignant, as the train moved off, deserting him in the midst of his
beloved possessions. He was saddened, but not altogether discouraged,
and after some trouble succeeded in making his way home, where he again
set up his laboratory and also his printing-office. There was some
objection on the part of the family, as they feared that they might
also suffer from fire, but he promised not to bring in anything of a
dangerous nature.
He continued to publish the _Weekly Herald_, but after a while was
persuaded by a chum to change its character and publish it under the
name of _Paul Pry_, making it a journal of town gossip about local
people and their affairs and peculiarities.
No copies of _Paul Pry_ can now be found, but it is known that its
style was distinctly personal, and the weaknesses of the townspeople
were discussed in it very freely and frankly by the two boys. It caused
no small offense, and in one instance Edison was pitched into the St.
Clair River by one of the victims whose affairs had been given such
unsought publicity.
Possibly this was one of the reasons that caused Edison to give up the
paper not very long afterward. He had a great liking for newspaper
work, and might have continued in that field had it not been for strong
influences in other directions. There is no question, however, that he
was the youngest publisher and editor of his time.
V
A FEW STORIES OF EDISON'S NEWSBOY DAYS
The Grand Trunk Railroad machine shops at Port Huron had a great
attraction for young Edison. The boy who was to have much to do with
the evolution of the modern electric locomotive in later years was
fascinated with the mechanism of the steam locomotive. Whenever he
could get the chance he would ride with the engineer in the cab, and he
liked nothing better than to handle the locomotive himself during the
run. Edison's own account of what happened on of these trips is very
laughable. He says:
"The engine was one of a number leased to the Grank Trunk by the
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. It had bright brass bands all over the
woodwork, was beautifully painted, and everything was highly polished,
which was the custom up to the time old Commodore Vanderbilt stopped it
on his roads. It was a slow freight train. The engineer and fireman had
been out all night at a dance. After running about fifteen miles they
became so sleepy that they couldn't keep their eyes open, and agreed
to permit me to run the engine. I took charge, reducing the speed to
about twelve miles an hour, and brought the train of seven cars to her
destination at the Grand Trunk junction safely. But something occurred
which was very much out of the ordinary. I was greatly worried about
the water, and I knew that if it got low the boiler was likely to
explode. I hadn't gone twenty miles before black, damp mud blew out of
the stack and covered every part of the engine, including myself. I
was about to awaken the fireman to find out the cause of this, when it
stopped. Then I approached a station where the fireman always went out
to the cow-catcher, opened the oil-cup on the steam-chest, and poured
oil in. I started to carry out the procedure, when, upon opening the
oil-cup, the steam rushed out with a tremendous noise, nearly knocking
me off the engine. I succeeded in closing the oil-cup and got back
in the cab, and made up my mind that she would pull through without
oil. I learned afterward that the engineer always shut off steam when
the fireman went to oil. This point I failed to notice. My powers of
observation were very much improved after this occurrence. Just before
I reached the junction another outpour of black mud occurred, and the
whole engine was a sight--so much so that when I pulled into the yard
everybody turned to see it, laughing immoderately. I found the reason
of the mud was that I carried so much water it passed over into the
stack, and this washed out all the accumulated soot."