Fort Wayne, on the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad. This was
a "day job," and he did not like it. Two months later he drifted to
Indianapolis, arriving there in the fall of 1864, when for the first
time he entered the employ of the Western Union Telegraph Company,
with which in later years he entered into closer relationship. At this
time, however, he was assigned to duty at Union Station, at a salary of
seventy-five dollars a month.
He did not stay long in Indianapolis, however, leaving in February,
1865, and going from there to Cincinnati. This change was possibly
caused by one of his early inventions, which has been spoken of by
an expert as probably the most simple and ingenious arrangement of
connections for a repeater.
His ambition was to take "press report," which would come over the
wire quite fast, 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. This went well
under ordinary conditions, but when an unusual pressure occurred he
fell behind, and the newspapers complained of the slowness with which
the reports were delivered to them. As to this device, Mr. Edison said
recently: "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 theater 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 operators taking the report up to 1 A.M., which were 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 to 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."
Arriving in Cincinnati, Edison got employment in the Western Union
Commercial Telegraph Department at sixty dollars per month. Here he
made the acquaintance of Milton F. Adams, referred to in the preceding
chapter. 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 in Cincinnati came
the close of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln.
One of Edison's reminiscences is interesting as showing the mechanical
way in which some telegraph operators do their work. "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
realization of its significance."
Edison's diversions in Cincinnati were characteristic of his life
before and since. He read a great deal, but spent most of his leisure
time experimenting. Occasionally he would indulge in some form of
amusement, but this was not often. At this time he and Adams were close
friends, and Mr. Adams remarks: "Edison and I were fond of tragedy.
Forrest and John McCullough were playing at the National Theater,
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 Garten, 'over
the Rhine,' with a glass of beer and a few pretzels consumed while
listening to the excellent music of a German band, the theater was the
sum and substance of our innocent dissipation."
While Edison was in Cincinnati there came one day a delegation of
five trade-union operators from Cleveland to form a local branch in
Cincinnati. The occasion was one of great conviviality. Night came and
many of the operators were away. The Cleveland wire was in special
need, and Edison, almost alone in the office, devoted himself to it all
through the night and until three o'clock next morning, when he was
relieved. He had been previously getting eighty dollars a month, and
added to this by copying plays for a theater.
His rating was that of a "plug," or inferior operator, but having
determined to become a first-class operator, he had kept up a practice
of going to the office at night to take "press," acting willingly
as a substitute for any operator who wanted to get off for a few
hours--which often meant all night.
Thus he had been unconsciously preparing for the special ordeal which
the conviviality of the trade-unionists had brought about.
Speaking of that night's work, 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, and so I
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 one hundred and twenty-five dollars.' Thus
I got from the plug classification to that of a 'first-class man.'"
Not long after this promotion was secured Edison started again on his
wanderings. He went south, while his friend Adams went north, neither
one having any difficulty in making the trip. He says: "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 could go as far as they liked. The
number of operators was small, and they were in demand everywhere."
Edison's next stopping place was Memphis, Tennessee, where he got a
position as operator. Here again he began to invent and improve on
existing apparatus, with the result of being obliged once more to "move
on." He tells the story as follows: "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 protégé 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 two
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 without 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
traveling companion was less successful on account of his 'record.'
They had a limit even in those days when the telegraph service was so
demoralized."
After the Civil War was over the telegraph service was in desperate
condition, and some of Mr. Edison's reminiscences of these times are
quite interesting. He says: "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 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 signaling 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 eleven 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-martialed and shot. Finally the Jew
got up to eight hundred dollars. 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 was to wait three days and then go and sit
on the stoop of Van Duzer's office all day he would be taken back. But
Van Duzer swore that if the operator had taken eight hundred dollars
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 eight
hundred dollars and then sent the message deadhead he couldn't stand
it, and he would never relent."
A third typical story of this period relates to a cipher message for
General 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 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 twelve
or one o'clock, but no Louisville. About one o'clock the operator
at the Indianapolis office got hold of an operator who happened to
come into his office, which had a wire which ran from Indianapolis to
Louisville along the railroad. 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 a
hospital, while the third operator had gone to Cynthiana to see a man
hanged and had got left by the train."
[Illustration: Note handwritten by Edison]
I think the most important line of
investigation is the production of
Electricity direct from carbon.
Edison
From Memphis Edison went to Louisville. Here he remained for about
two years. It was while he was there that he perfected the peculiar
vertical style of writing which has since been his characteristic
style. He says of this form of writing, an example of which is given
above: "I developed this style in Louisville while taking press
reports. My wire was connected to the 'blind' side of a repeater at
Cincinnati, so that if I missed a word or sentence, or if the wire
worked badly, I could not break in and get the last words, because
the Cincinnati man had no instrument by which he could hear me. I had
to take what came. When I got the job the cable across the Ohio River
at Covington, connecting with the line to Louisville, had a variable
leak in it, which caused the strength of the signaling current to make
violent fluctuations. I obviated this by using several relays, each
with a different adjustment, working several sounders all connected
with one sounding-plate. The clatter was bad, but I could read it with
fair ease. When, in addition to this infernal leak, the wires north
to Cleveland worked badly it required a large amount of imagination
to get the sense of what was being sent. An imagination requires an
appreciable time for its exercise, and as the stuff was coming at the
rate of thirty-five to forty words a minute, it was very difficult
to write down what was coming and imagine what wasn't coming. Hence
it was necessary to become a very rapid writer, so I started to find
the fastest style. I found that the vertical style, with each letter
separate and without any flourishes, was the most rapid, and that, the
smaller the letter, the greater the rapidity. As I took on an average
from eight to fifteen columns of news report every day, it did not take
long to perfect this method."
The telegraph offices of those early days were very crude as compared
with the equipments of modern times. The apparatus was generally
in a very poor condition, and the wiring was of a haphazard kind.
The conditions during the time of the Civil War all tended to
demoralization, both of operators and apparatus.
Indeed, the following story, related by Edison, illustrates the
lengths to which telegraphers could go at a time when they were in so
much demand: "When I took the position there was a great shortage of
operators. One night, at 2 A.M., another operator and I were on duty.
I was taking press report, and the other man was working the New York
wire. We heard a heavy tramp, tramp, tramp on the rickety stairs.
Suddenly the door was thrown open with great violence, dislodging
it from one of the hinges. There appeared in the doorway one of the
best operators we had, who worked daytime, and who was of a very
quiet disposition except when intoxicated. He was a great friend of
the manager of the office. His eyes were bloodshot and wild, and one
sleeve had been torn away from his coat. Without noticing either of
us, he went up to the stove and kicked it over. The stove-pipe fell,
dislocated at every joint. It was half full of exceedingly fine soot,
which floated out and completely filled the room. This produced a
momentary respite to his labors. When the atmosphere had cleared
sufficiently to see he went around and pulled every table away from
the wall, piling them on top of the stove in the middle of the room.
Then he proceeded to pull the switchboard away from the wall. It was
held tightly by screws. He succeeded, finally, and when it gave way he
fell with the board, and, striking on a table, cut himself so that he
soon became covered with blood. He then went to the battery-room and
knocked all the batteries off on the floor. The nitric acid soon began
to combine with the plaster in the room below, which was the public
receiving-room for messengers and bookkeepers. The excess acid poured
through and ate up the account-books. After having finished everything
to his satisfaction, he left. I told the other operators to do nothing.
We would leave things just as they were, and wait until the manager
came. In the meantime, as I knew all the wires coming through to the
switchboard, I rigged up a temporary set of instruments so that the New
York business could be cleared up, and we also got the remainder of the
press matter. At seven o'clock the day men began to appear. They were
told to go downstairs and await the coming of the manager. At eight
o'clock he appeared, walked around, went into the battery-room, and
then came to me, saying: 'Edison, who did this?' I told him that Billy
L. had come in full of soda-water and invented the ruin before him.
He walked back and forth about a minute, then, coming up to my table,
put his fist down, and said: 'If Billy L. ever does that again I will
discharge him.' It was needless to say that there were other operators
who took advantage of that kind of discipline, and I had many calls at
night after that, but none with such destructive effects."
Incidents such as these, together with the daily life and work of
an operator, presented one aspect of life to our young operator in
Louisville. But there was another, more intellectual side, in the
contact afforded with journalism and its leaders, on which Mr. Edison
looks back with great satisfaction. "I remember," he says, "the
discussions between the celebrated poet and journalist George D.
Prentice, then editor of 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, where I heard
them arguing on the immortality of the soul, etc. I asked permission
of Mr. Tyler if, after finishing the press matter, I might come in and
listen to the conversation, which I did many times after. One thing I
never could comprehend was that Tyler had a sideboard with liquors and
generally crackers. Prentice would pour out half a glass of what they
call corn whisky, and would dip the crackers in it and eat them. Tyler
took 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
paragraph in the modern American newspaper, as distributed instantly
throughout the country through the telegraph. "It was the practice
of the press operators all over the country at that time, when a
lull occurred, to start in and send jokes or stories the day men had
collected; and these were copied and pasted up on the bulletin-board.
Cleveland was the originating office for 'press,' which it received
from New York and sent out simultaneously to Milwaukee, Chicago,
Toledo, Detroit, Pittsburg, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Indianapolis,
Vincennes, Terre Haute, St. Louis and Louisville. Cleveland would call
first on Milwaukee and ask if he had anything. If so, he would send
it, and Cleveland would repeat it to all of us. Thus any joke or story
originating anywhere in that area was known the next day all over. The
press men would come in and copy anything which could be published,
which was about three per cent. I collected, too, quite a large
scrap-book of it, but, unfortunately, I have lost it."