experiments, and was already known as the best-informed operator in
the office, accepted the task, inviting Adams to accompany him. What
happened is described by Adams as follows: "We gathered up a couple of
sounders, a battery, and some wire, and at the appointed time called on
her to do the stunt. Her school-room was about twenty by twenty feet,
not including a small platform. We rigged up the line between the two
ends of the room, Edison taking the stage, while I was at the other
end of the room. All being in readiness, the principal was told to
bring in her children. The door opened, and in came about twenty young
ladies elegantly gowned, not one of whom was under seventeen. When
Edison saw them I thought he would faint. He called me on the line and
asked me to come to the stage and explain the mysteries of the Morse
system. I replied that I thought he was in the right place, and told
him to get busy with his talk on dots and dashes. Always modest, Edison
was so overcome he could hardly speak, but he managed to say finally
that, as his friend, Mr. Adams, was better equipped with cheek than he
was, we would change places, and he would do the demonstrating while I
explained the whole thing. This caused the bevy to turn to see where
the lecturer was. I went on the stage, said something, and we did some
telegraphing over the line. I guess it was satisfactory; we got the
money, which was the main point to us."
Edison tells the story in a similar manner, but insists that it was
he who saved the situation. "I managed to say that I would work the
apparatus, and Mr. Adams would make the explanations. Adams was so
embarrassed that he fell over an ottoman. The girls tittered, and this
increased his embarrassment until he couldn't say a word. The situation
was so desperate that for a reason I never could explain I started
in myself and talked and explained better than I ever did before or
since. I can talk to two or three persons, but when there are more
they radiate some unknown form of influence which paralyzes my vocal
cords. However, I got out of this scrape, and many times afterward
when I chanced with other operators to meet some of the young ladies
on their way home from school they would smile and nod, much to the
mystification of the operators, who were ignorant of this episode." The
purchase of supplies and apparatus for his constant experiments and
studies kept Edison's pocket-money at low ebb. He never had a surplus
of cash, and tells this amusing story of those impecunious days:
"My friend Adams was working in the Franklin Telegraph Company, which
competed with the Western Union. Adams was laid off, and as his
financial resources had reached absolute zero centigrade, I undertook
to let him sleep in my hall bedroom. I generally had hall bedrooms,
because they were cheap and I needed money to buy apparatus. I also
had the pleasure of his genial company at the boarding-house about a
mile distant, but at the sacrifice of some apparatus. One morning, as
we were hastening to breakfast, we came into Tremont Row, and saw a
large crowd in front of two small 'gents'' furnishing goods stores. We
stopped to ascertain the cause of the excitement. One store put up a
paper sign in the display window which said, 'Three hundred pairs of
stockings received this day, five cents a pair--no connection with the
store next door.' Presently the other store put up a sign stating they
had received three hundred pairs, price three cents a pair, also that
they had no connection with the store next door. Nobody went in. The
crowd kept increasing. Finally, when the price had reached three pairs
for one cent, Adams said to me: I can't stand this any longer; give me
a cent.' I gave him a cent, and he elbowed his way in; and throwing
the money on the counter, the store being filled with women clerks, he
said, 'Give me three pairs.' The crowd was breathless, and the girl
took down a box and drew out three pairs of baby socks. 'Oh!' said
Adams, 'I want men's size.' 'Well, sir, we do not permit one to pick
sizes for that amount of money.' And the crowd roared, and this broke
up the sales."
During Edison's first stay in Boston he began to weary of the
monotonous routine of a telegraph operator's life and took steps to
establish himself in an independent business. It was at this point that
he began his career as an inventor.
He says: "After the vote recorder I invented a stock ticker, and
started a ticker service in Boston, had thirty or forty subscribers,
and operated from a room over the Gold Exchange. This was about a year
after Callahan started in New York."
It has been generally supposed that Edison did not take up stock ticker
work until he left Boston finally and went to New York in 1869. But the
above shows that he actually started a ticker service in Boston in 1868.
The stock ticker had been invented about a year before, 1867, by E.
A. Callahan, and had then been introduced into service in New York.
Its success was immediate, and it became the common ambition of every
operator to invent a new ticker, as there seemed to be a promise of
great wealth in this direction. Edison, however, was about the only one
in Boston who seems to have achieved any tangible result.
This was not by any means all the practical work he did in Boston at
this time, as we learn from his own words. He says: "I also engaged
in putting up private lines, upon which I used an alphabetical dial
instrument for telegraphing between business establishments, a
forerunner of modern telephony. This instrument was very simple and
practical, and any one could work it after a few minutes' explanation.
I had these instruments made at Mr. Hamblet's, who had a little shop
where he was engaged in experimenting with electric clocks. Mr.
Hamblet was the father and introducer in after years of the Western
Union Telegraph system of time distribution. My laboratory was the
headquarters for the men, and also of tools and supplies for those
private lines. They were put up cheaply, as I used the roofs of
houses, just as the Western Union did. It never occurred to me to ask
permission from the owners; all we did was to go to the store, etc.,
say we were telegraph men, and wanted to go up to the wires on the
roof; and permission was always granted.
"In this laboratory I had a large induction coil which I had borrowed
to make some experiments with. One day I got hold of both electrodes of
the coil, and it clinched my hands on them so that I couldn't let go.
The battery was on a shelf. The only way I could get free was to back
off and pull the coil, so that the battery wires would pull the cells
off the shelf and thus break the circuit. I shut my eyes and pulled,
but the nitric acid splashed all over my face and ran down my back. I
rushed to a sink, which was only half big enough, and got in as well as
I could and wiggled around for several minutes to permit the water to
dilute the acid and stop the pain. My face and back were streaked with
yellow; the skin was thoroughly oxidized. I did not go on the street by
daylight for two weeks, as the appearance of my face was dreadful. The
skin, however, peeled off, and new skin replaced it without any damage."
With all the practical work he was now doing, Boston seemed to be too
limited a sphere, and Edison longed for the greater opportunities of
New York. His friend Adams went West to continue a life of roving and
adventure, but the serious-minded Edison had had more than enough of
aimless roaming, and had determined to forge ahead on the lines on
which he was working.
Realizing that he must look to New York to better his fortunes, Edison,
deep in debt for his new inventions, but with high hope and courage,
now made the next momentous step in his career.
IX
FROM POVERTY TO INDEPENDENCE
Edison came first to New York in 1868, with his early stock printer,
which he tried unsuccessfully to sell. He went back to Boston, and,
quite undismayed, got up a duplex telegraph. "Toward the end of my stay
in Boston," he says, "I obtained a loan of money, amounting to eight
hundred dollars, to build up a peculiar kind of duplex telegraph for
sending two messages over a single wire simultaneously. The apparatus
was built, and I left the Western Union employ and went to Rochester,
New York, to test the apparatus on the lines of the Atlantic and
Pacific Telegraph between that city and New York. But the assistant at
the other end could not be made to understand anything, notwithstanding
I had written out a very minute description of just what to do. After
trying for a week I gave it up and returned to New York with but a few
cents in my pocket."
No one could have been in direr poverty than Edison when the steamboat
landed him in New York in 1869. He was in debt, and his few belongings
in books and instruments had to be left behind. He was not far from
starving.
After leaving the boat his first thought was for breakfast; but he was
without money to obtain it. He walked the streets, and in passing a
wholesale tea house saw a man "tasting" tea, so he went in and asked
the "taster" if he might have some tea. His request was granted, and
this was his first breakfast in New York.
He knew a telegraph operator in the city, and in the course of the day
succeeded in finding him, but he also was out of work, and the best he
could do was to lend Edison one dollar.
By this time Edison was extremely hungry, and he gave most serious
consideration as to what he should buy in the way of food that would be
most satisfying. He finally decided upon apple dumplings and coffee,
which he obtained at Smith & McNeil's restaurant. He says he never ate
anything more appetizing.
He applied to the Western Union Company for a position as operator,
but as there was no immediate vacancy he was obliged to wait for an
opening. Having only the remainder of the borrowed dollar, he did not
want to spend it for lodging, so he got permission to stay overnight
in the battery-room of the Gold Indicator Company. Thus he kept what
little change he had to buy food.
This was four years after the Civil War, but its effects were felt
everywhere, and notably in the depreciation of government securities
and our paper money. Gold, being the standard, was regarded as much
more valuable than a paper promise to pay issued by a government
heavily in debt. A gold dollar, therefore, would buy much more than
a paper dollar, at times a dollar and a quarter, or a dollar and a
half in value. In a word, gold commanded a high premium. For several
years afterward there was a great deal of speculation in the precious
metal, and a "Gold Room" had been established in Wall Street, where
the transactions took place. At first the prices were exhibited on a
blackboard there, but before long this plan was found to be too slow
for the brokers. Then Dr. S. S. Laws, vice president and presiding
officer of the Gold Exchange, invented a system of indicators to be
placed in the offices of brokers. These indicators were operated from
a complicated transmitting instrument at the Exchange, and each one
showed the fluctuations of price as transactions took place. Dr. Laws
resigned from the Exchange and organized the Gold Indicator Company,
which put the system into operation.
At the time when Edison took shelter at night in the battery-room of
the company there were about three hundred instruments in the offices
of subscribers. While waiting to hear from the Western Union, Edison
spent his days studying the indicators and the complicated transmitting
instrument in the office, controlled from the keyboard of the operator
on the floor of the Gold Exchange.
What happened next has been the basis of many inaccurate stories,
but the following is Mr. Edison's own version: "On the third day of
my arrival, and while sitting in the office, the complicated general
instrument for sending on all the lines, and which made a very great
noise, suddenly came to a stop with a crash. Within two minutes over
three hundred boys--a boy from every broker in the street--rushed
up-stairs and crowded the long aisle and office, that hardly had
room for one hundred, all yelling that such and such a broker's wire
was out of order and to fix it at once. It was pandemonium, and the
man in charge became so excited that he lost control of all the
knowledge he ever had. I went to the indicator, and, having studied
it thoroughly, knew where the trouble ought to be, and found it. One
of the innumerable contact springs had broken off and had fallen down
between the two gearwheels and stopped the instrument; but it was not
very noticeable. As I went out to tell the man in charge what the
matter was Dr. Laws appeared on the scene, the most excited person I
had seen. He demanded of the man the cause of the trouble, but the man
was speechless. I ventured to say that I knew what the trouble was,
and he said, 'Fix it! Fix it! Be quick!' I removed the spring and set
the contact wheels at zero; and the line, battery, and inspecting men
all scattered through the financial district to set the instruments.
In about two hours things were working again. Dr. Laws came in to ask
my name and what I was doing. I told him, and he asked me to come to
his private office the following day. His office was filled with stacks
of books all relating to metaphysics and kindred matters. He asked me
a great many questions about the instruments and his system, and I
showed him how he could simplify things generally. He then requested
that I should call next day. On arrival, he stated at once that he had
decided to put me in charge of the whole plant, and that my salary
would be three hundred dollars a month! This was such a violent jump
from anything I had ever had before that it rather paralyzed me for a
while. I thought it was too much to be lasting; but I determined to try
and live up to that salary if twenty hours a day of hard work would do
it. I kept this position, made many improvements, devised several stock
tickers, until the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company consolidated with
the Gold Indicator Company."
Certainly few changes in fortune have been more sudden and dramatic in
any notable career than this which thus placed an ill-clad, unkempt,
half-starved, eager lad in a position of such responsibility in days
when the fluctuations in the price of gold at every instant meant
fortune or ruin to thousands.
There was at this time a very active period of speculation, and not a
great while afterward came the attempt of Jay Gould and his associates
to corner the gold market by buying all the available supply. This
brought about the panic of Black Friday, September 24, 1869.
Edison, then but twenty-two years old, was a keen observer, and his
recollection of this episode is interesting. "On Black Friday," he
says, "we had a very exciting time with the indicators. The Gould and
Fisk crowd had cornered gold, and had run the quotations up faster
than the indicator could follow. The indicator was composed of several
wheels; on the circumference of each wheel were the numerals; and
one wheel had fractions. It worked in the same way as an ordinary
counter; one wheel made ten revolutions, and at the tenth it advanced
the adjacent wheel; and this, in its turn having gone ten revolutions,
advanced the next wheel, and so on. On the morning of Black Friday the
indicator was quoting one hundred and fifty premium, whereas the bids
by Gould's agents in the Gold Room were one hundred and sixty-five for
five millions or any part. We had a paper-weight at the transmitter
(to speed it up), and by one o'clock reached the right quotation. The
excitement was prodigious. New Street, as well as Broad Street, was
jammed with excited people. I sat on the top of the Western Union
telegraph booth to watch the surging, crazy crowd. One man came to the
booth, grabbed a pencil, and attempted to write a message to Boston.
The first stroke went clear off the blank; he was so excited that he
had the operator write the message for him. Amid great excitement
Speyer, the banker, went crazy, and it took five men to hold him; and
everybody lost their heads. The Western Union operator came to me and
said: 'Shake, Edison, we are O. K. We haven't got a cent.' I felt very
happy because we were poor. These occasions are very enjoyable to a
poor man; but they occur rarely."
Edison in those days rather liked the modest coffee-shops and mentions
visiting one. "When on the New York No. 1 wire that I worked in Boston
there was an operator named Jerry Borst at the other end. He was a
first-class receiver and rapid sender. We made up a scheme to hold this
wire, so he changed one letter of the alphabet and I soon got used to
it; and finally we changed three letters. If any operator tried to
receive from Borst he couldn't do it, so Borst and I always worked
together. Borst did less talking than any operator I ever knew. Never
having seen him, I went, while in New York, to call upon him. I did
all the talking. He would listen, stroke his beard, and say nothing.
In the evening I went over to an all-night lunch-house in Printing
House Square, in a basement--Oliver's. Night editors, including Horace
Greeley, and Henry Raymond, of the New York _Times_, took their
midnight lunch there. When I went with Borst and another operator they
pointed out two or three men who were then celebrated in the newspaper
world. The night was intensely hot and close. After getting our lunch
and upon reaching the sidewalk, Borst opened his mouth, and said:
'That's a great place; a plate of cakes, a cup of coffee, and a Russian
bath for ten cents.' This was about fifty per cent, of his conversation
for two days."
The work of Edison on the gold indicator had thrown him into close
relationship with Mr. Franklin L. Pope, a young telegraph engineer, and
afterward a distinguished expert and technical writer. Each recognized
the special ability of the other, and barely a week after Black Friday
the announcement of their partnership appeared in the _Telegrapher_ of
October 1, 1869.
This was the first "professional card," if it may be so described, ever
issued in America by a firm of electrical engineers.
In order to be near his new friend, Edison boarded with Pope at
Elizabeth, New Jersey, for some time living the "strenuous life" in
the performance of his duties and following up his work on telegraph
printers with marked success.
In regard to this Mr. Edison says: "While with them" (Pope and J.
N. Ashley) "I devised a printer to print gold quotations instead of
indicating them. The lines were started, and the whole was sold out to
the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company. My experimenting was all done
in the small shop of a Dr. Bradley, located near the station of the
Pennsylvania Railroad in Jersey City. Every night I left for Elizabeth
on the 1 A.M. train, then walked half a mile to Mr. Pope's house, and
up at 6 A.M. for breakfast, to catch the 7 A.M. train. This continued
all winter, and many were the occasions when I was nearly frozen in the
Elizabeth walk."
After the Edison and Pope printer was bought out by the Gold and Stock
Telegraph Company, its president, Gen. Marshall Lefferts, requested
Edison to go to work on improving the stock ticker, he, Lefferts, to
furnish the money.
Edison tackled the subject enthusiastically, and as one result produced
the "Universal" ticker, which came into wide-spread use in its day.
This and some other inventions had a startling effect on his fortunes.
Mr. Edison says: "I made a great many inventions; one was the special
ticker used for many years outside of New York in the large cities.
This was made exceedingly simple, as they did not have the experts we
had in New York to handle anything complicated. The same ticker was
used on the London Stock Exchange. After I had made a great number of
inventions and obtained patents, the General seemed anxious that the
matter should be closed up. One day I exhibited and worked a successful
device whereby, if a ticker should get out of unison in a broker's
office and commence to print wild figures, it could be brought to
unison from the central station, which saved the labor of many men and
much trouble to the broker. He called me into his office, and said:
'Now, young man, I want to close up the matter of your inventions. How
much do you think you should receive?' I had made up my mind that,
taking into consideration the time and killing pace I was working at, I
should be entitled to five thousand dollars, but could get along with
three thousand dollars. When the psychological moment arrived, I hadn't
the nerve to name such a large sum, so I said: 'Well, General, suppose
you make me an offer.' Then he said: 'How would forty thousand dollars
strike you?' This caused me to come as near fainting as I ever got. I
was afraid he would hear my heart beat. I managed to say that I thought
it was fair. 'All right, I will have a contract drawn; come around in
three days and sign it, and I will give you the money.' I arrived on
time, but had been doing some considerable thinking on the subject.
The sum seemed to be very large for the amount of work, for, at that
time I determined the value by the time and trouble, and not by what
the invention was worth to others. I thought there was something unreal
about it. However, the contract was handed to me. I signed without
reading it"
Edison was then handed the first check he had ever received, one for
forty thousand dollars. He went down to the bank and passed the check
in to the paying teller, who handed it back to him with some remarks
which in his deafness he did not hear. Fancying for a moment he had
been cheated, Edison went outside "to let the cold sweat evaporate."
He went back to the General, who, with his secretary, had a good laugh
over the matter, and told him the check must be endorsed, and sent with
him a clerk to identify him.
The ceremony of identification performed with the paying teller, who
was quite merry over the incident, Edison was given the amount in
bundles of small bills "until there certainly seemed to be one cubic
foot." Unaware that he was the victim of a practical joke, Edison
proceeded gravely to stow away the money in his overcoat pockets and
all his other pockets. He then went to Newark and sat up all night with
the money for fear it might be stolen. Once more he sought help next
morning, when the General laughed heartily, and, telling the clerk that
the joke must not be carried any further, enabled him to deposit the
currency in the bank and open an account--his first bank account.
Thus in a very brief time Edison had passed from poverty to
independence. Not only that, but he had made a deep impression as to
his originality and ability on important people, and had brought out
valuable inventions. Thus he lifted himself at one hound out of the
ranks and away from the drudgery of the key.
Many young men of twenty-two would have been so dazzled by coming
suddenly into possession of forty thousand dollars after a period of
poverty, struggle, and hard work, that their main ideas would have been
of recreation and pleasure. Not so with Edison, however. Naturally
enterprising and a pioneer, this money meant to him nothing but means
to an end.
He bought some machinery and opened a small shop and got work for it.
Very quickly he was compelled to move to larger quarters. Nos. 10
and 12 Ward Street, Newark, New Jersey. He secured large orders from
General Lefferts to build stock tickers, and employed fifty men.
As business increased he put on a night force, and was his own foreman
in both shifts. Half an hour of sleep three or four times in the
twenty-four hours was all he needed. His force increased to one hundred
and fifty men, and, besides superintending all the work day and night,
he was constantly making new inventions in the lines on which he was
then working, which was chiefly stock tickers.
A glimpse at some of young Edison's first methods as a manufacturer
is interesting. He says: "Nearly all my men were on piece-work, and I
allowed them to make good wages, and never cut until the pay became
absurdly high as they got more expert. I kept no books. I had two
hooks. All the bills and accounts I owed I jabbed on one hook, and
memoranda of all owed to myself I put on the other. When some of the
bills fell due, and I couldn't deliver tickers to get a supply of
money, I gave a note. When the notes were due a messenger came around
from the bank with the note and a protest pinned to it for one dollar
and twenty-five cents. Then I would go to New York and get an advance
or pay the note if I had the money. This method of giving notes for
my accounts and having all notes protested I kept up over two years,
yet my credit was fine. Every store I traded with was always glad to
furnish goods, perhaps in amazed admiration of my system of doing
business, which was certainly new."
After a while Edison got a bookkeeper, whose vagaries made him look
back with regret on the earlier, primitive method. "The first three
months I had him go over the books to find out how much we had made.
He reported three thousand dollars. I gave a supper to some of my men
to celebrate this, only to be told two days afterward that he had made
a mistake, and that we had lost five hundred dollars; and then a few
days after that he came to me again and said he was all mixed up, and
now found that we had made over seven thousand dollars." Edison changed
bookkeepers, but never afterward counted anything real profit until he
had paid all his debts and had the profits in the bank.
Among the men who have worked with Edison in his various shops from
time to time, there have always been those who later have risen to some
notable degree of prominence in the electrical arts. This early shop
was no exception.