millions of records, one of the difficulties to be overcome was to make
large numbers of duplicates from an original record made by a singer,
speaker, or band of musicians.
This difficulty will be perceived when it is stated that the record
cut into the wax cylinder is hardly ever greater than one-thousandth
of an inch deep, which is less than the thickness of a sheet of tissue
paper, and in a single phonograph record there are many millions of
sound-waves so recorded.
Through endless experiments of Edison and his working force, and with
many ingenious inventions, however, these difficulties were overcome
one by one.
It may be added that the phonograph was an invention so absolutely new
that when Mr. Edison applied for his original patent, in 1877, the
Patent Office could not find that any such attempt had ever before been
made to record and reproduce speech or other sounds, and the patent
was granted immediately. He has since taken out more than one hundred
patents on improvements.
The original patent has long since expired, and many kinds of
talking-machines are now made by others also, but they all operate on
the identical principle which Edison was the first to discover and put
into actual practice.
XIII
A NEW LIGHT IN THE WORLD
In these modern times an incandescent electric lamp is such an
every-day affair as to be a familiar object even to a small child. But
only a few years ago--a little over thirty--the man who proposed and
invented it was derided in the newspapers, and called a madman and a
dreamer.
If among Edison's numerous inventions there should be selected one or a
class that might be considered the greatest, it seems to be universal
opinion that the palm would be awarded to the incandescent lamp and his
_complete system_ for the distribution of electric light, heat, and
power. These inventions as a class, and what has sprung from them, have
brought about most wonderful changes in the world.
The year 1877 was a busy one at Edison's laboratory at Menlo Park.
He was engaged on the telephone, on acoustic electric transmission,
sextuplex telegraphs, duplex telegraphs, miscellaneous carbon articles,
and other things. He also commenced experimenting on the electric light.
Besides, as we have seen in the previous chapter, he invented the
phonograph. The great interest and excitement caused by the latter
invention took up nearly all of his time and attention for many months,
and, indeed, up to July, 1878. He then took a vacation and went out to
Wyoming with a party of astronomers to observe an eclipse of the sun
and to make a test of his tasimeter.
He was absent about two months, coming home rested and refreshed. Mr.
Edison says: "After my return from the trip to observe the eclipse
of the sun I went with Professor Barker, professor of physics in the
University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Chandler, professor of chemistry
in Columbia College, to see Mr. Wallace, a large manufacturer of brass
in Ansonia, Connecticut. Wallace at this time was experimenting on
series arc lighting. Just at that time I wanted to take up something
new, and Professor Barker suggested that I go to work and see if I
could subdivide the electric light so it could be got in small units
like gas. This was not a new suggestion, because I had made a number of
experiments on electric lighting a year before this. They had been laid
aside for the phonograph. I determined to take up the search again and
continue it. On my return home I started my usual course of collecting
every kind of data about gas; bought all the transactions of the gas
engineering societies, etc., all the back volumes of gas journals, etc.
Having obtained all the data, and investigated gas-jet distribution in
New York by actual observations, I made up my mind that the problem
of the subdivision of the electric current could be solved and made
commercial."
The problem which Edison had undertaken to solve was a gigantic one.
The arc light was then known and in use to a very small extent, but the
subdivision of the electric light--as it was then called--had not been
accomplished. It had been the dream of scientists and inventors for a
long time.
Innumerable trials and experiments had been made in America and Europe
for many years, but without success. Although a great number of
ingenious lamps had been made by the foremost inventors of the period,
they were utterly useless as part of a scheme for a system of electric
lighting. In fact, these efforts had been so unsuccessful that many of
the leading scientists of the time, even as late as 1879, declared that
the subdivision of the light was an impossibility.
The chief trouble was that the early experimenters did not conceive the
idea of a _system_, and worked only on a lamp. They all seemed to have
the idea that an electric lamp was the main thing and that it should
be of low resistance and should be operated on a current of very low
voltage, or pressure. They, therefore experimented on lamps using short
carbon rods or strips for burners, which required a large quantity of
current.
Electric lighting with this kind of lamp was indeed a practical
impossibility. The quantity of current required for a large number of
them would have been prodigious, giving rise to tremendous problems on
account of the heating effects. Besides, the most fatal objection was
the cost of copper for conductors, which for a city section of about
half a mile square would have cost not less than a hundred million
dollars, on account of the enormous quantity of current that would be
required.
Mr. Edison realized at the beginning that previous experimenters had
failed because they had been following the wrong track. He knew that
electric lighting could not be a success unless it could be sold to the
public at a reasonable price and pay a profit to those who supplied it.
With such lamps as had been proposed, requiring such an enormous outlay
for copper, this would have been impossible. Besides, there would not
have been enough copper in the world to supply conductors for one large
city.
Edison did what he has so often done before and since. He turned about
and went in the opposite direction. He reasoned that in order to
develop a successful system of electric lighting the cost of conductors
must come within very reasonable limits. To insure this, he must
invent a lamp of comparatively high resistance, requiring only a small
quantity of current, and with a burner having a small radiating surface.
Having the problem clearly in mind, Edison went to work in the fall
of 1878 with that enthusiastic energy so characteristic of him. His
earliest experiments were made with carbon as the burner for his lamp.
In the previous year he had also experimented on this line, beginning
with strips of carbon burned in the open air, and then _in vacuo_
by means of a hand-worked air-pump. These strips burned only a few
minutes. On resuming his work in 1878 he again commenced with carbon,
and made a very large number of trials, all _in vacuo_. Not only did he
try ordinary strips of carbonized paper, but tissue-paper coated with
tar and lampblack was rolled into thin sticks, like knitting-needles,
carbonized and raised to the white heat of incandescence _in vacuo_.
He also tried hard carbon, wood carbon, and almost every conceivable
variety of paper carbon in like manner. But with the best vacuum that
he could then get by means of the ordinary hand-pump the carbons
would last at the most only from ten to fifteen minutes in a state of
incandescence.
It was evident to Edison that such results as these were not of
commercial value. He feared that, after all, carbon was not the ideal
substance he had thought it was for an incandescent lamp-burner. The
lamp that he had in mind was one which should have a tough, hair-like
filament for a light-giving body that could be maintained at a white
heat for a thousand hours before breaking.
He therefore turned his line of experiments to wires made of refractory
metals, such as platinum and iridium, and their alloys. These metals
have very high fusing points, and while they would last longer than the
carbon strips, they melted with a slight excess of current after they
had been lighted but a short time.
Nevertheless, Edison continued to experiment along this line, making
some improvements, until about April, 1879, he made an important
discovery which led him to the first step toward the modern
incandescent lamp. He discovered that if he introduced a piece of
platinum wire into an all-glass globe, completely sealed and highly
exhausted of air, and passed a current through the platinum wire
while the vacuum was being made the wire would give a light equal to
twenty-five candle-power without melting. Previously, the same length
of wire would melt in the open air when giving a light equal to four
candles.
He thus discovered that the passing of current through the platinum
while the vacuum was being obtained would drive out occluded gases
(_i.e._, gases mechanically held in or upon the metal). This was
important and soon led to greater results.
Edison and his associates had been working night and day at the Menlo
Park laboratory, and now that promising results were ahead their
efforts went on with greater vigor than ever. Taking no account of
the passage of time, with an utter disregard of meal-times, and with
but scanty hours of sleep snatched reluctantly at odd periods, Edison
labored on, and the laboratory was kept going without cessation.
Following up the progress he had made, Edison made improvement after
improvement, especially in the line of high vacua, and about the
beginning of October had so improved his pumps that he could produce
a vacuum up to the one-millionth part of an atmosphere. It should
be understood that the maintaining of such a high vacuum was only
rendered possible by Edison's invention of a one-piece all-glass globe,
hermetically sealed during its manufacture into a lamp.
In obtaining this perfection of vacuum apparatus Edison realized that
he was drawing nearer to a solution of the problem. For many reasons,
however, he was dissatisfied with platino-iridium filaments for
burners, and went back to carbon, which from the first he had thought
of as an ideal substance for a burner.
His next step proved that he was correct. On October 21, 1879, after
many patient trials, he carbonized a piece of cotton sewing-thread bent
into a loop or horseshoe form, and had it sealed into a glass globe
from which he exhausted the air until a vacuum up to one-millionth of
an atmosphere was produced. This lamp, when put on the circuit, lighted
up brightly to incandescence and maintained its integrity for over
forty hours, and lo! the practical incandescent lamp was born. The
impossible, so called, had been attained; subdivision of the electric
current was made practicable; the goal had been reached, and one of the
greatest inventions of the century was completed.
Edison and his helpers stayed by the lamp during the whole forty hours
watching it, some of the men making bets as to how long it would burn.
It may well be imagined that there was great jubilation throughout the
laboratory during those two days of delight and anxiety.
But now that the principle was established work was renewed with great
fervor in making other lamps. A vast number of experiments were made
with carbons made of paper, and the manufacture of lamps with these
paper carbons was carried on continuously. A great number of these were
made and put into actual use.
Edison was not satisfied, however. He wanted something better. He began
to carbonize everything that he could lay hands on. In his laboratory
note-books are innumerable jottings of the things that were carbonized
and tried, such as tissue-paper, soft paper, all kinds of cardboards,
drawing paper of all grades, paper saturated with tar, all kinds of
threads, fish-line, threads rubbed with tarred lampblack, fine threads
plaited together in strands, cotton soaked in boiling tar, lamp-wick,
twine, tar and lampblack mixed with a proportion of lime, vulcanized
fiber, celluloid, boxwood, cocoanut hair and shell, spruce, hickory,
baywood, cedar, and maple shavings, rosewood, punk, cork, bagging,
flax, and a host of other things.
He also extended his searches far into the realms of nature in the
line of grasses, plants, canes, and similar products, and in these
experiments at that time and later he carbonized, made into lamps,
and tested no fewer than six thousand different species of vegetable
growths.
At this time Edison was investigating everything with a microscope. One
day he picked up a palm-leaf fan and examined the long strip of cane
binding on its edge. He gave it to one of his assistants, telling him
to cut it up into filaments, carbonize them, and put them into lamps.
These proved to be the best thus far obtained, and on further
examination Edison decided that he had now found the best material so
far tried, and a material entirely suitable for his lamps.
Within a very short time he sent a man off to China and Japan to search
for bamboo, with instructions to keep on sending samples until the
right one was found. This man did his work well, and among the species
of bamboo he sent was one that was found satisfactory. Mr. Edison
obtained a quantity of this and arranged with a farmer in Japan to grow
it for him and to ship regular supplies. This was done for a number of
years, and during that time millions of Edison lamps were regularly
made from that particular species of Japanese bamboo.
Mr. Edison did not stop at this, however. He was continually in search
of the best, and sent other men out to Cuba, Florida, and all through
South America to hunt for something that might be superior to what he
was using. Another man was sent on a trip around the world for the same
purpose.
Some of these explorers met with striking adventures during their
travels, and all of them sent vast quantities of bamboos, palms, and
fibrous grasses to the laboratory for examination, but Edison never
found any of them better for his purposes than the bamboo from Japan.
In this remarkable exploration of the world for such a material will
be found an example of the thoroughness of Edison's methods. He is not
satisfied to believe he has the best until he has proved it, and this
search for the best bamboo was so thorough that it cost him altogether
about one hundred thousand dollars.
In the meantime he was experimenting to manufacture an artificial
filament that would be better than bamboo. He finally succeeded in his
efforts, and brought out what is known as a "squirted" filament. This
was made of a cellulose mixture and pressed out in the form of a thread
through dies. This kind of filament has gradually superseded the bamboo
in the manufacture of lamps.
We have been obliged to confine ourselves to a very brief outline
history of the invention and development of the incandescent lamp.
To tell the detailed story of the intense labors of the inventor and
his staff of faithful workers would require a volume as large as the
present one.
All that could be done in the space at our disposal was to try and give
the reader a general idea of the clear thinking, logical reasoning,
endless experimenting, hard work, and thoroughness of method of Edison
in the creation of a new art.
XIV
MENLO PARK
In the history of the world's progress, Menlo Park, New Jersey, will
ever be famous as the birthplace of the carbon transmitter, the
phonograph, the incandescent lamp, the commercial dynamo, and the
fundamental systems of distributing electric light, heat, and power.
In this list might also be included the electric railway, for while
others had previously made some progress in this direction, it was in
this historic spot that Edison did his pioneer work that advanced the
art to a stage of practicability.
The name of Menlo Park will not have as striking a significance to the
younger readers as to their elders whose recollections carry them back
to the years between 1876 and 1886. During that period the place became
invested with the glamor of romance by reason of the many startling and
wonderful inventions coming out of it from time to time.
Edison worked there during these ten years. He had adopted Invention
as a profession. As we have seen, he had always had a passion for a
laboratory. Thus, from the little cellar at Port Huron, from the scant
shelves in a baggage car, from the nooks and corners of dingy telegraph
offices, and the grimy little shops in New York and Newark, he had come
to the proud ownership of a _real_ laboratory where he could wrestle
with Nature for her secrets.
Here he could experiment to his heart's content, and invent on a bolder
and larger scale than ever before. All the world knows that he did.
Menlo Park was the merest hamlet, located a few miles below Elizabeth.
Besides the laboratory buildings, it had only a few houses, the
best-looking of which Edison lived in. Two or three of the others
were occupied by the families of members of his staff; in the others
boarders were taken.
During the ten years that Edison occupied his laboratory there, life in
Menlo Park could be summed up in one short word--work. Through the days
and through the nights, year in and year out, for the most part, he
and his associates labored on unceasingly, snatching only a few hours
of sleep here and there when tired nature positively demanded it. Such
a scene of concentrated and fruitful activity the world has probably
never seen.
The laboratory buildings consisted of the laboratory proper, the
library and office, a machine shop, carpenter shop, and some smaller
buildings, and, later on, a wooden building, which was used for a short
time as an incandescent lamp factory.
Here Edison worked through those busy years, surrounded by a band of
chosen assistants, whose individual abilities and never-failing loyalty
were of invaluable aid to him in accomplishing the purposes that he had
in mind.
As to these associates, we quote Mr. Edison's own words from an
autobiographical article in the _Electrical World_ of March 5, 1904:
"It is interesting to note that in addition to those mentioned above
(Charles Batchelor and Francis R. Upton), I had around me other men who
ever since have remained active in the field, such as Messrs. Francis
Jahl, William J. Hammer, Martin Force, Ludwig K. Boehm, not forgetting
that good friend and co-worker, the late John Kruesi. They found plenty
to do in the various developments of the art, and as I now look back I
sometimes wonder how we did so much in so short a time."
To this roll of honor may be added the names of a few others: The
Carman brothers, Stockton L. Griffin, Dr. A. Haid, John F. Ott (still
with Mr. Edison at Orange), John W. Lawson, Edward H. Johnson, Charles
L. Clarke, William Holzer, James Hippie, Charles T. Hughes, Samuel D.
Mott, Charles T. Mott, E. G. Acheson, Dr. E. L. Nichols, J. H. Vail, W.
S. Andrews, and Messrs. Worth, Crosby, Herrick, Hill, Isaacs, Logan,
and Swanson.
To these should be added the name of Mr. Samuel Insull, who, in 1881,
became Mr. Edison's private secretary, and who for many years afterward
managed all his business affairs.
Mr. Insull's position as secretary in the Menlo Park days was not a
"soft snap," as his own words will show. He says: "I never attempted to
systematize Edison's business life. Edison's whole method of work would
upset the system of any office. He was just as likely to be at work in
his laboratory at midnight as midday. He cared not for the hours of the
day or the days of the week. If he was exhausted he might more likely
be asleep in the middle of the day than in the middle of the night, as
most of his work in the way of invention was done at night. I used to
run his office on as close business methods as my experience admitted,
and I would get at him whenever it suited his convenience. Sometimes
he would not go over his mail for days at a time, but other times he
would go regularly to his office in the morning. At other times my
engagements used to be with him to go over his business affairs at
Menlo Park at night, if I was occupied in New York during the day. In
fact, as a matter of convenience I used more often to get at him at
night as it left my days free to transact his affairs, and enabled me,
probably at a midnight luncheon, to get a few minutes of his time to
look over his correspondence and get his directions as to what I should
do in some particular negotiation or matter of finance. While it was
a matter of suiting Edison's convenience as to when I should transact
business with him, it also suited my own ideas, as it enabled me after
getting through my business with him to enjoy the privilege of watching
him at his work, and to learn something about the technical side of
matters. Whatever knowledge I may have of the electric light and power
industry I feel I owe it to the tuition of Edison. He was about the
most willing tutor, and I must confess that he had to be a patient one."
It must not be supposed that the hard work of these times made life
a burden to the small family of laborers associated with Edison. On
the contrary, they were a cheerful, happy lot of men, always ready to
brighten up their strenuous life by the enjoyment of anything of a
humorous nature that came along.
Often during the long, weary nights of experimenting Edison would call
a halt for refreshments, which he had ordered always to be sent in at
midnight when night work was in progress. Everything would be dropped,
all present would join in the meal, and the last good story or joke
would pass around.
Mr. Jehl has written some recollections of this period, in which he
says: "Our lunch always ended with a cigar, and I may mention here that
although Edison was never fastidious in eating, he always relished
a good cigar, and seemed to find in it consolation and solace....
It often happened that while we were enjoying the cigars after our
midnight repast, one of the boys would start up a tune on the organ
and we would sing together, or one of the others would give a solo.
Another of the boys had a voice that sounded like something between
the ring of an old tomato-can and a pewter jug. He had one song that
he would sing while we roared with laughter. He was also great in
imitating the tin-foil phonograph. When Boehm was in good humor he would
play his zither now and then, and amuse us by singing pretty German
songs. On many of these occasions the laboratory was the rendezvous of
jolly and convivial visitors, mostly old friends and acquaintances of
Mr. Edison. Some of the office employees would also drop in once in a
while, and, as every one present was always welcome to partake of the
midnight meal, we all enjoyed these gatherings. After a while, when we
were ready to resume work, our visitors would intimate that they were
going home to bed, but we fellows could stay up and work, and they
would depart, generally singing some song like 'Good-night, Ladies!' ...
It often happened that when Edison had been working up to three or
four o'clock in the morning he would lie down on one of the laboratory
tables, and with nothing but a couple of books for a pillow, would fall
into a sound sleep. He said it did him more good than being in a soft
bed, which spoils a man. Some of the laboratory assistants could be
seen now and then sleeping on a table in the early morning hours. If
their snoring became objectionable to those still at work, the 'calmer'
was applied. This machine consisted of a Babbitt's soap-box without a
cover. Upon it was mounted a broad ratchet-wheel with a crank, while
into the teeth of the wheel there played a stout, elastic slab of wood.
The box would be placed on the table where the snorer was sleeping
and the crank turned rapidly. The racket thus produced was something
terrible, and the sleeper would jump up as though a typhoon had struck
the laboratory. The irrepressible spirit of humor in the old days,
although somewhat strenuous at times, caused many a moment of hilarity
which seemed to refresh the boys, and enabled them to work with renewed
vigor after its manifestation."