THOMAS A. EDISON, THE GREATEST INVENTOR OF ELECTRICAL MACHINERY IN THE
WORLD
[Sidenote: =His parentage=]
=199. The Wizard of the Electrical World.= Thomas A. Edison was born in
1847 at Milan, Ohio. His father's people were Dutch and his mother's
were Scotch. When he was seven years of age his parents removed to Port
Huron, Michigan.
Edison owed his early training to his mother's care. At the age of
twelve he was reading such books as Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire_, Hume's _History of England_, Newton's _Principia_, and
Ure's _Dictionary of Science_. The last-named book was too full of
mathematics for him.
[Illustration: EDISON SELLING PAPERS AFTER THE BATTLE OF PITTSBURG
LANDING]
[Sidenote: =A tireless reader=]
That Edison was a great reader is proved by his resolution to read all
the books in the Detroit Free Library! He did finish "fifteen feet of
volumes" before any one knew what he was doing.
In 1862 General Grant fought the terrible battle of Pittsburg Landing.
Everybody wanted to hear the news. Edison bought a thousand newspapers,
boarded a train, and the engineer allowed him a few minutes at each
station to sell papers.
[Sidenote: =His experience as a newsboy=]
As the first station came in sight, Edison looked ahead and saw a wild
crowd of men. He grabbed an armful of papers, rushed out, and sold
forty before the train left. At the next station the platform was
crowded with a yelling mob. He raised the price to ten cents, but sold
one hundred fifty.
Finally he reached Port Huron. The station was a mile from town. Edison
seized his papers. He met the crowd coming just as he reached a church
where a prayer meeting was being held. The prayer meeting broke up, and
though he raised his price to twenty-five cents he "took in a young
fortune."
[Sidenote: =Experimenting in electricity=]
Edison began very early to make experiments in electricity. After
rigging up a line at home, hitching the wire to the legs of a cat, and
rubbing the cat's back vigorously, he saw the failure of his first
experiment--the cat would not stand!
[Sidenote: =Saves a life and receives lessons in telegraphy=]
At Mt. Clemens, one day, young Edison saw a child playing on the
railroad with its back to an on-coming freight train. He dashed at the
child, and both tumbled to the ground at the roadside. For this act of
bravery the telegraph operator gave him lessons in telegraphy.
[Sidenote: =Makes a set of telegraphic instruments=]
[Sidenote: =Becomes a tramp telegrapher=]
=200. Begins to Study Electricity.= He studied ten days, then
disappeared. He returned with a complete set of telegraphic instruments
made by his own hand! After his trade was learned he began a period
of wandering as a telegraph operator. For many boys still in their
teens this would have been a time of destruction, but Edison neither
drank nor smoked. He wandered from Adrian to Fort Wayne, Indianapolis,
Cincinnati, Memphis, and Boston, stopping for shorter or longer periods
at each place.
[Illustration: THOMAS ALVA EDISON
_After a photograph from life_]
By the time he was twenty-two he had invented and partly finished his
plan of sending two dispatches along the same wire at the same time.
This was equal to doubling the number of wires in use.
[Sidenote: =Repairs electric machinery and gains a situation=]
Edison was a poor boy and was two or three hundred dollars in debt.
He went from Boston to New York. The speculators in Wall Street were
wild with excitement, for the electric machinery had broken down.
Nobody could make it work. Edison pushed his way to the front, saw the
difficulty, and at once removed it.
All were loud in their praise of Edison. On the next day he was engaged
to take charge of all the electric machinery at three hundred dollars
per month.
[Sidenote: =Receives forty thousand dollars for his inventions=]
After a time he joined a company and gave his time to working out
inventions. The company finally sent a number of men to ask Edison how
much he would take for his inventions. He had already decided to say
five thousand dollars. But when the men came he said that he did not
know. He was dumfounded when they offered him forty thousand dollars!
[Sidenote: =Establishes his first workshop=]
=201. Edison's Inventions.= In 1873 Edison established his first
laboratory or workshop in Newark, New Jersey. Here he gathered
more than three hundred men to turn out the inventions pertaining
to electricity which his busy brain suggested. They were all as
enthusiastic over the inventions as Edison himself. No fixed hours of
labor in this shop! When the day's work was done the men often begged
to be allowed to return to the shop to complete their work.
[Sidenote: =More inventions=]
[Sidenote: =Builds a new laboratory and gathers a fine library=]
Many telegraph and telephone inventions were made in this laboratory.
There were forty-five inventions all told. They brought in so much
money that Edison decided they must have a better place to work. He
built at Menlo Park, New Jersey, twenty-four miles from New York City,
the finest laboratory then in the world. On instruments alone he spent
$100,000. In the great laboratory at Menlo Park Edison gathered one of
the finest scientific libraries that money could buy. This library was
for the men in the factory--to help them in their inventions and to
give them pleasure.
[Sidenote: =Invents the microphone=]
The microphone is one of Edison's inventions. Its purpose is to
increase sound while sending it over the wire. The passing of a
delicate camel's-hair brush is magnified so as to seem like the roar of
a mighty wind in a forest of giant pines.
[Illustration: THE PHONOGRAPH]
[Sidenote: =The megaphone=]
Next came the megaphone, an instrument to bring far-away sounds to
one's hearing. By means of this instrument, persons talking a long
distance apart are able to hear each other with ease.
The phonograph, which can reproduce the human voice and other sounds
almost perfectly, was invented by Edison in 1876.
[Illustration: EDISON'S GREAT WORKSHOP AT ORANGE, NEW JERSEY]
[Sidenote: =Edison's first phonograph=]
Sounds reach the ear by means of air waves which the sounding body
sets in motion. In Edison's first phonograph these waves struck a bit
of taut parchment, and were marked by a needle on a tinfoil disc. But
tinfoil does not hold its shape well. In 1888 Edison patented a better
phonograph in which the record was made on a wax disc.
Phonograph records are now made with one hundred grooves to an inch.
Each groove is not more than four one-thousandths of an inch deep. A
lever tipped with sapphire cuts the grooves. Its tiny marks have been
photographed--one way of seeing a sound!
[Sidenote: =What the phonograph does=]
The phonograph is used everywhere for amusement. It preserves the
voices of great singers for the future. With it songs and bits of
folklore can be collected in languages that are now dying out.
[Sidenote: =The electric light=]
Edison has put into practical use many principles discovered by other
men. He does not claim to be the discoverer of the electric light.
He did much, however, to make it useful to people in lighting their
houses, and also in lighting great cities.
[Sidenote: =The first great electrical exhibition=]
In the winter of 1880, in Menlo Park, Edison gave to the public an
exhibition of his electric light. Visitors came from all parts of the
country to see this wonderful show. Seven hundred lights were put up
in the streets, and inside the buildings. Edison had produced a much
better light than any that had been used before.
=202. A Great New Industry.= Edison also had a part in another
invention for which Americans can claim most of the credit--moving
pictures.
[Sidenote: =Settling a racetrack dispute=]
A dispute about horseracing did most for the discovery of moving
pictures. The question was whether a horse ever had all four feet off
the ground at once. To settle it, Edward Muybridge, an employee of the
government, was called in. He stretched cords, fastened to the shutters
of a row of cameras, across a racetrack. As the horse ran past, it
took its own pictures. Later Muybridge made a camera which would take
pictures very quickly, but he could not show his pictures well.
[Sidenote: =Edison's camera=]
Edison in 1892 invented a camera which used long strips of celluloid
film. These pictures were looked at through a slot by one person at a
time.
Another government worker, C. Francis Jenkins, invented the first
complete moving picture machine in 1894.
[Sidenote: =The moving picture business=]
At first people were slow to welcome the new kind of play. Now it is
claimed that our fifth largest industry is moving pictures. Probably as
many tickets are sold here each year as there are people in the world.
[Sidenote: =Moving pictures of the war=]
In the war each army had its own moving picture camera men. They took
pictures of ships torpedoed, of airplane battles, and of the fighting
among the icy peaks of the Alps, often at great danger to their own
lives. Great events of world history like the signing of the armistice
can now be recorded for future times. Such pictures teach us things
that cannot easily be learned from books.
Many schools have a machine of their own, and use moving pictures as a
part of their regular class work. The subject is first outlined, then
the pictures are shown, and afterwards the pupils write about what they
have learned.
[Sidenote: =Moving pictures in schools=]
Some schools have films of their own. Others find it easy to get them.
Our government sends out educational films on silo building, dairying,
airplane manufacture, and many government activities. Business firms
have films to loan on shoes, soap, automobiles, and other things they
make. Regular film companies have pictures of animal life, the natural
wonders of our country, current events, foreign countries, and other
subjects suitable for school use, such as the teaching of cube root by
moving picture cartoons.
Outside of schools moving pictures can be used for educational purposes
in social service and Americanization work. One state, North Carolina,
has trucks carrying moving picture machines for many of its counties.
Programs of educational and amusing pictures can be given regularly in
small towns with these machines.