THE MAKING OF AN INVENTOR
"It was during the time young Edison was employed at Port Huron," the
radio continued, "that the cable under River St. Clair between that city
and Port Sarnia was severed by an ice jam. The river at that point is
three quarters of a mile wide. Navigation was suspended and the ice had
broken up so that the stream could not be crossed on foot nor could the
broken cable lying in the bed of the river be mended.
"The ingenious young telegrapher suggested signaling Sarnia by giving,
with the whistle of a locomotive, the dot-and-dash letters of the Morse
telegraph code. Or course, this strange whistling caused considerable
wonderment on the Canada side until a shrewd operator recognized the
long-and-short telegraph letters, and communication was at once
established--important messages being transmitted by steam whistles--a
gigantic system of broadcasting. This was a simple way out of a sublime
difficulty involving the affairs of two great peoples.
"But the too-enterprising operator had started so much trouble for
himself that he decided to find employment where his mind would not be
distracted from his job or tempted away from working out his chemical
and electrical experiments. Because of these he preferred the position
of night operator. His telegraph work was really a side line.
"On these accounts he found a job as night operator at Stratford
Junction, Canada West, as Ontario was then called. He was only sixteen
but his salary of twenty-five dollars a month seemed very small after
making ten or twelve dollars a day as 'candy butcher.' But on account of
the chances it gave him for experimenting, he resigned himself to the
smallness of his pay. The treatment he had received at the hands of that
train conductor had convinced him that he could not follow his bent
while working all day on the railroad.
"Mr. Edison likes to tell of the prevailing ignorance of the science of
telegraphy. He once told a friend:
"'The telegraph men themselves seemed unable to explain how the thing
worked, though I was always trying to find out. The best explanation I
got was from an old Scotch line repairer employed by the Montreal
Telegraph Company, then operating the railway wires. Here is the way he
described it: "If you had a dachshund long enough to reach from
Edinburgh to London, and pulled his tail in Edinburgh he would bark in
London!"
"'I could understand that, but I never could get it through me what went
through the dog or over the wire.'
"It was at Stratford Junction that the Edison boy began his career of
invention. From the first his chief aim was the saving of labor. In
order to be sure that the operators all along the line were not asleep
at their posts, they were required to send to the train dispatcher's
office a certain dot-and-dash signal every hour in the night. Young
Edison was like young Napoleon in grudging himself the necessary hours
of sleep. While the ingenious lad was fond of machinery--to make a
machine of himself was utterly distasteful to him. It was against his
principles and instincts to do anything a mere machine could do instead.
So he made a little wheel with a few notches in the rim, with which he
connected the clock and the transmitter, so that at the required instant
every hour in the night the wheel revolved and sent the proper signal to
headquarters. Meanwhile that wily young operator slept the sleep of the
genius, if not of the just. Of one experience at this little place
Edison relates:
"'This night job just suited me, as I could have the whole day to
myself. I had the faculty of sleeping in a chair any time for a few
minutes at a time. I taught the night yardman my call, so I could get
half an hour's sleep now and then between trains, and in case the
station was called the watchman was to wake me. One night I got an order
to hold a freight train, and I replied that I would do so. I ran out to
find the signal man, but before I could locate him and get the signal
set--_the train ran past!_ I rushed back to the telegraph office and
reported that I could not hold it.
"'But on receiving my first message that I would hold the freight, the
dispatcher let another train leave the next station going the opposite
way. There was a station near the Junction where the day operator slept.
I started to run in that direction, but it was pitch dark. I fell down a
culvert and was knocked senseless.'
"The two engineers, with a feeling that all was not as it should be,
kept a sharp lookout and saw each other just in time to avert a fatal
accident. But young Edison was cited to trial, for gross neglect of
duty, by the general manager. During an informal hearing two Englishmen
called on the manager. While he was talking with them the young night
operator disappeared. Boarding a freight train bound for Port Sarnia, he
made his escape from the five-years' term in prison threatened by the
irate manager. Edison afterward confessed that his heart did not leave
his throat until he had crossed the ferry to Port Huron and 'one wide
river' lay between him and the Canadian authorities.
"Following his escape from Canada young Edison knocked about the home
country, North and South. As it was during the Civil War he had some
peculiar adventures. After making a long circuit, broken in many places
by 'short circuits,' the journeyman telegrapher landed in Port Huron,
and wrote his friend Adams, then in Boston to find him a job.
"His friend relates that he asked the Boston manager of the Western
Union Telegraph office if he wanted a first-class operator from the
West.
"'What kind of copy does he make?'" was the manager's first query.
"Adams continues:
"'I passed Edison's letter through the window for his inspection. He was
surprised, for it was almost as plain as print, and asked:
"'Can he take it off the wire like that?'
"'I said he certainly could, and that there was nobody who could stick
him. He told me to send for my man and I did. When Edison came he landed
the job without delay.'"
"The inventor himself has told the story of his reporting for duty in
Boston:
"'The manager asked me when I was ready to go to work.
"'_Now_!' said I, and was instructed to return at 5:30 P.M., which I
did, to the minute. I came into the operators' room and was ushered into
the night manager's presence.
"'The weather was cold and I was poorly dressed; so my appearance, as I
was told afterward, occasioned considerable merriment, and the night
operators conspired to "put up a job on the jay from the wild and woolly
West." I was given a pen and told to take the New York No. 1 wire. After
an hour's wait I was asked to take my place at a certain table and
receive a special report for the Boston _Herald_, the conspirators
having arranged to have one of the fastest operators in New York send
the despatch and "salt" the new man.
"'Without suspecting what was up I sat down, and the New York man
started in very slowly. Soon he increased his speed and I easily adapted
my pace to his. This put the man on his mettle and he "laid in his best
licks," but soon reached his limit.
"'At this point I happened to look up and saw the operators all looking
over my shoulder with faces that seemed to expect something funny. Then
I knew they were playing a trick on me, but I didn't let on.
"'Before long the New York man began slurring his words, running them
together and sticking the signals; but I had been used to all that sort
of thing in taking reports, so I wasn't put out in the least. At last,
when I thought the joke had gone far enough, and as the special was
nearly finished, I calmly opened the key and remarked over the wire to
my New York rival:
"'Say, young man, change off and send with the other foot!'
"'This broke the fellow up so that he turned the job over to another
operator to finish, to the real discomfiture of the fellows around me.'
"Friend Adams goes on to tell of other happennings at the Hub:
"'One day Edison was more than delighted to pick up a complete set of
Faraday's works, bringing them home at 4 A.M. and reading steadily until
breakfast time, when he said, with great enthusiasm:
"'Adams, I have got so much to do and life is so short, _I am going to
hustle_!'"
"'Then he started off to breakfast on a dead run.'
"He soon opened a workshop in Boston and began making experiments. It
was here that he made a working model of his vote recorder, the first
invention he ever patented.
"Edison has told us of this trip to Washington and how he showed that
his invention could register the House vote, pro and con, almost
instantaneously. The chairman of the committee saw how quickly and
perfectly it worked and said to him:
"'Young man, if there is any invention on earth that we _don't_ want
down here, it is this. Filibustering on votes is one of the greatest
weapons in the hands of a minority to prevent bad legislation, and this
instrument would stop that.'
"The youth felt the force of this so much that he decided from that time
forth not to try to invent anything unless it would meet a genuine
demand,--not from a few, but many people.
"It was while in Boston that Edison grew weary of the monotonous life of
a telegraph operator and began to work up an independent business along
inventive lines, so that he really began his career as an inventor at
the Hub.
"After the vote recorder, he invented a stock ticker, and started a
ticker service in Boston which had thirty or forty subscribers, and
operated from a room over the Gold Exchange.
* * * * *
"The third talk on Mr. Edison and his inventions will be given from this
broadcasting station WUK next Monday at the same hour."