EARLY STRUGGLES
The receiving outfits were completed; the aërials had been put up, one
installed at the garage, the other at the mansion. Grace naturally had
all, the say about placing the one in her home. The aërial, of four
wires, each thirty feet long and parallel, were attached equi-distant,
and at each end to springy pieces of ash ten feet long, these being
insulators in part and sustained by spiral spring cables, each divided
by a glass insulator block, the extended cables being fastened to a
maple tree and the house chimney. The ground wire went down the side of
the house beside a drain pipe.
The house receiver, in a cabinet that had cost the boys much painstaking
labor, was set by a window and, after Grace and Skeets had been
instructed how to tune the instrument to varying wave lengths, they and
good Mrs. Hooper enjoyed many delightful periods of listening in, all
zealously consulting the published programs from the great broadcasting
stations.
The other outfit made by the boys, which, except the elaborate box and
stand, was an exact duplicate of the Hooper receiver, was taken to the
Brown cottage. Gus insisted that Bill had the best right to it, and as
the Griers and Mrs. Brown had long been the best of friends and lived
almost next door to each other, all the members of the carpenter's
family would be welcome to listen in whenever they wanted to. The little
evening gatherings at certain times for this purpose were both mirthful
and delightful.
The boys' aërial was a three-wire affair, stretching forty feet, and
erected in much the same way as that at the Hooper house, except that
one mast had to be put up as high as the gable end of the cottage, which
was the other support, thirty-five feet high.
Then, when the announcement was made that the talks on Edison were to be
repeated, Bill and Gus told the class and others of their friends, so
the Hoopers came also, the merry crowd filling the Brown living-room.
Mr. Hooper's absence was noted and regretted from the first, as his
eagerness "to be shown" was well known to them all.
The first lectures concerning Edison's boyhood were repeated. The second
and third talks were each better attended than the preceding ones. Cora,
Dot, Skeets and two other girls occupied the front row; Ted Bissell and
Terry Watkins were present. Bill presided with much dignity, most
carefully tuning in, making the announcements, then becoming the most
interested listener, the theme being ever dear to him.
On the occasion of the third lecture, Bill said:
"Now, then, classmates and other folks, this is a new one to all of us.
The last was where we left off in June on the Professor's receiver. You
can just bet this is going to be a pippin. First off, though, is a
violin solo by--by--oh, I forget his name,--and may it be short and
sweet!"
After the music, the now well-known voice came from the horn:
"This is the third talk on the career and accomplishments of Thomas Alva
Edison:
"In a little while young Edison began to get tired of the humdrum life
of a telegraph operator in Boston. As I have told you, after the
vote-recorder, he had invented a stock ticker and started a quotation
service in Boston. He opened operations from a room over the Gold
Exchange with thirty to forty subscribers.
"He also engaged in putting up private lines, upon which he 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.
"The inventor has described an accident he suffered and its effect on
him:
"'In the laboratory,' he says, 'I had a large induction coil. One day I
got hold of both electrodes of this coil, and it clinched my hands on
them so that I could not 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 let the water
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.'
"The young inventor went to New York City to seek better fortunes. First
he tried to sell his stock printer and failed in the effort. Then he
returned to Boston and got up a duplex telegraph--for sending two
messages at once over one wire. He tried to demonstrate it between
Rochester and New York City. After a week's trial, his test did not
work, partly because of the inefficiency of his assistant.
"He had run in debt eight hundred dollars to build this duplex
apparatus. His other inventions had cost considerable money to make, and
he had failed to sell them. So his books, apparatus and other belongings
were left in Boston, and when he returned to New York he arrived there
with but a few cents in his pocket. He was very hungry. He walked the
streets in the early morning looking for breakfast but with so little
money left that he did not wish to spend it.
"Passing a wholesale tea house, he saw a man testing tea by tasting it.
The young inventor asked the 'taster' for some of the tea. The man
smiled and held out a cup of the fragrant drink. That tea was Thomas A.
Edison's first breakfast in New York City.
"He walked back and forth hunting for a telegraph operator he had known,
but that young man was also out of work. When Edison finally found him,
all his friend could do was to lend him a dollar!
"By this time Edison was nearly starved. With such limited resources he
gave solemn thought to what he should select that would be most
satisfying. He decided to buy apple dumplings and coffee, and in telling
afterward of his first real 'eats' in New York, Mr. Edison said he never
had anything that tasted so good.
"Just as young Ben Franklin, on arriving in New York City from Boston,
looked for a job in a printing office, the youthful modern inventor
applied for work in a telegraph office there. As there was no vacancy
and he needed the rest of his borrowed dollar for meals, Edison found
lodging in the battery room of the Gold Indicator Company.
"It was four years after the Civil War and, besides there being much
unemployment, the fluctuations in the value of gold, as compared with
the paper currency of that day, made it necessary to have gold
'indicators' something like the tickers from the Stock Exchange to-day.
Dr. Laws, presiding officer of the Gold Exchange, had recently invented
a system of gold indicators, which were placed in brokers' offices and
operated from the Gold Exchange.
"When Edison got permission to spend the night in the battery room of
this company, there were about three hundred of these instruments
operating in offices in all directions in lower New York City.
"On the third day after his arrival, while sitting in this office, the
complicated instrument sending quotations out on all the lines made a
very loud noise, and came to a sudden stop with a crash. Within two
minutes over three hundred boys---one from every broker's office in the
street--rushed upstairs and crowded the long aisle and office where
there was hardly room for one-third that number, each yelling that a
certain broker's wire was out of order, and that it must be fixed at
once.
"It was pandemonium, and the manager got so wild that he lost all
control of himself. Edison went to the indicator, and as he had already
studied it thoroughly, he knew right where the trouble was. He went
right out to see the man in charge, and found Dr. Laws there also--the
most excited man of all!
"The Doctor demanded to know what caused all the trouble, but his man
stood there, staring and dumb. As soon as Edison could get Laws'
attention he told him he knew what the matter was.
"'Fix it! Fix it! and be quick about it!' Dr. Laws shouted.
"Edison went right to work and in two hours had everything in running
order. Dr. Laws came in to ask the inventor's name and what he was
doing. When told, he asked the young man to call on him in his office
the next day. Edison did so and Laws said he had decided to place Edison
in charge of the entire plant at a salary of three hundred dollars a
month!
"This was such a big jump from any wages he had ever received that it
quite paralyzed the youthful inventor. He felt that it was too much to
last long, but he made up his mind he would do his best to earn that
salary if he had to work twenty hours a day. He kept that job, making
improvements and devising other stock tickers, until the Gold and Stock
Telegraph Company consolidated with the Gold Indicator Company."