GENIUS IS OFTEN ERRATIC
The fourth radio talk on the life, character and accomplishments of the
world's foremost inventor proved to be the most interesting of the
series. Fairview had heard of these entertainments and so many people
had asked Bill and Gus if they might attend, the boys became aware that
the modest little living-room of the Brown home would not hold half of
them. They, therefore, decided to let the radio be heard in the town
hall, if a few citizens would pay the rent for the evening.
This was readily arranged, but when the suggestion was made that an
admission be charged, the boys refused. This was their treat all round,
even to transferring their aërial to the hall between its cupola and a
mast at the other end of the roof, put up by the ever willing Mr. Grier
who could not do too much to further the boys' interests.
Early in the evening the hall was filled to overflowing, and ushers were
appointed to seat the crowd. Naturally there was much chattering and
scraping of feet until suddenly a strain of music, an orchestral
selection, began to come out of the horn and there was instant quiet.
After its conclusion came the voice:
"This is our last lecture on Edison. Following this will be given a
series on Marconi, the inventor of the wireless.
"As I have told you, Mr. Thomas Alva Edison's leap to fortune was sudden
and spectacular, as have been most of his accomplishments since. Those
who do really great things along the lines of physical improvement, or
concerning the inception of large enterprises are apt to startle the
public and to surprise thoughtful people almost as though some
impossible thing had been achieved.
"From a mere salaried operator to forty thousand dollars in a lump sum
for expert work was quite a jump.
"The forty thousand dollars, however, did not turn Mr. Edison's head as
has been the effect of sudden wealth on many a good-sized but smaller
minded man.
"He used it as a fund to start a plant and hire expert men to experiment
and work out the inventions which came to him so fast in his ceaseless
work and study. He could get along with as little sleep as Napoleon is
said to have required when a mighty battle was on. Edison could lie down
on a settee or table and sleep just as the Little Corporal did even
while cannon were booming all around him.
"There was something Napoleonic, also, about Edison's intensity of
application and his masterfulness in his gigantic undertakings. If
genius is the ability to take great pains, Thomas A. Edison is the
greatest genius in the world to-day--if not in all history.
"Sometimes, as Napoleon did with his chief generals before a decisive
engagement, Edison would shut himself up with his confidential
coworkers. Sometimes he and they would neither eat nor sleep till they
had fought out a problem of greater importance to the world than even
Napoleon's crossing the Alps or the decisive battle of Austerlitz. But,
though he began to work on a large scale, young Edison's financial
facilities were of the crudest and simplest.
"Almost all of his men were on piece-work, and he allowed them to make
good salaries. He never cut them down, although their pay was very high
as they became more and more expert.
"Instead of _books_ he kept _hooks_--two of them. All the bills he owed
he jabbed on one hook, and stuck mems of what was due him on the other.
If he had no tickers ready to deliver when an account came due, he gave
his note for the amount required.
"Then as one bill after another fell due, a bank messenger came with a
notice of protest pinned to the note, demanding a dollar and a quarter
extra for protest fees besides principal and interest. Whereupon he
would go to New York and borrow more funds, or pay the note on the spot
if he happened to have money enough on hand. He kept up this expensive
way of doing business for two years, but his credit was perfectly good.
Every dealer he patronized was glad to furnish him with what he wanted,
and some expressed admiration for his new method of paying bills.
"But, to save his own time, Edison had to hire a bookkeeper whose
inefficiency made him regret for a while the change in his way of doing
business. He tells of one of his experiences with this accountant:
"'After the first three months I told him to go through his books and
see how much we had made.
"Three thousand dollars!" he told me after studying a while. So, to
celebrate this, I gave a dinner to several of the staff.
"'Two days after that he came to tell me he had made a big mistake, for
we had _lost_ five hundred dollars. Several days later he came round
again and tried to prove to me that we had made seven thousand dollars
in the three months!'
"This was so disconcerting that the inventor decided to change
bookkeepers, but he never 'counted his chickens before they were
hatched.' In other words, he did not believe that he had made anything
till he had paid all his bills and had his money safe in the bank.
"Mr. Edison once made the remark that when Jay Gould got possession of
the Western Union Telegraph Company, no further progress in telegraphy
was possible, because Gould took no pride in building up. All he cared
for was money, only money.
"The opposite was true of Edison. While he had decided to invent only
that which was of commercial value, it was not on account of the money
but because that which millions of people will buy is of the greatest
value to the world.
"After he stopped telegraphing, Edison turned his mind to many
inventions. It is not generally known that the first successful, widely
sold typewriter was perfected by him.
"This typewriter proved a difficult thing to make commercial. The
alignment of the letters was very bad. One letter would be one-sixteenth
of an inch above the others, and all the letters wanted to wander out of
line. He worked on it till the machine gave fair results. The typewriter
he got into commercial shape is now known as the Remington.
"It is not hard to understand that Mr. Edison invented the American
District Messenger call-box system, which has been superseded by the
telephone, but very few people know when they are eating caramels and
other sticky confectionery that wax or paraffin paper was invented by
Edison. Also the tasimeter, an instrument so delicate that it measures
the heat of the most distant star, Arcturus. One of the few vacations
Mr. Edison allowed himself was when he traveled to the Rocky Mountains
to witness a total eclipse of the sun and experiment on certain stars
with his tasimeter, and this very clearly shows that Mr. Edison is as
much interested in the advancement of science as in matters purely
commercial."