“When did you begin to be interested in inventions?” I questioned.
“Well,” he said, “I began to dabble in chemistry at that time. I fitted
up a small laboratory on the train.”
In reference to this, Mr. Edison subsequently admitted that, during
the progress of some occult experiments in this workshop, certain
complications ensued in which a jolted and broken bottle of sulphuric
acid attracted the attention of the conductor. He, who had been long
suffering in the matter of unearthly odors, promptly ejected the young
devotee and all his works. This incident would have been only amusing
but for its relation to and explanation of his deafness. A box on the
ear, administered by the irate conductor, caused the lasting deafness.
“What was your first work in a practical line?” I went on.
“A telegraph line between my home and another boy’s, I made with the
help of an old river cable, some stove-pipe wire, and glass-bottle
insulators. I had my laboratory in the cellar and studied telegraphy
outside.”
“What was the first really important thing you did?”
“I saved a boy’s life.”
“How?”
“The boy was playing on the track near the depot. I saw he was in
danger and caught him, getting out of the way just in time. His father
was station-master, and taught me telegraphy in return.”
Dramatic situations appear at every turn of this man’s life, though,
temperamentally, it is evident that he would be the last to seek them.
He seems to have been continually arriving on the scene at critical
moments, and always with the good sense to take things in his own
hands. The chance of learning telegraphy only gave him a chance to show
how apt a pupil he was, and the railroad company soon gave him regular
employment. He himself admits that, at seventeen, he had become one of
the most expert operators on the road.
“Did you make much use of your inventive talent at this time?” I
questioned.
“Yes,” he answered. “I invented an automatic attachment for my
telegraph instrument which would send in the signal to show I was
awake at my post, when I was comfortably snoring in a corner. I didn’t
do much of that, though,” he went on; “for some such boyish trick sent
me in disgrace over the line into Canada.”