“Were you there long?”
“Only a winter. If it’s incident you want, I can tell you one of that
time. The place where I was and Sarnia, the American town, were cut off
from telegraph and other means of communication by the storms until I
got at a locomotive whistle and tooted a telegraphic message. I had to
do it again and again, but eventually they understood it over the water
and answered in the same way.”
According to his own and various recorded accounts, Edison was
successively in charge of important wires in Memphis, Cincinnati,
New Orleans and Louisville. He lived in the free-and-easy atmosphere
of the tramp operators—a boon companion with them, yet absolutely
refusing to join in the dissipations to which they were addicted. So
highly esteemed was he for his honesty that it was the custom of his
colleagues, when a spree was on hand, to make him the custodian of
those funds which they felt obliged to save. On a more than usually
hilarious occasion, one of them returned rather the worse for wear, and
knocked the treasurer down on his refusal to deliver the trust money;
the other depositors, we are glad to note, gave the ungentlemanly
tippler a sound thrashing.
“Were you good at saving your own money?” I asked.
“No,” he said, smiling. “I never was much for saving money, as money. I
devoted every cent, regardless of future needs, to scientific books and
materials for experiments.”
“You believe that an excellent way to succeed?”
“Well, it helped me greatly to future success.”
“What was your next invention?” I inquired.
“An automatic telegraph recorder—a machine which enabled me to record
dispatches at leisure, and send them off as fast as needed.”
“How did you come to hit upon that?”
“Well, at the time, I was in such straits that I had to walk from
Memphis to Louisville. At the Louisville station they offered me a
place. I had perfected a style of handwriting which would allow me to
take legibly from the wire, long hand, forty-seven and even fifty-four
words a minute, but I was only a moderately rapid sender. I had to do
something to help me on that side, and so I thought out that little
device.”
Later, he pointed out an article by one of his biographers, in which a
paragraph, referring to this Louisville period, says:—
“True to his dominant instincts, he was not long in gathering around
him a laboratory, printing office and machine shop. He took press
reports during his whole stay, including, on one occasion, the
Presidential message, by Andrew Johnson, and this at one sitting, from
3:30 P. M. to 4:30 A. M.
“He then paragraphed the matter he had received over the wires, so that
printers had exactly three lines each, thus enabling them to set up a
column in two or three minutes’ time. For this, he was allowed all the
exchanges he desired, and the Louisville press gave him a state dinner.”
“How did you manage to attract public attention to your ability?” I
questioned.
“I didn’t manage,” said the Wizard. “Some things I did created comment.
A device that I invented which utilized one submarine cable for two
circuits, caused considerable talk, and the Franklin telegraph office
of Boston gave me a position.”
It is related of this, Mr. Edison’s first trip east, that he came with
no ready money and in a rather dilapidated condition. His colleagues
were tempted by his “hayseed” appearance to “salt” him, as professional
slang terms the process of giving a receiver matter faster than he
can record it. For this purpose, the new man was assigned to a wire
manipulated by a New York operator famous for his speed. But there
was no fun at all. Notwithstanding the fact that the New Yorker was
in the game and was doing his most speedy clip, Edison wrote out the
long message accurately, and, when he realized the situation, was soon
firing taunts over the wire at the sender’s slowness.