“Had you patented many things up to the time of your coming east?” I
queried.
“Nothing,” said the inventor, ruminatively. “I received my first patent
in 1869.”
“For what?”
“A machine for recording votes and designed to be used in the State
Legislature.”
“I didn’t know such machines were in use,” I ventured.
“They ar’n’t,” he answered, with a merry twinkle. “The better it
worked, the more impossible it was; the sacred right of the minority,
you know,—couldn’t filibuster if they used it,—didn’t use it.”
“Oh!”
“Yes, it was an ingenious thing. Votes were clearly pointed and shown
on a roll of paper, by a small machine attached to the desk of each
member. I was made to learn that such an innovation was out of the
question, but it taught me something.”
“And that was?”
“To be sure of the practical need of, and demand for, a machine, before
expending time and energy on it.”
“Is that one of your maxims of success?”
“It is.”
In this same year, Edison came from Boston to New York, friendless
and in debt on account of the expenses of his experiment. For
several weeks he wandered about the town with actual hunger staring
him in the face. It was a time of great financial excitement, and
with that strange quality of Fortunism, which seems to be his chief
characteristic, he entered the establishment of the Law Gold Reporting
Company just as their entire plant had shut down on account of an
accident in the machinery that could not be located. The heads of the
firm were anxious and excited to the last degree, and a crowd of the
Wall street fraternity waited about for the news which came not. The
shabby stranger put his finger on the difficulty at once, and was
given lucrative employment. In the rush of the metropolis, a man finds
his true level without delay, especially when his talents are of so
practical and brilliant a nature as were this young telegrapher’s. It
would be an absurdity to imagine an Edison hidden in New York. Within
a short time, he was presented with a check for $40,000, as his share
of a single invention—an improved stock printer. From this time, a
national reputation was assured him. He was, too, now engaged upon the
duplex and quadruplex systems—systems for sending two and four messages
at the same time over a single wire,—which were to inaugurate almost a
new era in telegraphy.