I.

Thomas A. Edison, when he was congratulated upon his forty-sixth

birthday, declared that he did not measure his life by years, but by

achievements or by campaigns; and he then confessed that he had

planned ahead many campaigns, and that he looks forward to no period

of rest, believing that for him, at least, the happiest life is a life

of work. In speaking of his campaigns Mr. Edison said: "I do not

regard myself as a pure scientist, as so many persons have insisted

that I am. I do not search for the laws of nature, and have made no

great discoveries of such laws. I do not study science as Newton and

Kepler and Faraday and Henry studied it, simply for the purpose of

learning truth. I am only a professional inventor. My studies and

experiments have been conducted entirely with the object of inventing

that which will have commercial utility. I suppose I might be called a

scientific inventor, as distinguished from a mechanical inventor,

although really there is no distinction."

When Mr. Edison was asked about his campaigns and those achievements

by which he measured his life, he said that in the past there had been

first the stock-ticker and the telephone, upon the latter of which he

worked very hard. But he regarded the greatest of his achievements, in

the early part of his career, as the invention of the phonograph.

"That," said he, "was an invention pure and simple. No suggestion of

it, so far as I know, had ever been made; and it was a discovery made

by accident, while experimenting upon another invention, that led to

the development of the phonograph.

"My second campaign was that which resulted in the invention of the

incandescent lamp. Of course, an incandescent lamp had been suggested

before. There had been abortive attempts to make them, even before I

knew anything about telegraphing. The work which I did was to make an

incandescent lamp which was commercially valuable, and the courts have

recently sustained my claim to priority of invention of this lamp. I

worked about three years upon that. Some of the experiments were very

delicate and very difficult; some of them needed help which was very

costly. That so far has been, I suppose, my chief achievement. It

certainly was the first one which made me independent, and left me

free to begin other campaigns without the necessity of calling for

outside capital, or of finding my invention subjected to the mysteries

of Wall Street manipulation."

The hint contained in Mr. Edison's reference to Wall Street, and the

mysteries of financiering which prevail there, led naturally enough to

a question as to Mr. Edison's future purpose with regard to

capitalists, and he said:

"In my future campaigns I expect myself to control absolutely such

inventions as I make. I am now fortunate enough to have capital of my

own, and that I shall use in these campaigns. The most important of

the campaigns I have in mind is one in which I have now been engaged

for several years. I have long been satisfied that it was possible to

invent an ore-concentrator which would vastly simplify the prevailing

methods of extracting iron from earth and rock, and which would do it

so much cheaper than those processes as to command the market. Of

course I refer to magnetic iron ore. Some of the New Jersey mountains

contain practically inexhaustible stores of this magnetic ore, but it

has been expensive to mine. I was able to secure mining options upon

nearly all these properties, and then I began the campaign of

developing an ore-concentrator which would make these deposits

profitably available. This iron is unlike any other iron ore. It takes

four tons of the ore to produce one ton of pure iron, and yet I saw,

some years ago, that if some method of extracting this ore could be

devised, and the mines controlled, an enormously profitable business

would be developed, and yet a cheaper iron ore--cheaper in its first

cost--would be put upon the market. I worked very hard upon this

problem, and in one sense successfully, for I have been able by my

methods to extract this magnetic ore at comparatively small cost, and

deliver from my mills pure iron bricklets. Yet I have not been

satisfied with the methods; and some months ago I decided to abandon

the old methods and to undertake to do this work by an entirely new

system. I had some ten important details to master before I could get

a perfect machine, and I have already mastered eight of them. Only two

remain to be solved; and when this work is complete, I shall have, I

think, a plant and mining privileges which will outrank the

incandescent lamp as a commercial venture, certainly so far as I am

myself concerned. Whatever the profits are, I shall myself control

them, as I have taken no capitalists in with me in this scheme."

Mr. Edison was asked if he was willing to be more explicit respecting

this invention, but he declined to be, further than to say: "When the

machinery is done as I expect to develop it, it will be capable of

handling twenty thousand tons of ore a day with two shifts of men,

five in a shift. That is to say, ten workmen, working twenty hours a

day in the aggregate, will be able to take this ore, crush it, reduce

the iron to cement-like proportions, extract it from the rock and

earth, and make it into bricklets of pure iron, and do it so cheaply

that it will command the market for magnetic iron."

Mr. Edison, in speaking of this campaign, referred to it as though it

was practically finished; and it was evident in the conversation that

already his mind turns to a new campaign, which he will take up as

soon as his iron-ore concentrator is complete and its work can be left

to competent subordinates.

He was asked if he would be willing to say what he had in mind for the

next campaign, and he replied: "Well, I think as soon as the ore

concentrating business is developed and can take care of itself, I

shall turn my attention to one of the greatest problems that I have

ever thought of solving, and that is, the direct control of the energy

which is stored up in coal, so that it may be employed without waste

and at a very small margin of cost. Ninety per cent. of the energy

that exists in coal is now lost in converting it into power. It goes

off in heat through the chimneys of boiler-rooms. You perceive it when

you step into a room where there is a furnace and boiler; it is also

greatly wasted in the development of the latent heat which is created

by the change from water to steam. Now that is an awful waste, and

even a child can see that if this wastage can be saved, it will result

in vastly cheapening the cost of everything which is manufactured by

electric or steam power. In fact, it will vastly cheapen the cost of

all the necessaries and luxuries of life, and I suppose the results

would be of mightier influence upon civilization than the development

of the steam-engine and electricity have been. It will, in fact, do

away with steam-engines and boilers, and make the use of steam power

as much of a tradition as the stage-coach now is.

"It would enable an ocean steamship of twenty thousand horse-power to

cross the ocean faster than any of the crack vessels now do, and

require the burning of only two hundred and fifty tons of coal instead

of three thousand, which are now required; so that, of course, the

charges for freight and passenger fares would be greatly reduced. It

would enormously lessen the cost of manufacturing and of traffic. It

would develop the electric current directly from coal, so that the

cost of steam-engines and boilers would be eliminated. I have thought

of this problem very much, and I have already my theory of the

experiments, or some of them, which may be necessary to develop this

direct use of all the power that is stored in coal. I can only say

now, that the coal would be put into a receptacle, the agencies then

applied which would develop its energy and save it all, and through

this energy electric power of any degree desired could be furnished.

Yes, it can be done; I am sure of that. Some of the details I have

already mastered, I think; at least, I am sure that I know the way to

go to work to master them. I believe that I shall make this my next

campaign. It may be years before it is finished, and it may not be a

very long time."

Mr. Edison looks farther ahead than this campaign, for he said: "I

think it quite likely that I may try to develop a plan for marine

signalling. I have the idea already pretty well formulated in my mind.

I should use the well-known principle that water is a more perfect

medium for carrying vibrations than air, and should develop

instruments which may be carried upon sea-going vessels, by which they

can transmit or receive, through an international code of signals,

reports within a radius of say ten miles."

Mr. Edison believes that Chicago is to become the London of America

early in the next century, while New York will be its Liverpool, and

he is of opinion that very likely a ship canal may connect Chicago

with tide water, so that it will itself become a great seaport.

There is a common impression that Mr. Edison is an agnostic, but he

denies it; and he said, in closing the conversation, "I tell you that

no person can be brought into close contact with the mysteries of

nature, or make a study of chemistry, without being convinced that

behind it all there is supreme intelligence. I am convinced of that,

and I think that I could, perhaps I may some time, demonstrate the

existence of such intelligence through the operation of these

mysterious laws with the certainty of a demonstration in mathematics."