Suppose the Pilgrim fathers that landed at Plymouth Rock so many,
many years ago should come back to earth, how many strange sights
would greet them! No longer would they be permitted to ride in a
slow, clumsy wagon, but, instead, would ride in an electric car.
Furthermore, when night came, instead of the tallow candle, they
would marvel at the brilliant electric lights. Wouldn't it be fun to
start the phonograph and watch them stare in astonishment as "the
wooden box" talked to them? But the most fun would be to take them
to the moving picture show and hear what they would say.
Odd as it seems at first, all these marvelous inventions, and many
others, are the result of one man's work; in fact, this man has
thought out so many marvelous inventions that the whole world agrees
that he is the greatest inventor that has ever lived. Should you like
to hear the life story of one who is so truly great? I am sure you
would, for in the best sense he is a self-made American.
But, you ask, what is a self-made American? He is one born in poverty
who has had to struggle hard for everything he has ever had; one who
has had to force his way to success through all sorts of obstacles.
This great inventor first saw the light of day in the humble home of a
poor laboring man who lived in Milan, a small canal town in the state
of Ohio. In 1854 when Thomas A. Edison, for that is his name, was
seven years of age, his parents moved to Port Huron, Michigan, where
most of his boyhood days were spent.
As we should naturally expect, Thomas was sent to school, but his
teachers did not understand him and his progress was very poor.
Finally his mother took him out of school and taught him herself. This
she was able to do, for, before she married, she was a successful
school teacher in Canada.
Later in life, in speaking of his mother, he said: "I was always a
careless boy, and with a mother of different mental caliber I should
have probably turned out badly. But her firmness, her sweetness, her
goodness, were potent powers to keep me in the right path. I remember
I never used to be able to get along at school. I don't know why it
was, but I was always at the foot of the class. I used to feel that my
teachers never sympathized with me, and that my father thought that I
was stupid, and at last I almost decided that I must really be a
dunce. My mother was always kind, always sympathetic, and she never
misunderstood or misjudged me. My mother was the making of me. She was
so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had someone to live for, some one
I must not disappoint. The memory of her will always be a blessing to
me."
When young Edison was twelve years of age, he became a newsboy on the
Grand Trunk Railroad. That he was a wide-awake, energetic lad is shown
by the following experience as told by himself.
"At the beginning of the Civil War I was slaving late and early at
selling papers; but to tell the truth I was not making a fortune. I
worked on so small a margin that I had to be mighty careful not to
overload myself with papers that I could not sell. On the other hand,
I could not afford to carry so few that I found myself sold out long
before the end of the trip. To enable myself to hit the happy mean, I
found a plan which turned out admirably. I made a friend of one of the
compositors of the Free Press office, and persuaded him to show me
every day a galley-proof of the most important news articles. From a
study of its head-lines, I soon learned to gauge the value of the
day's news and its selling capacity, so that I could form a tolerably
correct estimate of the number of papers I should need. As a rule I
could dispose of about two hundred; but if there was any special news
from the seat of war, the sale ran up to three hundred or over.
"Well, one day my compositor brought me a proof-slip of which nearly
the whole was taken up with a gigantic display head. It was the first
report of the battle of Pittsburgh Landing--afterward called Shiloh,
you know, and it gave the number of killed and wounded as sixty
thousand men.
"I grasped the situation at once. Here was a chance for enormous
sales, if only the people along the line could know what had happened!
If only they could see the proof-slip I was then reading! Suddenly an
idea occurred to me. I rushed off to the telegraph operator and
gravely made a proposition to him which he received just as gravely.
He, on his part, was to wire to each of the principal stations on our
route, asking the station-master to chalk up on the bulletin-board,
used for announcing the time of arrival and departure of trains, the
news of the great battle, with its accompanying slaughter. This he was
to do at once, while I, in return, agreed to supply him with current
literature for nothing during the next six months from that date.
"This bargain struck, I began to bethink me how I was to get enough
papers to make the grand coup I intended. I had very little cash, and,
I feared, still less credit. I went to the superintendent of the
delivery department, and preferred a modest request for one thousand
copies of the Free Press on trust. I was not much surprised when my
request was curtly and gruffly refused. In those days, though, I was a
pretty cheeky boy and I felt desperate, for I saw a small fortune in
prospect if my telegraph operator had kept his word, a point on which
I was still a trifle doubtful. Nerving myself for a great stroke, I
marched up stairs into the office of Wilbur F. Story himself and asked
to see him. I told him who I was and that I wanted fifteen hundred
copies of the paper on credit. The tall, thin, dark-eyed man stared at
me for a moment and then scratched a few words on a slip of paper.
'Take that down stairs,' said he, 'and you will get what you want.'
And so I did. Then I felt happier than I have ever felt since.
"I took my fifteen hundred papers, got three boys to help me fold
them, and mounted the train all agog to find out whether the telegraph
operator had kept his word. At the town where our first stop was made
I usually sold two papers. As the train swung into that station I
looked ahead and thought there must be a riot going on. A big crowd
filled the platform and as the train drew up I began to realize that
they wanted my papers. Before we left, I had sold a hundred or two at
five cents each. At the next station the place was fairly black with
people. I raised the 'ante' and sold three hundred papers at ten cents
each. So it went on until Port Huron was reached. Then I transferred
my remaining stock to the wagon, which always waited for me there,
hired a small boy to sit on the pile of papers in the back, so as to
prevent any pilfering, and sold out every paper I had at a quarter of
a dollar or more per copy. I remember I passed a church full of
worshippers, and stopped to yell out my news. In ten seconds there was
not a soul left in the meeting, all of the audience, including the
parson, were clustered around me, bidding against each other for
copies of the precious paper."
Though, as you will admit, Mr. Edison was a very successful newsboy,
he was not satisfied merely to sell papers, so at the age of fifteen
he began editing and publishing a paper of his own. To do this he
purchased a small hand printing press and fitted out, as best he
could, a printing office in an old freight car.
The _Grand Trunk Herald_, as the paper was called, consisted of a
single sheet printed on both sides, and sold for eight cents a month.
When the paper was at the height of its popularity he sold five
hundred copies each week, and realized a profit of forty-five dollars
a month.
He might have continued in editorial work had not a sad mishap
overtaken him. In addition to his editorial work he performed many
experiments, for his was the soul of the inventor. These experiments
were performed in the baggage car of the train. One day, as he was in
the midst of one of these experiments, a sudden lurch of the train
upset his bottle of phosphorous, setting the baggage car on fire. The
conductor, a quick-tempered man, after putting out the fire, dumped
young Edison's precious printing press and apparatus out of the car
and went on. This was a very sad experience for the lad, but the
saddest part was the fact that, as the conductor threw Edison out he
boxed his ears so severely that he was partially deaf ever after.
Now that young Edison had lost his job as newsboy, and could no longer
print the _Grand Trunk Herald_, what was he to do? He decided, if
possible, to get a position as telegraph operator. But, you ask, how
did he learn to be a telegraph operator?
While yet a newsboy, he had saved the life of a child by snatching it
from before a moving train. The father, a telegraph operator, was so
grateful to young Edison for saving his child that he offered to teach
him telegraphy. This offer the lad eagerly accepted, and devoted every
spare minute to his new task. From the first his progress was rapid,
and when he lost his job as newsboy he applied for a position as
telegraph operator and was given a job as night operator at Stratford
Junction, Canada, at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month. He was
now sixteen years of age.
Within a very few years Edison became a swift and competent operator,
as the following incident will show. "Edison had been promised
employment in the Boston office. The weather was quite cold, and his
peculiar dress, topped with a slouchy broad-brimmed hat, made
something of a sensation. But Edison then cared as little for dress as
he does today. So one raw, wet day a tall man with a limp, wet duster
clinging to his legs, stalked into the superintendent's room and
said:
"'Here I am'.
"The superintendent eyed him from head to foot, and said:
"'Who are you?'
"'Tom Edison.'
"'And who on earth might Tom Edison be?'
"The young man explained that he had been ordered to report at the
Boston office, and was finally told to sit down in the operating room,
where his advent created much merriment. The operators made fun of him
loudly enough for him to hear. He didn't care. A few minutes later a
New York operator, noted for his swiftness, called up the Boston
office. There was no one at liberty.
"'Well,' said the office chief, 'let the new man try him.'
"Edison sat down and for four hours and a half wrote out messages in
his clear round hand, stuck a date and number on them, and threw them
on the floor for the office boy to pick up. The time he took in
numbering and dating the sheets were the only seconds he was not
writing out transmitted words. Faster and faster ticked the
instrument, and faster and faster went Edison's fingers, until the
rapidity with which the messages came tumbling on the floor attracted
the attention of the other operators, who, when their work was done,
gathered around to witness the spectacle. At the close of the four and
a half hours' work there flashed from New York the salutation:
"'Hello!'
"'Hello yourself!' ticked Edison.
"'Who are you?' rattled into the Boston office.
"'Tom Edison.'
"'You are the first man in the country', ticked in the instrument,
'that could ever take me at my fastest, and the only one who could
ever sit at the other end of my wire for more than two hours and a
half. I'm proud to know you.'"
While employed as telegraph operator Edison's inventive mind was hard
at work. Accordingly, when but seventeen years of age he invented the
Duplex telegraph which made it possible "to send two messages in
opposite directions on the same wire at the same time, without causing
any confusion."
Though a brilliant operator, young Edison found it difficult to hold a
job, as he was always neglecting his regular work to "fool with
experiments," as his employers put it.
Accordingly, when twenty-one years of age, he found himself in New
York City seeking work. Suppose we invite Mr. Edison to tell us of
this dramatic period of his life.
"On the third day after my arrival, while sitting in the office of the
Laws Gold Repeating Telegraph Company, the complicated general
instrument for sending messages on all the lines suddenly came to a
stop with a crash. Within two minutes over three hundred boys,--a boy
from every broker in the street, rushed upstairs and crowded the long
aisle and office that hardly had room for one hundred, all yelling
that such and such a broker's wire was out of order and to fix it at
once. It was pandemonium, and the man in charge became so excited that
he lost control of all the knowledge he ever had. I went to the
indicator and, having studied it thoroughly, knew where the trouble
ought to be, and found it."
"One of the innumerable contact springs had broken off and had fallen
down between the two gear wheels and stopped the instrument; but it
was not very noticeable. As I went out to tell the man in charge what
the matter was, George Laws, the inventor of the system, appeared on
the scene, the most excited person I had seen. He demanded of the man
the cause of the trouble, but the man was speechless. I ventured to
say that I knew what the trouble was, and he said, 'Fix it! Fix it! Be
quick!' I removed the spring and set the contact wheels at zero; and
the line, battery, and inspecting men scattered through the financial
district to set the instruments. In about two hours, things were
working again. Mr. Laws came to ask my name and what I was doing. I
told him and he asked me to come to his private office the following
day. He asked me a great many questions about the instruments and his
system, and I showed him how he could simplify things generally. He
then requested that I should come next day. On arrival, he stated at
once that he had decided to put me in charge of the whole plant, and
that my salary would be three hundred dollars a month."
"This was such a violent jump from anything I had ever seen before,
that it rather paralyzed me for a while. I thought it was too much to
be lasting; but I determined to try and live up to that salary if
twenty hours a day of hard work would do it."
It is needless to say that he made good in the biggest and best sense
of the word.
It was at this time that Mr. Edison, now twenty-one years of age,
invented an electric stock ticker for which he received forty thousand
dollars.
Always desiring to devote his entire time to inventive work, he now
saw that with the aid of his forty thousand dollars it was possible to
do so. Accordingly, a little later we see him constructing a
laboratory one hundred feet long at Menlo Park, a little station
twenty-five miles from Newark, New Jersey. Here for years, in company
with his assistants, he has made inventions that have revolutionized
the world.
Finally, in 1886, his business had so seriously outgrown his quarters
that he built his present laboratories at Orange, New Jersey. These
laboratories are now housed in two beautiful, four story brick
buildings each sixty feet wide by one hundred feet long. In addition
to these laboratories there are Edison factories located in various
sections of the country.
Though now seventy years of age, he is devoting all his time and the
time of his laboratory force in solving the great problems connected
with the present war.
* * * * *
"_A tool is but the extension of a man's hand, and a machine is but a
complete tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a
man and the well being of mankind._" --HENRY WARD BEECHER.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
Inventor of the Telephone]