 CHAPTER V. ARJUIS YEARS IN THE CENTRAL WEST In 1903, when accepting the position of honorary electrician to the International Exposition held in St. Louis in 1904 to commemorate the centenary of the Louisiana Purchase, Mr. Edison spoke in his letter of the Central West as a region where as a young telegraph operator I spent many arduous years before moving east. The term of probation thus referred to did not end until 1868, and while it lasted, Edison's wanderings carried him from Detroit to New Orleans and took him, among other cities, to Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Memphis, some of which he visited twice in his peregrinations to secure work. From Canada, after the episodes noted in the last chapter, he went to Adrian, Michigan, and of what happened there Edison tells a story typical of his wanderings for several years to come. After leaving my first job at Stratford Junction, I got a position as operator on the Lakeshore and Michigan Southern at Adrian, Michigan, in the division, superintendent's office. As usual, I took the night-trick, which most operators disliked, but which I preferred, as it gave me more leisure to experiment. I had obtained from the station agent a small room, and had established a little shop of my own. One day, the day operator wanted to get off, and I was on duty. About nine o'clock the superintendent handed me a dispatch, which he said was very important, and I must get off at once. The wire at the time was very busy, and I asked if I should break in. I got orders to do so, and acting under those orders of the superintendent, I broke in and tried to send the dispatch. But the other operator would not permit it, and the struggle continued for ten minutes. Finally, I got possession of the wire and sent the message. The superintendent of the telegraph, who then lived in Adrian, and went to his office in Toledo every day, happened that day to be in the Western Union office uptown, and it was the superintendent I was really struggling with. In about twenty minutes he arrived, lived with rage, and I was discharged on the spot. I informed him that the general superintendent had told me to break in and send the dispatch, but the general superintendent then and there repudiated the whole thing. Their families were socially closed, so I was sacrificed. My faith in human nature got a slight jar. Edison then went to Toledo, and secured a position at Fort Wayne, on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railroad, now leased to the Pennsylvania system. This was a day job, and he did not like it. He drifted two months later to Indianapolis, arriving there in the fall of 1864 when he was at first assigned to duty at the Union Station at a salary of $75 a month for the Western Union telegraph company, whose service he now entered, and with which he has been destined to maintain highly important and close relationships throughout a large part of his life. Superintendent Wallach appears to have treated him generously, and to have loaned him instruments, a kindness that was greatly appreciated. For twenty years later the inventor called on his old employer, and together they visited the scene where the borrowed apparatus had been mounted on a rough board in the depot. Edison did not stay long in Indianapolis, however, resigning in February 1865 and proceeding to Cincinnati. The transfer was probably due to trouble caused by one of his early inventions, embodying what has been characterized by an expert as, probably the most simple and ingenious arrangement of connections for a repeater. His ambition was to take press report, but finding even after considerable practice that he broke frequently, he adjusted two embossing Morse registers, one to receive the press matter, and the other to repeat the dots and dashes at a lower speed so that the message could be copied leisurely. Hence he could not be rushed or broken in receiving, while he turned out copy that was a marvel of neatness and clearness. All was well so long as ordinary conditions prevailed, but when an unusual pressure occurred the little system fell behind, and the newspapers complained of the slowness with which reports were delivered to them. It is easy to understand that with matter received at a rate of 40 words per minute and worked off at 25 words per minute, a serious congestion or delay would result, and the newspapers were more anxious for news than they were for fine penmanship. Of this device Mr. Edison remarks, This led to an investigation by the manager and the scheme was forbidden. This instrument many years afterwards was applied by me for transferring messages from one wire to any other wire simultaneously, or after any interval of time. It consisted of a disc of paper, the indentations being formed in a volute spiral, exactly as in the disc photographs today. It was this instrument which gave me the idea of the phonograph while working on the telephone. Arrived in Cincinnati, where he got employment in the Western Union Commercial Telegraph Department at a wage of $60 per month, Edison made the acquaintance of Milton F. Adams, already referred to as Facile Princips, the typical telegrapher in all his more sociable and brilliant aspects. Speaking of that time, Mr. Adams says, I can well recall when Edison drifted in to take a job. He was a youth of about 18 years, decidedly unprepossessing in dress, and rather uncouth in manner. I was 21 and very duddish. He was quite thin in those days, and his nose was very prominent, giving a Napoleonic look to his face, although the curious resemblance did not strike me at the time. The boys did not take to him cheerfully, and he was lonesome. I sympathized with him, and we became close companions. As an operator he had no superiors and very few equals. Most of the time he was monkeying with the batteries and circuits, and devising things to make the work of telegraphy less irksome. He also relieved the monotony of office work by fitting up the battery circuits to play jokes on his fellow operators, and to deal with the vermin that infested the premises. He arranged in the cellar what he called his Rat Paralyzer, a very simple contrivance consisting of two plates, insulated from each other, and connected from the main battery. They were so placed that when a rat passed over them, the four feet on one plate and the hind feet on the other completed the circuit, and the rat departed this life electrocuted. Shortly after Edison's arrival at Cincinnati came the close of the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln. It was natural that telegraphers should take an intense interest in the general struggle, for not only did they handle all the news relating to it, but many of them were one time or another personal participants. For example, one of the operators in the Cincinnati office was George Ellsworth, who was telegrapher from Morgan, the famous Southern Gorilla, and it was with him when he made his raid into Ohio, and was captured near the Pennsylvania line. Ellsworth himself made a narrow escape by swimming the Ohio River, with the aid of an army mule. Yet we can well appreciate the unimpressionable way in which some of the men did their work, from an antidote that Mr. Edison tells of that awful night of Friday, April 14th, 1865. I noticed, he says, an immense crowd gathering in the street outside a newspaper office. I called the attention of the other operators to the crowd and we sent a messenger boy to find out the cause of the excitement. He returned in a few minutes and shouted, Lincoln's shot! Instinctively the operators looked from one face to another to see which man had received the news. All the faces were blank, and every man said he had not taken a word about the shooting. Look over your files, said the boss, to the man handling the press stuff. For a few moments we waited in suspense, and then the man held up a sheet of paper containing a short of count of the shooting of the president. The operator had worked so mechanically that he had handled the news without the slightest knowledge of its significance. Mr. Adams says that at the time the city was unfet on account of the close of the war. The name of the assassin was received by Telegraph, and it was noted with a thrill of horror that it was the brother of Edwin Booth and that of Junius Brutus Booth, the latter of whom was then playing at the Old National Theater. Booth was hurried away into seclusion, and the next morning the city that had been so gay overnight with bunting was draped with mourning. Edison's diversions in Cincinnati were chiefly those already observed. He read a great deal, but spent most of his leisure in experiment. Mr. Adams remarks, Edison and I were very fond of tragedy. Forrest and John McCullough were playing at the National Theater, and when our capital was sufficient we would go to see these eminent tragedians alternate in Othello and Yago. Edison always enjoyed Othello greatly. Aside from an occasional visit to the Llewellyn Garden over the Rhine, with a glass of beer and a few pretzels consumed while listening to the excellent music of a German band, the theater was the sum and substance of our innocent dissipation. The Cincinnati office, as a central point, appears to have been attractive to many of the clever young operators who graduated from it to positions of larger responsibility. Some of them were conspicuous for their skill and versatility. Mr. Adams tells this interesting story as an illustration. L. C. Weir, or Charlie as he was known, at that time, agent for the Adams Express Company, had the remarkable ability of taking messages and copying them 25 words behind the sender. One day he came into the operating room, and passing a table he heard Llewell calling Cincinnati. He reached over to the key and answered the call. My attention was arrested by the fact that he walked off after responding, and the sender happened to be a good one. Weir coolly asked for a pen, and when he sat down, the sender was just one message ahead of him with date, address, and signature. Charlie started in, and in a beautiful, large, round hand, copied that message. The sender went right along, and when he finished with six messages, closed his key. When Weir had done with the last one, the sender began to think that after all there had been no receiver, as Weir did not break, but simply gave his OK. He afterward became president of the Adams Express, and was certainly a wonderful operator. The operating room, referred to, was on the fifth floor of the building with no elevators. Those were the early days of trade unionism and telegraphy, and the movement will probably never quite die out in the craft, which has always shown so much solidarity. While Edison was in Cincinnati, a delegation of five union operators went over from Cleveland to form a local branch, and the occasion was one of great conviviality. Night came, but the Unionists were conspicuous by their absence, although more circuits than one were intolerant of delay and clamorous for attention. Eight local Unionists being away. The Cleveland Report Weir was in special need, and Edison, almost alone in the office, devoted himself to it through the night, and until three o'clock the next morning when he was relieved. He had previously been getting $80 a month, and had eked this out by copying plays for the theater. His rating was that of a plug, or inferior operator, but he was determined to lift himself into the class of first-class operators, and kept up the practice of going into the office at night to copy press, acting willingly as a substitute for any operator who wanted to get off a few hours, which often meant all night. Speaking of this special ordeal, for which he had thus been unconsciously preparing, Edison says, My copy looked fine, if viewed as a whole, as I could write a perfectly straight line across the wide sheet, which was not ruled. There were no flourishes, but the individual letters would not bear close inspection. When I missed understanding a word, there was no time to think what it was, so I made an illegible one to fill in, trusting to the printers to sense it. I knew they could read anything, although Mr. Bloss, an editor of the Enquirer, made such bad copy that one of his editorials was pasted up on the notice board in the telegraph office with an offer of $1 to any man who could read 20 consecutive words. Nobody ever did it. When I got through, I was too nervous to go home, so waited the rest of the night for the day manager, Mr. Stevens, to see what was to be the outcome of this union formation and of my efforts. He was an austere man, and I was afraid of him. I got the morning papers, which came out at 4 a.m., and the press report read perfectly, which surprised me greatly. I went to work on my regular day wire to Portsmouth, Ohio, and there was considerable excitement, but nothing was said to me. Neither did Mr. Stevens examine the copy on the office hook, which I was watching with great interest. However, about 3 p.m. he went to the hook, grabbed a bunch, and looked at it as a whole without examining it in detail, for which I was thankful. Then he jabbed it back on the hook, and I knew I was all right. He walked over to me and said, young man, I want you to work the Louisville wire nights. Your salary will be $125. Thus I got from the plug classification to that of a first class man. But no sooner was this promotion secured than he started again on his wandering southward, while his friend Adams went north, neither having any difficulty in making the trip. The boys in those days had extraordinary facilities for travel. As a usual thing it was only necessary for them to board a train and tell the conductor they were operators. Then they would go as far as they liked. The number of operators was small, and they were in demand everywhere. It was in this way Edison made his way south as far as Memphis, Tennessee, where the telegraph service at that time was under military law, although the operators received $125 a month. Here again Edison began to invent and to improve on existing apparatus, with the result of having once more to move on. The story may be told in his terse language. I was not the inventor of the auto-repeater, but while in Memphis I worked on one. Learning that the chief operator, who was a protege of the superintendent, was trying in some way to put New York and New Orleans together for the first time since the close of the war, I redoubled my efforts, and at 2 o'clock one morning I had them speaking to each other. The office of the Memphis Avalanche was in the same building. The paper got wind of it and sent messages. A column came out in the morning about it, but when I went to the office in the afternoon to report for duty I was discharged without explanation. The superintendent would not even give me a pass to Nashville, so I had to pay my fare. I had so little money, left, that I nearly starved, to Cater, Alabama, and had to stay there three days before going north to Nashville. Arrived in that city, I went to the telegraph office, got money enough to buy a little solid food, and secured a pass to Louisville. I had a companion with me, who was also out of a job. I arrived at Louisville on a bitterly cold day, with ice in the gutters. I was wearing a linen duster, and was not much to look at, but I got a position at once, working on a press wire. My traveling companion was less successful, on account of his record. They had a limit even in those days, when the telegraph office was so demoralized. Some reminiscences of Mr. Edison are of interest, as bearing not only upon the demoralized telegraph service, but the conditions from which the New South had to emerge while working out at Salvation. The telegraph was still under military control, not having been turned over to its original owners, the Southern Telegraph Company. In addition to the regular force there was an extra force of two or three operators, and some stranded ones, who were a burden for us, for the board was high. One of these derelicts was a great source of worry to me personally. He would come in at all hours, and either throw ink around, or make a lot of noise. One day he built a fire in the grate, and started to throw pistol cartridges into the flames. These would explode, and I was twice hit by the bullets, which left a black and blue mark. Another night he came in, from some part of the building, with a lot of stationery, with Confederate states printed at the head. He was a fine operator, and wrote a beautiful hand. He would take a sheet of paper, write capital A, and then take another sheet, and make the A differently. And so on through the alphabet, each time crumpling the paper up in his hands and throwing it on the floor. He would keep this up until the room was nearly flush with the table. Then he would quit. Everything at that time was wide open. Disorganization reigned supreme. There was no head to anything. One night myself and a companion would go over to a gorgeously furnished farrow bank and get our midnight lunch. Everything was free. There was over twenty kino rooms running. One of them I visited was in a Baptist church, the man with the wheel being in the pulpit, and the gamblers in the pews. While there, manager of the telegraph office was arrested for something I never understood, and incarcerated in a military prison about a half mile from the office. The building was in plain sight from the office, and four stories high. He was kept strictly incommunicado. One day, thinking he might be confined in a room facing the office, I put my arm out of the window, and kept signaling, dots and dashes by the movement of the arm. I tried this several times for two days. Finally he noticed it, and putting his arm through the bars of the window, he established communication with me. He thus sent several messages to his friends, and was afterwards set free. Another curious story told by Edison concerns a fellow operator on night duty at Chattanooga Junction at the time he was at Memphis. When it was reported that Hood was marching on Nashville, one night a Jew came into the office about eleven o'clock in great excitement, having heard the Hood rumor. He, being a large settler, wanted to send a message to save his goods. The operator said it was impossible. That orders had been given to send no private messages. Then the Jew wanted to bribe my friend, who steadfastly refused for the reason, as he told the Jew, that he might be cord-martialed and shot. Finally the Jew got up to eight hundred dollars. The operator swore him to secrecy and sent the message. Now there was no such order about private messages, and the Jew, finding it out, complained to Captain van Duzer, chief of telegraphs, who investigated the matter, and while he would not discharge the operator, laid him off indefinitely. Van Duzer was so lenient that if an operator were discharged, all the operator had to do was wait three days, and then go back and sit on the stoop of Van Duzer's office all day, and he would be taken back. But Van Duzer swore he would never give in, in this case. He said that if the operator had taken eight hundred dollars and sent the message at the regular rate, which was twenty-five cents, it would have been all right, as the Jew would be punished for trying to bribe a military officer. But when the operator took the eight hundred and then sent the message deadhead, he couldn't stand it, and he would never relent. A third typical story of this period deals with a cipher message from Thomas. Mr. Edison narrates it as follows. When I was an operator in Cincinnati working out the Louisville wire lines for a time, one night a man on the Pittsburgh wire yelled out, D. I. Cipher, which meant that there was a cipher message from the War Department at Washington, and that it was coming, and he yelled out Louisville. I immediately started to call up that place. It was just at the change of shift in the office. I could not get Louisville, and the cipher message began to come. It was taken by the operator at the other table, direct from the War Department. It was for General Thomas at Nashville. I called for about twenty minutes, and notified them that I could not get Louisville. I kept at it for about fifteen minutes longer, and notified them that there was still no answer from Louisville. They then notified the War Department that they could not get Louisville. Then we tried to get by all kinds of roundabout ways, but in no case could anybody get them at the office. Soon a message came from the War Department to send immediately for the manager of the Cincinnati office. He was brought to the office, and several messages were exchanged. The contents of which, of course, I do not know. But the matters appeared to be very serious, and as they were afraid of General Hood, of the Confederate Army, who was then attempting to march on Nashville. And it was very important that this cipher, of about twelve hundred words or so, should be got through immediately to General Thomas. I kept on calling up to twelve or one o'clock, but no Louisville. About one o'clock the operator at the Indianapolis office got a hold of an operator on a wire which ran from Indianapolis to Louisville along the railroad, who happened to come into his office. He arranged with this operator to get a relay of horses, and the message was sent through Indianapolis to this operator, who then engaged horses to send the dispatches to Louisville, and find out the trouble, and to get the dispatches through without delay to General Thomas. In those days the telegraph fraternity was rather demoralized, and the discipline was very lax. It was found out a couple of days afterward that there were three night operators at Louisville. One of them had gone over to Jeffersonville, and had fallen off a horse and broken his leg. It was in a hospital. By a remarkable coincidence another of the men had been stabbed in the Keto Room, and was also in hospital, while the third operator had gone to Synthiana to see a man hanged, and had got left by the train. Young Edison remained in Louisville for about two years, quite a long stay for one with such nomadic instincts. It was there that he perfected the peculiar vertical style of writing, which, beginning with him in telegraphy, later became so much of a fad with teachers of penmanship and in the schools. He says of this form of writing, a current example of which is given above. I developed this style in Louisville while taking press reports. My wire was connected to the blind side of a repeater at Cincinnati, so that if I missed a word or sentence, or if the wire worked badly, I could not break in and get the last words, because the Cincinnati man had no instrument by which he could hear me. I had to take what came. When I got the job, the cable across the Ohio River at Covington, connecting with the line at Louisville, had a variable leak in it, which caused the strength of the signaling current to make violent fluctuations. I obviated this by using several relays, each with a different adjustment, working several sounders, all connected with one sounding plate. The clatter was bad, but I could read it with fair ease. When, in addition to this infernal leak, the wires north to Cleveland worked badly, it required a large amount of imagination to get the sense of what was being sent. An imagination requires an appreciable time for this exercise, and as the stuff was coming at a rate of 35 to 40 words a minute, it was very difficult to write down what was coming, and to imagine what wasn't coming. Hence it was necessary to become a very rapid writer, so I started to find the fastest style. I found that the vertical style, with each letter separate and without any flourishes, was the most rapid, and that the smaller the letter, the greater the rapidity. As I took on an average from 8 to 15 columns of news report every day, it did not take long to perfect this method. Mr. Edison has adhered to this characteristic style of penmanship down to the present time. As a matter of fact, the conditions at Louisville at that time were not much better than they had been at Memphis. The telegraph operating room was in a deplorable condition. It was on the second story of a dilapidated building on the principal street of the city, with the battery room in the rear, behind which was the office of the agent of the Associated Press. The plastering was about one-third gone from the ceiling. A small stove, used occasionally in the winter, was connected to the chimney by a tortuous pipe. The office was never cleaned. The switchboard for manipulating the wires was about 34 inches square. The brass connections on it were black with age and with the arcing effects of lightning, which, to young Edison, seemed particularly partial to Louisville. It would strike on the wires, he says, with an explosion like a cannon shot, making that office no place for an operator with heart disease. Around the dingy walls were a dozen tables, the ends next to the wall. They were about the size of those seen in old-fashioned country hotels for holding the wash bowl and pitcher. The copper wires connecting the instruments to the switchboard were small, crystallized and rotten. The battery room was arranged with old record books and message bundles, and 100 cells of nitric acid battery, arranged on a stand in the center of the room. This stand, as well as the floor, was almost eaten through by the destructive action of the powerful acid. Grim and uncompromising as the description reads, it was typical of the equipment in those remote days of the telegraph at the close of the war. Illustrative of the length to which telegraphers could go at a time when there was so much in demand, Edison tells the following story. When I took the position there, there was a great shortage of operators. One night at 2 a.m., another operator and I were on duty. I was taking press report, and the other man was working the New York wire. We heard a heavy tramp-tramp-tramp on the rickety stairs. Suddenly the door was thrown open with great violence, dislodging it from one of the hinges. There appeared in the doorway one of the best operators we had, who worked daytime and was of a very quiet disposition, except when intoxicated. He was a great friend of the manager of the office. His eyes were bloodshot and wild. One sleeve had been torn away from his coat. Without noticing either of us, he went up to the stove and kicked it over. The stovepipe fell, dislocated at every joint. It was half full of exceedingly fine soot, which floated out and filled the room completely. This produced a momentary respite to his labors. When the atmosphere was cleared sufficiently to sea, he went around and pulled every table away from the wall. Piling them on top of the stove in the middle of the room. Then he proceeded to pull the switchboard away from the wall. It was held tightly by screws. He succeeded, finally, and when it gave way he fell with the board, and striking on the table, cut himself so he soon became covered with blood. He then went to the battery room and knocked all the batteries off on the floor. The nitric acid soon began to combine with the plaster in the room below, which was the public receiving room for messengers and bookkeepers. The excess acid poured through and ate up the accounting books. After having finished everything to his satisfaction, he left. I told the other operator to do nothing. We would leave things just as they were and wait until the manager came. In the meantime, as I knew all the wires coming through to the switchboard, I rigged up a temporary set of instruments so that the New York business could be cleared up, and we also got the remainder of the press matter. At about 7 o'clock the day men began to appear. They were told to go downstairs and wait the coming of the manager. At 8 o'clock he appeared, walking around, went into the battery room, and then came to me saying, Edison, who did this? I told him that Billy L had come in full of soda water and invented the ruin before him. He walked backward and forward about a minute, then coming up to my table put his fist down and said, if Billy L ever does that again, I will discharge him. It was needless to say that there were other operators who took advantage of that kind of discipline, and I had many calls at night after that, but none with such destructive effects. This was one aspect of life as it presented itself to the sensitive and observant young operator Louisville. But there was another, more intellectual side, in the contact afforded with journalism and its leaders, and the information taken in almost unconsciously as to the political and social movements of the time. Mr. Edison looks back on this with great satisfaction. I remember, he says, the discussions between the celebrated poet and journalist George D. Prentis, then editor of the Currier Journal and Mr. Tyler of the Associated Press. I believe Prentis was the father of the humorous paragraph of the American newspaper. He was poetic, highly educated, and a brilliant talker. He was very thin and small. I don't think he weighed over 125 pounds. Tyler was a graduate of Harvard, and had a very clear enunciation and a sharp contrast to Prentis. He was a large man. After the paper had gone to press, Prentis would generally come over to Tyler's office and start talking. Having while in Tyler's office heard them arguing on the immortality of the soul, etc., I asked permission of Mr. Tyler if, after finishing the press matter, I might come in and listen to the conversation, which I did many times after. One thing I could never comprehend was that Tyler had a sideboard with liquors and generally crackers. Prentis would pour out half a glass of what they call corn whiskey and would dip the crackers in it and eat them. Tyler's took it son's food. One teaspoon of that stuff would have put me to sleep. Mr. Edison throws out a curious sidelight on the origin of the comic column in the modern American newspaper, the telegraph giving to a new joke or good story, the ubiquity and instantaneity of an important historical event. It was the practice of the press operators all over the country at that time when a law occurred to start in and send jokes or stories the day men had collected, and these were copied and pasted up on the bulletin board. Cleveland was the originating office for press, which it received from New York and sent it out simultaneously to Milwaukee, Chicago, Toledo, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Vincen, Terre Haute, St. Louis, and Louisville. Cleveland would call first on Milwaukee if he had anything, if so he would send it, and Cleveland would repeat it to all of us. Thus any joke or story originating anywhere in that area was known the next day all over. The press men would come in and copy anything that could be published, which was about 3%. I collected too quite a large scrapbook of it, but unfortunately have lost it. Edison tells an amusing story of his own pursuits at the time. Always an omnivorous reader, he had some difficulty in getting a sufficient quantity of literature for home consumption and was in the habit of buying books at auctions and at second hand stores. One day at an auction room he secured a stack of 20 unbound volumes of the North American review for $2. These he had bound and delivered at the telegraph office. One morning when he was free as usual at 3 o'clock he started off at a rapid pace with 10 volumes on his shoulder. He found himself very soon the subject of a fuselage. When he stopped a breathless policeman grabbed him by the throat and ordered him to drop his parcel and explain matters as a suspicious character. He opened the package showing the books somewhat to the disgust of the officer who imagined he had caught a burglar sneaking away in the dark alley with his booty. Edison explained that being deaf he had heard no challenge and therefore had kept moving and the policeman remarked apologetically that it was fortunate for Edison that he was not a better shot. The incident is curiously relevantory of the character of the man for it must be admitted that while literary telegraphers are by no means scarce there are very few who would spend scant savings on back numbers of a ponderous review at an age when tragedy, beer and pretzels are far more enticing. Through all his travels Edison has preserved those books and has them now in his library and Llewellyn Park on Orange Mountain, New Jersey. Drifting after a time from Louisville Edison made his way as far north as Detroit but like the famous Duke of York soon made his way back again. Possibly the severe discipline after the happy-go-lucky regime in the southern city had something to do with this restlessness which again manifested itself however on his return thither. The end of the war had left the south a scene of destruction and desolation and many men who had fought bravely and well found it hard to reconcile themselves to the grim task of reconstruction. To them it seemed better to let ill alone and to seek other climb where conditions would be less onerous. At this moment a great deal of exaggerated talk was current as to the sunny life and easy wealth of Latin America and under its influences many unreconstructed southerners made their way to Mexico, Brazil, Peru or the Argentine. Telegraph operators were naturally in touch with this movement and Edison's fertile imagination was readily inflamed by the glowing idea of all these vague possibilities. Again he threw up his steady work and with a couple of sanguine young friends made his way to New Orleans. They had the notion of taking positions in the Brazilian government telegraphs as an advertisement had been inserted in some paper stating that operators were wanted. They had timed their departure from Louisville so as to catch a specially charted steamer which was to leave New Orleans for Brazil on a certain day and to convey a large number of confederates and their families who were disgusted with the United States. And were going to settle in Brazil where slavery still prevailed. Edison and his friends arrived in New Orleans just at the time of the Great Riot when several hundred Negroes were killed and the city was in the hands of a mob. The government had seized the steamer charted for Brazil in order to bring in troops in the Yazoo River to New Orleans to stop the rioting. The young operators therefore visited another shipping office to make inquiries as to vessels for Brazil and encountered an old Spaniard who sit in a chair near the steamer's agents desk and to whom they explained their intentions. He had lived and worked in South America and was very emphatic in his assertion as he shook his yellow boned finger at them that the worst mistake that they could possibly make would be to leave the United States. He would not leave on any account and they as young Americans would always regret it if they forsook their native land whose freedom, climate and opportunities could not be equaled anywhere on the face of the globe. Such sincere advice as this could not be disdained and Edison made his way north again. One cannot resist speculation as to what might have happened to Edison himself and to the development of electricity had he made this proposed plunge into the innervating tropics. It will be remembered that in a somewhat similar crisis in life young Robert Burns entertained seriously the idea of forsaking Scotland for the West Indies. That he did not go was certainly better for Scottish verse to which he contributed later so many immortal lines and it was probably better for himself even if he died a gager. It was simply impossible to imagine Edison working out the phonograph, telephone and incandescent lap under the tropical climes he sought. Some years later he was informed that both his companions had gone to Veracruz, Mexico and had died there of yellow fever. Work was soon resumed at Louisville where the dilapidated old office occupied at the close of the war had been exchanged for one much more comfortable and luxurious in its equipment. As before Edison was allotted to press work and remembers very distinctly taking the presidential message and veto of the District of Columbia Bill by President Johnson. As the matter was received over the wire he paragraph it so that each printer had exactly three lines thus enabling the matter to be set up very expeditiously in the newspaper offices. This earned him the gratitude of the editors, a dinner and all the newspaper exchanges he wanted. Edison's accounts of the sprees and diboshes of the other night operators in the loosely managed offices enable one to understand how even a little steady application to the work in hand would be appreciated. On one occasion Edison acted as treasurer for his biblist companions holding the stake so to speak in order that the supply of liquor might last longer. One of the mildest manner to the party took umbrage at the parsimony of the treasurer and knocked him down whereupon the others in the party set upon the assailant and mauled him so badly that he had to spend three weeks in the hospital. At another time two of his companions sharing the temporary hospitality of his room smashed most of the furniture and went to bed with their boots on then his kindly good nature rebelled. I felt that this was running hospitality into the ground so I pulled them out and left them on the floor to cool off from their alcoholic trance. Edison seems on the hold to have been fairly comfortable and happy and lovable surrounding himself with books and experimental apparatus and even indicting a treatise on electricity but his very thirst for knowledge and new facts again proved as undoing. The instruments in the handsome new offices were fastened in their proper places and the operators were strictly forbidden to remove them or to use the batteries except on regular work. This prohibition meant little to Edison who had access to no other instruments except those of the company. I went one night into the battery room to obtain some sulfuric acid for experimenting. The car boy tipped over, the acid ran out, went through to the manager's room below and ate up his desk and all the carpet. The next morning I was summoned before him and told what the company wanted was operators not experimenters. I was at liberty to take my pay and get out. The fact that Edison is a very studious man and his satiate lover and reader of books is well known to his associates but the surprise is often expressed at his fund of miscellaneous information. This, it will be seen, is partly explained by his work for years as a press reporter. He says of this, the second time I was in Louisville they had moved into a new office and the discipline was now good. I took the press job, in fact I was a very poor sender and therefore made the taking of press report a specialty. The newspaper man allowed me to come over after going to press at 3am and get all the exchanges I wanted. These I would take home and lay at the foot of my bed. I never slept more than 4 or 5 hours so that I would awake at 9 or 10 and read these papers until dinner time. I thus kept posted and knew from their activity every member of congress and what committees they were on and about all the topical doings as well as the prices of breadstuffs and all the primary markets. I was in a much better position than most operators to call on my imagination to supply missing words or sentences which were frequent in those days of old rotten wires, badly insulated especially on stormy nights. Upon such occasions I had to supply in some cases one fifth of the whole matter, pure guessing, but I got caught only once. There had been some kind of convention in Virginia in which John Minor Bots was the leading figure. There was a great excitement about it and two votes had been taken at the convention on the two days. There was no doubt that the vote the next day would go a certain way. A very bad storm came up about 10 o'clock and my wire worked very badly. Then there was a cessation of all signals. Then I made out the words Minor Bots. The next was a New York item. I filled in a paragraph about the convention and how the vote had gone as I was sure it would, but the next day I learned that instead of there having been a vote the convention had enjoined without action until the day after. In like manner it was at Louisville that Mr. Edison got an insight into the manner in which great political speeches are more frequently reported than the public suspects. The Associated Press had a shorthand man traveling with President Johnson when he made a celebrated swing around the circle in a private train delivering hot speeches in deference of his conduct. The man engaged me to write out the notes from his reading. He came in loaded and on the verge of incoherence. We started in, but about every two minutes I would have to scratch out whole paragraphs and insert the same thing said in another and better way. He would frequently change words, always to the betterment of the speech. I couldn't understand this, and when he got through I had copied about three columns. I asked him why these changes, if he read from notes. Sunny, he said, if these politicians had their speeches published as they deliver them, a great many shorthand writers would be out of a job. The best shorthanders and the holders of good positions are those who could take a lot of rambling, incoherent stuff and make a rattling good speech out of it. Going back to Cincinnati and beginning his second term there as an operator Edison found the office in New Quarters and with greatly improved management. He was again put on night duty, much to his satisfaction. He rented a room in the top floor of an office building, bought a cot and an oil stove, a foot lathe and some tools. He cultivated the acquaintance of Mr. Summers, superintendent of Telegraph of the Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railroad, who gave him permission to take such scrap apparatus as he might desire, which was of no use to the company. With Mr. Summers on one occasion he had an opportunity to indulge his always strong sense of humor. Summers was a very witty man, he says, in fond of experimenting. We worked on a self-adjusting Telegraph relay, which would have been very valuable if we could have got it. I soon became the possessor of a second hand room-corp induction coil, which, although would only give a small spark, would twist the arms and clutch the hands of a man so he could not let go of the apparatus. One day we went down to the roundhouse of the Cincinnati and Indianapolis Railroad and connected up the long wash tank in the room with the coil, one electrode being connected to the earth. Above this washroom was a flat roof, we bored a hole through the roof, and could see the men as they came in. The first man as he entered dipped his hands in the water, the floor being wet he formed a circuit, and up went his hands. He tried it the second time with the same result. He then stood against the wall with a puzzled expression. We surmised that he was waiting for someone else to come in, which occurred shortly after, with the same result. Then they went out and the place was soon crowded and there was considerable excitement. Various theories were broached to explain the curious phenomena. We enjoyed the sport immensely. It must be remembered that this was over forty years ago when there was no popular instruction in electricity and when its possibilities for practical joking were known to very few. Today such a crowd of working men would be sure to include at least one student of a night school or a correspondence course who could explain the mystery offhand. Note has been made of the presence of Ellsworth in the Cincinnati office and his service with the Confederate guerrilla Morgan, for whom he had tapped federal wires, read military messages, sent false ones and done serious mischief generally. It is well known that one operator can recognize another by the way in which he makes his signals. It is his style of handwriting. Ellsworth possessed, in a remarkable degree, the skill of imitating these peculiarities and thus he deceived the Union operators easily. Edison says while apparently a quiet man and bearing, Ellsworth, after the excitement of fighting, found the tameness of a telegraph office obnoxious and that he became a bad gunman in the panhandle of Texas where he was killed. We soon became acquainted, says Edison of this period in Cincinnati, and he wanted me to invent a secret method of sending dispatches so that an intermediate operator could not tap the wire and understand it. He said that if it could be accomplished he could sell it to the government for a large sum of money. This suited me and I started in and succeeded in making such an instrument, which had in it the germ of my quadruplex, now used throughout the world, permitting the dispatch of four messages over one wire simultaneously. By the time I had succeeded in getting the apparatus to work, Ellsworth suddenly disappeared. Many years afterwards I used this little device again for the same purpose. At Menlo Park, New Jersey, I had my laboratory. There were several Western Union wires cut into the laboratory and used by me and experimenting at night. One day I sat near an instrument which I had left connected during the night. I soon found it was a private wire between New York and Philadelphia and I heard among a lot of stuff a message that surprised me. A week after that I had occasion to go to New York and, visiting the office of the lycee of the wire, I asked him if he hadn't sent such and such a message. The expression that came over his face was a sight. He asked me how I knew of any message. I told him the circumstances and suggest that he had better cipher such communications or put on a secret sounder. The result of the interview was that I installed from him my old Cincinnati apparatus, which was used thereafter for many years. Edison did not make a very long stay in Cincinnati this time, but went home after a while to port Huron. Soon, tiring of idleness and isolation, he sent a cry from Macedonia to his old friend, Milt Adams, who was in Boston and whom he wished to rejoin if he could get work properly in the East. Edison himself gives the details of this eventful move when he went East to grow up with the new art of electricity. I had left Louisville the second time and went home to see my parents. After stopping home for some time I got restless and thought I would like to work in the East. Knowing that a former operator named Adams, who had worked with me in the Cincinnati office, was in Boston, I wrote him that I wanted a job there. He wrote back that if I came on immediately he would get me a job in the Western Union office. I had helped out the Grand Trunk Railroad Telegraph people by a new device when they lost one of the two submarine cables they had across the river, making the remaining cable act just as well for their purpose, as if they had had two. I thought that I was entitled to a pass, which they conceded, and I started for Boston. After leaving Toronto, a terrific blizzard came up and the train got snowed under in a cut. After staying there 24 hours, the train man made snowshoes of fence rail splits and started out to find food, which they did about a half mile away. They found a roadside inn and by means of snowshoes all the passengers were taken to the inn. The train reached Montreal four days late. A number of the passengers and myself went to the military headquarters to testify in favor of a soldier who was on furlough and was two days late, which was a serious matter with military people, I learned. We willingly did this, for this soldier was a great storyteller and made the time pass quickly. I met here a telegraph operator named Stanton, who took me to his boarding house, the most cheerless I have ever been in. Nobody got enough to eat, the bed clothes were too short and too thin, it was 28 degrees below zero, the wash water was frozen solid. The board was cheap, being only $1.50 per week. Stanton said that the usual livestock accompaniment of operators boarding houses was absent. He thought the intense cold had caused them to hibernate. Stanton, when I was working at Cincinnati, left his position and went out on the Union Pacific to work at Julesburg, which was a cattle town at that time and very rough. I remember seeing him off on a train, never expecting to see him again. Six months later, while working press wire in Cincinnati, about 2 a.m., there was flung in the middle of the operating room a large tin box. It made a report just like a pistol and we all jumped up startled. In walked Stanton. Gentlemen, he said, I have just returned from a pleasure trip to the land beyond the Mississippi. All my wealth is contained in my metallic traveling device and you are welcome to it. The case contained one paper collar. He sat down and I noticed that he had a woollen comforter around his neck with his coat buttoned closely. The night was intensely warm. He then opened his coat and revealed the fact that he had nothing on but the bare skin. Gentlemen, said he, you see before you an operator who has reached the limit of impiccuniosity. Not far from the limit of impiccuniosity was Edison himself as he landed in Boston in 1868 after this wintery ordeal. This chapter is run to undue length, but it must not close without one citation from high authority as to the service of the military telegraph corps so often referred to in it. General Grant, in his memoirs, describing the movements of the Army of the Potomac, lays stress on the service of his telegraph operators and says, Nothing could be more complete than the organization and discipline of this body of brave and intelligent men. Insulated wires were wound upon reels, two men in a mule detailed to each wheel. Pack saddle was provided with a rack, like a saw-buck, placed crossways so that the wheel would revolve freely. There was a wagon provided with a telegraph operator, battery, and instruments for each division corps and Army, and for my headquarters. Wagons were also loaded with light poles supplied with an iron spike at each end to hold the wires up. The moment troops were in a position to go into camp, the men would put up these wires. Thus in a few minutes longer time than it took a mule to walk the length of its coil, telegraphic communication would be affected between all the headquarters of the Army. No orders ever had to be given to establish the telegraph. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Milton Adams was working in the office of the Franklin telegraph company in Boston when he received Edison's appeal from Port Huron for the first time in his life. The company, in petuosity, at once made it his business to secure a position for his friend. There was no opening in the Franklin office, so Adams went over to the Western Union office and asked the manager, Mr. George F. Millican, if he did not want an operator who, like young Lookenvarr, came out of the West. What kind of copy does he make, was the cautious response. Millican read it, and a look of surprise came over his countenance, as he asked me if he could take it off the line like that. I said he certainly could, and that there was nobody who could stick him. Millican said that if he was that kind of an operator, I could send for him, and I wrote to Edison to come on, as I had a job for him in the main office of the Western Union. Meantime, Edison had secured his pass over the Grand Trunk Railroad, and spent four days and nights on the journey, suffering extremes of cold and hunger. The Franklin's arrival in Philadelphia finds its parallel in the very modest debut of Adams' friend in Boston. It took only five minutes for Edison to get the job, for Superintendent Millican, a fine type of telegraph official, saw quickly through the superficialities, and realized that it was no ordinary young operator he was engaging. Edison himself tells the story of what happened. The manager asked me when I was ready to work. Now, I replied, I was then told to return at 5.30 p.m., and punctually at that hour I entered the main operating room and was introduced to the night manager. The weather being cold and being clothed poorly, my peculiar appearance caused much mirth. As I afterward learned, the night operators had consulted together how they might put up a job on the J from the Woolly West. I was given a pen and assigned to the New York number one wire. After waiting an hour, I was told to come over to a special table and take a special report for the Boston Herald. The conspirators having arranged to have one of the fastest senders in New York send the dispatch and salt the new man. I sat down unsuspiciously at the table, and the New York man started slowly. Soon he increased his speed, to which I easily adapted my pace. This put my rival on his metal, and he put on his best powers, which, however, were soon reached. At this point I happened to look up and saw the operators all looking over my shoulder, with their faces shining with fun and excitement. I knew then that they were trying to put a job on me, but I kept my own counsel. The New York man then commenced to slur over his words, running them together and sticking the signals. But I had been used to this style of telegraphy and taking report, and was not, in the least, discomfited. Finally when I thought the fun had gone far enough, and having about completed the special, I quietly opened the key and remarked telegraphically to my New York friend, Say young man, change off and send with your other foot. This broke the New York man all up, and he turned the job over to another man to finish. Edison had a distaste for taking press report, due to the fact that it was steady, continuous work, and interfered with the studies and investigations that could be carried on in the intervals. He was not lazy in any sense. While he had no very lively interest in the mere routine work of a telegraph office, he had the profoundest curiosity as to the underlying principles of electricity, that made telegraphy possible, and he had an unflagging desire and belief in his own ability to improve the apparatus he handled daily. The whole intellectual atmosphere of Boston was favorable to the development of the brooding genius in this shy, awkward, studious youth. Utterly indifferent to clothes and personal appearance, but ready to spend his last dollar on books and scientific paraphernalia. It is a matter of record that he did once buy a new suit for $30 in Boston. But the following Sunday, while experimenting with acids in his little workshop, the suit was spoiled. This is what I get for putting so much money in a new suit, was the laconic remark of the youth, who was more than delighted to pick up a complete set of Faraday's new suit. Adam says that when Edison brought home these books at 4 a.m., he read steadily until breakfast time. Then he remarked enthusiastically, Adam's, I got so much to do and life is so short, I'm going to hustle. Thereupon he started on a run for breakfast. Edison himself says, It was in Boston I bought Faraday's works. I think I must have tried about everything in those books. His excellent work of art, and his excellent work of art, I think I must have tried about everything in those books. His explanations were simple. He used no mathematics. He was the master experimenter. I don't think there were many copies of Faraday's works sold in those days. The only people who did anything in electricity were the telegraphers and the opticians making simple school apparatus to demonstrate the principles. One of these firms was Palmer and Hall, whose catalog of 1850 showed a miniature electric locomotive made by Mr. Thomas Hall and exhibited in operation the following year at the Charitable Mechanics Fair in Boston. In 1852, Mr. Hall made for a Dr. A. L. Henderson of Buffalo, New York, a model line of railroad with electric motor engine, telegraph line and electric railroad signals together with a figure operating the signals at each end of the line automatically. This was in reality the first example of railroad trains moving by telegraph signals, a practice now so common and universal as to attract no comment. To show how little some fundamental methods can change in 50 years, it may be noted that Hall conveyed the current to his tiny car through 40 feet of rail using the rail as a conductor, just as Edison did more than 30 years later in his historic experiments for a viad at Menlo Park and just as a large proportion of American trolley systems do this at the present moment. It was among such practical, investigating folk as these that Edison was very much at home. Another notable man of this stamp with whom Edison was thrown in contact was the late Mr. Charles Williams, who, beginning his career in the electrical field in the 40s, was at the height of activity as a maker of apparatus when Edison arrived in the city and who afterward, as an associate of Alexander Graham Bell, enjoyed the distinction of being the first manufacturer in the world of telephones. At his Court Street workshop, Edison was a frequent visitor. Telegraph repairs and experiments were going on constantly, especially on the early fire alarm telegraphs of Farmer and Gamewell and with the aid of one of the men there, probably George Anders, Edison worked out into an operative model, his first invention, a vote recorder, the first Edison patent for which papers were executed on October 11th, 1868 and which was taken out June 1st, 1869, number 90,646. The purpose of this particular device was to permit a vote in the National House of Representatives to be taken in a minute or so, complete lists being furnished of all members voting on the two sides of any question. Mr. Edison, in recalling the circumstances says, Roberts was the telegraph operator who was the financial backer to the extent of $100. The invention, when completed, was taken to Washington. I think it was exhibited before a committee that had something to do with the Capitol. The chairman of the committee, after seeing how quickly and perfectly it worked, said, Young man, if there is any invention on earth we don't want down here, it is this. One of the greatest weapons in the hands of a minority to prevent bad legislation is filibustering on votes and this instrument would prevent it. I saw the truth of this because as press operator I had taken miles of congressional proceedings and to this day an enormous amount of time is wasted during each session of the House in foolishly calling the members' names and recording and then adding their votes when the whole operation can be done in almost a moment by merely pressing a particular button at each desk. For filibustering purposes, however, the present methods are most admirable. Edison determined from that time forth to devote his inventive faculties only to things for which there was a real, genuine demand, something that subserved the actual necessities of humanity. The first patent was taken out for him by the late, honorable Carol D. White, afterward U.S. Commission of Labor and a well-known publicist, then practicing patent law in Boston. He describes Edison as an uncouth and manner, a chuer rather than a smoker of tobacco, but full of intelligence and ideas. Footnote. The general scheme of a fire alarm telegraph system embodies a central office to which notice can be sent from any number of signal boxes of the outbreak of a fire in the district covered by the box. The central office in turn calling out the nearest fire engines and warning the fire department in general of the occurrence. Such fire alarms can be exchanged automatically or by operators and are sometimes associated with a large fire alarm bell or whistle. Some boxes can be operated by the passing public. Others need special keys. The box mechanism is usually of the ratchet, step-by-step movement, familiar in district messenger call boxes. End footnote. Edison's curiously practical, though imaginative mind, demanded realities to work upon, things that belonged to human nature's daily food. And he soon hearted back to telegraphy, a domain in which he was destined to succeed and over which he was to reign supreme as an inventor. He did not, however, neglect chemistry, but indulged his taste in that direction freely, although we have no record that this work was anything more, at that time, than the carrying out of experiments outlined in the books. The foundations were being laid for the remarkable chemical knowledge that later on grappled successfully with so many naughty problems in the realm of chemistry, notably with the incandescent lamp and the storage battery. Of one incident in his chemical experiments, he tells the following story. I had read in a scientific paper the method of making nitroglycerin and was so fired by the wonderful properties it was said to possess that I determined to make some of the compound. We tested what we considered a very small quantity, but this produced such terrible and unexpected results that we became alarmed, the fact dawning on us that we had a very large white elephant in our possession. At 6 a.m., I put the explosive into a sasperilla bottle, tied a string to it, wrapped it up in a paper, and gently let it down in the sewer, corner of state and Washington streets. The associate in this was a man whom he had found endeavoring to make electrical apparatus for sleight of hand performances. In the Boston Telegraph Office at that time, as perhaps at others, there were operators studying to enter college. Possibly some were already in attendance at Harvard University. This condition was not unusual at one time. The first electrical engineer graduated from Columbia University, New York, followed up his studies while a night operator, came out brilliantly at the head of his class. Edison says of these scholars that they paraded their knowledge rather freely, and it was his delight to go to the second hand bookstores on Cornhill and study up questions that he could spring upon them when he got an occasion. With those engaged on night duty, he got midnight lunch from an old Irishman called the Cake Man, who appeared regularly with his wares at 12 midnight. The office was on the ground floor and had been a restaurant previous to its occupation by the Western Union Telegraph Company. It was literally loaded with cockroaches, which lived between the wall and the board running around the room at the floor, and which came out after the lunch. These were such a bother on my table that I pasted two strips of tinfoil on the wall at my desk, connecting one piece to the positive side with the big battery supplying current to the wires, and the negative pole to the other strip. The cockroaches moving up on the wall would pass over the strips. The moment they got their legs across both strips, there was a flash of light, and the cockroaches went up into gas. This automatic electrocuting device attracted so much attention and got half a column in an evening paper that the manager made me stop it. The reader will remember that a similar plan of campaign against rats was carried out by Edison while in the West. About this time Edison had a narrow escape from injury, which might easily have shortened his career, and he seems to have provoked the trouble more or less innocently by using a little elementary chemistry. After being in Boston several months, he says, working New York wire one, I was requested to work the press wire called the milk route as there were so many towns on it taking press simultaneously. New York office had reported great delays on the wire due to operators constantly interrupting or breaking what was called to have words repeated which they failed to get. And New York claimed that Boston was one of the worst offenders. It was a rather hard position for me for I took the report without breaking and it would prove the previous Boston operator incompetent. The results made the operators have some hard feelings against me. He was put back on the wire and did much better after that. It seems that the office boy was down on this man. One night he asked me if I could tell him how to fix a key so it would not break, even if the circuit breaker was open and also so it cannot be easily detected. I told him to jab a pen full of ink on the platinum points so that there was sugar enough to make it sufficiently thick to hold up while the operator tried to break. The current was still going through the ink so he could not break. The next night about 1 a.m. this operator on the press wire while I was standing near a house printer studying it pulled out a glass insulator then used upside down as a substitute for an ink bottle and threw it with great violence at me just missing my head. It would certainly have killed me if it had not missed. The cause of the trouble was that this operator was doing his best he could not to break but being compelled to open the key and found he couldn't. The press matter came right along and he couldn't stop it. The office boy had put the ink in a few minutes before when the operator had turned his head during a law. He blamed me instinctively as the cause of the trouble. Later on we became good friends. He took his meals at the same emaciator that I did. His main object in life seemed to be acquiring the art of throwing up wash pitchers and catching them without breaking them. About one third of a salary was used in paying for pitchers. One day a request reached the western union telegraph office in Boston from the principal of a select school for young ladies to the effect that she would like someone to be sent up to the school to exhibit and describe the Morse telegraph to her children. There had always been a warm interest in Boston in the life and work of Morse who had been born there at Charlestown barely a mile from the birthplace of Franklin and this request for a little lecture on Morse's telegraph was quite natural. Edison, who was always ready to earn some extra money for his experiments and was already known as the best informed operator in the office accepted the invitation. What happened is described by Adams as follows. We gathered up a couple of sounders, a battery and a sonic wire and at the appointed time called on her to do the stunt. Her school room was about 20 feet by 20 feet not including a small platform. We rigged up the line between the two ends of the room. Edison taken the stage while I was at the other end of the room. All being in readiness the principal was told to bring in her children. The door opened and in came about 20 young ladies elegantly gowned not one of whom was under 17. When Edison saw them I thought he would faint. He called me on the line and asked me to come to the stage and explain the mysteries of the Morse system. I replied that I thought that he was in the right place and told him to get busy with his talks on dots and dashes. Always modest Edison was so overcome he could hardly speak but he managed to say finally that his friend Mr. Adams was better equipped with cheek than he was. We would change places and he would do the demonstrating while I explain the whole thing. This caused the bevy to turn to see where the lecturer was. I went to the stage saying something and we did some telegraphing over the line. I guess it was satisfactory. We got the money which was the main point to us. Edison tells the story in a similar manner but insists that it was he who saved the situation. I managed to say that I would work the apparatus and Mr. Adams would make the explanations. Adams was so embarrassed that he fell over an ottoman. The girls tittered and this increased his embarrassment until he couldn't say a word. The situation was so desperate that for a reason I could never explain I started in myself and talked and explained better than I had ever did before or since. I can talk to two or three persons but when there are more they radiate some unknown form of influence which paralyzes my vocal cords. However I got out of this scrape and many times afterwards when I chanced with other operators to meet some of the young ladies on their way home from school they would smile a nod much to the mystification of the operators who were ignorant of this episode. Another amusing story of this period of impuniosity and in financial strain is thus told by Edison. My friend Adams was working in the Franklin Telegraph Company which competed with the Western Union. Adams was laid off and as his financial resources had reached absolute zero centigrade I undertook to let him sleep in my hall bedroom. I generally had hall bedrooms because they were cheap and I needed money to buy apparatus. I also had the pleasure of his genial company at the boarding house about a mile distant but at the sacrifice of some apparatus. One morning as we were hastening to breakfast we came in to Tremont Row and saw a large crowd in front of two small gents furnishing good stores. We stopped to asserting the cause of the excitement. One store put up a paper sign in the display window which said 300 pairs of stockings received this day five cents a pair no connection with the store next door. Presently the other store put up a sign stating that they had received 300 pairs price three cents per pair and stated that they had no connection with the store next door. Nobody went in the crowd kept increasing finally when the price had reached three pairs for one cent Adam says to me I can't stand this any longer give me a cent I gave him a nickel and he outbode his way in and throwing the money on the counter the store being filled with women clerks he said give me three pairs the crowd was breathless and a girl took down a box and drew out three pairs of baby socks oh said Adams I want men's size well sir we do not permit one to pick sizes for that amount of money and the crowd roared and this broke up the sales it was generally supposed that Edison did not take up work on the stock ticker until after his arrival a little later in New York but he says after the wrote recorder I invented a stock ticker and started a ticker service in Boston operated from a room over the gold exchange this was about a year after Callahan started in New York to say the least this evidenced great ability and enterprise on part of the youth the dealings in gold during the Civil War and after it's closed had brought gold indicators into use and these had soon been followed by stock tickers the first of which was introduced in New York in 1867 the success of this new but primitively crude class of apparatus was a very immediate four manufacturers were soon busy trying to keep pace with the demands for it from brokers and the gold and stock telegraph company formed to exploit the system which soon increased its capital from 200,000 to 300,000 paying 12 stent dividends on the latter amount within its first year the capital was again increased to $1 million and the dividends of 10% were easily paid on that sum also it is needless to say from whose ranks of course the new employees were enlisted and it was a common ambition among the more ingenious to produce a new stock ticker from the beginning each phase of electrical development indeed each step in mechanics has been accompanied by the well-known phenomenon of invention namely the attempt of the many to perfect and refine and even reinvent where one or two daring spirits have led the way the figures of capitalization and profit just mentioned in the 1960s than they are today into enterprising young operators they spelled in limitable wealth Edison was however about the only one in Boston of whom history makes record as achieving any tangible result in this new art and he soon longed for the larger telegraph opportunity of New York his friend Milt Adams went west with quenchless zest for that kind of roving life and aimless adventure had already had more than enough of realizing that to New York he must look for further support in his efforts Edison deep in debt for his embryonic inventions but with high hope and courage now made the next monumentous step in his career he was far riper in experience and practice of his art than any other telegrapher of his age and had acquired moreover no little knowledge of the practical business of life note has been made above of his invention of a stock ticker in Boston and of his establishing a stock quotation circuit this was by no means all and as a fitting close to this chapter he may be quoted as to some other work and its perils in experimentation I was also engaged in putting up private lines upon which I used an alphabetical dial instrument for telegraphing between business establishments a forerunner of modern telephony this instrument was very simple and practical I was also involved in this explanation I had these instruments made and Mr. Hampletts who had a little shop where he was engaged in experimenting with electric clocks Mr. Hamplet was the father and introducer in after years of the western union telegraph system of time distribution my laboratory was the headquarters for the men and also of tools and supplies for these private lines they were put up cheaply as I used the roofs of houses just as the western union did from the owners all we did was to go to the store say we were telegraph men and wanted to go up on the wires on the roof permission was always granted in this laboratory I had a large induction coil which I borrowed to make some experiments with one day I got a hold of both electrodes of the coil and it clenched my hand on them so I couldn't let go the battery was on the shelf the only way I could get free was to take the circuit I shut my eyes and pulled but the nitric acid splashed all over my face and ran down my back I rushed to a sink which was only half big enough and got in as well as I could and wiggled around for several minutes to permit the water to dilute the acid and stop the pain my face and back were streaked with yellow the skin was thoroughly oxidized I did not go on the street by daylight for two weeks as the appearance of my face was dreadful I placed it without any damage End of Chapter 6