Thomas Edison

“ The career of Edison illustrates the industrial value of one informed intellect to the nation. In 1910, business men in the United States had invested in the expired patents of Thomas Edison six billion seven hundred millions of dollars. These factories brought in an annual income of a billion and seventy millions of dollars. ”

“ The incandescent, [238] or “glow lamp” as it is called in England, is most common. The arc light is used for lighting large buildings and city streets.
Thomas Edison is an American scientist who has made it his life-work to make practical use of the great force of electricity. He was born in 1847 and is still living and still working. He was the son of a hard-working laborer. His mother had been a school teacher and she gave her son as good an education as she could. When only twelve years old, he started out to earn his own living as a news-boy on the Grand Trunk Railroad. ”

“ In the end he grew rich and gained great honor from his invention.
There has been no man more talked of in our time than Thomas A. Edison. All of you must have heard of him. He went into business when he was only twelve years old, selling newspapers and other things on the cars, and he was so bright and did so well that he was able to send his parents five hundred dollars a year. When he was sixteen he saved the child of a station-master from being run over by a locomotive, and the father was so grateful that he taught him how to telegraph. ”

“ Insull came to the United States in 1881 and became private secretary to Mr. Thomas A. Edison, and for years had active charge of Mr. Edison's business affairs. He became organizer and manager, on behalf of Mr. Edison, of the Electric Tube Company, and also of the Edison Machine Works and the Edison Lamp Company, and built and managed for Mr. Edison the plant of the Edison Machine Works at Schenectady, N.Y. On the consolidation of the various Edison interests with the Edison-General Electric Company, he became its second vice-president, in charge of the manufacturing and selling departments. ”

“ From it has emanated a series of marvellous inventions which have carried the name of Edison throughout the whole civilised world. Expense was disregarded in making the laboratory as efficient as possible; the very best equipment was provided, the ablest assistants employed, and the profit has been immense. Edison is a millionaire; the royalties from his patents alone are said to equal the salary of a Prime Minister. ”

“ Never has there been an American inventor who has contributed more abundantly than Thomas Alva Edison to the republic’s industrial expansion, nor one who has achieved greatness under a heavier handicap of early disadvantages. ”

“ He could get along with as little sleep as Napoleon is said to have required when a mighty battle was on. Edison could lie down on a settee or table and sleep just as the Little Corporal did even while cannon were booming all around him.
"There was something Napoleonic, also, about Edison's intensity of application and his masterfulness in his gigantic undertakings. If genius is the ability to take great pains, Thomas A. Edison is the greatest genius in the world to-day--if not in all history. ”

“ As to natural gifts, it is probable that Thomas A. Edison hadn’t a very great deal the edge on Bogy, his contemporary; indeed, if tradition is to be accepted, both, when young, were afflicted with an overdose of inertia, though Edison even then spent much of his time dabbling with electrical instruments.
Edison, so the tale runs, stuck to the home base and to the dabbling, until there was born in him the [Pg 105] desire to do something no other man had done, and to serve his fellowmen in the doing. ”

“ So his books, apparatus and other belongings were left in Boston, and when he returned to New York he arrived there with but a few cents in his pocket. He was very hungry. He walked the streets in the early morning looking for breakfast but with so little money left that he did not wish to spend it.
"Passing a wholesale tea house, he saw a man testing tea by tasting it. The young inventor asked the 'taster' for some of the tea. The man smiled and held out a cup of the fragrant drink. That tea was Thomas A. Edison's first breakfast in New York City. ”

“ The vast majority of practical inventors belong to and remain in the first of these divisions, but there have been, and probably always will be, a less number who, by reason of their greater achievements, are entitled to be included in both classes. Of these latter, Thomas Alva Edison is one, but in the pages of history he stands conspicuously pre-eminent—a commanding towering figure, even among giants. ”

“ Into such times Thomas Alva Edison was born, and his relations to them and to the events of the past sixty years are the subject of this narrative. Aside from the personal interest that attaches to the picturesque career, so typically American, there is a broader aspect in which the work of the "Franklin of the Nineteenth Century" touches the welfare and progress of the race. ”

“ This is $25,000 more than the previous contracts.—Collier’s Weekly.
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VALUE OF ONE MAN
Of Thomas A. Edison, the inventor, The Episcopal Recorder says:
In these days, when every millionaire comes in for his share of just or unjust criticism, it is refreshing to read the kindly comments made on Thomas A. Edison and his work. Mr. Edison is an enormously wealthy man, but strange to say, we seldom think of Edison and millions in the same moment. ”

“ I believe that in coming years by my own work and that of Dickson, Muybridge, Marié and others who will doubtless enter the field, that grand opera can be given at the Metropolitan Opera House at New York without any material change from the original, and with artists and musicians long since dead. ”

“ The Associated Press wires run through his laboratory, and anon he picks up his telephone and chats with Philadelphia, or with Prof. Barker, at the University of Pennsylvania. When visitors call to see him, they are most likely to inquire for Mr. Edison from the man himself—a boyish face, an unostentatious manner, a careless dress, and, in fact, the unchanged whole that formerly put in an appearance as the new man at the Boston office. The crowd of farm-boys that come over to see the wonderful talking-machine find him as ready to gratify their curiosity as the more pretentious "professor." ”

“ He went to the Western Union president, who had already heard of him, and said, “If I locate this trouble within two or three hours, will you take up my inventions and give them honest consideration?” The president answered, “I’ll consider your inventions if you get us out of this fix within two days.” Edison rushed forthwith to the main office. There he called up Pittsburg and asked for their best operator. When he had him he told him to call up the best man at Albany, and get him to telegraph down the line to New York as far as he could, and report back to him. ”

“ Edison said he never had anything that tasted so good.
"Just as young Ben Franklin, on arriving in New York City from Boston, looked for a job in a printing office, the youthful modern inventor applied for work in a telegraph office there. As there was no vacancy and he needed the rest of his borrowed dollar for meals, Edison found lodging in the battery room of the Gold Indicator Company. ”

“ Bill went on, with ever increasing enthusiasm, "just how that shows where Mr. Edison stands. Nobody can get ahead of him, and there isn't anyone with brains who knows him who doesn't admit he has more brains and is wider awake than anybody else. There's nothing that he does that doesn't show it. You have all seen his questionnaires for the men who are employed in his laboratories and you can bet they're no joke. And his inventions—they're not just the trifling things like egg-beaters, rat-traps, coat-hangers, bread-mixers, fly-swatters and lipsticks." ”

“ The dilemma is encountered by central stations in a bewildered way, as a novel and unexpected experience; but Edison foresaw the situation and warned against it long ago. It is one of the greatest gifts of statesmanship to see new social problems years before they arise and solve them in advance. It is one of the greatest attributes of invention to foresee and meet its own problems in exactly the same way. ”

“ This thing saved a good deal of labor to a large number of men, and prevented trouble for the broker himself. It impressed the president so much that he invited Edison into his private office and said, in a stage whisper:
"'Young man, I would like to settle with you for your inventions here. How much do you want for them?"
"Edison had thought it all over and had come to the conclusion that, on account of the hard night-and-day work he had been doing, he really ought to have five thousand dollars, but he would be glad to settle for three thousand, if they thought five thousand was too much. ”

“ Most every one knows of Mr. Edison's perseverance in his early days in getting his inventions upon the market. A great many people know that he himself has not received a fraction of the reward that he is entitled to because of his great inventions. He is, without doubt, the greatest inventor the United States has produced. While I have never met Mr. Edison personally, I have always been a great admirer of him, because he is the man most responsible for raising the title of 'inventor' from that of crank to that of honor. ”

“ From his lips the stereotyped “Here you are in your own house” had real meaning. His library included Spanish editions of Taine, Nietzsche, Emerson—and Roosevelt; his phonograph was of high grade and his records well chosen. Edison was his ideal of manhood—indeed, a straw vote in the Andes would certainly show the “wizard of Orange” the most popular American—and he was wont to boast jokingly that his own name was the same as one of those of the inventor, “showing that some of our ancestors were the same.” ”

“ Edison had now determined to become an inventor, and as soon as he was able gave up his position in the Boston telegraph office, where his routine work took too much of his time, and went to New York to look for other opportunities. ”

“ In America no man is as his father was except in physical traits. No man there is a volunteer soldier fighting his country's battles except from a conviction that he ought to be. A man is an inventor, a politician, a writer, first because he knows that valuable changes are possible, and, second, because he can make such changes profitable to himself. It is the great realm of immutable steadfastness combined with constant change; unique among the nations.
Edison never had more than two months regular schooling in his entire boyhood. ”

“ Edison loves his work, and although he is now a very wealthy man, he keeps on inventing and working every day. It is said that he sometimes works for twenty-four hours, day and night, without food or rest, until he has perfected some new invention. Mr. Edison is a true type of an American gentleman. ”

“ Obviously, however, all of these personal characteristics have nothing to do with Edison's position in the world of affairs. They show him to be a plain, easy-going, placid American, with no sense of self-importance, and ready at all times to have his mind turned into a lighter channel. In private life they show him to be a good citizen, a good family man, absolutely moral, temperate in all things, and of great charitableness to all mankind. ”

“ When Edison was a very poor young man, walking the streets in search of work, he happened to step into an office in Wall street. The telegraph recording machine was out of order, and no one could make it work. Instead of pleading his case in general statements, he simply asked if he might try his hand on the balky machine. He was permitted, and was successful. This was the turning point in his career toward fortune. He not only had knowledge and skill enough to make a machine go, but he had wit enough to perceive the opportunity just at hand. ”

“ The laboratory witnessed high times that night, for all were in the best of humor, and many a bottle was drained in toasting the health of Edison and the aldermen." This was one of the extremely rare occasions on which Edison has addressed an audience; but the stake was worth the effort. The representatives of New York could with justice drink the health of the young inventor, whose system is one of the greatest boons the city has ever had conferred upon it. ”

“ MILTON ADAMS was working in the office of the Franklin Telegraph Company in Boston when he received Edison's appeal from Port Huron, and with characteristic impetuosity 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. Milliken, if he did not want an operator who, like young Lochinvar, came out of the West. ”

“ He was at once placed regularly on the New York wire. While in Boston, Edison opened a small workshop, put many of his ideas into definite shape, and took out his first patent. It was upon a chemical apparatus to record votes. He tried to introduce this into Congress, but failed, although he proved that it "would work." ”

“ It is true that the record of the chattering little machine, made in cabalistic abbreviations on the tape, can drive a man suddenly to the very verge of insanity with joy or despair; but if there be blame for that, it attaches to the American spirit of speculation and not to the ingenious mechanism which reads and registers the beating of the financial pulse.
Edison came first to New York in 1868, with his early stock printer, which he tried unsuccessfully to sell. He went back to Boston, and quite undismayed got up a duplex telegraph. ”