CHAPTER VII
THE MAKING OF AN INVENTOR
"It was during the time young Edison was employed at Port Huron," theradio continued, "that the cable under River St. Clair between that cityand Port Sarnia was severed by an ice jam. The river at that point isthree quarters of a mile wide. Navigation was suspended and the ice hadbroken up so that the stream could not be crossed on foot nor could thebroken cable lying in the bed of the river be mended.
"The ingenious young telegrapher suggested signaling Sarnia by giving,with the whistle of a locomotive, the dot-and-dash letters of the Morsetelegraph code. Or course, this strange whistling caused considerablewonderment on the Canada side until a shrewd operator recognized thelong-and-short telegraph letters, and communication was at onceestablished--important messages being transmitted by steam whistles--agigantic system of broadcasting. This was a simple way out of a sublimedifficulty involving the affairs of two great peoples.
"But the too-enterprising operator had started so much trouble forhimself that he decided to find employment where his mind would not bedistracted from his job or tempted away from working out his chemicaland electrical experiments. Because of these he preferred the positionof night operator. His telegraph work was really a side line.
"On these accounts he found a job as night operator at StratfordJunction, Canada West, as Ontario was then called. He was only sixteenbut his salary of twenty-five dollars a month seemed very small aftermaking ten or twelve dollars a day as 'candy butcher.' But on account ofthe chances it gave him for experimenting, he resigned himself to thesmallness of his pay. The treatment he had received at the hands of thattrain conductor had convinced him that he could not follow his bentwhile working all day on the railroad.
"Mr. Edison likes to tell of the prevailing ignorance of the science oftelegraphy. He once told a friend:
"'The telegraph men themselves seemed unable to explain how the thingworked, though I was always trying to find out. The best explanation Igot was from an old Scotch line repairer employed by the MontrealTelegraph Company, then operating the railway wires. Here is the way hedescribed it: "If you had a dachshund long enough to reach fromEdinburgh to London, and pulled his tail in Edinburgh he would bark inLondon!"
"'I could understand that, but I never could get it through me what wentthrough the dog or over the wire.'
"It was at Stratford Junction that the Edison boy began his career ofinvention. From the first his chief aim was the saving of labor. Inorder to be sure that the operators all along the line were not asleepat their posts, they were required to send to the train dispatcher'soffice a certain dot-and-dash signal every hour in the night. YoungEdison was like young Napoleon in grudging himself the necessary hoursof sleep. While the ingenious lad was fond of machinery--to make amachine of himself was utterly distasteful to him. It was against hisprinciples and instincts to do anything a mere machine could do instead.So he made a little wheel with a few notches in the rim, with which heconnected the clock and the transmitter, so that at the required instantevery hour in the night the wheel revolved and sent the proper signal toheadquarters. Meanwhile that wily young operator slept the sleep of thegenius, if not of the just. Of one experience at this little placeEdison relates:
"'This night job just suited me, as I could have the whole day tomyself. I had the faculty of sleeping in a chair any time for a fewminutes at a time. I taught the night yardman my call, so I could gethalf an hour's sleep now and then between trains, and in case thestation was called the watchman was to wake me. One night I got an orderto hold a freight train, and I replied that I would do so. I ran out tofind the signal man, but before I could locate him and get the signalset--_the train ran past!_ I rushed back to the telegraph office andreported that I could not hold it.
"'But on receiving my first message that I would hold the freight, thedispatcher let another train leave the next station going the oppositeway. There was a station near the Junction where the day operator slept.I started to run in that direction, but it was pitch dark. I fell down aculvert and was knocked senseless.'
"The two engineers, with a feeling that all was not as it should be,kept a sharp lookout and saw each other just in time to avert a fatalaccident. But young Edison was cited to trial, for gross neglect ofduty, by the general manager. During an informal hearing two Englishmencalled on the manager. While he was talking with them the young nightoperator disappeared. Boarding a freight train bound for Port Sarnia, hemade his escape from the five-years' term in prison threatened by theirate manager. Edison afterward confessed that his heart did not leavehis throat until he had crossed the ferry to Port Huron and 'one wideriver' lay between him and the Canadian authorities.
"Following his escape from Canada young Edison knocked about the homecountry, North and South. As it was during the Civil War he had somepeculiar adventures. After making a long circuit, broken in many placesby 'short circuits,' the journeyman telegrapher landed in Port Huron,and wrote his friend Adams, then in Boston to find him a job.
"His friend relates that he asked the Boston manager of the WesternUnion Telegraph office if he wanted a first-class operator from theWest.
"'What kind of copy does he make?'" was the manager's first query."Adams continues:
"'I passed Edison's letter through the window for his inspection. He wassurprised, for it was almost as plain as print, and asked:
"'Can he take it off the wire like that?'
"'I said he certainly could, and that there was nobody who could stickhim. He told me to send for my man and I did. When Edison came he landedthe job without delay.'"
"The inventor himself has told the story of his reporting for duty inBoston:
"'The manager asked me when I was ready to go to work.
"'_Now_!' said I, and was instructed to return at 5:30 P.M., which Idid, to the minute. I came into the operators' room and was ushered intothe night manager's presence.
"'The weather was cold and I was poorly dressed; so my appearance, as Iwas told afterward, occasioned considerable merriment, and the nightoperators conspired to "put up a job on the jay from the wild and woollyWest." I was given a pen and told to take the New York No. 1 wire. Afteran hour's wait I was asked to take my place at a certain table andreceive a special report for the Boston _Herald_, the conspiratorshaving arranged to have one of the fastest operators in New York sendthe despatch and "salt" the new man.
"'Without suspecting what was up I sat down, and the New York manstarted in very slowly. Soon he increased his speed and I easily adaptedmy pace to his. This put the man on his mettle and he "laid in his bestlicks," but soon reached his limit.
"'At this point I happened to look up and saw the operators all lookingover my shoulder with faces that seemed to expect something funny. ThenI knew they were playing a trick on me, but I didn't let on.
"'Before long the New York man began slurring his words, running themtogether and sticking the signals; but I had been used to all that sortof thing in taking reports, so I wasn't put out in the least. At last,when I thought the joke had gone far enough, and as the special wasnearly finished, I calmly opened the key and remarked over the wire tomy New York rival:
"'Say, young man, change off and send with the other foot!'
"'This broke the fellow up so that he turned the job over to anotheroperator to finish, to the real discomfiture of the fellows around me.'
"Friend Adams goes on to tell of other happennings at the Hub:
"'One day Edison was more than delighted to pick up a complete set ofFaraday's works, bringing them home at 4 A.M. and reading steadily untilbreakfast time, when he said, with great enthusiasm:
"'Adams, I have got so much to do and life is so short, _I am going tohustle_!'"
"'Then he started off to breakfast on a dead run.'
"He soon opened a workshop in Boston and began making experiments. Itwas here that he made a working model of his vote recorder, the firstinvention he ever patented.
"Edison has told us of thi
s trip to Washington and how he showed thathis invention could register the House vote, pro and con, almostinstantaneously. The chairman of the committee saw how quickly andperfectly it worked and said to him:
"'Young man, if there is any invention on earth that we _don't_ wantdown here, it is this. Filibustering on votes is one of the greatestweapons in the hands of a minority to prevent bad legislation, and thisinstrument would stop that.'
"The youth felt the force of this so much that he decided from that timeforth not to try to invent anything unless it would meet a genuinedemand,--not from a few, but many people.
"It was while in Boston that Edison grew weary of the monotonous life ofa telegraph operator and began to work up an independent business alonginventive lines, so that he really began his career as an inventor atthe Hub.
"After the vote recorder, he invented a stock ticker, and started aticker service in Boston which had thirty or forty subscribers, andoperated from a room over the Gold Exchange.
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"The third talk on Mr. Edison and his inventions will be given from thisbroadcasting station WUK next Monday at the same hour."