Edison, His Life and Inventions

F >> Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin >> Edison, His Life and Inventions


Returning to the automatic telegraph it is interesting to note that so
long as Edison was associated with it as a supervising providence it did
splendid work, which renders the later neglect of automatic or "rapid
telegraphy" the more remarkable. Reid's standard Telegraph in America
bears astonishing testimony on this point in 1880, as follows: "The
Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company had twenty-two automatic stations.
These included the chief cities on the seaboard, Buffalo, Chicago,
and Omaha. The through business during nearly two years was largely
transmitted in this way. Between New York and Boston two thousand words
a minute have been sent. The perforated paper was prepared at the rate
of twenty words per minute. Whatever its demerits this system enabled
the Atlantic & Pacific company to handle a much larger business during
1875 and 1876 than it could otherwise have done with its limited
number of wires in their then condition." Mr. Reid also notes as a
very thorough test of the perfect practicability of the system, that it
handled the President's message, December 3, 1876, of 12,600 words with
complete success. This long message was filed at Washington at 1.05 and
delivered in New York at 2.07. The first 9000 words were transmitted
in forty-five minutes. The perforated strips were prepared in thirty
minutes by ten persons, and duplicated by nine copyists. But to-day,
nearly thirty-five years later, telegraphy in America is still
practically on a basis of hand transmission!

Of this period and his association with Jay Gould, some very interesting
glimpses are given by Edison. "While engaged in putting in the automatic
system, I saw a great deal of Gould, and frequently went uptown to his
office to give information. Gould had no sense of humor. I tried several
times to get off what seemed to me a funny story, but he failed to see
any humor in them. I was very fond of stories, and had a choice
lot, always kept fresh, with which I could usually throw a man into
convulsions. One afternoon Gould started in to explain the great future
of the Union Pacific Railroad, which he then controlled. He got a map,
and had an immense amount of statistics. He kept at it for over four
hours, and got very enthusiastic. Why he should explain to me, a mere
inventor, with no capital or standing, I couldn't make out. He had a
peculiar eye, and I made up my mind that there was a strain of insanity
somewhere. This idea was strengthened shortly afterward when the Western
Union raised the monthly rental of the stock tickers. Gould had one in
his house office, which he watched constantly. This he had removed,
to his great inconvenience, because the price had been advanced a few
dollars! He railed over it. This struck me as abnormal. I think Gould's
success was due to abnormal development. He certainly had one trait
that all men must have who want to succeed. He collected every kind of
information and statistics about his schemes, and had all the data. His
connection with men prominent in official life, of which I was aware,
was surprising to me. His conscience seemed to be atrophied, but that
may be due to the fact that he was contending with men who never had any
to be atrophied. He worked incessantly until 12 or 1 o'clock at night.
He took no pride in building up an enterprise. He was after money, and
money only. Whether the company was a success or a failure mattered not
to him. After he had hammered the Western Union through his opposition
company and had tired out Mr. Vanderbilt, the latter retired from
control, and Gould went in and consolidated his company and controlled
the Western Union. He then repudiated the contract with the Automatic
Telegraph people, and they never received a cent for their wires or
patents, and I lost three years of very hard labor. But I never had any
grudge against him, because he was so able in his line, and as long as
my part was successful the money with me was a secondary consideration.
When Gould got the Western Union I knew no further progress in
telegraphy was possible, and I went into other lines." The truth is
that General Eckert was a conservative--even a reactionary--and being
prejudiced like many other American telegraph managers against "machine
telegraphy," threw out all such improvements.

The course of electrical history has been variegated by some very
remarkable litigation; but none was ever more extraordinary than that
referred to here as arising from the transfer of the Automatic Telegraph
Company to Mr. Jay Gould and the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company.
The terms accepted by Colonel Reiff from Mr. Gould, on December 30,
1874, provided that the purchasing telegraph company should increase its
capital to $15,000,000, of which the Automatic interests were to receive
$4,000,000 for their patents, contracts, etc. The stock was then selling
at about 25, and in the later consolidation with the Western Union
"went in" at about 60; so that the real purchase price was not less than
$1,000,000 in cash. There was a private arrangement in writing with Mr.
Gould that he was to receive one-tenth of the "result" to the Automatic
group, and a tenth of the further results secured at home and abroad.
Mr. Gould personally bought up and gave money and bonds for one or two
individual interests on the above basis, including that of Harrington,
who in his representative capacity executed assignments to Mr. Gould.
But payments were then stopped, and the other owners were left without
any compensation, although all that belonged to them in the shape of
property and patents was taken over bodily into Atlantic & Pacific
hands, and never again left them. Attempts at settlement were made in
their behalf, and dragged wearily, due apparently to the fact that
the plans were blocked by General Eckert, who had in some manner taken
offence at a transaction effected without his active participation in
all the details. Edison, who became under the agreement the electrician
of the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company, has testified to the
unfriendly attitude assumed toward him by General Eckert, as president.
In a graphic letter from Menlo Park to Mr. Gould, dated February 2,
1877, Edison makes a most vigorous and impassioned complaint of
his treatment, "which, acting cumulatively, was a long, unbroken
disappointment to me"; and he reminds Mr. Gould of promises made to
him the day the transfer had been effected of Edison's interest in the
quadruplex. The situation was galling to the busy, high-spirited young
inventor, who, moreover, "had to live"; and it led to his resumption of
work for the Western Union Telegraph Company, which was only too glad to
get him back. Meantime, the saddened and perplexed Automatic group was
left unpaid, and it was not until 1906, on a bill filed nearly thirty
years before, that Judge Hazel, in the United States Circuit Court
for the Southern District of New York, found strongly in favor of the
claimants and ordered an accounting. The court held that there had been
a most wrongful appropriation of the patents, including alike those
relating to the automatic, the duplex, and the quadruplex, all being
included in the general arrangement under which Mr. Gould had held put
his tempting bait of $4,000,000. In the end, however, the complainant
had nothing to show for all his struggle, as the master who made the
accounting set the damages at one dollar!

Aside from the great value of the quadruplex, saving millions of
dollars, for a share in which Edison received $30,000, the automatic
itself is described as of considerable utility by Sir William Thomson in
his juror report at the Centennial Exposition of 1876, recommending it
for award. This leading physicist of his age, afterward Lord Kelvin, was
an adept in telegraphy, having made the ocean cable talk, and he saw in
Edison's "American Automatic," as exhibited by the Atlantic & Pacific
company, a most meritorious and useful system. With the aid of Mr. E.
H. Johnson he made exhaustive tests, carrying away with him to Glasgow
University the surprising records that he obtained. His official report
closes thus: "The electromagnetic shunt with soft iron core, invented
by Mr. Edison, utilizing Professor Henry's discovery of electromagnetic
induction in a single circuit to produce a momentary reversal of the
line current at the instant when the battery is thrown off and so cut
off the chemical marks sharply at the proper instant, is the electrical
secret of the great speed he has achieved. The main peculiarities of Mr.
Edison's automatic telegraph shortly stated in conclusion are: (1) the
perforator; (2) the contact-maker; (3) the electromagnetic shunt; and
(4) the ferric cyanide of iron solution. It deserves award as a very
important step in land telegraphy." The attitude thus disclosed toward
Mr. Edison's work was never changed, except that admiration grew as
fresh inventions were brought forward. To the day of his death Lord
Kelvin remained on terms of warmest friendship with his American
co-laborer, with whose genius he thus first became acquainted at
Philadelphia in the environment of Franklin.

It is difficult to give any complete idea of the activity maintained at
the Newark shops during these anxious, harassed years, but the statement
that at one time no fewer than forty-five different inventions were
being worked upon, will furnish some notion of the incandescent activity
of the inventor and his assistants. The hours were literally endless;
and upon one occasion, when the order was in hand for a large quantity
of stock tickers, Edison locked his men in until the job had been
finished of making the machine perfect, and "all the bugs taken out,"
which meant sixty hours of unintermitted struggle with the difficulties.
Nor were the problems and inventions all connected with telegraphy.
On the contrary, Edison's mind welcomed almost any new suggestion as a
relief from the regular work in hand. Thus: "Toward the latter part of
1875, in the Newark shop, I invented a device for multiplying copies of
letters, which I sold to Mr. A. B. Dick, of Chicago, and in the years
since it has been universally introduced throughout the world. It is
called the 'Mimeograph.' I also invented devices for and introduced
paraffin paper, now used universally for wrapping up candy, etc."
The mimeograph employs a pointed stylus, used as in writing with a
lead-pencil, which is moved over a kind of tough prepared paper placed
on a finely grooved steel plate. The writing is thus traced by means of
a series of minute perforations in the sheet, from which, as a stencil,
hundreds of copies can be made. Such stencils can be prepared on
typewriters. Edison elaborated this principle in two other forms--one
pneumatic and one electric--the latter being in essence a reciprocating
motor. Inside the barrel of the electric pen a little plunger, carrying
the stylus, travels to and fro at a very high rate of speed, due to the
attraction and repulsion of the solenoid coils of wire surrounding it;
and as the hand of the writer guides it the pen thus makes its record
in a series of very minute perforations in the paper. The current from
a small battery suffices to energize the pen, and with the stencil thus
made hundreds of copies of the document can be furnished. As a matter
of fact, as many as three thousand copies have been made from a single
mimeographic stencil of this character.



CHAPTER IX

THE TELEPHONE, MOTOGRAPH, AND MICROPHONE

A VERY great invention has its own dramatic history. Episodes full of
human interest attend its development. The periods of weary struggle,
the daring adventure along unknown paths, the clash of rival claimants,
are closely similar to those which mark the revelation and subjugation
of a new continent. At the close of the epoch of discovery it is seen
that mankind as a whole has made one more great advance; but in the
earlier stages one watched chiefly the confused vicissitudes of fortune
of the individual pioneers. The great modern art of telephony has had
thus in its beginnings, its evolution, and its present status as a
universal medium of intercourse, all the elements of surprise, mystery,
swift creation of wealth, tragic interludes, and colossal battle that
can appeal to the imagination and hold public attention. And in this
new electrical industry, in laying its essential foundations, Edison has
again been one of the dominant figures.

As far back as 1837, the American, Page, discovered the curious fact
that an iron bar, when magnetized and demagnetized at short intervals
of time, emitted sounds due to the molecular disturbances in the mass.
Philipp Reis, a simple professor in Germany, utilized this principle in
the construction of apparatus for the transmission of sound; but in the
grasp of the idea he was preceded by Charles Bourseul, a young French
soldier in Algeria, who in 1854, under the title of "Electrical
Telephony," in a Parisian illustrated paper, gave a brief and lucid
description as follows:


"We know that sounds are made by vibrations, and are made sensible to
the ear by the same vibrations, which are reproduced by the intervening
medium. But the intensity of the vibrations diminishes very rapidly with
the distance; so that even with the aid of speaking-tubes and trumpets
it is impossible to exceed somewhat narrow limits. Suppose a man speaks
near a movable disk sufficiently flexible to lose none of the vibrations
of the voice; that this disk alternately makes and breaks the connection
with a battery; you may have at a distance another disk which will
simultaneously execute the same vibrations.... Any one who is not deaf
and dumb may use this mode of transmission, which would require no
apparatus except an electric battery, two vibrating disks, and a wire."

This would serve admirably for a portrayal of the Bell telephone, except
that it mentions distinctly the use of the make-and-break method (i.
e., where the circuit is necessarily opened and closed as in telegraphy,
although, of course, at an enormously higher rate), which has never
proved practical.

So far as is known Bourseul was not practical enough to try his own
suggestion, and never made a telephone. About 1860, Reis built several
forms of electrical telephonic apparatus, all imitating in some degree
the human ear, with its auditory tube, tympanum, etc., and examples
of the apparatus were exhibited in public not only in Germany, but in
England. There is a variety of testimony to the effect that not only
musical sounds, but stray words and phrases, were actually transmitted
with mediocre, casual success. It was impossible, however, to maintain
the devices in adjustment for more than a few seconds, since the
invention depended upon the make-and-break principle, the circuit being
made and broken every time an impulse-creating sound went through it,
causing the movement of the diaphragm on which the sound-waves impinged.
Reis himself does not appear to have been sufficiently interested in the
marvellous possibilities of the idea to follow it up--remarking to the
man who bought his telephonic instruments and tools that he had shown
the world the way. In reality it was not the way, although a monument
erected to his memory at Frankfort styles him the inventor of the
telephone. As one of the American judges said, in deciding an early
litigation over the invention of the telephone, a hundred years of Reis
would not have given the world the telephonic art for public use. Many
others after Reis tried to devise practical make-and-break telephones,
and all failed; although their success would have rendered them very
valuable as a means of fighting the Bell patent. But the method was a
good starting-point, even if it did not indicate the real path. If Reis
had been willing to experiment with his apparatus so that it did not
make-and-break, he would probably have been the true father of the
telephone, besides giving it the name by which it is known. It was not
necessary to slam the gate open and shut. All that was required was to
keep the gate closed, and rattle the latch softly. Incidentally it
may be noted that Edison in experimenting with the Reis transmitter
recognized at once the defect caused by the make-and-break action, and
sought to keep the gap closed by the use, first, of one drop of water,
and later of several drops. But the water decomposed, and the incurable
defect was still there.

The Reis telephone was brought to America by Dr. P. H. Van der Weyde,
a well-known physicist in his day, and was exhibited by him before a
technical audience at Cooper Union, New York, in 1868, and described
shortly after in the technical press. The apparatus attracted attention,
and a set was secured by Prof. Joseph Henry for the Smithsonian
Institution. There the famous philosopher showed and explained it to
Alexander Graham Bell, when that young and persevering Scotch genius
went to get help and data as to harmonic telegraphy, upon which he was
working, and as to transmitting vocal sounds. Bell took up immediately
and energetically the idea that his two predecessors had dropped--and
reached the goal. In 1875 Bell, who as a student and teacher of vocal
physiology had unusual qualifications for determining feasible methods
of speech transmission, constructed his first pair of magneto telephones
for such a purpose. In February of 1876 his first telephone patent was
applied for, and in March it was issued. The first published account
of the modern speaking telephone was a paper read by Bell before the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston in May of that year;
while at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia the public first
gained any familiarity with it. It was greeted at once with scientific
acclaim and enthusiasm as a distinctly new and great invention, although
at first it was regarded more as a scientific toy than as a commercially
valuable device.

By an extraordinary coincidence, the very day that Bell's application
for a patent went into the United States Patent Office, a caveat was
filed there by Elisha Gray, of Chicago, covering the specific idea of
transmitting speech and reproducing it in a telegraphic circuit "through
an instrument capable of vibrating responsively to all the tones of
the human voice, and by which they are rendered audible." Out of this
incident arose a struggle and a controversy whose echoes are yet heard
as to the legal and moral rights of the two inventors, the assertion
even being made that one of the most important claims of Gray, that on
a liquid battery transmitter, was surreptitiously "lifted" into the
Bell application, then covering only the magneto telephone. It was also
asserted that the filing of the Gray caveat antedated by a few hours
the filing of the Bell application. All such issues when brought to
the American courts were brushed aside, the Bell patent being broadly
maintained in all its remarkable breadth and fullness, embracing an
entire art; but Gray was embittered and chagrined, and to the last
expressed his belief that the honor and glory should have been his. The
path of Gray to the telephone was a natural one. A Quaker carpenter who
studied five years at Oberlin College, he took up electrical invention,
and brought out many ingenious devices in rapid succession in the
telegraphic field, including the now universal needle annunciator for
hotels, etc., the useful telautograph, automatic self-adjusting relays,
private-line printers--leading up to his famous "harmonic" system. This
was based upon the principle that a sound produced in the presence of a
reed or tuning-fork responding to the sound, and acting as the armature
of a magnet in a closed circuit, would, by induction, set up electric
impulses in the circuit and cause a distant magnet having a similarly
tuned armature to produce the same tone or note. He also found that over
the same wire at the same time another series of impulses corresponding
to another note could be sent through the agency of a second set
of magnets without in any way interfering with the first series of
impulses. Building the principle into apparatus, with a keyboard and
vibrating "reeds" before his magnets, Doctor Gray was able not only to
transmit music by his harmonic telegraph, but went so far as to send
nine different telegraph messages at the same instant, each set of
instruments depending on its selective note, while any intermediate
office could pick up the message for itself by simply tuning its relays
to the keynote required. Theoretically the system could be split up into
any number of notes and semi-tones. Practically it served as the basis
of some real telegraphic work, but is not now in use. Any one can
realize, however, that it did not take so acute and ingenious a mind
very long to push forward to the telephone, as a dangerous competitor
with Bell, who had also, like Edison, been working assiduously in the
field of acoustic and multiple telegraphs. Seen in the retrospect, the
struggle for the goal at this moment was one of the memorable incidents
in electrical history.

Among the interesting papers filed at the Orange Laboratory is a
lithograph, the size of an ordinary patent drawing, headed "First
Telephone on Record." The claim thus made goes back to the period
when all was war, and when dispute was hot and rife as to the actual
invention of the telephone. The device shown, made by Edison in 1875,
was actually included in a caveat filed January 14, 1876, a month before
Bell or Gray. It shows a little solenoid arrangement, with one end
of the plunger attached to the diaphragm of a speaking or resonating
chamber. Edison states that while the device is crudely capable of use
as a magneto telephone, he did not invent it for transmitting speech,
but as an apparatus for analyzing the complex waves arising from various
sounds. It was made in pursuance of his investigations into the subject
of harmonic telegraphs. He did not try the effect of sound-waves
produced by the human voice until Bell came forward a few months later;
but he found then that this device, made in 1875, was capable of use as
a telephone. In his testimony and public utterances Edison has always
given Bell credit for the discovery of the transmission of articulate
speech by talking against a diaphragm placed in front of an
electromagnet; but it is only proper here to note, in passing, the
curious fact that he had actually produced a device that COULD talk,
prior to 1876, and was therefore very close to Bell, who took the
one great step further. A strong characterization of the value and
importance of the work done by Edison in the development of the carbon
transmitter will be found in the decision of Judge Brown in the United
States Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in Boston, on February 27,
1901, declaring void the famous Berliner patent of the Bell telephone
system. [5]

[Footnote 5: See Federal Reporter, vol. 109, p. 976 et seq.]

Bell's patent of 1876 was of an all-embracing character, which only
the make-and-break principle, if practical, could have escaped. It was
pointed out in the patent that Bell discovered the great principle that
electrical undulations induced by the vibrations of a current produced
by sound-waves can be represented graphically by the same sinusoidal
curve that expresses the original sound vibrations themselves; or, in
other words, that a curve representing sound vibrations will correspond
precisely to a curve representing electric impulses produced or
generated by those identical sound vibrations--as, for example, when
the latter impinge upon a diaphragm acting as an armature of an
electromagnet, and which by movement to and fro sets up the electric
impulses by induction. To speak plainly, the electric impulses
correspond in form and character to the sound vibration which they
represent. This reduced to a patent "claim" governed the art as firmly
as a papal bull for centuries enabled Spain to hold the Western
world. The language of the claim is: "The method of and apparatus for
transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically as herein described,
by causing electrical undulations similar in form to the vibrations of
the air accompanying the said vocal or other sounds substantially as set
forth." It was a long time, however, before the inclusive nature of this
grant over every possible telephone was understood or recognized, and
litigation for and against the patent lasted during its entire life. At
the outset, the commercial value of the telephone was little appreciated
by the public, and Bell had the greatest difficulty in securing capital;
but among far-sighted inventors there was an immediate "rush to the gold
fields." Bell's first apparatus was poor, the results being described by
himself as "unsatisfactory and discouraging," which was almost as
true of the devices he exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial. The
new-comers, like Edison, Berliner, Blake, Hughes, Gray, Dolbear, and
others, brought a wealth of ideas, a fund of mechanical ingenuity,
and an inventive ability which soon made the telephone one of the most
notable gains of the century, and one of the most valuable additions
to human resources. The work that Edison did was, as usual, marked by
infinite variety of method as well as by the power to seize on the
one needed element of practical success. Every one of the six million
telephones in use in the United States, and of the other millions in use
through out the world, bears the imprint of his genius, as at one time
the instruments bore his stamped name. For years his name was branded
on every Bell telephone set, and his patents were a mainstay of what has
been popularly called the "Bell monopoly." Speaking of his own efforts
in this field, Mr. Edison says: