Edison, His Life and Inventions

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


Among other now well-known men who came to us and assisted in various
kinds of work were Messrs. Acheson, Worth, Crosby, Herrick, and Hill,
while Doctor Haid was placed by Mr. Edison in charge of a special
chemical laboratory. Dr. E. L. Nichols was also with us for a short time
conducting a special series of experiments. There was also Mr. Isaacs,
who did a great deal of photographic work, and to whom we must be
thankful for the pictures of Menlo Park in connection with Edison's
work.

"Among others who were added to Mr. Kruesi's staff in the machine-shop
were Messrs. J. H. Vail and W. S. Andrews. Mr. Vail had charge of the
dynamo-room. He had a good general knowledge of machinery, and very
soon acquired such familiarity with the dynamos that he could skip about
among them with astonishing agility to regulate their brushes or to
throw rosin on the belts when they began to squeal. Later on he took
an active part in the affairs and installations of the Edison Light
Company. Mr. Andrews stayed on Mr. Kruesi's staff as long as the
laboratory machine-shop was kept open, after which he went into the
employ of the Edison Electric Light Company and became actively engaged
in the commercial and technical exploitation of the system. Another man
who was with us at Menlo Park was Mr. Herman Claudius, an Austrian, who
at one time was employed in connection with the State Telegraphs of his
country. To him Mr. Edison assigned the task of making a complete model
of the network of conductors for the contemplated first station in New
York."

Mr. Francis R. Upton, who was early employed by Mr. Edison as his
mathematician, furnishes a pleasant, vivid picture of his chief
associates engaged on the memorable work at Menlo Park. He says: "Mr.
Charles Batchelor was Mr. Edison's principal assistant at that time. He
was an Englishman, and came to this country to set up the thread-weaving
machinery for the Clark thread-works. He was a most intelligent,
patient, competent, and loyal assistant to Mr. Edison. I remember
distinctly seeing him work many hours to mount a small filament; and
his hand would be as steady and his patience as unyielding at the end
of those many hours as it was at the beginning, in spite of repeated
failures. He was a wonderful mechanic; the control that he had of his
fingers was marvellous, and his eyesight was sharp. Mr. Batchelor's
judgment and good sense were always in evidence.

"Mr. Kruesi was the superintendent, a Swiss trained in the best Swiss
ideas of accuracy. He was a splendid mechanic with a vigorous temper,
and wonderful ability to work continuously and to get work out of men.
It was an ideal combination, that of Edison, Batchelor, and Kruesi. Mr.
Edison with his wonderful flow of ideas which were sharply defined in
his mind, as can be seen by any of the sketches that he made, as he
evidently always thinks in three dimensions; Mr. Kruesi, willing to take
the ideas, and capable of comprehending them, would distribute the work
so as to get it done with marvellous quickness and great accuracy.
Mr. Batchelor was always ready for any special fine experimenting or
observation, and could hold to whatever he was at as long as Mr. Edison
wished; and always brought to bear on what he was at the greatest
skill."

While Edison depended upon Upton for his mathematical work, he was wont
to check it up in a very practical manner, as evidenced by the following
incident described by Mr. Jehl: "I was once with Mr. Upton calculating
some tables which he had put me on, when Mr. Edison appeared with a
glass bulb having a pear-shaped appearance in his hand. It was the kind
that we were going to use for our lamp experiments; and Mr. Edison asked
Mr. Upton to please calculate for him its cubic contents in centimetres.
Now Mr. Upton was a very able mathematician, who, after he finished his
studies at Princeton, went to Germany and got his final gloss under that
great master, Helmholtz. Whatever he did and worked on was executed in
a pure mathematical manner, and any wrangler at Oxford would have been
delighted to see him juggle with integral and differential equations,
with a dexterity that was surprising. He drew the shape of the bulb
exactly on paper, and got the equation of its lines with which he was
going to calculate its contents, when Mr. Edison again appeared and
asked him what it was. He showed Edison the work he had already done on
the subject, and told him that he would very soon finish calculating
it. 'Why,' said Edison, 'I would simply take that bulb and fill it
with mercury and weigh it; and from the weight of the mercury and its
specific gravity I'll get it in five minutes, and use less mental energy
than is necessary in such a fatiguing operation.'"

Menlo Park became ultimately the centre of Edison's business life as
it was of his inventing. After the short distasteful period during the
introduction of his lighting system, when he spent a large part of his
time at the offices at 65 Fifth Avenue, New York, or on the actual work
connected with the New York Edison installation, he settled back again
in Menlo Park altogether. Mr. Samuel Insull describes the business
methods which prevailed throughout the earlier Menlo Park days of "storm
and stress," and the curious conditions with which he had to deal as
private secretary: "I never attempted to systematize Edison's business
life. Edison's whole method of work would upset the system of any
office. He was just as likely to be at work in his laboratory at
midnight as midday. He cared not for the hours of the day or the days
of the week. If he was exhausted he might more likely be asleep in the
middle of the day than in the middle of the night, as most of his work
in the way of inventions was done at night. I used to run his office on
as close business methods as my experience admitted; and I would get at
him whenever it suited his convenience. Sometimes he would not go over
his mail for days at a time; but other times he would go regularly to
his office in the morning. At other times my engagements used to be with
him to go over his business affairs at Menlo Park at night, if I was
occupied in New York during the day. In fact, as a matter of convenience
I used more often to get at him at night, as it left my days free to
transact his affairs, and enabled me, probably at a midnight luncheon,
to get a few minutes of his time to look over his correspondence and get
his directions as to what I should do in some particular negotiation or
matter of finance. While it was a matter of suiting Edison's convenience
as to when I should transact business with him, it also suited my own
ideas, as it enabled me after getting through my business with him to
enjoy the privilege of watching him at his work, and to learn something
about the technical side of matters. Whatever knowledge I may have of
the electric light and power industry I feel I owe it to the tuition of
Edison. He was about the most willing tutor, and I must confess that he
had to be a patient one."

Here again occurs the reference to the incessant night-work at Menlo
Park, a note that is struck in every reminiscence and in every record
of the time. But it is not to be inferred that the atmosphere of grim
determination and persistent pursuit of the new invention characteristic
of this period made life a burden to the small family of laborers
associated with Edison. Many a time during the long, weary nights of
experimenting Edison would call a halt for refreshments, which he had
ordered always to be sent in when night-work was in progress. Everything
would be dropped, all present would join in the meal, and the last good
story or joke would pass around. In his notes Mr. Jehl says: "Our lunch
always ended with a cigar, and I may mention here that although Edison
was never fastidious in eating, he always relished a good cigar, and
seemed to find in it consolation and solace.... It often happened that
while we were enjoying the cigars after our midnight repast, one of the
boys would start up a tune on the organ and we would all sing together,
or one of the others would give a solo. Another of the boys had a voice
that sounded like something between the ring of an old tomato can and
a pewter jug. He had one song that he would sing while we roared with
laughter. He was also great in imitating the tin-foil phonograph....
When Boehm was in good-humor he would play his zither now and then, and
amuse us by singing pretty German songs. On many of these occasions the
laboratory was the rendezvous of jolly and convivial visitors, mostly
old friends and acquaintances of Mr. Edison. Some of the office
employees would also drop in once in a while, and as everybody present
was always welcome to partake of the midnight meal, we all enjoyed
these gatherings. After a while, when we were ready to resume work, our
visitors would intimate that they were going home to bed, but we fellows
could stay up and work, and they would depart, generally singing some
song like Good-night, ladies! . . . It often happened that when Edison
had been working up to three or four o'clock in the morning, he would
lie down on one of the laboratory tables, and with nothing but a couple
of books for a pillow, would fall into a sound sleep. He said it did
him more good than being in a soft bed, which spoils a man. Some of the
laboratory assistants could be seen now and then sleeping on a table in
the early morning hours. If their snoring became objectionable to those
still at work, the 'calmer' was applied. This machine consisted of
a Babbitt's soap box without a cover. Upon it was mounted a broad
ratchet-wheel with a crank, while into the teeth of the wheel there
played a stout, elastic slab of wood. The box would be placed on the
table where the snorer was sleeping and the crank turned rapidly. The
racket thus produced was something terrible, and the sleeper would jump
up as though a typhoon had struck the laboratory. The irrepressible
spirit of humor in the old days, although somewhat strenuous at times,
caused many a moment of hilarity which seemed to refresh the boys, and
enabled them to work with renewed vigor after its manifestation." Mr.
Upton remarks that often during the period of the invention of the
incandescent lamp, when under great strain and fatigue, Edison would go
to the organ and play tunes in a primitive way, and come back to crack
jokes with the staff. "But I have often felt that Mr. Edison never could
comprehend the limitations of the strength of other men, as his own
physical and mental strength have always seemed to be without limit.
He could work continuously as long as he wished, and had sleep at his
command. His sleep was always instant, profound, and restful. He
has told me that he never dreamed. I have known Mr. Edison now for
thirty-one years, and feel that he has always kept his mind direct and
simple, going straight to the root of troubles. One of the peculiarities
I have noticed is that I have never known him to break into a
conversation going on around him, and ask what people were talking
about. The nearest he would ever come to it was when there had evidently
been some story told, and his face would express a desire to join in the
laugh, which would immediately invite telling the story to him."

Next to those who worked with Edison at the laboratory and were with
him constantly at Menlo Park were the visitors, some of whom were his
business associates, some of them scientific men, and some of them
hero-worshippers and curiosity-hunters. Foremost in the first category
was Mr. E. H. Johnson, who was in reality Edison's most intimate friend,
and was required for constant consultation; but whose intense activity,
remarkable grasp of electrical principles, and unusual powers of
exposition, led to his frequent detachment for long trips, including
those which resulted in the introduction of the telephone, phonograph,
and electric light in England and on the Continent. A less frequent
visitor was Mr. S. Bergmann, who had all he needed to occupy his time
in experimenting and manufacturing, and whose contemporaneous Wooster
Street letter-heads advertised Edison's inventions as being made there,
Among the scientists were Prof. George F. Barker, of Philadelphia, a
big, good-natured philosopher, whose valuable advice Edison esteemed
highly. In sharp contrast to him was the earnest, serious Rowland, of
Johns Hopkins University, afterward the leading American physicist of
his day. Profs. C. F. Brackett and C. F. Young, of Princeton University,
were often received, always interested in what Edison was doing, and
proud that one of their own students, Mr. Upton, was taking such a
prominent part in the development of the work.

Soon after the success of the lighting experiments and the installation
at Menlo Park became known, Edison was besieged by persons from all
parts of the world anxious to secure rights and concessions for their
respective countries. Among these was Mr. Louis Rau, of Paris, who
organized the French Edison Company, the pioneer Edison lighting
corporation in Europe, and who, with the aid of Mr. Batchelor,
established lamp-works and a machine-shop at Ivry sur-Seine, near Paris,
in 1882. It was there that Mr. Nikola Tesla made his entree into the
field of light and power, and began his own career as an inventor; and
there also Mr. Etienne Fodor, general manager of the Hungarian General
Electric Company at Budapest, received his early training. It was he who
erected at Athens the first European Edison station on the now universal
three-wire system. Another visitor from Europe, a little later, was
Mr. Emil Rathenau, the present director of the great Allgemeine
Elektricitaets Gesellschaft of Germany. He secured the rights for the
empire, and organized the Berlin Edison system, now one of the largest
in the world. Through his extraordinary energy and enterprise the
business made enormous strides, and Mr. Rathenau has become one of the
most conspicuous industrial figures in his native country. From Italy
came Professor Colombo, later a cabinet minister, with his friend Signor
Buzzi, of Milan. The rights were secured for the peninsula; Colombo and
his friends organized the Italian Edison Company, and erected at Milan
the first central station in that country. Mr. John W. Lieb, Jr., now
a vice-president of the New York Edison Company, was sent over by Mr.
Edison to steer the enterprise technically, and spent ten years in
building it up, with such brilliant success that he was later decorated
as Commander of the Order of the Crown of Italy by King Victor. Another
young American enlisted into European service was Mr. E. G. Acheson,
the inventor of carborundum, who built a number of plants in Italy and
France before he returned home. Mr. Lieb has since become President of
the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Association of
Edison Illuminating Companies, while Doctor Acheson has been President
of the American Electrochemical Society.

Switzerland sent Messrs. Turrettini, Biedermann, and Thury, all
distinguished engineers, to negotiate for rights in the republic; and
so it went with regard to all the other countries of Europe, as well as
those of South America. It was a question of keeping such visitors away
rather than of inviting them to take up the exploitation of the Edison
system; for what time was not spent in personal interviews was required
for the masses of letters from every country under the sun, all making
inquiries, offering suggestions, proposing terms. Nor were the
visitors merely those on business bent. There were the lion-hunters and
celebrities, of whom Sarah Bernhardt may serve as a type. One visit
of note was that paid by Lieut. G. W. De Long, who had an earnest and
protracted conversation with Edison over the Arctic expedition he was
undertaking with the aid of Mr. James Gordon Bennett, of the New York
Herald. The Jeannette was being fitted out, and Edison told De Long
that he would make and present him with a small dynamo machine, some
incandescent lamps, and an arc lamp. While the little dynamo was being
built all the men in the laboratory wrote their names on the paper
insulation that was wound upon the iron core of the armature. As the
Jeannette had no steam-engine on board that could be used for the
purpose, Edison designed the dynamo so that it could be worked by man
power and told Lieutenant De Long "it would keep the boys warm up in the
Arctic," when they generated current with it. The ill-fated ship never
returned from her voyage, but went down in the icy waters of the North,
there to remain until some future cataclysm of nature, ten thousand
years hence, shall reveal the ship and the first marine dynamo as
curious relics of a remote civilization.

Edison also furnished De Long with a set of telephones provided with
extensible circuits, so that parties on the ice-floes could go long
distances from the ship and still keep in communication with her. So
far as the writers can ascertain this is the first example of "field
telephony." Another nautical experiment that he made at this time,
suggested probably by the requirements of the Arctic expedition, was a
buoy that was floated in New York harbor, and which contained a small
Edison dynamo and two or three incandescent lamps. The dynamo was driven
by the wave or tide motion through intermediate mechanism, and thus the
lamps were lit up from time to time, serving as signals. These were the
prototypes of the lighted buoys which have since become familiar, as in
the channel off Sandy Hook.

One notable afternoon was that on which the New York board of aldermen
took a special train out to Menlo Park to see the lighting system
with its conductors underground in operation. The Edison Electric
Illuminating Company was applying for a franchise, and the aldermen,
for lack of scientific training and specific practical information, were
very sceptical on the subject--as indeed they might well be. "Mr. Edison
demonstrated personally the details and merits of the system to them.
The voltage was increased to a higher pressure than usual, and all the
incandescent lamps at Menlo Park did their best to win the approbation
of the New York City fathers. After Edison had finished exhibiting all
the good points of his system, he conducted his guests upstairs in the
laboratory, where a long table was spread with the best things that one
of the most prominent New York caterers could furnish. 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.

Among other frequent visitors was Mr, Edison's father, "one of those
amiable, patriarchal characters with a Horace Greeley beard, typical
Americans of the old school," who would sometimes come into the
laboratory with his two grandchildren, a little boy and girl called
"Dash" and "Dot." He preferred to sit and watch his brilliant son at
work "with an expression of satisfaction on his face that indicated
a sense of happiness and content that his boy, born in that distant,
humble home in Ohio, had risen to fame and brought such honor upon the
name. It was, indeed, a pathetic sight to see a father venerate his son
as the elder Edison did." Not less at home was Mr. Mackenzie, the Mt.
Clemens station agent, the life of whose child Edison had saved when
a train newsboy. The old Scotchman was one of the innocent, chartered
libertines of the place, with an unlimited stock of good jokes and
stories, but seldom of any practical use. On one occasion, however, when
everything possible and impossible under the sun was being carbonized
for lamp filaments, he allowed a handful of his bushy red beard to
be taken for the purpose; and his laugh was the loudest when the
Edison-Mackenzie hair lamps were brought up to incandescence--their
richness in red rays being slyly attributed to the nature of the
filamentary material! Oddly enough, a few years later, some inventor
actually took out a patent for making incandescent lamps with carbonized
hair for filaments!

Yet other visitors again haunted the place, and with the following
reminiscence of one of them, from Mr. Edison himself, this part of the
chapter must close: "At Menlo Park one cold winter night there came into
the laboratory a strange man in a most pitiful condition. He was nearly
frozen, and he asked if he might sit by the stove. In a few moments
he asked for the head man, and I was brought forward. He had a head of
abnormal size, with highly intellectual features and a very small and
emaciated body. He said he was suffering very much, and asked if I
had any morphine. As I had about everything in chemistry that could be
bought, I told him I had. He requested that I give him some, so I got
the morphine sulphate. He poured out enough to kill two men, when I told
him that we didn't keep a hotel for suicides, and he had better cut the
quantity down. He then bared his legs and arms, and they were literally
pitted with scars, due to the use of hypodermic syringes. He said he had
taken it for years, and it required a big dose to have any effect. I let
him go ahead. In a short while he seemed like another man and began to
tell stories, and there were about fifty of us who sat around listening
until morning. He was a man of great intelligence and education. He
said he was a Jew, but there was no distinctive feature to verify
this assertion. He continued to stay around until he finished every
combination of morphine with an acid that I had, probably ten ounces all
told. Then he asked if he could have strychnine. I had an ounce of the
sulphate. He took enough to kill a horse, and asserted it had as good an
effect as morphine. When this was gone, the only thing I had left was a
chunk of crude opium, perhaps two or three pounds. He chewed this up and
disappeared. I was greatly disappointed, because I would have laid in
another stock of morphine to keep him at the laboratory. About a week
afterward he was found dead in a barn at Perth Amboy."

Returning to the work itself, note of which has already been made
in this and preceding chapters, we find an interesting and unique
reminiscence in Mr. Jehl's notes of the reversion to carbon as a
filament in the lamps, following an exhibition of metallic-filament
lamps given in the spring of 1879 to the men in the syndicate advancing
the funds for these experiments: "They came to Menlo Park on a late
afternoon train from New York. It was already dark when they were
conducted into the machine-shop, where we had several platinum lamps
installed in series. When Edison had finished explaining the principles
and details of the lamp, he asked Kruesi to let the dynamo machine run.
It was of the Gramme type, as our first dynamo of the Edison design
was not yet finished. Edison then ordered the 'juice' to be turned
on slowly. To-day I can see those lamps rising to a cherry red, like
glowbugs, and hear Mr. Edison saying 'a little more juice,' and the
lamps began to glow. 'A little more' is the command again, and then one
of the lamps emits for an instant a light like a star in the distance,
after which there is an eruption and a puff; and the machine-shop is in
total darkness. We knew instantly which lamp had failed, and Batchelor
replaced that by a good one, having a few in reserve near by. The
operation was repeated two or three times with about the same results,
after which the party went into the library until it was time to catch
the train for New York."

Such an exhibition was decidedly discouraging, and it was not a jubilant
party that returned to New York, but: "That night Edison remained in the
laboratory meditating upon the results that the platinum lamp had given
so far. I was engaged reading a book near a table in the front, while
Edison was seated in a chair by a table near the organ. With his head
turned downward, and that conspicuous lock of hair hanging loosely on
one side, he looked like Napoleon in the celebrated picture, On the
Eve of a Great Battle. Those days were heroic ones, for he then
battled against mighty odds, and the prospects were dim and not very
encouraging. In cases of emergency Edison always possessed a keen
faculty of deciding immediately and correctly what to do; and the
decision he then arrived at was predestined to be the turning-point
that led him on to ultimate success.... After that exhibition we had a
house-cleaning at the laboratory, and the metallic-filament lamps were
stored away, while preparations were made for our experiments on carbon
lamps."

Thus the work went on. Menlo Park has hitherto been associated in the
public thought with the telephone, phonograph, and incandescent
lamp; but it was there, equally, that the Edison dynamo and system of
distribution were created and applied to their specific purposes. While
all this study of a possible lamp was going on, Mr. Upton was busy
calculating the economy of the "multiple arc" system, and making a great
many tables to determine what resistance a lamp should have for the best
results, and at what point the proposed general system would fall off
in economy when the lamps were of the lower resistance that was then
generally assumed to be necessary. The world at that time had not the
shadow of an idea as to what the principles of a multiple arc system
should be, enabling millions of lamps to be lighted off distributing
circuits, each lamp independent of every other; but at Menlo Park at
that remote period in the seventies Mr. Edison's mathematician was
formulating the inventor's conception in clear, instructive figures;
"and the work then executed has held its own ever since." From the
beginning of his experiments on electric light, Mr. Edison had a
well-defined idea of producing not only a practicable lamp, but also
a SYSTEM of commercial electric lighting. Such a scheme involved the
creation of an entirely new art, for there was nothing on the face of
the earth from which to draw assistance or precedent, unless we except
the elementary forms of dynamos then in existence. It is true, there
were several types of machines in use for the then very limited field of
arc lighting, but they were regarded as valueless as a part of a great
comprehensive scheme which could supply everybody with light. Such
machines were confessedly inefficient, although representing the
farthest reach of a young art. A commission appointed at that time by
the Franklin Institute, and including Prof. Elihu Thomson, investigated
the merits of existing dynamos and reported as to the best of them: "The
Gramme machine is the most economical as a means of converting motive
force into electricity; it utilizes in the arc from 38 to 41 per cent.
of the motive work produced, after deduction is made for friction
and the resistance of the air." They reported also that the Brush arc
lighting machine "produces in the luminous arc useful work equivalent to
31 per cent. of the motive power employed, or to 38 1/2 per cent. after
the friction has been deducted." Commercial possibilities could not
exist in the face of such low economy as this, and Mr. Edison realized
that he would have to improve the dynamo himself if he wanted a better
machine. The scientific world at that time was engaged in a controversy
regarding the external and internal resistance of a circuit in which
a generator was situated. Discussing the subject Mr. Jehl, in his
biographical notes, says: "While this controversy raged in the
scientific papers, and criticism and confusion seemed at its height,
Edison and Upton discussed this question very thoroughly, and Edison
declared he did not intend to build up a system of distribution in which
the external resistance would be equal to the internal resistance.
He said he was just about going to do the opposite; he wanted a large
external resistance and a low internal one. He said he wanted to sell
the energy outside of the station and not waste it in the dynamo and
conductors, where it brought no profits.... In these later days, when
these ideas of Edison are used as common property, and are applied in
every modern system of distribution, it is astonishing to remember that
when they were propounded they met with most vehement antagonism from
the world at large." Edison, familiar with batteries in telegraphy,
could not bring himself to believe that any substitute generator of
electrical energy could be efficient that used up half its own possible
output before doing an equal amount of outside work.