Edison, His Life and Inventions

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


Samuel Edison, versatile, buoyant of temper, and ever optimistic, would
thus appear to have pitched his tent with shrewd judgment. There was
plenty of occupation ready to his hand, and more than one enterprise
received his attention; but he devoted his energies chiefly to the
making of shingles, for which there was a large demand locally and along
the lake. Canadian lumber was used principally in this industry. The
wood was imported in "bolts" or pieces three feet long. A bolt made two
shingles; it was sawn asunder by hand, then split and shaved. None but
first-class timber was used, and such shingles outlasted far those made
by machinery with their cross-grain cut. A house in Milan, on which some
of those shingles were put in 1844, was still in excellent condition
forty-two years later. Samuel Edison did well at this occupation, and
employed several men, but there were other outlets from time to time for
his business activity and speculative disposition.

Edison's mother was an attractive and highly educated woman, whose
influence upon his disposition and intellect has been profound and
lasting. She was born in Chenango County, New York, in 1810, and was the
daughter of the Rev. John Elliott, a Baptist minister and descendant of
an old Revolutionary soldier, Capt. Ebenezer Elliott, of Scotch descent.
The old captain was a fine and picturesque type. He fought all through
the long War of Independence--seven years--and then appears to have
settled down at Stonington, Connecticut. There, at any rate, he found
his wife, "grandmother Elliott," who was Mercy Peckham, daughter of a
Scotch Quaker. Then came the residence in New York State, with final
removal to Vienna, for the old soldier, while drawing his pension at
Buffalo, lived in the little Canadian town, and there died, over 100
years old. The family was evidently one of considerable culture and deep
religious feeling, for two of Mrs. Edison's uncles and two brothers were
also in the same Baptist ministry. As a young woman she became a teacher
in the public high school at Vienna, and thus met her husband, who was
residing there. The family never consisted of more than three children,
two boys and a girl. A trace of the Canadian environment is seen in the
fact that Edison's elder brother was named William Pitt, after the
great English statesman. Both his brother and the sister exhibited
considerable ability. William Pitt Edison as a youth was so clever with
his pencil that it was proposed to send him to Paris as an art student.
In later life he was manager of the local street railway lines at Port
Huron, Michigan, in which he was heavily interested. He also owned a
good farm near that town, and during the ill-health at the close of
his life, when compelled to spend much of the time indoors, he devoted
himself almost entirely to sketching. It has been noted by intimate
observers of Thomas A. Edison that in discussing any project or new idea
his first impulse is to take up any piece of paper available and make
drawings of it. His voluminous note-books are a mass of sketches.
Mrs-Tannie Edison Bailey, the sister, had, on the other hand, a great
deal of literary ability, and spent much of her time in writing.

The great inventor, whose iron endurance and stern will have enabled him
to wear down all his associates by work sustained through arduous days
and sleepless nights, was not at all strong as a child, and was of
fragile appearance. He had an abnormally large but well-shaped head, and
it is said that the local doctors feared he might have brain trouble.
In fact, on account of his assumed delicacy, he was not allowed to go to
school for some years, and even when he did attend for a short time
the results were not encouraging--his mother being hotly indignant upon
hearing that the teacher had spoken of him to an inspector as "addled."
The youth was, indeed, fortunate far beyond the ordinary in having a
mother at once loving, well-informed, and ambitious, capable herself,
from her experience as a teacher, of undertaking and giving him an
education better than could be secured in the local schools of the day.
Certain it is that under this simple regime studious habits were formed
and a taste for literature developed that have lasted to this day. If
ever there was a man who tore the heart out of books it is Edison, and
what has once been read by him is never forgotten if useful or worthy of
submission to the test of experiment.

But even thus early the stronger love of mechanical processes and of
probing natural forces manifested itself. Edison has said that he
never saw a statement in any book as to such things that he did not
involuntarily challenge, and wish to demonstrate as either right or
wrong. As a mere child the busy scenes of the canal and the grain
warehouses were of consuming interest, but the work in the ship-building
yards had an irresistible fascination. His questions were so ceaseless
and innumerable that the penetrating curiosity of an unusually strong
mind was regarded as deficiency in powers of comprehension, and the
father himself, a man of no mean ingenuity and ability, reports that
the child, although capable of reducing him to exhaustion by endless
inquiries, was often spoken of as rather wanting in ordinary acumen.
This apparent dulness is, however, a quite common incident to youthful
genius.

The constructive tendencies of this child of whom his father said once
that he had never had any boyhood days in the ordinary sense, were early
noted in his fondness for building little plank roads out of the debris
of the yards and mills. His extraordinarily retentive memory was shown
in his easy acquisition of all the songs of the lumber gangs and canal
men before he was five years old. One incident tells how he was found
one day in the village square copying laboriously the signs of the
stores. A highly characteristic event at the age of six is described by
his sister. He had noted a goose sitting on her eggs and the result. One
day soon after, he was missing. By-and-by, after an anxious search, his
father found him sitting in a nest he had made in the barn, filled with
goose-eggs and hens' eggs he had collected, trying to hatch them out.

One of Mr. Edison's most vivid recollections goes back to 1850, when as
a child three of four years old he saw camped in front of his home six
covered wagons, "prairie schooners," and witnessed their departure for
California. The great excitement over the gold discoveries was thus felt
in Milan, and these wagons, laden with all the worldly possessions of
their owners, were watched out of sight on their long journey by this
fascinated urchin, whose own discoveries in later years were to tempt
many other argonauts into the auriferous realms of electricity.

Another vivid memory of this period concerns his first realization
of the grim mystery of death. He went off one day with the son of
the wealthiest man in the town to bathe in the creek. Soon after they
entered the water the other boy disappeared. Young Edison waited around
the spot for half an hour or more, and then, as it was growing dark,
went home puzzled and lonely, but silent as to the occurrence. About two
hours afterward, when the missing boy was being searched for, a man came
to the Edison home to make anxious inquiry of the companion with whom
he had last been seen. Edison told all the circumstances with a painful
sense of being in some way implicated. The creek was at once dragged,
and then the body was recovered.

Edison had himself more than one narrow escape. Of course he fell in the
canal and was nearly drowned; few boys in Milan worth their salt omitted
that performance. On another occasion he encountered a more novel peril
by falling into the pile of wheat in a grain elevator and being almost
smothered. Holding the end of a skate-strap for another lad to shorten
with an axe, he lost the top of a finger. Fire also had its perils. He
built a fire in a barn, but the flames spread so rapidly that, although
he escaped himself, the barn was wholly destroyed, and he was publicly
whipped in the village square as a warning to other youths. Equally well
remembered is a dangerous encounter with a ram that attacked him while
he was busily engaged digging out a bumblebee's nest near an orchard
fence. The animal knocked him against the fence, and was about to butt
him again when he managed to drop over on the safe side and escape. He
was badly hurt and bruised, and no small quantity of arnica was needed
for his wounds.

Meantime little Milan had reached the zenith of its prosperity, and all
of a sudden had been deprived of its flourishing grain trade by the new
Columbus, Sandusky & Hocking Railroad; in fact, the short canal was one
of the last efforts of its kind in this country to compete with the
new means of transportation. The bell of the locomotive was everywhere
ringing the death-knell of effective water haulage, with such dire
results that, in 1880, of the 4468 miles of American freight canal, that
had cost $214,000,000, no fewer than 1893 miles had been abandoned,
and of the remaining 2575 miles quite a large proportion was not paying
expenses. The short Milan canal suffered with the rest, and to-day
lies well-nigh obliterated, hidden in part by vegetable gardens, a mere
grass-grown depression at the foot of the winding, shallow valley. Other
railroads also prevented any further competition by the canal, for a
branch of the Wheeling & Lake Erie now passes through the village, while
the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern runs a few miles to the south.

The owners of the canal soon had occasion to regret that they had
disdained the overtures of enterprising railroad promoters desirous
of reaching the village, and the consequences of commercial isolation
rapidly made themselves felt. It soon became evident to Samuel Edison
and his wife that the cozy brick home on the bluff must be given up
and the struggle with fortune resumed elsewhere. They were well-to-do,
however, and removing, in 1854, to Port Huron, Michigan, occupied a
large colonial house standing in the middle of an old Government fort
reservation of ten acres overlooking the wide expanse of the St. Clair
River just after it leaves Lake Huron. It was in many ways an ideal
homestead, toward which the family has always felt the strongest
attachment, but the association with Milan has never wholly ceased. The
old house in which Edison was born is still occupied (in 1910) by Mr.
S. O. Edison, a half-brother of Edison's father, and a man of marked
inventive ability. He was once prominent in the iron-furnace industry of
Ohio, and was for a time associated in the iron trade with the father
of the late President McKinley. Among his inventions may be mentioned a
machine for making fuel from wheat straw, and a smoke-consuming device.

This birthplace of Edison remains the plain, substantial little brick
house it was originally: one-storied, with rooms finished on the attic
floor. Being built on the hillside, its basement opens into the rear
yard. It was at first heated by means of open coal grates, which may not
have been altogether adequate in severe winters, owing to the altitude
and the north-eastern exposure, but a large furnace is one of the more
modern changes. Milan itself is not materially unlike the smaller Ohio
towns of its own time or those of later creation, but the venerable
appearance of the big elm-trees that fringe the trim lawns tells of its
age. It is, indeed, an extremely neat, snug little place, with well-kept
homes, mostly of frame construction, and flagged streets crossing
each other at right angles. There are no poor--at least, everybody is
apparently well-to-do. While a leisurely atmosphere pervades the
town, few idlers are seen. Some of the residents are engaged in local
business; some are occupied in farming and grape culture; others are
employed in the iron-works near-by, at Norwalk. The stores and places
of public resort are gathered about the square, where there is plenty
of room for hitching when the Saturday trading is done at that point,
at which periods the fitful bustle recalls the old wheat days when young
Edison ran with curiosity among the six and eight horse teams that had
brought in grain. This square is still covered with fine primeval forest
trees, and has at its centre a handsome soldiers' monument of the Civil
War, to which four paved walks converge. It is an altogether pleasant
and unpretentious town, which cherishes with no small amount of pride
its association with the name of Thomas Alva Edison.

In view of Edison's Dutch descent, it is rather singular to find him
with the name of Alva, for the Spanish Duke of Alva was notoriously the
worst tyrant ever known to the Low Countries, and his evil deeds occupy
many stirring pages in Motley's famous history. As a matter of fact,
Edison was named after Capt. Alva Bradley, an old friend of his father,
and a celebrated ship-owner on the Lakes. Captain Bradley died a few
years ago in wealth, while his old associate, with equal ability for
making money, was never able long to keep it (differing again from the
Revolutionary New York banker from whom his son's other name, "Thomas,"
was taken).



CHAPTER III

BOYHOOD AT PORT HURON, MICHIGAN

THE new home found by the Edison family at Port Huron, where Alva spent
his brief boyhood before he became a telegraph operator and roamed the
whole middle West of that period, was unfortunately destroyed by fire
just after the close of the Civil War. A smaller but perhaps more
comfortable home was then built by Edison's father on some property he
had bought at the near-by village of Gratiot, and there his mother spent
the remainder of her life in confirmed invalidism, dying in 1871. Hence
the pictures and postal cards sold largely to souvenir-hunters as the
Port Huron home do not actually show that in or around which the events
now referred to took place.

It has been a romance of popular biographers, based upon the fact that
Edison began his career as a newsboy, to assume that these earlier years
were spent in poverty and privation, as indeed they usually are by the
"newsies" who swarm and shout their papers in our large cities. While
it seems a pity to destroy this erroneous idea, suggestive of a heroic
climb from the depths to the heights, nothing could be further from the
truth. Socially the Edison family stood high in Port Huron at a time
when there was relatively more wealth and general activity than to-day.
The town in its pristine prime was a great lumber centre, and hummed
with the industry of numerous sawmills. An incredible quantity of
lumber was made there yearly until the forests near-by vanished and the
industry with them. The wealth of the community, invested largely in
this business and in allied transportation companies, was accumulated
rapidly and as freely spent during those days of prosperity in St. Clair
County, bringing with it a high standard of domestic comfort. In all
this the Edisons shared on equal terms.

Thus, contrary to the stories that have been so widely published, the
Edisons, while not rich by any means, were in comfortable circumstances,
with a well-stocked farm and large orchard to draw upon also for
sustenance. Samuel Edison, on moving to Port Huron, became a dealer in
grain and feed, and gave attention to that business for many years. But
he was also active in the lumber industry in the Saginaw district and
several other things. It was difficult for a man of such mercurial,
restless temperament to stay constant to any one occupation; in fact,
had he been less visionary he would have been more prosperous, but might
not have had a son so gifted with insight and imagination. One instance
of the optimistic vagaries which led him incessantly to spend time and
money on projects that would not have appealed to a man less sanguine
was the construction on his property of a wooden observation tower over
a hundred feet high, the top of which was reached toilsomely by winding
stairs, after the payment of twenty-five cents. It is true that the
tower commanded a pretty view by land and water, but Colonel Sellers
himself might have projected this enterprise as a possible source of
steady income. At first few visitors panted up the long flights of steps
to the breezy platform. During the first two months Edison's father
took in three dollars, and felt extremely blue over the prospect, and
to young Edison and his relatives were left the lonely pleasures of the
lookout and the enjoyment of the telescope with which it was equipped.
But one fine day there came an excursion from an inland town to see the
lake. They picnicked in the grove, and six hundred of them went up
the tower. After that the railroad company began to advertise these
excursions, and the receipts each year paid for the observatory.

It might be thought that, immersed in business and preoccupied with
schemes of this character, Mr. Edison was to blame for the neglect of
his son's education. But that was not the case. The conditions were
peculiar. It was at the Port Huron public school that Edison received
all the regular scholastic instruction he ever enjoyed--just three
months. He might have spent the full term there, but, as already noted,
his teacher had found him "addled." He was always, according to his own
recollection, at the foot of the class, and had come almost to regard
himself as a dunce, while his father entertained vague anxieties as to
his stupidity. The truth of the matter seems to be that Mrs. Edison, a
teacher of uncommon ability and force, held no very high opinion of
the average public-school methods and results, and was both eager to
undertake the instruction of her son and ambitious for the future of
a boy whom she knew from pedagogic experience to be receptive and
thoughtful to a very unusual degree. With her he found study easy and
pleasant. The quality of culture in that simple but refined home, as
well as the intellectual character of this youth without schooling, may
be inferred from the fact that before he had reached the age of twelve
he had read, with his mother's help, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, Hume's History of England, Sears' History of the World,
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and the Dictionary of Sciences; and had
even attempted to struggle through Newton's Principia, whose mathematics
were decidedly beyond both teacher and student. Besides, Edison, like
Faraday, was never a mathematician, and has had little personal use
for arithmetic beyond that which is called "mental." He said once to a
friend: "I can always hire some mathematicians, but they can't hire me."
His father, by-the-way, always encouraged these literary tastes, and
paid him a small sum for each new book mastered. It will be noted that
fiction makes no showing in the list; but it was not altogether
excluded from the home library, and Edison has all his life enjoyed
it, particularly the works of such writers as Victor Hugo, after whom,
because of his enthusiastic admiration--possibly also because of his
imagination--he was nicknamed by his fellow-operators, "Victor Hugo
Edison."

Electricity at that moment could have no allure for a youthful mind.
Crude telegraphy represented what was known of it practically, and about
that the books read by young Edison were not redundantly informational.
Even had that not been so, the inclinations of the boy barely ten years
old were toward chemistry, and fifty years later there is seen no change
of predilection. It sounds like heresy to say that Edison became an
electrician by chance, but it is the sober fact that to this pre-eminent
and brilliant leader in electrical achievement escape into the chemical
domain still has the aspect of a delightful truant holiday. One of
the earliest stories about his boyhood relates to the incident when
he induced a lad employed in the family to swallow a large quantity of
Seidlitz powders in the belief that the gases generated would enable
him to fly. The agonies of the victim attracted attention, and Edison's
mother marked her displeasure by an application of the switch kept
behind the old Seth Thomas "grandfather clock." The disastrous result
of this experiment did not discourage Edison at all, as he attributed
failure to the lad rather than to the motive power. In the cellar of
the Edison homestead young Alva soon accumulated a chemical outfit,
constituting the first in a long series of laboratories. The word
"laboratory" had always been associated with alchemists in the past,
but as with "filament" this untutored stripling applied an iconoclastic
practicability to it long before he realized the significance of the
new departure. Goethe, in his legend of Faust, shows the traditional
or conventional philosopher in his laboratory, an aged, tottering,
gray-bearded investigator, who only becomes youthful upon diabolical
intervention, and would stay senile without it. In the Edison laboratory
no such weird transformation has been necessary, for the philosopher
had youth, fiery energy, and a grimly practical determination that would
submit to no denial of the goal of something of real benefit to mankind.
Edison and Faust are indeed the extremes of philosophic thought and
accomplishment.

The home at Port Huron thus saw the first Edison laboratory. The boy
began experimenting when he was about ten or eleven years of age. He got
a copy of Parker's School Philosophy, an elementary book on physics, and
about every experiment in it he tried. Young Alva, or "Al," as he was
called, thus early displayed his great passion for chemistry, and in
the cellar of the house he collected no fewer than two hundred bottles,
gleaned in baskets from all parts of the town. These were arranged
carefully on shelves and all labelled "Poison," so that no one else
would handle or disturb them. They contained the chemicals with which
he was constantly experimenting. To others this diversion was both
mysterious and meaningless, but he had soon become familiar with all
the chemicals obtainable at the local drug stores, and had tested to
his satisfaction many of the statements encountered in his scientific
reading. Edison has said that sometimes he has wondered how it was
he did not become an analytical chemist instead of concentrating on
electricity, for which he had at first no great inclination.

Deprived of the use of a large part of her cellar, tiring of the "mess"
always to be found there, and somewhat fearful of results, his mother
once told the boy to clear everything out and restore order. The thought
of losing all his possessions was the cause of so much ardent distress
that his mother relented, but insisted that he must get a lock and key,
and keep the embryonic laboratory closed up all the time except when he
was there. This was done. From such work came an early familiarity with
the nature of electrical batteries and the production of current from
them. Apparently the greater part of his spare time was spent in the
cellar, for he did not share to any extent in the sports of the boys of
the neighborhood, his chum and chief companion, Michael Oates, being a
lad of Dutch origin, many years older, who did chores around the
house, and who could be recruited as a general utility Friday for the
experiments of this young explorer--such as that with the Seidlitz
powders.

Such pursuits as these consumed the scant pocket-money of the boy very
rapidly. He was not in regular attendance at school, and had read all
the books within reach. It was thus he turned newsboy, overcoming the
reluctance of his parents, particularly that of his mother, by pointing
out that he could by this means earn all he wanted for his experiments
and get fresh reading in the shape of papers and magazines free of
charge. Besides, his leisure hours in Detroit he would be able to spend
at the public library. He applied (in 1859) for the privilege of selling
newspapers on the trains of the Grand Trunk Railroad, between Port Huron
and Detroit, and obtained the concession after a short delay, during
which he made an essay in his task of selling newspapers.

Edison had, as a fact, already had some commercial experience from the
age of eleven. The ten acres of the reservation offered an excellent
opportunity for truck-farming, and the versatile head of the family
could not avoid trying his luck in this branch of work. A large "market
garden" was laid out, in which Edison worked pretty steadily with the
help of the Dutch boy, Michael Oates--he of the flying experiment. These
boys had a horse and small wagon intrusted to them, and every morning in
the season they would load up with onions, lettuce, peas, etc., and go
through the town.

As much as $600 was turned over to Mrs. Edison in one year from this
source. The boy was indefatigable but not altogether charmed with
agriculture. "After a while I tired of this work, as hoeing corn in
a hot sun is unattractive, and I did not wonder that it had built up
cities. Soon the Grand Trunk Railroad was extended from Toronto to Port
Huron, at the foot of Lake Huron, and thence to Detroit, at about the
same time the War of the Rebellion broke out. By a great amount of
persistence I got permission from my mother to go on the local train
as a newsboy. The local train from Port Huron to Detroit, a distance of
sixty-three miles, left at 7 A.M. and arrived again at 9.30 P.M. After
being on the train for several months, I started two stores in Port
Huron--one for periodicals, and the other for vegetables, butter, and
berries in the season. These were attended by two boys who shared in the
profits. The periodical store I soon closed, as the boy in charge could
not be trusted. The vegetable store I kept up for nearly a year. After
the railroad had been opened a short time, they put on an express which
left Detroit in the morning and returned in the evening. I received
permission to put a newsboy on this train. Connected with this train was
a car, one part for baggage and the other part for U. S. mail, but for
a long time it was not used. Every morning I had two large baskets of
vegetables from the Detroit market loaded in the mail-car and sent to
Port Huron, where the boy would take them to the store. They were much
better than those grown locally, and sold readily. I never was asked to
pay freight, and to this day cannot explain why, except that I was so
small and industrious, and the nerve to appropriate a U. S. mail-car to
do a free freight business was so monumental. However, I kept this up
for a long time, and in addition bought butter from the farmers along
the line, and an immense amount of blackberries in the season. I bought
wholesale and at a low price, and permitted the wives of the engineers
and trainmen to have the benefit of the discount. After a while there
was a daily immigrant train put on. This train generally had from seven
to ten coaches filled always with Norwegians, all bound for Iowa and
Minnesota. On these trains I employed a boy who sold bread, tobacco, and
stick candy. As the war progressed the daily newspaper sales became very
profitable, and I gave up the vegetable store."