Edison, His Life and Inventions

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


The hours of this occupation were long, but the work was not
particularly heavy, and Edison soon found opportunity for his favorite
avocation--chemical experimentation. His train left Port Huron at 7
A.M., and made its southward trip to Detroit in about three hours. This
gave a stay in that city from 10 A.M. until the late afternoon, when the
train left, arriving at Port Huron about 9.30 P.M. The train was made up
of three coaches--baggage, smoking, and ordinary passenger or "ladies."
The baggage-car was divided into three compartments--one for trunks and
packages, one for the mail, and one for smoking. In those days no use
was made of the smoking-compartment, as there was no ventilation, and it
was turned over to young Edison, who not only kept papers there and his
stock of goods as a "candy butcher," but soon had it equipped with an
extraordinary variety of apparatus. There was plenty of leisure on the
two daily runs, even for an industrious boy, and thus he found time
to transfer his laboratory from the cellar and re-establish it on the
train.

His earnings were also excellent--so good, in fact, that eight or ten
dollars a day were often taken in, and one dollar went every day to his
mother. Thus supporting himself, he felt entitled to spend any other
profit left over on chemicals and apparatus. And spent it was, for with
access to Detroit and its large stores, where he bought his supplies,
and to the public library, where he could quench his thirst for
technical information, Edison gave up all his spare time and money to
chemistry. Surely the country could have presented at that moment no
more striking example of the passionate pursuit of knowledge under
difficulties than this newsboy, barely fourteen years of age, with his
jars and test-tubes installed on a railway baggage-car.

Nor did this amazing equipment stop at batteries and bottles. The same
little space a few feet square was soon converted by this precocious
youth into a newspaper office. The outbreak of the Civil War gave a
great stimulus to the demand for all newspapers, noticing which he
became ambitious to publish a local journal of his own, devoted to the
news of that section of the Grand Trunk road. A small printing-press
that had been used for hotel bills of fare was picked up in Detroit,
and type was also bought, some of it being placed on the train so that
composition could go on in spells of leisure. To one so mechanical in
his tastes as Edison, it was quite easy to learn the rudiments of the
printing art, and thus the Weekly Herald came into existence, of which
he was compositor, pressman, editor, publisher, and newsdealer. Only one
or two copies of this journal are now discoverable, but its appearance
can be judged from the reduced facsimile here shown. The thing was
indeed well done as the work of a youth shown by the date to be less
than fifteen years old. The literary style is good, there are only a few
trivial slips in spelling, and the appreciation is keen of what would be
interesting news and gossip. The price was three cents a copy, or eight
cents a month for regular subscribers, and the circulation ran up to
over four hundred copies an issue. This was by no means the result of
mere public curiosity, but attested the value of the sheet as a genuine
newspaper, to which many persons in the railroad service along the
line were willing contributors. Indeed, with the aid of the railway
telegraph, Edison was often able to print late news of importance, of
local origin, that the distant regular papers like those of Detroit,
which he handled as a newsboy, could not get. It is no wonder that this
clever little sheet received the approval and patronage of the English
engineer Stephenson when inspecting the Grand Trunk system, and was
noted by no less distinguished a contemporary than the London Times as
the first newspaper in the world to be printed on a train in motion.
The youthful proprietor sometimes cleared as much as twenty to thirty
dollars a month from this unique journalistic enterprise.

But all this extra work required attention, and Edison solved the
difficulty of attending also to the newsboy business by the employment
of a young friend, whom he trained and treated liberally as an
understudy. There was often plenty of work for both in the early days
of the war, when the news of battle caused intense excitement and large
sales of papers. Edison, with native shrewdness already so strikingly
displayed, would telegraph the station agents and get them to bulletin
the event of the day at the front, so that when each station was reached
there were eager purchasers waiting. He recalls in particular the
sensation caused by the great battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing,
in April, 1862, in which both Grant and Sherman were engaged, in which
Johnston died, and in which there was a ghastly total of 25,000 killed
and wounded.

In describing his enterprising action that day, Edison says that when
he reached Detroit the bulletin-boards of the newspaper offices were
surrounded with dense crowds, which read awestricken the news that there
were 60,000 killed and wounded, and that the result was uncertain. "I
knew that if the same excitement was attained at the various small towns
along the road, and especially at Port Huron, the sale of papers would
be great. I then conceived the idea of telegraphing the news ahead, went
to the operator in the depot, and by giving him Harper's Weekly and
some other papers for three months, he agreed to telegraph to all the
stations the matter on the bulletin-board. I hurriedly copied it, and he
sent it, requesting the agents to display it on the blackboards used for
stating the arrival and departure of trains. I decided that instead of
the usual one hundred papers I could sell one thousand; but not having
sufficient money to purchase that number, I determined in my desperation
to see the editor himself and get credit. The great paper at that time
was the Detroit Free Press. I walked into the office marked 'Editorial'
and told a young man that I wanted to see the editor on important
business--important to me, anyway, I was taken into an office where
there were two men, and I stated what I had done about telegraphing, and
that I wanted a thousand papers, but only had money for three hundred,
and I wanted credit. One of the men refused it, but the other told the
first spokesman to let me have them. This man, I afterward learned, was
Wilbur F. Storey, who subsequently founded the Chicago Times, and became
celebrated in the newspaper world. By the aid of another boy I lugged
the papers to the train and started folding them. The first station,
called Utica, was a small one where I generally sold two papers. I saw
a crowd ahead on the platform, and thought it some excursion, but
the moment I landed there was a rush for me; then I realized that the
telegraph was a great invention. I sold thirty-five papers there. The
next station was Mount Clemens, now a watering-place, but then a town of
about one thousand. I usually sold six to eight papers there. I decided
that if I found a corresponding crowd there, the only thing to do to
correct my lack of judgment in not getting more papers was to raise
the price from five cents to ten. The crowd was there, and I raised the
price. At the various towns there were corresponding crowds. It had
been my practice at Port Huron to jump from the train at a point
about one-fourth of a mile from the station, where the train generally
slackened speed. I had drawn several loads of sand to this point to jump
on, and had become quite expert. The little Dutch boy with the horse met
me at this point. When the wagon approached the outskirts of the town
I was met by a large crowd. I then yelled: 'Twenty-five cents apiece,
gentlemen! I haven't enough to go around!' I sold all out, and made what
to me then was an immense sum of money."

Such episodes as this added materially to his income, but did not
necessarily increase his savings, for he was then, as now, an utter
spendthrift so long as some new apparatus or supplies for experiment
could be had. In fact, the laboratory on wheels soon became crowded
with such equipment, most costly chemicals were bought on the instalment
plan, and Fresenius' Qualitative Analysis served as a basis for
ceaseless testing and study. George Pullman, who then had a small shop
at Detroit and was working on his sleeping-car, made Edison a lot of
wooden apparatus for his chemicals, to the boy's delight. Unfortunately
a sudden change came, fraught with disaster. The train, running one day
at thirty miles an hour over a piece of poorly laid track, was thrown
suddenly out of the perpendicular with a violent lurch, and, before
Edison could catch it, a stick of phosphorus was jarred from its shelf,
fell to the floor, and burst into flame. The car took fire, and the boy,
in dismay, was still trying to quench the blaze when the conductor, a
quick-tempered Scotchman, who acted also as baggage-master, hastened to
the scene with water and saved his car. On the arrival at Mount Clemens
station, its next stop, Edison and his entire outfit, laboratory,
printing-plant, and all, were promptly ejected by the enraged conductor,
and the train then moved off, leaving him on the platform, tearful and
indignant in the midst of his beloved but ruined possessions. It was
lynch law of a kind; but in view of the responsibility, this action of
the conductor lay well within his rights and duties.

It was through this incident that Edison acquired the deafness that
has persisted all through his life, a severe box on the ears from the
scorched and angry conductor being the direct cause of the infirmity.
Although this deafness would be regarded as a great affliction by most
people, and has brought in its train other serious baubles, Mr. Edison
has always regarded it philosophically, and said about it recently:
"This deafness has been of great advantage to me in various ways. When
in a telegraph office, I could only hear the instrument directly on the
table at which I sat, and unlike the other operators, I was not bothered
by the other instruments. Again, in experimenting on the telephone,
I had to improve the transmitter so I could hear it. This made the
telephone commercial, as the magneto telephone receiver of Bell was too
weak to be used as a transmitter commercially. It was the same with the
phonograph. The great defect of that instrument was the rendering of the
overtones in music, and the hissing consonants in speech. I worked over
one year, twenty hours a day, Sundays and all, to get the word 'specie'
perfectly recorded and reproduced on the phonograph. When this was done
I knew that everything else could be done which was a fact. Again,
my nerves have been preserved intact. Broadway is as quiet to me as a
country village is to a person with normal hearing."

Saddened but not wholly discouraged, Edison soon reconstituted his
laboratory and printing-office at home, although on the part of the
family there was some fear and objection after this episode, on the
score of fire. But Edison promised not to bring in anything of a
dangerous nature. He did not cease the publication of the Weekly Herald.
On the contrary, he prospered in both his enterprises until persuaded
by the "printer's devil" in the office of the Port Huron Commercial to
change the character of his journal, enlarge it, and issue it under the
name of Paul Pry, a happy designation for this or kindred ventures
in the domain of society journalism. No copies of Paul Pry can now be
found, but it is known that its style was distinctly personal, that
gossip was its specialty, and that no small offence was given to the
people whose peculiarities or peccadilloes were discussed in a frank
and breezy style by the two boys. In one instance the resentment of the
victim of such unsought publicity was so intense he laid hands on Edison
and pitched the startled young editor into the St. Clair River. The name
of this violator of the freedom of the press was thereafter excluded
studiously from the columns of Paul Pry, and the incident may have been
one of those which soon caused the abandonment of the paper. Edison
had great zest in this work, and but for the strong influences in other
directions would probably have continued in the newspaper field, in
which he was, beyond question, the youngest publisher and editor of the
day.

Before leaving this period of his career, it is to be noted that it gave
Edison many favorable opportunities. In Detroit he could spend frequent
hours in the public library, and it is matter of record that he began
his liberal acquaintance with its contents by grappling bravely with a
certain section and trying to read it through consecutively, shelf by
shelf, regardless of subject. In a way this is curiously suggestive
of the earnest, energetic method of "frontal attack" with which the
inventor has since addressed himself to so many problems in the arts and
sciences.

The Grand Trunk Railroad machine-shops at Port Huron were a great
attraction to the boy, who appears to have spent a good deal of his time
there. He who was to have much to do with the evolution of the modern
electric locomotive was fascinated by the mechanism of the steam
locomotive; and whenever he could get the chance Edison rode in the cab
with the engineer of his train. He became thoroughly familiar with the
intricacies of fire-box, boiler, valves, levers, and gears, and liked
nothing better than to handle the locomotive himself during the run.
On one trip, when the engineer lay asleep while his eager substitute
piloted the train, the boiler "primed," and a deluge overwhelmed the
young driver, who stuck to his post till the run and the ordeal were
ended. Possibly this helped to spoil a locomotive engineer, but went
to make a great master of the new motive power. "Steam is half an
Englishman," said Emerson. The temptation is strong to say that workaday
electricity is half an American. Edison's own account of the incident
is very laughable: "The engine was one of a number leased to the Grand
Trunk by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. It had bright brass bands all
over, the woodwork beautifully painted, and everything highly polished,
which was the custom up to the time old Commodore Vanderbilt stopped
it on his roads. After running about fifteen miles the fireman couldn't
keep his eyes open (this event followed an all-night dance of the
trainmen's fraternal organization), and he agreed to permit me to run
the engine. I took charge, reducing the speed to about twelve miles
an hour, and brought the train of seven cars to her destination at the
Grand Trunk junction safely. But something occurred which was very much
out of the ordinary. I was very much worried about the water, and I
knew that if it got low the boiler was likely to explode. I hadn't gone
twenty miles before black damp mud blew out of the stack and covered
every part of the engine, including myself. I was about to awaken the
fireman to find out the cause of this when it stopped. Then I approached
a station where the fireman always went out to the cowcatcher, opened
the oil-cup on the steam-chest, and poured oil in. I started to carry
out the procedure when, upon opening the oil-cup, the steam rushed out
with a tremendous noise, nearly knocking me off the engine. I succeeded
in closing the oil-cup and got back in the cab, and made up my mind
that she would pull through without oil. I learned afterward that the
engineer always shut off steam when the fireman went out to oil. This
point I failed to notice. My powers of observation were very much
improved after this occurrence. Just before I reached the junction
another outpour of black mud occurred, and the whole engine was a
sight--so much so that when I pulled into the yard everybody turned to
see it, laughing immoderately. I found the reason of the mud was that I
carried so much water it passed over into the stack, and this washed out
all the accumulated soot."

One afternoon about a week before Christmas Edison's train jumped the
track near Utica, a station on the line. Four old Michigan Central
cars with rotten sills collapsed in the ditch and went all to pieces,
distributing figs, raisins, dates, and candies all over the track and
the vicinity. Hating to see so much waste, Edison tried to save all he
could by eating it on the spot, but as a result "our family doctor had
the time of his life with me in this connection."

An absurd incident described by Edison throws a vivid light on the
free-and-easy condition of early railroad travel and on the Southern
extravagance of the time. "In 1860, just before the war broke out there
came to the train one afternoon, in Detroit, two fine-looking young men
accompanied by a colored servant. They bought tickets for Port Huron,
the terminal point for the train. After leaving the junction just
outside of Detroit, I brought in the evening papers. When I came
opposite the two young men, one of them said: 'Boy, what have you got?'
I said: 'Papers.' 'All right.' He took them and threw them out of the
window, and, turning to the colored man, said: 'Nicodemus, pay this
boy.' I told Nicodemus the amount, and he opened a satchel and paid me.
The passengers didn't know what to make of the transaction. I returned
with the illustrated papers and magazines. These were seized and thrown
out of the window, and I was told to get my money of Nicodemus. I then
returned with all the old magazines and novels I had not been able to
sell, thinking perhaps this would be too much for them. I was small and
thin, and the layer reached above my head, and was all I could possibly
carry. I had prepared a list, and knew the amount in case they bit
again. When I opened the door, all the passengers roared with laughter.
I walked right up to the young men. One asked me what I had. I said
'Magazines and novels.' He promptly threw them out of the window,
and Nicodemus settled. Then I came in with cracked hickory nuts, then
pop-corn balls, and, finally, molasses candy. All went out of the
window. I felt like Alexander the Great!--I had no more chance! I had
sold all I had. Finally I put a rope to my trunk, which was about
the size of a carpenter's chest, and started to pull this from the
baggage-car to the passenger-car. It was almost too much for my
strength, but at last I got it in front of those men. I pulled off my
coat, shoes, and hat, and laid them on the chest. Then he asked: 'What
have you got, boy?' I said: 'Everything, sir, that I can spare that is
for sale.' The passengers fairly jumped with laughter. Nicodemus paid me
$27 for this last sale, and threw the whole out of the door in the rear
of the car. These men were from the South, and I have always retained a
soft spot in my heart for a Southern gentleman."

While Edison was a newsboy on the train a request came to him one day
to go to the office of E. B. Ward & Company, at that time the largest
owners of steamboats on the Great Lakes. The captain of their largest
boat had died suddenly, and they wanted a message taken to another
captain who lived about fourteen miles from Ridgeway station on the
railroad. This captain had retired, taken up some lumber land, and had
cleared part of it. Edison was offered $15 by Mr. Ward to go and fetch
him, but as it was a wild country and would be dark, Edison stood out
for $25, so that he could get the companionship of another lad. The
terms were agreed to. Edison arrived at Ridgeway at 8.30 P.M., when it
was raining and as dark as ink. Getting another boy with difficulty to
volunteer, he launched out on his errand in the pitch-black night. The
two boys carried lanterns, but the road was a rough path through dense
forest. The country was wild, and it was a usual occurrence to see deer,
bear, and coon skins nailed up on the sides of houses to dry. Edison had
read about bears, but couldn't remember whether they were day or night
prowlers. The farther they went the more apprehensive they became, and
every stump in the ravished forest looked like a bear. The other lad
proposed seeking safety up a tree, but Edison demurred on the plea that
bears could climb, and that the message must be delivered that night to
enable the captain to catch the morning train. First one lantern went
out, then the other. "We leaned up against a tree and cried. I thought
if I ever got out of that scrape alive I would know more about the
habits of animals and everything else, and be prepared for all kinds of
mischance when I undertook an enterprise. However, the intense darkness
dilated the pupils of our eyes so as to make them very sensitive, and
we could just see at times the outlines of the road. Finally, just as
a faint gleam of daylight arrived, we entered the captain's yard and
delivered the message. In my whole life I never spent such a night of
horror as this, but I got a good lesson."

An amusing incident of this period is told by Edison. "When I was a
boy," he says, "the Prince of Wales, the late King Edward, came to
Canada (1860). Great preparations were made at Sarnia, the Canadian town
opposite Port Huron. About every boy, including myself, went over to
see the affair. The town was draped in flags most profusely, and carpets
were laid on the cross-walks for the prince to walk on. There were
arches, etc. A stand was built raised above the general level, where the
prince was to be received by the mayor. Seeing all these preparations,
my idea of a prince was very high; but when he did arrive I mistook the
Duke of Newcastle for him, the duke being a fine-looking man. I soon saw
that I was mistaken: that the prince was a young stripling, and did
not meet expectations. Several of us expressed our belief that a prince
wasn't much, after all, and said that we were thoroughly disappointed.
For this one boy was whipped. Soon the Canuck boys attacked the Yankee
boys, and we were all badly licked. I, myself, got a black eye. That has
always prejudiced me against that kind of ceremonial and folly." It is
certainly interesting to note that in later years the prince for whom
Edison endured the ignominy of a black eye made generous compensation
in a graceful letter accompanying the gold Albert Medal awarded by the
Royal Society of Arts.

Another incident of the period is as follows: "After selling papers in
Port Huron, which was often not reached until about 9.30 at night, I
seldom got home before 11.00 or 11.30. About half-way home from the
station and the town, and within twenty-five feet of the road in a
dense wood, was a soldiers' graveyard where three hundred soldiers were
buried, due to a cholera epidemic which took place at Fort Gratiot, near
by, many years previously. At first we used to shut our eyes and run the
horse past this graveyard, and if the horse stepped on a twig my heart
would give a violent movement, and it is a wonder that I haven't some
valvular disease of that organ. But soon this running of the horse
became monotonous, and after a while all fears of graveyards absolutely
disappeared from my system. I was in the condition of Sam Houston, the
pioneer and founder of Texas, who, it was said, knew no fear. Houston
lived some distance from the town and generally went home late at night,
having to pass through a dark cypress swamp over a corduroy road. One
night, to test his alleged fearlessness, a man stationed himself behind
a tree and enveloped himself in a sheet. He confronted Houston suddenly,
and Sam stopped and said: 'If you are a man, you can't hurt me. If you
are a ghost, you don't want to hurt me. And if you are the devil, come
home with me; I married your sister!'"

It is not to be inferred, however, from some of the preceding statements
that the boy was of an exclusively studious bent of mind. He had then,
as now, the keen enjoyment of a joke, and no particular aversion to the
practical form. An incident of the time is in point. "After the breaking
out of the war there was a regiment of volunteer soldiers quartered
at Fort Gratiot, the reservation extending to the boundary line of our
house. Nearly every night we would hear a call, such as 'Corporal of
the Guard, No. 1.' This would be repeated from sentry to sentry until it
reached the barracks, when Corporal of the Guard, No. 1, would come and
see what was wanted. I and the little Dutch boy, after returning from
the town after selling our papers, thought we would take a hand at
military affairs. So one night, when it was very dark, I shouted for
Corporal of the Guard, No. 1. The second sentry, thinking it was the
terminal sentry who shouted, repeated it to the third, and so on. This
brought the corporal along the half mile, only to find that he was
fooled. We tried him three nights; but the third night they were
watching, and caught the little Dutch boy, took him to the lock-up at
the fort, and shut him up. They chased me to the house. I rushed for the
cellar. In one small apartment there were two barrels of potatoes and a
third one nearly empty. I poured these remnants into the other barrels,
sat down, and pulled the barrel over my head, bottom up. The soldiers
had awakened my father, and they were searching for me with candles and
lanterns. The corporal was absolutely certain I came into the cellar,
and couldn't see how I could have gotten out, and wanted to know from my
father if there was no secret hiding-place. On assurance of my father,
who said that there was not, he said it was most extraordinary. I was
glad when they left, as I was cramped, and the potatoes were rotten that
had been in the barrel and violently offensive. The next morning I was
found in bed, and received a good switching on the legs from my father,
the first and only one I ever received from him, although my mother kept
a switch behind the old Seth Thomas clock that had the bark worn off.
My mother's ideas and mine differed at times, especially when I got
experimenting and mussed up things. The Dutch boy was released next
morning."