Edison, His Life and Inventions

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


It has certainly required great bodily vigor and physical capacity to
sustain such fatigue as Edison has all his life imposed upon himself,
to the extent on one occasion of going five days without sleep. In a
conversation during 1909, he remarked, as though it were nothing out of
the way, that up to seven years previously his average of daily working
hours was nineteen and one-half, but that since then he figured it
at eighteen. He said he stood it easily, because he was interested in
everything, and was reading and studying all the time. For instance,
he had gone to bed the night before exactly at twelve and had arisen at
4.30 A. M. to read some New York law reports. It was suggested that the
secret of it might be that he did not live in the past, but was always
looking forward to a greater future, to which he replied: "Yes, that's
it. I don't live with the past; I am living for to-day and to-morrow. I
am interested in every department of science, arts, and manufacture.
I read all the time on astronomy, chemistry, biology, physics,
music, metaphysics, mechanics, and other branches--political economy,
electricity, and, in fact, all things that are making for progress in
the world. I get all the proceedings of the scientific societies, the
principal scientific and trade journals, and read them. I also read The
Clipper, The Police Gazette, The Billboard, The Dramatic Mirror, and
a lot of similar publications, for I like to know what is going on. In
this way I keep up to date, and live in a great moving world of my own,
and, what's more, I enjoy every minute of it." Referring to some event
of the past, he said: "Spilt milk doesn't interest me. I have spilt lots
of it, and while I have always felt it for a few days, it is quickly
forgotten, and I turn again to the future." During another talk on
kindred affairs it was suggested to Edison that, as he had worked so
hard all his life, it was about time for him to think somewhat of the
pleasures of travel and the social side of life. To which he replied
laughingly: "I already have a schedule worked out. From now until I am
seventy-five years of age, I expect to keep more or less busy with my
regular work, not, however, working as many hours or as hard as I have
in the past. At seventy five I expect to wear loud waistcoats with
fancy buttons; also gaiter tops; at eighty I expect to learn how to play
bridge whist and talk foolishly to the ladies. At eighty-five I expect
to wear a full-dress suit every evening at dinner, and at ninety--well,
I never plan more than thirty years ahead."

The reference to clothes is interesting, as it is one of the few
subjects in which Edison has no interest. It rather bores him. His dress
is always of the plainest; in fact, so plain that, at the Bergmann shops
in New York, the children attending a parochial Catholic school were
wont to salute him with the finger to the head, every time he went by.
Upon inquiring, he found that they took him for a priest, with his dark
garb, smooth-shaven face, and serious expression. Edison says: "I get
a suit that fits me; then I compel the tailors to use that as a jig or
pattern or blue-print to make others by. For many years a suit was used
as a measurement; once or twice they took fresh measurements, but these
didn't fit and they had to go back. I eat to keep my weight constant,
hence I need never change measurements." In regard to this, Mr. Mallory
furnishes a bit of chat as follows: "In a lawsuit in which I was a
witness, I went out to lunch with the lawyers on both sides, and the
lawyer who had been cross-examining me stated that he had for a client
a Fifth Avenue tailor, who had told him that he had made all of Mr.
Edison's clothes for the last twenty years, and that he had never seen
him. He said that some twenty years ago a suit was sent to him from
Orange, and measurements were made from it, and that every suit since
had been made from these measurements. I may add, from my own personal
observation, that in Mr. Edison's clothes there is no evidence but that
every new suit that he has worn in that time looks as if he had been
specially measured for it, which shows how very little he has changed
physically in the last twenty years."

Edison has never had any taste for amusements, although he will indulge
in the game of "Parchesi" and has a billiard-table in his house. The
coming of the automobile was a great boon to him, because it gave him
a form of outdoor sport in which he could indulge in a spirit of
observation, without the guilty feeling that he was wasting valuable
time. In his automobile he has made long tours, and with his family has
particularly indulged his taste for botany. That he has had the usual
experience in running machines will be evidenced by the following little
story from Mr. Mallory: "About three years ago I had a motor-car of
a make of which Mr. Edison had already two cars; and when the car was
received I made inquiry as to whether any repair parts were carried
by any of the various garages in Easton, Pennsylvania, near our cement
works. I learned that this particular car was the only one in Easton.
Knowing that Mr. Edison had had an experience lasting two or three
years with this particular make of car, I determined to ask him for
information relative to repair parts; so the next time I was at the
laboratory I told him I was unable to get any repair parts in Easton,
and that I wished to order some of the most necessary, so that, in case
of breakdowns, I would not be compelled to lose the use of the car for
several days until the parts came from the automobile factory. I asked
his advice as to what I should order, to which he replied: 'I don't
think it will be necessary to order an extra top.'" Since that episode,
which will probably be appreciated by most automobilists, Edison
has taken up the electric automobile, and is now using it as well as
developing it. One of the cars equipped with his battery is the Bailey,
and Mr. Bee tells the following story in regard to it: "One day Colonel
Bailey, of Amesbury, Massachusetts, who was visiting the Automobile Show
in New York, came out to the laboratory to see Mr. Edison, as the
latter had expressed a desire to talk with him on his next visit to the
metropolis. When he arrived at the laboratory, Mr. Edison, who had been
up all night experimenting, was asleep on the cot in the library. As
a rule we never wake Mr. Edison from sleep, but as he wanted to see
Colonel Bailey, who had to go, I felt that an exception should be made,
so I went and tapped him on the shoulder. He awoke at once, smiling,
jumped up, was instantly himself as usual, and advanced and greeted the
visitor. His very first question was: 'Well, Colonel, how did you come
out on that experiment?'--referring to some suggestions he had made at
their last meeting a year before. For a minute Colonel Bailey did not
recall what was referred to; but a few words from Mr. Edison brought it
back to his remembrance, and he reported that the results had justified
Mr. Edison's expectations."

It might be expected that Edison would have extreme and even radical
ideas on the subject of education--and he has, as well as a perfect
readiness to express them, because he considers that time is wasted on
things that are not essential: "What we need," he has said, "are men
capable of doing work. I wouldn't give a penny for the ordinary college
graduate, except those from the institutes of technology. Those coming
up from the ranks are a darned sight better than the others. They aren't
filled up with Latin, philosophy, and the rest of that ninny stuff." A
further remark of his is: "What the country needs now is the practical
skilled engineer, who is capable of doing everything. In three or four
centuries, when the country is settled, and commercialism is diminished,
there will be time for the literary men. At present we want engineers,
industrial men, good business-like managers, and railroad men." It is
hardly to be marvelled at that such views should elicit warm protest,
summed up in the comment: "Mr. Edison and many like him see in reverse
the course of human progress. Invention does not smooth the way for the
practical men and make them possible. There is always too much danger
of neglecting thoughts for things, ideas for machinery. No theory
of education that aggravates this danger is consistent with national
well-being."

Edison is slow to discuss the great mysteries of life, but is of
reverential attitude of mind, and ever tolerant of others' beliefs. He
is not a religious man in the sense of turning to forms and creeds, but,
as might be expected, is inclined as an inventor and creator to argue
from the basis of "design" and thence to infer a designer. "After years
of watching the processes of nature," he says, "I can no more doubt the
existence of an Intelligence that is running things than I do of the
existence of myself. Take, for example, the substance water that forms
the crystals known as ice. Now, there are hundreds of combinations that
form crystals, and every one of them, save ice, sinks in water. Ice, I
say, doesn't, and it is rather lucky for us mortals, for if it had done
so, we would all be dead. Why? Simply because if ice sank to the bottoms
of rivers, lakes, and oceans as fast as it froze, those places would be
frozen up and there would be no water left. That is only one example
out of thousands that to me prove beyond the possibility of a doubt that
some vast Intelligence is governing this and other planets."

A few words as to the domestic and personal side of Edison's life, to
which many incidental references have already been made in these pages.
He was married in 1873 to Miss Mary Stillwell, who died in 1884, leaving
three children--Thomas Alva, William Leslie, and Marion Estelle.

Mr. Edison was married again in 1886 to Miss Mina Miller, daughter of
Mr. Lewis Miller, a distinguished pioneer inventor and manufacturer in
the field of agricultural machinery, and equally entitled to fame as the
father of the "Chautauqua idea," and the founder with Bishop Vincent
of the original Chautauqua, which now has so many replicas all over the
country, and which started in motion one of the great modern educational
and moral forces in America. By this marriage there are three
children--Charles, Madeline, and Theodore.

For over a score of years, dating from his marriage to Miss Miller,
Edison's happy and perfect domestic life has been spent at Glenmont,
a beautiful property acquired at that time in Llewellyn Park, on the
higher slopes of Orange Mountain, New Jersey, within easy walking
distance of the laboratory at the foot of the hill in West Orange. As
noted already, the latter part of each winter is spent at Fort Myers,
Florida, where Edison has, on the banks of the Calahoutchie River, a
plantation home that is in many ways a miniature copy of the home and
laboratory up North. Glenmont is a rather elaborate and florid building
in Queen Anne English style, of brick, stone, and wooden beams showing
on the exterior, with an abundance of gables and balconies. It is set in
an environment of woods and sweeps of lawn, flanked by unusually large
conservatories, and always bright in summer with glowing flower beds. It
would be difficult to imagine Edison in a stiffly formal house, and this
big, cozy, three-story, rambling mansion has an easy freedom about it,
without and within, quite in keeping with the genius of the inventor,
but revealing at every turn traces of feminine taste and culture. The
ground floor, consisting chiefly of broad drawing-rooms, parlors, and
dining-hall, is chiefly noteworthy for the "den," or lounging-room, at
the end of the main axis, where the family and friends are likely to
be found in the evening hours, unless the party has withdrawn for more
intimate social intercourse to the interesting and fascinating private
library on the floor above. The lounging-room on the ground floor is
more or less of an Edison museum, for it is littered with souvenirs from
great people, and with mementos of travel, all related to some event
or episode. A large cabinet contains awards, decorations, and medals
presented to Edison, accumulating in the course of a long career,
some of which may be seen in the illustration opposite. Near by may be
noticed a bronze replica of the Edison gold medal which was founded in
the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the first award of which
was made to Elihu Thomson during the present year (1910). There are
statues of serpentine marble, gifts of the late Tsar of Russia, whose
admiration is also represented by a gorgeous inlaid and enamelled
cigar-case.

There are typical bronze vases from the Society of Engineers of Japan,
and a striking desk-set of writing apparatus from Krupp, all the pieces
being made out of tiny but massive guns and shells of Krupp steel. In
addition to such bric-a-brac and bibelots of all kinds are many pictures
and photographs, including the original sketches of the reception given
to Edison in 1889 by the Paris Figaro, and a letter from Madame Carnot,
placing the Presidential opera-box at the disposal of Mr. and Mrs.
Edison. One of the most conspicuous features of the room is a phonograph
equipment on which the latest and best productions by the greatest
singers and musicians can always be heard, but which Edison himself is
everlastingly experimenting with, under the incurable delusion that this
domestic retreat is but an extension of his laboratory.

The big library--semi-boudoir--up-stairs is also very expressive of the
home life of Edison, but again typical of his nature and disposition,
for it is difficult to overlay his many technical books and scientific
periodicals with a sufficiently thick crust of popular magazines or
current literature to prevent their outcropping into evidence. In like
manner the chat and conversation here, however lightly it may begin,
turns invariably to large questions and deep problems, especially in the
fields of discovery and invention; and Edison, in an easy-chair, will
sit through the long evenings till one or two in the morning, pulling
meditatively at his eyebrows, quoting something he has just read
pertinent to the discussion, hearing and telling new stories with gusto,
offering all kinds of ingenious suggestions, and without fail getting
hold of pads and sheets of paper on which to make illustrative sketches.
He is wonderfully handy with the pencil, and will sometimes amuse
himself, while chatting, with making all kinds of fancy bits of
penmanship, twisting his signature into circles and squares, but always
writing straight lines--so straight they could not be ruled truer. Many
a night it is a question of getting Edison to bed, for he would much
rather probe a problem than eat or sleep; but at whatever hour the
visitor retires or gets up, he is sure to find the master of the house
on hand, serene and reposeful, and just as brisk at dawn as when he
allowed the conversation to break up at midnight. The ordinary routine
of daily family life is of course often interrupted by receptions and
parties, visits to the billiard-room, the entertainment of visitors, the
departure to and return from college, at vacation periods, of the young
people, and matters relating to the many social and philanthropic causes
in which Mrs. Edison is actively interested; but, as a matter of fact,
Edison's round of toil and relaxation is singularly uniform and free
from agitation, and that is the way he would rather have it.

Edison at sixty-three has a fine physique, and being free from serious
ailments of any kind, should carry on the traditions of his long-lived
ancestors as to a vigorous old age. His hair has whitened, but is still
thick and abundant, and though he uses glasses for certain work, his
gray-blue eyes are as keen and bright and deeply lustrous as ever, with
the direct, searching look in them that they have ever worn. He
stands five feet nine and one-half inches high, weighs one hundred and
seventy-five pounds, and has not varied as to weight in a quarter of a
century, although as a young man he was slim to gauntness. He is very
abstemious, hardly ever touching alcohol, caring little for meat, but
fond of fruit, and never averse to a strong cup of coffee or a good
cigar. He takes extremely little exercise, although his good color and
quickness of step would suggest to those who do not know better that he
is in the best of training, and one who lives in the open air.

His simplicity as to clothes has already been described. One would be
startled to see him with a bright tie, a loud checked suit, or a fancy
waistcoat, and yet there is a curious sense of fastidiousness about
the plain things he delights in. Perhaps he is not wholly responsible
personally for this state of affairs. In conversation Edison is direct,
courteous, ready to discuss a topic with anybody worth talking to, and,
in spite of his sore deafness, an excellent listener. No one ever goes
away from Edison in doubt as to what he thinks or means, but he is ever
shy and diffident to a degree if the talk turns on himself rather than
on his work.

If the authors were asked, after having written the foregoing pages,
to explain here the reason for Edison's success, based upon their
observations so far made, they would first answer that he combines with
a vigorous and normal physical structure a mind capable of clear and
logical thinking, and an imagination of unusual activity. But this would
by no means offer a complete explanation. There are many men of
equal bodily and mental vigor who have not achieved a tithe of
his accomplishment. What other factors are there to be taken into
consideration to explain this phenomenon? First, a stolid, almost
phlegmatic, nervous system which takes absolutely no notice of ennui--a
system like that of a Chinese ivory-carver who works day after day and
month after month on a piece of material no larger than your hand. No
better illustration of this characteristic can be found than in the
development of the nickel pocket for the storage battery, an element the
size of a short lead-pencil, on which upward of five years were spent
in experiments, costing over a million dollars, day after day, always
apparently with the same tubes but with small variations carefully
tabulated in the note-books. To an ordinary person the mere sight of
such a tube would have been as distasteful, certainly after a week or
so, as the smell of a quail to a man striving to eat one every day for a
month, near the end of his gastronomic ordeal. But to Edison these small
perforated steel tubes held out as much of a fascination at the end of
five years as when the search was first begun, and every morning found
him as eager to begin the investigation anew as if the battery was an
absolutely novel problem to which his thoughts had just been directed.

Another and second characteristic of Edison's personality contributing
so strongly to his achievements is an intense, not to say courageous,
optimism in which no thought of failure can enter, an optimism born of
self-confidence, and becoming--after forty or fifty years of experience
more and more a sense of certainty in the accomplishment of success. In
the overcoming of difficulties he has the same intellectual pleasure
as the chess-master when confronted with a problem requiring all the
efforts of his skill and experience to solve. To advance along smooth
and pleasant paths, to encounter no obstacles, to wrestle with no
difficulties and hardships--such has absolutely no fascination to him.
He meets obstruction with the keen delight of a strong man battling with
the waves and opposing them in sheer enjoyment, and the greater and more
apparently overwhelming the forces that may tend to sweep him back, the
more vigorous his own efforts to forge through them. At the conclusion
of the ore-milling experiments, when practically his entire fortune was
sunk in an enterprise that had to be considered an impossibility, when
at the age of fifty he looked back upon five or six years of intense
activity expended apparently for naught, when everything seemed most
black and the financial clouds were quickly gathering on the horizon,
not the slightest idea of repining entered his mind. The main experiment
had succeeded--he had accomplished what he sought for. Nature at another
point had outstripped him, yet he had broadened his own sum of knowledge
to a prodigious extent. It was only during the past summer (1910) that
one of the writers spent a Sunday with him riding over the beautiful
New Jersey roads in an automobile, Edison in the highest spirits and
pointing out with the keenest enjoyment the many beautiful views of
valley and wood. The wanderings led to the old ore-milling plant at
Edison, now practically a mass of deserted buildings all going to decay.
It was a depressing sight, marking such titanic but futile struggles
with nature. To Edison, however, no trace of sentiment or regret
occurred, and the whole ruins were apparently as much a matter of
unconcern as if he were viewing the remains of Pompeii. Sitting on the
porch of the White House, where he lived during that period, in the
light of the setting sun, his fine face in repose, he looked as placidly
over the scene as a happy farmer over a field of ripening corn. All that
he said was: "I never felt better in my life than during the five years
I worked here. Hard work, nothing to divert my thought, clear air and
simple food made my life very pleasant. We learned a great deal. It will
be of benefit to some one some time." Similarly, in connection with the
storage battery, after having experimented continuously for three years,
it was found to fall below his expectations, and its manufacture had
to be stopped. Hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent on the
experiments, and, largely without Edison's consent, the battery had been
very generally exploited in the press. To stop meant not only to pocket
a great loss already incurred, facing a dark and uncertain future, but
to most men animated by ordinary human feelings, it meant more than
anything else, an injury to personal pride. Pride? Pooh! that had
nothing to do with the really serious practical problem, and the writers
can testify that at the moment when his decision was reached, work
stopped and the long vista ahead was peered into, Edison was as little
concerned as if he had concluded that, after all, perhaps peach-pie
might be better for present diet than apple-pie. He has often said that
time meant very little to him, that he had but a small realization
of its passage, and that ten or twenty years were as nothing when
considering the development of a vital invention.

These references to personal pride recall another characteristic of
Edison wherein he differs from most men. There are many individuals
who derive an intense and not improper pleasure in regalia or military
garments, with plenty of gold braid and brass buttons, and thus arrayed,
in appearing before their friends and neighbors. Putting at the head of
the procession the man who makes his appeal to public attention solely
because of the brilliancy of his plumage, and passing down the ranks
through the multitudes having a gradually decreasing sense of vanity in
their personal accomplishment, Edison would be placed at the very end.
Reference herein has been made to the fact that one of the two great
English universities wished to confer a degree upon him, but that he
was unable to leave his work for the brief time necessary to accept the
honor. At that occasion it was pointed out to him that he should make
every possible sacrifice to go, that the compliment was great, and that
but few Americans had been so recognized. It was hopeless--an
appeal based on sentiment. Before him was something real--work to be
accomplished--a problem to be solved. Beyond, was a prize as intangible
as the button of the Legion of Honor, which he concealed from his
friends that they might not feel he was "showing off." The fact is that
Edison cares little for the approval of the world, but that he cares
everything for the approval of himself. Difficult as it may be--perhaps
impossible--to trace its origin, Edison possesses what he would probably
call a well-developed case of New England conscience, for whose approval
he is incessantly occupied.

These, then, may be taken as the characteristics of Edison that have
enabled him to accomplish more than most men--a strong body, a clear
and active mind, a developed imagination, a capacity of great mental and
physical concentration, an iron-clad nervous system that knows no ennui,
intense optimism, and courageous self-confidence. Any one having these
capacities developed to the same extent, with the same opportunities for
use, would probably accomplish as much. And yet there is a peculiarity
about him that so far as is known has never been referred to before in
print. He seems to be conscientiously afraid of appearing indolent,
and in consequence subjects himself regularly to unnecessary hardship.
Working all night is seldom necessary, or until two or three o'clock in
the morning, yet even now he persists in such tests upon his strength.
Recently one of the writers had occasion to present to him a long
typewritten document of upward of thirty pages for his approval. It
was taken home to Glenmont. Edison had a few minor corrections to make,
probably not more than a dozen all told. They could have been embodied
by interlineations and marginal notes in the ordinary way, and certainly
would not have required more than ten or fifteen minutes of his time.
Yet what did he do? HE COPIED OUT PAINSTAKINGLY THE ENTIRE PAPER IN
LONG HAND, embodying the corrections as he went along, and presented the
result of his work the following morning. At the very least such a task
must have occupied several hours. How can such a trait--and scores of
similar experiences could be given--be explained except by the fact
that, evidently, he felt the need of special schooling in industry--that
under no circumstances must he allow a thought of indolence to enter his
mind?