Edison, His Life and Inventions

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


Another glimpse of this period of development is afforded by an
interesting article on the stock-reporting telegraph in the Electrical
World of March 4, 1899, by Mr. Ralph W. Pope, the well-known Secretary
of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, who had as a youth an
active and intimate connection with that branch of electrical industry.
In the course of his article he mentions the curious fact that Doctor
Laws at first, in receiving quotations from the Exchanges, was so
distrustful of the Morse system that he installed long lines of
speaking-tube as a more satisfactory and safe device than a telegraph
wire. As to the relations of that time Mr. Pope remarks: "The rivalry
between the two concerns resulted in consolidation, Doctor Laws's
enterprise being absorbed by the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company, while
the Laws stock printer was relegated to the scrap-heap and the museum.
Competition in the field did not, however, cease. Messrs. Pope and
Edison invented a one-wire printer, and started a system of 'gold
printers' devoted to the recording of gold quotations and sterling
exchange only. It was intended more especially for importers and
exchange brokers, and was furnished at a lower price than the indicator
service.... The building and equipment of private telegraph lines was
also entered upon. This business was also subsequently absorbed by the
Gold & Stock Telegraph Company, which was probably at this time at the
height of its prosperity. The financial organization of the company was
peculiar and worthy of attention. Each subscriber for a machine paid
in $100 for the privilege of securing an instrument. For the service
he paid $25 weekly. In case he retired or failed, he could transfer
his 'right,' and employees were constantly on the alert for purchasable
rights, which could be disposed of at a profit. It was occasionally
worth the profit to convince a man that he did not actually own the
machine which had been placed in his office.... The Western Union
Telegraph Company secured a majority of its stock, and Gen. Marshall
Lefferts was elected president. A private-line department was
established, and the business taken over from Pope, Edison, and Ashley
was rapidly enlarged."

At this juncture General Lefferts, as President of the Gold & Stock
Telegraph Company, requested Edison to go to work on improving the stock
ticker, furnishing the money; and the well-known "Universal" ticker, in
wide-spread use in its day, was one result. Mr. Edison gives a graphic
picture of the startling effect on his fortunes: "I made a great many
inventions; one was the special ticker used for many years outside of
New York in the large cities. This was made exceedingly simple, as
they did not have the experts we had in New York to handle anything
complicated. The same ticker was used on the London Stock Exchange.
After I had made a great number of inventions and obtained patents, the
General seemed anxious that the matter should be closed up. One day I
exhibited and worked a successful device whereby if a ticker should get
out of unison in a broker's office and commence to print wild figures,
it could be brought to unison from the central station, which saved the
labor of many men and much trouble to the broker. He called me into his
office, and said: 'Now, young man, I want to close up the matter of your
inventions. How much do you think you should receive?' I had made up
my mind that, taking into consideration the time and killing pace I
was working at, I should be entitled to $5000, but could get along with
$3000. When the psychological moment arrived, I hadn't the nerve to
name such a large sum, so I said: 'Well, General, suppose you make me an
offer.' Then he said: 'How would $40,000 strike you?' This caused me to
come as near fainting as I ever got. I was afraid he would hear my heart
beat. I managed to say that I thought it was fair. 'All right, I will
have a contract drawn; come around in three days and sign it, and I
will give you the money.' I arrived on time, but had been doing some
considerable thinking on the subject. The sum seemed to be very large
for the amount of work, for at that time I determined the value by the
time and trouble, and not by what the invention was worth to others. I
thought there was something unreal about it. However, the contract was
handed to me. I signed without reading it." Edison was then handed the
first check he had ever received, one for $40,000 drawn on the Bank of
New York, at the corner of William and Wall Streets. On going to the
bank and passing in the check at the wicket of the paying teller,
some brief remarks were made to him, which in his deafness he did not
understand. The check was handed back to him, and Edison, fancying for a
moment that in some way he had been cheated, went outside "to the
large steps to let the cold sweat evaporate." He then went back to the
General, who, with his secretary, had a good laugh over the matter,
told him the check must be endorsed, and sent with him a young man to
identify him. The ceremony of identification performed with the paying
teller, who was quite merry over the incident, Edison was given the
amount in bundles of small bills "until there certainly seemed to be one
cubic foot." Unaware that he was the victim of a practical joke, Edison
proceeded gravely to stow away the money in his overcoat pockets and all
his other pockets. He then went to Newark and sat up all night with
the money for fear it might be stolen. Once more he sought help next
morning, when the General laughed heartily, and, telling the clerk that
the joke must not be carried any further, enabled him to deposit the
currency in the bank and open an account.

Thus in an inconceivably brief time had Edison passed from poverty to
independence; made a deep impression as to his originality and ability
on important people, and brought out valuable inventions; lifting
himself at one bound out of the ruck of mediocrity, and away from the
deadening drudgery of the key. Best of all he was enterprising, one of
the leaders and pioneers for whom the world is always looking; and, to
use his own criticism of himself, he had "too sanguine a temperament
to keep money in solitary confinement." With quiet self-possession he
seized his opportunity, began to buy machinery, rented a shop and got
work for it. Moving quickly into a larger shop, Nos. 10 and 12 Ward
Street, Newark, New Jersey, he secured large orders from General
Lefferts to build stock tickers, and employed fifty men. As business
increased he put on a night force, and was his own foreman on both
shifts. Half an hour of sleep three or four times in the twenty-four
hours was all he needed in those days, when one invention succeeded
another with dazzling rapidity, and when he worked with the fierce,
eruptive energy of a great volcano, throwing out new ideas incessantly
with spectacular effect on the arts to which they related. It has always
been a theory with Edison that we sleep altogether too much; but on
the other hand he never, until long past fifty, knew or practiced the
slightest moderation in work or in the use of strong coffee and black
cigars. He has, moreover, while of tender and kindly disposition, never
hesitated to use men up as freely as a Napoleon or Grant; seeing only
the goal of a complete invention or perfected device, to attain which
all else must become subsidiary. He gives a graphic picture of his first
methods as a manufacturer: "Nearly all my men were on piece work, and
I allowed them to make good wages, and never cut until the pay became
absurdly high as they got more expert. I kept no books. I had two hooks.
All the bills and accounts I owed I jabbed on one hook; and memoranda of
all owed to myself I put on the other. When some of the bills fell due,
and I couldn't deliver tickers to get a supply of money, I gave a note.
When the notes were due, a messenger came around from the bank with the
note and a protest pinned to it for $1.25. Then I would go to New York
and get an advance, or pay the note if I had the money. This method of
giving notes for my accounts and having all notes protested I kept up
over two years, yet my credit was fine. Every store I traded with was
always glad to furnish goods, perhaps in amazed admiration of my system
of doing business, which was certainly new." After a while Edison got
a bookkeeper, whose vagaries made him look back with regret on the
earlier, primitive method. "The first three months I had him go over
the books to find out how much we had made. He reported $3000. I gave
a supper to some of my men to celebrate this, only to be told two days
afterward that he had made a mistake, and that we had lost $500; and
then a few days after that he came to me again and said he was all
mixed up, and now found that we had made over $7000." Edison changed
bookkeepers, but never thereafter counted anything real profit until he
had paid all his debts and had the profits in the bank.

The factory work at this time related chiefly to stock tickers,
principally the "Universal," of which at one time twelve hundred were
in use. Edison's connection with this particular device was very close
while it lasted. In a review of the ticker art, Mr. Callahan stated,
with rather grudging praise, that "a ticker at the present time (1901)
would be considered as impracticable and unsalable if it were not
provided with a unison device," and he goes on to remark: "The first
unison on stock tickers was one used on the Laws printer. [2] It was a
crude and unsatisfactory piece of mechanism and necessitated doubling
of the battery in order to bring it into action. It was short-lived. The
Edison unison comprised a lever with a free end travelling in a spiral
or worm on the type-wheel shaft until it met a pin at the end of the
worm, thus obstructing the shaft and leaving the type-wheels at the
zero-point until released by the printing lever. This device is too
well known to require a further description. It is not applicable to any
instrument using two independently moving type-wheels; but on nearly if
not all other instruments will be found in use." The stock ticker has
enjoyed the devotion of many brilliant inventors--G. M. Phelps, H. Van
Hoevenbergh, A. A. Knudson, G. B. Scott, S. D. Field, John Burry--and
remains in extensive use as an appliance for which no substitute or
competitor has been found. In New York the two great stock exchanges
have deemed it necessary to own and operate a stock-ticker service for
the sole benefit of their members; and down to the present moment the
process of improvement has gone on, impelled by the increasing volume of
business to be reported. It is significant of Edison's work, now dimmed
and overlaid by later advances, that at the very outset he recognized
the vital importance of interchangeability in the construction of this
delicate and sensitive apparatus. But the difficulties of these early
days were almost insurmountable. Mr. R. W. Pope says of the "Universal"
machines that they were simple and substantial and generally
satisfactory, but adds: "These instruments were supposed to have been
made with interchangeable parts; but as a matter of fact the instances
in which these parts would fit were very few. The instruction-book
prepared for the use of inspectors stated that 'The parts should not be
tinkered nor bent, as they are accurately made and interchangeable.' The
difficulties encountered in fitting them properly doubtless gave rise
to a story that Mr. Edison had stated that there were three degrees of
interchangeability. This was interpreted to mean: First, the parts will
fit; second, they will almost fit; third, they do not fit, and can't be
made to fit."

[Footnote 2: This I invented as well.--T. A. E.]

This early shop affords an illustration of the manner in which Edison
has made a deep impression on the personnel of the electrical arts. At
a single bench there worked three men since rich or prominent. One
was Sigmund Bergmann, for a time partner with Edison in his lighting
developments in the United States, and now head and principal owner
of electrical works in Berlin employing ten thousand men. The next
man adjacent was John Kruesi, afterward engineer of the great General
Electric Works at Schenectady. A third was Schuckert, who left the bench
to settle up his father's little estate at Nuremberg, stayed there and
founded electrical factories, which became the third largest in Germany,
their proprietor dying very wealthy. "I gave them a good training as
to working hours and hustling," says their quondam master; and this is
equally true as applied to many scores of others working in companies
bearing the Edison name or organized under Edison patents. It is
curiously significant in this connection that of the twenty-one
presidents of the national society, the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers, founded in 1884, eight have been intimately associated with
Edison--namely, Norvin Green and F. L. Pope, as business colleagues of
the days of which we now write; while Messrs. Frank J. Sprague, T. C.
Martin, A. E. Kennelly, S. S. Wheeler, John W. Lieb, Jr., and Louis A.
Ferguson have all been at one time or another in the Edison employ. The
remark was once made that if a famous American teacher sat at one end
of a log and a student at the other end, the elements of a successful
university were present. It is equally true that in Edison and the many
men who have graduated from his stern school of endeavor, America has
had its foremost seat of electrical engineering.



CHAPTER VIII

AUTOMATIC, DUPLEX, AND QUADRUPLEX TELEGRAPHY

WORK of various kinds poured in upon the young manufacturer, busy also
with his own schemes and inventions, which soon began to follow so many
distinct lines of inquiry that it ceases to be easy or necessary for the
historian to treat them all in chronological sequence. Some notion of
his ceaseless activity may be formed from the fact that he started no
fewer than three shops in Newark during 1870-71, and while directing
these was also engaged by the men who controlled the Automatic Telegraph
Company of New York, which had a circuit to Washington, to help it out
of its difficulties. "Soon after starting the large shop (10 and 12 Ward
Street, Newark), I rented shop-room to the inventor of a new rifle.
I think it was the Berdan. In any event, it was a rifle which was
subsequently adopted by the British Army. The inventor employed a
tool-maker who was the finest and best tool-maker I had ever seen. I
noticed that he worked pretty near the whole of the twenty-four hours.
This kind of application I was looking for. He was getting $21.50 per
week, and was also paid for overtime. I asked him if he could run the
shop. 'I don't know; try me!' he said. 'All right, I will give you $60
per week to run both shifts.' He went at it. His executive ability
was greater than that of any other man I have yet seen. His memory was
prodigious, conversation laconic, and movements rapid. He doubled
the production inside three months, without materially increasing the
pay-roll, by increasing the cutting speeds of tools, and by the use of
various devices. When in need of rest he would lie down on a work-bench,
sleep twenty or thirty minutes, and wake up fresh. As this was just what
I could do, I naturally conceived a great pride in having such a man in
charge of my work. But almost everything has trouble connected with it.
He disappeared one day, and although I sent men everywhere that it was
likely he could be found, he was not discovered. After two weeks he came
into the factory in a terrible condition as to clothes and face. He sat
down and, turning to me, said: 'Edison, it's no use, this is the third
time; I can't stand prosperity. Put my salary back and give me a job.' I
was very sorry to learn that it was whiskey that spoiled such a career.
I gave him an inferior job and kept him for a long time."

Edison had now entered definitely upon that career as an inventor which
has left so deep an imprint on the records of the United States Patent
Office, where from his first patent in 1869 up to the summer of 1910
no fewer than 1328 separate patents have been applied for in his name,
averaging thirty-two every year, and one about every eleven days; with a
substantially corresponding number issued. The height of this inventive
activity was attained about 1882, in which year no fewer than 141
patents were applied for, and seventy-five granted to him, or nearly
nine times as many as in 1876, when invention as a profession may
be said to have been adopted by this prolific genius. It will be
understood, of course, that even these figures do not represent the full
measure of actual invention, as in every process and at every step there
were many discoveries that were not brought to patent registration, but
remained "trade secrets." And furthermore, that in practically every
case the actual patented invention followed from one to a dozen or more
gradually developing forms of the same idea.

An Englishman named George Little had brought over a system of automatic
telegraphy which worked well on a short line, but was a failure when put
upon the longer circuits for which automatic methods are best adapted.
The general principle involved in automatic or rapid telegraphs, except
the photographic ones, is that of preparing the message in advance, for
dispatch, by perforating narrow strips of paper with holes--work which
can be done either by hand-punches or by typewriter apparatus. A certain
group of perforations corresponds to a Morse group of dots and dashes
for a letter of the alphabet. When the tape thus made ready is run
rapidly through a transmitting machine, electrical contact occurs
wherever there is a perforation, permitting the current from the battery
to flow into the line and thus transmit signals correspondingly. At
the distant end these signals are received sometimes on an ink-writing
recorder as dots and dashes, or even as typewriting letters; but in
many of the earlier systems, like that of Bain, the record at the higher
rates of speed was effected by chemical means, a tell-tale stain
being made on the travelling strip of paper by every spurt of incoming
current. Solutions of potassium iodide were frequently used for this
purpose, giving a sharp, blue record, but fading away too rapidly.

The Little system had perforating apparatus operated by electromagnets;
its transmitting machine was driven by a small electromagnetic motor;
and the record was made by electrochemical decomposition, the writing
member being a minute platinum roller instead of the more familiar iron
stylus. Moreover, a special type of wire had been put up for the single
circuit of two hundred and eighty miles between New York and Washington.
This is believed to have been the first "compound" wire made for
telegraphic or other signalling purposes, the object being to secure
greater lightness with textile strength and high conductivity. It had a
steel core, with a copper ribbon wound spirally around it, and tinned
to the core wire. But the results obtained were poor, and in their
necessity the parties in interest turned to Edison.

Mr. E. H. Johnson tells of the conditions: "Gen. W. J. Palmer and some
New York associates had taken up the Little automatic system and had
expended quite a sum in its development, when, thinking they had reduced
it to practice, they got Tom Scott, of the Pennsylvania Railroad to send
his superintendent of telegraph over to look into and report upon it. Of
course he turned it down. The syndicate was appalled at this report, and
in this extremity General Palmer thought of the man who had impressed
him as knowing it all by the telling of telegraphic tales as a means of
whiling away lonesome hours on the plains of Colorado, where they were
associated in railroad-building. So this man--it was I--was sent for to
come to New York and assuage their grief if possible. My report was that
the system was sound fundamentally, that it contained the germ of a good
thing, but needed working out. Associated with General Palmer was one
Col. Josiah C. Reiff, then Eastern bond agent for the Kansas Pacific
Railroad. The Colonel was always resourceful, and didn't fail in
this case. He knew of a young fellow who was doing some good work for
Marshall Lefferts, and who it was said was a genius at invention, and
a very fiend for work. His name was Edison, and he had a shop out at
Newark, New Jersey. He came and was put in my care for the purpose of a
mutual exchange of ideas and for a report by me as to his competency in
the matter. This was my introduction to Edison. He confirmed my views
of the automatic system. He saw its possibilities, as well as the chief
obstacles to be overcome--viz., the sluggishness of the wire, together
with the need of mechanical betterment of the apparatus; and he agreed
to take the job on one condition--namely, that Johnson would stay and
help, as 'he was a man with ideas.' Mr. Johnson was accordingly given
three months' leave from Colorado railroad-building, and has never seen
Colorado since."

Applying himself to the difficulties with wonted energy, Edison devised
new apparatus, and solved the problem to such an extent that he and his
assistants succeeded in transmitting and recording one thousand words
per minute between New York and Washington, and thirty-five hundred
words per minute to Philadelphia. Ordinary manual transmission by key
is not in excess of forty to fifty words a minute. Stated very briefly,
Edison's principal contribution to the commercial development of the
automatic was based on the observation that in a line of considerable
length electrical impulses become enormously extended, or sluggish, due
to a phenomenon known as self-induction, which with ordinary Morse work
is in a measure corrected by condensers. But in the automatic the aim
was to deal with impulses following each other from twenty-five to one
hundred times as rapidly as in Morse lines, and to attempt to receive
and record intelligibly such a lightning-like succession of signals
would have seemed impossible. But Edison discovered that by utilizing
a shunt around the receiving instrument, with a soft iron core, the
self-induction would produce a momentary and instantaneous reversal of
the current at the end of each impulse, and thereby give an absolutely
sharp definition to each signal. This discovery did away entirely with
sluggishness, and made it possible to secure high speeds over lines of
comparatively great lengths. But Edison's work on the automatic did
not stop with this basic suggestion, for he took up and perfected the
mechanical construction of the instruments, as well as the perforators,
and also suggested numerous electrosensitive chemicals for the
receivers, so that the automatic telegraph, almost entirely by reason of
his individual work, was placed on a plane of commercial practicability.
The long line of patents secured by him in this art is an interesting
exhibit of the development of a germ to a completed system, not, as
is usually the case, by numerous inventors working over considerable
periods of time, but by one man evolving the successive steps at a white
heat of activity.

This system was put in commercial operation, but the company, now
encouraged, was quite willing to allow Edison to work out his idea of an
automatic that would print the message in bold Roman letters instead
of in dots and dashes; with consequent gain in speed in delivery of
the message after its receipt in the operating-room, it being obviously
necessary in the case of any message received in Morse characters to
copy it in script before delivery to the recipient. A large shop was
rented in Newark, equipped with $25,000 worth of machinery, and Edison
was given full charge. Here he built their original type of apparatus,
as improved, and also pushed his experiments on the letter system so far
that at a test, between New York and Philadelphia, three thousand words
were sent in one minute and recorded in Roman type. Mr. D. N. Craig, one
of the early organizers of the Associated Press, became interested
in this company, whose president was Mr. George Harrington, formerly
Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury.

Mr. Craig brought with him at this time--the early seventies--from
Milwaukee a Mr. Sholes, who had a wooden model of a machine to which had
been given the then new and unfamiliar name of "typewriter." Craig
was interested in the machine, and put the model in Edison's hands to
perfect. "This typewriter proved a difficult thing," says Edison, "to
make commercial. The alignment of the letters was awful. One letter
would be one-sixteenth of an inch above the others; and all the letters
wanted to wander out of line. I worked on it till the machine gave
fair results. [3] Some were made and used in the office of the Automatic
company. Craig was very sanguine that some day all business letters
would be written on a typewriter. He died before that took place; but
it gradually made its way. The typewriter I got into commercial shape is
now known as the Remington. About this time I got an idea I could devise
an apparatus by which four messages could simultaneously be sent over a
single wire without interfering with each other. I now had five shops,
and with experimenting on this new scheme I was pretty busy; at least I
did not have ennui."