Arduous Years In The Central West - 11

Arduous Years In The Central West - 11

Note has been made of the presence of Ellsworth in the Cincinnati office, and his service

with the Confederate guerrilla Morgan, for whom he tapped Federal wires, read military

messages, sent false ones, and did serious mischief generally. It is well known that one

operator can recognize another by the way in which he makes his signals--it is his style of

handwriting. Ellsworth possessed in a remarkable degree the skill of imitating these

peculiarities, and thus he deceived the Union operators easily. Edison says that while

apparently a quiet man in bearing, Ellsworth, after the excitement of fighting, found the

tameness of a telegraph office obnoxious, and that he became a bad "gun man" in the

Panhandle of Texas, where he was killed. "We soon became acquainted," says Edison of

this period in Cincinnati, "and he wanted me to invent a secret method of sending

despatches so that an intermediate operator could not tap the wire and understand it. He

said that if it could be accomplished, he could sell it to the Govern- ment for a large sum

of money. This suited me, and I started in and succeeded in making such an instrument,

which had in it the germ of my quadruplex now used throughout the world, permitting the

despatch of four messages over one wire simultaneously. By the time I had succeeded in

getting the apparatus to work, Ellsworth suddenly disappeared. Many years afterward I

used this little device again for the same purpose. At Menlo Park, New Jersey, I had my

laboratory. There were several Western Union wires cut into the laboratory, and used by

me in experimenting at night. One day I sat near an instrument which I had left connected

during the night. I soon found it was a private wire between New York and Philadelphia,

and I heard among a lot of stuff a message that surprised me. A week after that I had

occasion to go to New York, and, visiting the office of the lessee of the wire, I asked him

if he hadn't sent such and such a message. The expression that came over his face was a

sight. He asked me how I knew of any message. I told him the circumstances, and

suggested that he had better cipher such communications, or put on a secret sounder. The

result of the interview was that I installed for him my old Cincinnati apparatus, which

was used thereafter for many years."

Edison did not make a very long stay in Cincinnati this time, but went home after a while

to Port Huron. Soon tiring of idleness and isolation he sent "a cry from Macedonia" to his

old friend "Milt" Adams, who was in Boston, and whom he wished to rejoin if he could

get work promptly in the East.

Edison himself gives the details of this eventful move, when he went East to grow up

with the new art of electricity. "I had left Louisville the second time, and went home to

see my parents. After stopping at home for some time, I got restless, and thought I would

like to work in the East. Knowing that a former operator named Adams, who had worked

with me in the Cincinnati office, was in Boston, I wrote him that I wanted a job there. He

wrote back that if I came on immediately he could get me in the Western Union office. I

had helped out the Grand Trunk Railroad telegraph people by a new device when they

lost one of the two submarine cables they had across the river, making the remaining

cable act just as well for their purpose, as if they had two. I thought I was entitled to a

pass, which they conceded; and I started for Boston. After leaving Toronto a terrific

blizzard came up and the train got snowed under in a cut. After staying there twenty- four

hours, the trainmen made snowshoes of fence- rail splints and started out to find food,

which they did about a half mile away. They found a roadside inn, and by means of

snowshoes all the passengers were taken to the inn. The train reached Montreal four days

late. A number of the passengers and myself went to the military headquarters to testify

in favor of a soldier who was on furlough, and was two days late, which was a serious

matter with military people, I learned. We willingly did this, for this soldier was a great

story-teller, and made the time pass quickly. I met here a telegraph operator named

Stanton, who took me to his boarding-house, the most cheer- less I have ever been in.

Nobody got enough to eat; the bedclothes were too short and too thin; it was 28 degrees

below zero, and the wash-water was frozen solid. The board was cheap, being only $1.50

per week.