Arduous Years In The Central West - 2

Arduous Years In The Central West - 2

Of this device Mr. Edison remarks: "Together we took press for several nights, my

companion keeping the apparatus in adjustment and I copying. The regular press operator

would go to the theatre or take a nap, only finishing the report after 1 A.M. One of the

newspapers complained of bad copy toward the end of the report--that, is from 1 to 3

A.M., and requested that the operator taking the report up to 1 A.M.--which was

ourselves--take it all, as the copy then was perfectly unobjectionable. This led to an

investigation by the manager, and the scheme was forbidden.

"This instrument, many years afterward, was applied by me for transferring messages

from one wire to any other wire simultaneously, or after any interval of time. It consisted

of a disk of paper, the indentations being formed in a volute spiral, exactly as in the disk

phonograph to-day. It was this instrument which gave me the idea of the phonograph

while working on the telephone."

Arrived in Cincinnati, where he got employment in the Western Union commercial

telegraph department at a wage of $60 per month, Edison made the acquaintance of

Milton F. Adams, already referred to as facile princeps the typical telegrapher in all his

more sociable and brilliant aspects. Speaking of that time, Mr. Adams says: "I can well

recall when Edison drifted in to take a job. He was a youth of about eighteen years,

decidedly unprepossessing in dress and rather uncouth in manner. I was twenty-one, and

very dudish. He was quite thin in those days, and his nose was very prominent, giving a

Napoleonic look to his face, although the curious resemblance did not strike me at the

time. The boys did not take to him cheerfully, and he was lonesome. I sympathized with

him, and we became close companions. As an operator he had no superiors and very few

equals. Most of the time he was monkeying with the batteries and circuits, and devising

things to make the work of telegraphy less irksome. He also relieved the monotony of

office-work by fitting up the battery circuits to play jokes on his fellow-operators, and to

deal with the vermin that infested the premises. He arranged in the cellar what he called

his `rat paralyzer,' a very simple contrivance consisting of two plates insulated from each

other and connected with the main battery. They were so placed that when a rat passed

over them the fore feet on the one plate and the hind feet on the other completed the

circuit and the rat departed this life, electrocuted."

Shortly after Edison's arrival at Cincinnati came the close of the Civil War and the

assassination of President Lincoln. It was natural that telegraphers should take an intense

interest in the general struggle, for not only did they handle all the news relating to it, but

many of them were at one time or another personal participants. For example, one of the

operators in the Cincinnati office was George Ellsworth, who was telegrapher for

Morgan, the famous Southern Guerrilla, and was with him when he made his raid into

Ohio and was captured near the Pennsylvania line. Ellsworth himself made a narrow

escape by swimming the Ohio River with the aid of an army mule. Yet we can well

appreciate the unimpression- able way in which some of the men did their work, from an

anecdote that Mr. Edison tells of that awful night of Friday, April 14, 1865: "I noticed,"

he says, "an immense crowd gathering in the street outside a newspaper office. I called

the attention of the other operators to the crowd, and we sent a messenger boy to find the

cause of the excitement. He returned in a few minutes and shouted `Lincoln's shot.'

Instinctively the operators looked from one face to another to see which man had

received the news. All the faces were blank, and every man said he had not taken a word

about the shooting. `Look over your files,' said the boss to the man handling the press

stuff. For a few moments we waited in suspense, and then the man held up a sheet of

paper containing a short account of the shooting of the President. The operator had

worked so mechanically that he had handled the news without the slightest knowledge of

its significance." Mr. Adams says that at the time the city was en fete on account of the

close of the war, the name of the assassin was received by telegraph, and it was noted

with a thrill of horror that it was that of a brother of Edwin Booth and of Junius Brutus

Booth--the latter of whom was then playing at the old National Theatre. Booth was

hurried away into seclusion, and the next morning the city that had been so gay over

night with bunting was draped with mourning.