Automatic, Duplex, And Quadruplex Telegraphy - 4

Automatic, Duplex, And Quadruplex Telegraphy - 4

The immense difficulties of reducing such a system to practice may be readily conceived,

especially when it is remembered that the "line" itself, running across hundreds of miles

of country, is subject to all manner of atmospheric conditions, and varies from moment to

moment in its ability to carry current, and also when it is borne in mind that the

quadruplex requires at each end of the line a so-called "artificial line," which must have

the exact resistance of the working line and must be varied with the variations in

resistance of the working line. At this juncture other schemes were fermenting in his

brain; but the quadruplex engrossed him. "This problem was of most difficult and

complicated kind, and I bent all my energies toward its solution. It required a peculiar

effort of the mind, such as the imagining of eight different things moving simultaneously

on a mental plane, without anything to demonstrate their efficiency." It is perhaps hardly

to be wondered at that when notified he would have to pay 12 1/2 per cent. extra if his

taxes in Newark were not at once paid, he actually forgot his own name when asked for it

suddenly at the City Hall, lost his place in the line, and, the fatal hour striking, had to pay

the surcharge after all!

So important an invention as the quadruplex could not long go begging, but there were

many difficulties connected with its introduction, some of which are best described in

Mr. Edison's own words: "Around 1873 the owners of the Automatic Telegraph

Company commenced negotiations with Jay Gould for the purchase of the wires between

New York and Washington, and the patents for the system, then in successful operation.

Jay Gould at that time controlled the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company, and was

competing with the Western Union and endeavoring to depress Western Union stock on

the Exchange. About this time I invented the quadruplex. I wanted to interest the Western

Union Telegraph Company in it, with a view of selling it, but was unsuccessful until I

made an arrangement with the chief electrician of the company, so that he could be

known as a joint inventor and receive a portion of the money. At that time I was very

short of money, and needed it more than glory. This electrician appeared to want glory

more than money, so it was an easy trade. I brought my apparatus over and was given a

separate room with a marble-tiled floor, which, by-the-way, was a very hard kind of floor

to sleep on, and started in putting on the finishing touches.

"After two months of very hard work, I got a detail at regular times of eight operators,

and we got it working nicely from one room to another over a wire which ran to Albany

and back. Under certain conditions of weather, one side of the quadruplex would work

very shakily, and I had not succeeded in ascertaining the cause of the trouble. On a

certain day, when there was a board meeting of the company, I was to make an exhibition

test. The day arrived. I had picked the best operators in New York, and they were familiar

with the apparatus. I arranged that if a storm occurred, and the bad side got shaky, they

should do the best they could and draw freely on their imaginations. They were sending

old messages. About 1, o'clock everything went wrong, as there was a storm somewhere

near Albany, and the bad side got shaky. Mr. Orton, the president, and Wm. H.

Vanderbilt and the other directors came in. I had my heart trying to climb up around my

oesophagus. I was paying a sheriff five dollars a day to withhold judgment which had

been entered against me in a case which I had paid no attention to; and if the quadruplex

had not worked before the president, I knew I was to have trouble and might lose my

machinery. The New York Times came out next day with a full account. I was given

$5000 as part payment for the invention, which made me easy, and I expected the whole

thing would be closed up. But Mr. Orton went on an extended tour just about that time. I

had paid for all the experiments on the quadruplex and exhausted the money, and I was

again in straits. In the mean time I had introduced the apparatus on the lines of the

company, where it was very successful.

"At that time the general superintendent of the Western Union was Gen. T. T. Eckert

(who had been Assistant Secretary of War with Stanton). Eckert was secretly negotiating

with Gould to leave the Western Union and take charge of the Atlantic & Pacific--

Gould's company. One day Eckert called me into his office and made inquiries about

money matters. I told him Mr. Orton had gone off and left me without means, and I was

in straits. He told me I would never get another cent, but that he knew a man who would

buy it. I told him of my arrangement with the electrician, and said I could not sell it as a

whole to anybody; but if I got enough for it, I would sell all my interest in any SHARE I

might have. He seemed to think his party would agree to this. I had a set of quadruplex

over in my shop, 10 and 12 Ward Street, Newark, and he arranged to bring him over next

evening to see the apparatus. So the next morning Eckert came over with Jay Gould and

introduced him to me. This was the first time I had ever seen him. I exhibited and

explained the apparatus, and they departed. The next day Eckert sent for me, and I was

taken up to Gould's house, which was near the Windsor Hotel, Fifth Avenue. In the

basement he had an office. It was in the evening, and we went in by the servants'

entrance, as Eckert probably feared that he was watched. Gould started in at once and

asked me how much I wanted. I said: `Make me an offer.' Then he said: `I will give you

$30,000.' I said: `I will sell any interest I may have for that money,' which was something

more than I thought I could get. The next morning I went with Gould to the office of his

lawyers, Sherman & Sterling, and received a check for $30,000, with a remark by Gould

that I had got the steamboat Plymouth Rock, as he had sold her for $30,000 and had just

received the check. There was a big fight on between Gould's company and the Western

Union, and this caused more litigation. The electrician, on account of the testimony

involved, lost his glory. The judge never decided the case, but went crazy a few months

afterward." It was obviously a characteristically shrewd move on the part of Mr. Gould to

secure an interest in the quadruplex, as a factor in his campaign against the Western

Union, and as a decisive step toward his control of that system, by the subsequent merger

that included not only the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company, but the American

Union Telegraph Company.