Automatic, Duplex, And Quadruplex Telegraphy - 6

Automatic, Duplex, And Quadruplex Telegraphy - 6

The course of electrical history has been variegated by some very remarkable litigation;
but none was ever more extraordinary than that referred to here as arising from the
transfer of the Automatic Telegraph Company to Mr. Jay Gould and the Atlantic &
Pacific Telegraph Company. The terms accepted by Colonel Reiff from Mr. Gould, on
December 30, 1874, provided that the purchasing telegraph company should increase its
capital to $15,000,000, of which the Automatic interests were to receive $4,000,000 for
their patents, contracts, etc. The stock was then selling at about 25, and in the later
consolidation with the Western Union "went in" at about 60; so that the real purchase
price was not less than $1,000,000 in cash. There was a private arrangement in writing
with Mr. Gould that he was to receive one-tenth of the "result" to the Automatic group,
and a tenth of the further results secured at home and abroad. Mr. Gould personally
bought up and gave money and bonds for one or two individual interests on the above
basis, including that of Harrington, who in his representative capacity executed
assignments to Mr. Gould. But payments were then stopped, and the other owners were
left without any compensation, although all that belonged to them in the shape of
property and patents was taken over bodily into Atlantic & Pacific hands, and never again
left them. Attempts at settlement were made in their behalf, and dragged wearily, due
apparently to the fact that the plans were blocked by General Eckert, who had in some
manner taken offence at a transaction effected without his active participation in all the
details. Edison, who became under the agreement the electrician of the Atlantic & Pacific
Telegraph Company, has testified to the unfriendly attitude assumed toward him by
General Eckert, as president. In a graphic letter from Menlo Park to Mr. Gould, dated
February 2, 1877, Edison makes a most vigorous and impassioned complaint of his
treatment, "which, acting cumulatively, was a long, unbroken disappointment to me"; and
he reminds Mr. Gould of promises made to him the day the transfer had been effected of
Edison's interest in the quadruplex. The situation was galling to the busy, high-spirited
young inventor, who, moreover, "had to live"; and it led to his resumption of work for the
Western Union Telegraph Company, which was only too glad to get him back.
Meantime, the saddened and perplexed Automatic group was left unpaid, and it was not
until 1906, on a bill filed nearly thirty years before, that Judge Hazel, in the United States
Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, found strongly in favor of the
claimants and ordered an accounting. The court held that there had been a most wrongful
appropriation of the patents, including alike those relating to the automatic, the duplex,
and the quadruplex, all being included in the general arrangement under which Mr. Gould
had held put his tempting bait of $4,000,000. In the end, however, the complainant had
nothing to show for all his struggle, as the master who made the accounting set the
damages at one dollar!
Aside from the great value of the quadruplex, saving millions of dollars, for a share in
which Edison received $30,000, the automatic itself is described as of considerable utility
by Sir William Thomson in his juror report at the Centennial Exposition of 1876,
recommending it for award. This leading physicist of his age, afterward Lord Kelvin, was
an adept in telegraphy, having made the ocean cable talk, and he saw in Edison's
"American Automatic," as exhibited by the Atlantic & Pacific company, a most
meritorious and useful system. With the aid of Mr. E. H. Johnson he made exhaustive
tests, carrying away with him to Glasgow University the surprising records that he
obtained. His official report closes thus: "The electromagnetic shunt with soft iron core,
invented by Mr. Edison, utilizing Professor Henry's discovery of electromagnetic
induction in a single circuit to produce a momentary reversal of the line current at the
instant when the battery is thrown off and so cut off the chemical marks sharply at the
proper instant, is the electrical secret of the great speed he has achieved. The main
peculiarities of Mr. Edison's automatic telegraph shortly stated in conclusion are: (1) the
perforator; (2) the contact- maker; (3) the electromagnetic shunt; and (4) the ferric
cyanide of iron solution. It deserves award as a very important step in land telegraphy."
The attitude thus disclosed toward Mr. Edison's work was never changed, except that
admiration grew as fresh inventions were brought forward. To the day of his death Lord
Kelvin remained on terms of warmest friendship with his American co-laborer, with
whose genius he thus first became acquainted at Philadelphia in the environment of
Franklin.
It is difficult to give any complete idea of the activity maintained at the Newark shops
during these anxious, harassed years, but the statement that at one time no fewer than
forty-five different inventions were being worked upon, will furnish some notion of the
incandescent activity of the inventor and his assistants. The hours were literally endless;
and upon one occasion, when the order was in hand for a large quantity of stock tickers,
Edison locked his men in until the job had been finished of making the machine perfect,
and "all the bugs taken out," which meant sixty hours of unintermitted struggle with the
difficulties. Nor were the problems and inventions all connected with telegraphy. On the
contrary, Edison's mind welcomed almost any new suggestion as a relief from the regular
work in hand. Thus: "Toward the latter part of 1875, in the Newark shop, I invented a
device for multiplying copies of letters, which I sold to Mr. A. B. Dick, of Chicago, and
in the years since it has been universally introduced throughout the world. It is called the
`Mimeograph.' I also invented devices for and introduced paraffin paper, now used
universally for wrapping up candy, etc." The mimeograph employs a pointed stylus, used
as in writing with a lead-pencil, which is moved over a kind of tough prepared paper
placed on a finely grooved steel plate. The writing is thus traced by means of a series of
minute perforations in the sheet, from which, as a stencil, hundreds of copies can be
made. Such stencils can be prepared on typewriters. Edison elaborated this principle in
two other forms--one pneumatic and one electric--the latter being in essence a
reciprocating motor. Inside the barrel of the electric pen a little plunger, carrying the
stylus, travels to and fro at a very high rate of speed, due to the attraction and repulsion of
the solenoid coils of wire surrounding it; and as the hand of the writer guides it the pen
thus makes its record in a series of very minute perforations in the paper. The current
from a small battery suffices to energize the pen, and with the stencil thus made hundreds
of copies of the document can be furnished. As a matter of fact, as many as three
thousand copies have been made from a single mimeographic stencil of this character.