Edison's Method In Inventing - 3

Edison's Method In Inventing - 3

 Having conceived some new idea and read everything obtainable relating to the subject in

general, Edison's fertility of resource and originality come into play. Taking one of the

laboratory note-books, he will write in it a memorandum of the experiments to be tried,

illustrated, if necessary, by sketches. This book is then passed on to that member of the

experimental staff whose special training and experience are best adapted to the work.

Here strenuousness is expected; and an immediate commencement of investigation and

prompt report are required. Sometimes the subject may be such as to call for a long line

of frequent tests which necessitate patient and accurate attention to minute details.

Results must be reported often--daily, or possibly with still greater frequency. Edison

does not forget what is going on; but in his daily tours through the laboratory keeps in

touch with all the work that is under the hands of his various assistants, showing by an

instant grasp of the present conditions of any experiment that he has a full consciousness

of its meaning and its reference to his original conception.

The year 1869 saw the beginning of Edison's career as an acknowledged inventor of

commercial devices. From the outset, an innate recognition of system dictated the

desirability and wisdom of preserving records of his experiments and inventions. The

primitive records, covering the earliest years, were mainly jotted down on loose sheets of

paper covered with sketches, notes, and data, pasted into large scrap- books, or preserved

in packages; but with the passing of years and enlargement of his interests, it became the

practice to make all original laboratory notes in large, uniform books. This course was

pursued until the Menlo Park period, when he instituted a new regime that has been

continued down to the present day. A standard form of note-book, about eight and a half

by six inches, containing about two hundred pages, was adopted. A number of these

books were (and are now) always to be found scattered around in the different sections of

the laboratory, and in them have been noted by Edison all his ideas, sketches, and

memoranda. Details of the various experiments concerning them have been set down by

his assistants from time to time.

These later laboratory note-books, of which there are now over one thousand in the

series, are eloquent in the history they reveal of the strenuous labors of Edison and his

assistants and the vast fields of research he has covered during the last thirty years. They

are overwhelmingly rich in biographic material, but analysis would be a prohibitive task

for one person, and perhaps interesting only to technical readers. Their pages cover

practically every department of science. The countless thousands of separate experiments

recorded exhibit the operations of a master mind seeking to surprise Nature into a

betrayal of her secrets by asking her the same question in a hundred different ways. For

instance, when Edison was investigating a certain problem of importance many years

ago, the note-books show that on this point alone about fifteen thousand experiments and

tests were made by one of his assistants.

A most casual glance over these note-books will illustrate the following remark, which

was made to one of the writers not long ago by a member of the laboratory staff who has

been experimenting there for twenty years: "Edison can think of more ways of doing a

thing than any man I ever saw or heard of. He tries everything and never lets up, even

though failure is apparently staring him in the face. He only stops when he simply can't

go any further on that particular line. When he decides on any mode of procedure he

gives his notes to the experimenter and lets him alone, only stepping in from time to time

to look at the operations and receive reports of progress."