Edison's Method In Inventing - 9

Edison's Method In Inventing - 9

 " Destructively distil the following substances down to a point just short of carbonization,

so that the residuum can be taken out of the retort, powdered, and acted on by all the

solvents just as the asphalt in previous page. The distillation should be carried to, say,

600 degrees or 700 degrees Fahr., but not continued long enough to wholly reduce mass

to charcoal, but always run to blackness. Separate the residuum in as many definite parts

as possible, bottle and label, and keep accurate records as to process, weights, etc., so a

reproduction of the experiment can at any time be made: Gelatine, 4 lbs.; asphalt, hard

Cuban, 10 lbs.; coal-tar or pitch, 10 lbs.; wood-pitch, 10 lbs.; Syrian asphalt, 10 lbs.;

bituminous coal, 10 lbs.; cane-sugar, 10 lbs.; glucose, 10 lbs.; dextrine, 10 lbs.; glycerine,

10 lbs.; tartaric acid, 5 lbs.; gum guiac, 5 lbs.; gum amber, 3 lbs.; gum tragacanth, 3 Lbs.;

aniline red, 1 lb.; aniline oil, 1 lb.; crude anthracene, 5 lbs.; petroleum pitch, 10 lbs.;

albumen from eggs, 2 lbs.; tar from passing chlorine through aniline oil, 2 lbs.; citric acid,

5 lbs.; sawdust of boxwood, 3 lbs.; starch, 5 lbs.; shellac, 3 lbs.; gum Arabic, 5 lbs.;

castor oil, 5 lbs."

The empirical nature of his method will be apparent from an examination of the above

items; but in pur- suing it he leaves all uncertainty behind and, trusting nothing to theory,

he acquires absolute knowledge. Whatever may be the mental processes by which he

arrives at the starting-point of any specific line of research, the final results almost

invariably prove that he does not plunge in at random; indeed, as an old associate

remarked: "When Edison takes up any proposition in natural science, his perceptions

seem to be elementally broad and analytical, that is to say, in addition to the knowledge

he has acquired from books and observation, he appears to have an intuitive apprehension

of the general order of things, as they might be supposed to exist in natural relation to

each other. It has always seemed to me that he goes to the core of things at once."

Although nothing less than results from actual experiments are acceptable to him as

established facts, this view of Edison may also account for his peculiar and somewhat

weird ability to "guess" correctly, a faculty which has frequently enabled him to take

short cuts to lines of investigation whose outcome has verified in a most remarkable

degree statements apparently made offhand and without calculation. Mr. Upton says:

"One of the main impressions left upon me, after knowing Mr. Edison for many years, is

the marvellous accuracy of his guesses. He will see the general nature of a result long

before it can be reached by mathematical calculation." This was supplemented by one of

his engineering staff, who remarked: "Mr. Edison can guess better than a good many men

can figure, and so far as my experience goes, I have found that he is almost invariably

correct. His guess is more than a mere starting- point, and often turns out to be the final

solution of a problem. I can only account for it by his remarkable insight and wonderful

natural sense of the proportion of things, in addition to which he seems to carry in his

head determining factors of all kinds, and has the ability to apply them instantly in

considering any mechanical problem."

While this mysterious intuitive power has been of the greatest advantage in connection

with the vast number of technical problems that have entered into his life-work, there

have been many remarkable instances in which it has seemed little less than prophecy,

and it is deemed worth while to digress to the extent of relating two of them. One day in

the summer of 1881, when the incandescent lamp-industry was still in swaddling clothes,

Edison was seated in the room of Major Eaton, vice-president of the Edison Electric

Light Company, talking over business matters, when Mr. Upton came in from the lamp

factory at Menlo Park, and said: "Well, Mr. Edison, we completed a thousand lamps today."

Edison looked up and said "Good," then relapsed into a thoughtful mood. In about

two minutes he raised his head, and said: "Upton, in fifteen years you will be making

forty thousand lamps a day." None of those present ventured to make any remark on this

assertion, although all felt that it was merely a random guess, based on the sanguine

dream of an inventor. The business had not then really made a start, and being entirely

new was without precedent upon which to base any such statement, but, as a matter of

fact, the records of the lamp factory show that in 1896 its daily output of lamps was

actually about forty thousand.