Introduction Of The Edison Electric Light - 4

Introduction Of The Edison Electric Light - 4

Another serious difficulty confronting Edison and his associates was that nowhere in the

world were there to be purchased any of the appliances necessary for the use of the

lighting system. Edison had resolved from the very first that the initial central station

embodying his various ideas should be installed in New York City, where he could

superintend the installation personally, and then watch the operation. Plans to that end

were now rapidly maturing; but there would be needed among many other things --every

one of them new and novel--dynamos, switchboards, regulators, pressure and current

indicators, fixtures in great variety, incandescent lamps, meters, sockets, small switches,

underground conductors, junction-boxes, service-boxes, manhole- boxes, connectors, and

even specially made wire. Now, not one of these miscellaneous things was in existence;

not an outsider was sufficiently informed about such devices to make them on order,

except perhaps the special wire. Edison therefore started first of all a lamp factory in one

of the buildings at Menlo Park, equipped it with novel machinery and apparatus, and

began to instruct men, boys, and girls, as they could be enlisted, in the absolutely new art,

putting Mr. Upton in charge.

With regard to the conditions attendant upon the manufacture of the lamps, Edison says:

"When we first started the electric light we had to have a factory for manufacturing

lamps. As the Edison Light Company did not seem disposed to go into manufacturing, we

started a small lamp factory at Menlo Park with what money I could raise from my other

inventions and royalties, and some assistance. The lamps at that time were costing about

$1.25 each to make, so I said to the company: `If you will give me a contract during the

life of the patents, I will make all the lamps required by the company and deliver them for

forty cents.' The company jumped at the chance of this offer, and a contract was drawn

up. We then bought at a receiver's sale at Harrison, New Jersey, a very large brick factory

building which had been used as an oil-cloth works. We got it at a great bargain, and only

paid a small sum down, and the balance on mortgage. We moved the lamp works from

Menlo Park to Harrison. The first year the lamps cost us about $1.10 each. We sold them

for forty cents; but there were only about twenty or thirty thousand of them. The next

year they cost us about seventy cents, and we sold them for forty. There were a good

many, and we lost more money the second year than the first. The third year I succeeded

in getting up machinery and in changing the processes, until it got down so that they cost

somewhere around fifty cents. I still sold them for forty cents, and lost more money that

year than any other, because the sales were increasing rapidly. The fourth year I got it

down to thirty-seven cents, and I made all the money up in one year that I had lost

previously. I finally got it down to twenty-two cents, and sold them for forty cents; and

they were made by the million. Whereupon the Wall Street people thought it was a very

lucrative business, so they concluded they would like to have it, and bought us out.

"One of the incidents which caused a very great cheapening was that, when we started,

one of the important processes had to be done by experts. This was the sealing on of the

part carrying the filament into the globe, which was rather a delicate operation in those

days, and required several months of training before any one could seal in a fair number

of parts in a day. When we got to the point where we employed eighty of these experts

they formed a union; and knowing it was impossible to manufacture lamps without them,

they became very insolent. One instance was that the son of one of these experts was

employed in the office, and when he was told to do anything would not do it, or would

give an insolent reply. He was discharged, whereupon the union notified us that unless

the boy was taken back the whole body would go out. It got so bad that the manager

came to me and said he could not stand it any longer; something had got to be done. They

were not only more surly; they were diminishing the output, and it became impossible to

manage the works. He got me enthused on the subject, so I started in to see if it were not

possible to do that operation by machinery. After feeling around for some days I got a

clew how to do it. I then put men on it I could trust, and made the preliminary machinery.

That seemed to work pretty well. I then made another machine which did the work

nicely. I then made a third machine, and would bring in yard men, ordinary laborers, etc.,

and when I could get these men to put the parts together as well as the trained experts, in

an hour, I considered the machine complete. I then went secretly to work and made thirty

of the machines. Up in the top loft of the factory we stored those machines, and at night

we put up the benches and got everything all ready. Then we discharged the office-boy.

Then the union went out. It has been out ever since.