Inventing A Complete System Of Lighting - 9

  Inventing A Complete System Of Lighting - 9

 During the year 1880 Edison had made application for sixty patents, of which thirty-two

were in relation to incandescent lamps; seven covered inventions relating to distributing

systems (including the two above particularized); five had reference to inventions of

parts, such as motors, sockets, etc.; six covered inventions relating to dynamo-electric

machines; three related to electric railways, and seven to miscellaneous apparatus, such

as telegraph relays, magnetic ore separators, magneto signalling apparatus, etc.

The list of Mr. Edison's patents (see Appendices) is not only a monument to his life's

work, but serves to show what subjects he has worked on from year to year since 1868.

The reader will see from an examination of this list that the years 1880, 1881, 1882, and

1883 were the most prolific periods of invention. It is worth while to scrutinize this list

closely to appreciate the wide range of his activities. Not that his patents cover his entire

range of work by any means, for his note-books reveal a great number of major and

minor inventions for which he has not seen fit to take out patents. Moreover, at the period

now described Edison was the victim of a dishonest patent solicitor, who deprived him of

a number of patents in the following manner:

"Around 1881-82 I had several solicitors attending to different classes of work. One of

these did me a most serious injury. It was during the time that I was developing my

electric-lighting system, and I was working and thinking very hard in order to cover all

the numerous parts, in order that it would be complete in every detail. I filed a great many

applications for patents at that time, but there were seventy-eight of the inventions I made

in that period that were entirely lost to me and my company by reason of the dishonesty

of this patent solicitor. Specifications had been drawn, and I had signed and sworn to the

application for patents for these seventy-eight inventions, and naturally I supposed they

had been filed in the regular way.

"As time passed I was looking for some action of the Patent Office, as usual, but none

came. I thought it very strange, but had no suspicions until I began to see my inventions

recorded in the Patent Office Gazette as being patented by others. Of course I ordered an

investigation, and found that the patent solicitor had drawn from the company the fees for

filing all these applications, but had never filed them. All the papers had disappeared,

however, and what he had evidently done was to sell them to others, who had signed new

applications and proceeded to take out patents themselves on my inventions. I afterward

found that he had been previously mixed up with a somewhat similar crooked job in

connection with telephone patents.

"I am free to confess that the loss of these seventy- eight inventions has left a sore spot in

me that has never healed. They were important, useful, and valuable, and represented a

whole lot of tremendous work and mental effort, and I had had a feeling of pride in

having overcome through them a great many serious obstacles, One of these inventions

covered the multipolar dynamo. It was an elaborated form of the type covered by my

patent No. 219,393 which had a ring armature. I modified and improved on this form and

had a number of pole pieces placed all around the ring, with a modified form of armature

winding. I built one of these machines and ran it successfully in our early days at the

Goerck Street shop.

"It is of no practical use to mention the man's name. I believe he is dead, but he may have

left a family. The occurrence is a matter of the old Edison Company's records."

It will be seen from an examination of the list of patents in the Appendix that Mr. Edison

has continued year after year adding to his contributions to the art of electric lighting, and

in the last twenty- eight years--1880-1908--has taken out no fewer than three hundred and

seventy-five patents in this branch of industry alone. These patents may be roughly

tabulated as follows:

Incandescent lamps and their manufacture................

Distributing systems and their control and regulation......

Dynamo-electric machines and accessories.........

Minor parts, such as sockets, switches, safety catches,

meters, underground conductors and parts, etc...............