Memories Of Menlo Park - 8
Switzerland sent Messrs. Turrettini, Biedermann, and Thury, all distinguished engineers,
to negotiate for rights in the republic; and so it went with regard to all the other countries
of Europe, as well as those of South America. It was a question of keeping such visitors
away rather than of inviting them to take up the exploitation of the Edison system; for
what time was not spent in personal interviews was required for the masses of letters
from every country under the sun, all making inquiries, offering suggestions, proposing
terms. Nor were the visitors merely those on business bent. There were the lion-hunters
and celebrities, of whom Sarah Bernhardt may serve as a type. One visit of note was that
paid by Lieut. G. W. De Long, who had an earnest and protracted conversation with
Edison over the Arctic expedition he was undertaking with the aid of Mr. James Gordon
Bennett, of the New York Herald. The Jeannette was being fitted out, and Edison told De
Long that he would make and present him with a small dynamo machine, some
incandescent lamps, and an arc lamp. While the little dynamo was being built all the men
in the laboratory wrote their names on the paper insulation that was wound upon the iron
core of the armature. As the Jeannette had no steam-engine on board that could be used
for the purpose, Edison designed the dynamo so that it could be worked by man power
and told Lieutenant De Long "it would keep the boys warm up in the Arctic," when they
generated current with it. The ill-fated ship never returned from her voyage, but went
down in the icy waters of the North, there to remain until some future cataclysm of
nature, ten thousand years hence, shall reveal the ship and the first marine dynamo as
curious relics of a remote civilization.
Edison also furnished De Long with a set of telephones provided with extensible circuits,
so that parties on the ice-floes could go long distances from the ship and still keep in
communication with her. So far as the writers can ascertain this is the first example of
"field telephony." Another nautical experiment that he made at this time, suggested
probably by the requirements of the Arctic expedition, was a buoy that was floated in
New York harbor, and which contained a small Edison dynamo and two or three
incandescent lamps. The dynamo was driven by the wave or tide motion through
intermediate mechanism, and thus the lamps were lit up from time to time, serving as
signals. These were the prototypes of the lighted buoys which have since become
familiar, as in the channel off Sandy Hook.
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