The Development Of The Edison Storage Battery - 2

The Development Of The Edison Storage Battery - 2

 Edison watched closely all this earlier development for about fifteen years, not changing

his mind as to what he regarded as the incurable defects of the lead- lead type, but

coming gradually to the conclusion that if a storage battery of some other and better type

could be brought forward, it would fulfil all the early hopes, however extravagant, of

such men as Kelvin (Sir William Thomson), and would become as necessary and as

universal as the incandescent lamp or the electric motor. The beginning of the present

century found him at his point of new departure.

Generally speaking, non-technical and uninitiated persons have a tendency to regard an

invention as being more or less the ultimate result of some happy inspiration. And,

indeed, there is no doubt that such may be the fact in some instances; but in most cases

the inventor has intentionally set out to accomplish a definite and desired result--mostly

through the application of the known laws of the art in which he happens to be working.

It is rarely, however, that a man will start out deliberately, as Edison did, to evolve a

radically new type of such an intricate device as the storage battery, with only a meagre

clew and a vague starting-point.

In view of the successful outcome of the problem which, in 1900, he undertook to solve,

it will be interesting to review his mental attitude at that period. It has already been noted

at the end of a previous chapter that on closing the magnetic iron-ore concentrating plant

at Edison, New Jersey, he resolved to work on a new type of storage battery. It was about

this time that, in the course of a conversation with Mr. R. H. Beach, then of the streetrailway

department of the General Electric Company, he said: "Beach, I don't think

Nature would be so unkind as to withhold the secret of a GOOD storage battery if a real

earnest hunt for it is made. I'm going to hunt."

Frequently Edison has been asked what he considers the secret of achievement. To this

query he has invariably replied: "Hard work, based on hard thinking." The laboratory

records bear the fullest witness that he has consistently followed out this prescription to

the utmost. The perfection of all his great inventions has been signalized by patient,

persistent, and incessant effort which, recognizing noth- ing short of success, has resulted

in the ultimate accomplishment of his ideas. Optimistic and hopeful to a high degree,

Edison has the happy faculty of beginning the day as open-minded as a child--yesterday's

disappointments and failures discarded and discounted by the alluring possibilities of tomorrow.

Of all his inventions, it is doubtful whether any one of them has called forth more

original thought, work, perseverance, ingenuity, and monumental patience than the one

we are now dealing with. One of his associates who has been through the many years of

the storage-battery drudgery with him said: "If Edison's experiments, investigations, and

work on this storage battery were all that he had ever done, I should say that he was not

only a notable inventor, but also a great man. It is almost impossible to appreciate the

enormous difficulties that have been overcome."

From a beginning which was made practically in the dark, it was not until he had

completed more than ten thousand experiments that he obtained any positive preliminary

results whatever. Through all this vast amount of research there had been no previous

signs of the electrical action he was looking for. These experiments had extended over

many months of constant work by day and night, but there was no breakdown of Edison's

faith in ultimate success-- no diminution of his sanguine and confident expectations. The

failure of an experiment simply meant to him that he had found something else that

would not work, thus bringing the possible goal a little nearer by a process of painstaking

elimination.