The Laboratory At Orange And The Staff - 2

The Laboratory At Orange And The Staff - 2

 Always a shrewd, observant, and kindly critic of character, Edison tells many anecdotes

of the men who gathered around him in various capacities at that quiet corner of New

Jersey--Menlo Park--and later at Orange, in the Llewellyn Park laboratory; and these

serve to supplement the main narrative by throwing vivid side-lights on the whole scene.

Here, for example, is a picture drawn by Edison of a laboratory interlude--just a bit

Rabelaisian: "When experimenting at Menlo Park we had all the way from forty to fifty

men. They worked all the time. Each man was allowed from four to six hours' sleep. We

had a man who kept tally, and when the time came for one to sleep, he was notified. At

midnight we had lunch brought in and served at a long table at which the experimenters

sat down. I also had an organ which I procured from Hilbourne Roosevelt-- uncle of the

ex-President--and we had a man play this organ while we ate our lunch. During the

summer- time, after we had made something which was successful, I used to engage a

brick-sloop at Perth Amboy and take the whole crowd down to the fishing- banks on the

Atlantic for two days. On one occasion we got outside Sandy Hook on the banks and

anchored. A breeze came up, the sea became rough, and a large number of the men were

sick. There was straw in the bottom of the boat, which we all slept on. Most of the men

adjourned to this straw very sick. Those who were not got a piece of rancid salt pork from

the skipper, and cut a large, thick slice out of it. This was put on the end of a fish-hook

and drawn across the men's faces. The smell was terrific, and the effect added to the

hilarity of the excursion.

"I went down once with my father and two assistants for a little fishing inside Sandy

Hook. For some reason or other the fishing was very poor. We anchored, and I started in

to fish. After fishing for several hours there was not a single bite. The others wanted to

pull up anchor, but I fished two days and two nights without a bite, until they pulled up

anchor and went away. I would not give up. I was going to catch that fish if it took a

week."

This is general. Let us quote one or two piquant personal observations of a more specific

nature as to the odd characters Edison drew around him in his experimenting. "Down at

Menlo Park a man came in one day and wanted a job. He was a sailor. I hadn't any

particular work to give him, but I had a number of small induction coils, and to give him

something to do I told him to fix them up and sell them among his sailor friends. They

were fixed up, and he went over to New York and sold them all. He was an extraordinary

fellow. His name was Adams. One day I asked him how long it was since he had been to

sea, and he replied two or three years. I asked him how he had made a living in the mean

time, before he came to Menlo Park. He said he made a pretty good living by going

around to different clinics and getting $10 at each clinic, because of having the worst case

of heart-disease on record. I told him if that was the case he would have to be very

careful around the laboratory. I had him there to help in experimenting, and the heartdisease

did not seem to bother him at all.