The Laboratory At Orange And The Staff - 3

The Laboratory At Orange And The Staff - 3

 "It appeared that he had once been a slaver; and altogether he was a tough character.

Having no other man I could spare at that time, I sent him over with my carbon

transmitter telephone to exhibit it in England. It was exhibited before the Post-Office

authorities. Professor Hughes spent an afternoon in examining the apparatus, and in about

a month came out with his microphone, which was absolutely nothing more nor less than

my exact invention. But no mention was made of the fact that, just previously, he had

seen the whole of my apparatus. Adams stayed over in Europe connected with the

telephone for several years, and finally died of too much whiskey --but not of heartdisease.

This shows how whiskey is the more dangerous of the two.

"Adams said that at one time he was aboard a coffee-ship in the harbor of Santos, Brazil.

He fell down a hatchway and broke his arm. They took him up to the hospital--a

Portuguese one--where he could not speak the language, and they did not understand

English. They treated him for two weeks for yellow fever! He was certainly the most

profane man we ever had around the laboratory. He stood high in his class."

And there were others of a different stripe. "We had a man with us at Menlo called

Segredor. He was a queer kind of fellow. The men got in the habit of plaguing him; and,

finally, one day he said to the assembled experimenters in the top room of the laboratory:

`The next man that does it, I will kill him.' They paid no attention to this, and next day

one of them made some sarcastic remark to him. Segredor made a start for his boardinghouse,

and when they saw him coming back up the hill with a gun, they knew there

would be trouble, so they all made for the woods. One of the men went back and

mollified him. He returned to his work; but he was not teased any more. At last, when I

sent men out hunting for bamboo, I dispatched Segredor to Cuba. He arrived in Havana

on Tuesday, and on the Friday following he was buried, having died of the black vomit.

On the receipt of the news of his death, half a dozen of the men wanted his job, but my

searcher in the Astor Library reported that the chances of finding the right kind of

bamboo for lamps in Cuba were very small; so I did not send a substitute."

Another thumb-nail sketch made of one of his associates is this: "When experimenting

with vacuum- pumps to exhaust the incandescent lamps, I required some very delicate

and close manipulation of glass, and hired a German glass-blower who was said to be the

most expert man of his kind in the United States. He was the only one who could make

clinical thermometers. He was the most extraordinarily conceited man I have ever come

across. His conceit was so enormous, life was made a burden to him by all the boys

around the laboratory. He once said that he was educated in a university where all the

students belonged to families of the aristocracy; and the highest class in the university all

wore little red caps. He said HE wore one."

Of somewhat different caliber was "honest" John Kruesi, who first made his mark at

Menlo Park, and of whom Edison says: "One of the workmen I had at Menlo Park was

John Kruesi, who afterward became, from his experience, engineer of the lighting station,

and subsequently engineer of the Edison General Electric Works at Schenectady. Kruesi

was very exact in his expressions. At the time we were promoting and putting up electriclight

stations in Pennsylvania, New York, and New England, there would be delegations

of different people who proposed to pay for these stations. They would come to our office

in New York, at `65,' to talk over the specifications, the cost, and other things. At first,

Mr. Kruesi was brought in, but whenever a statement was made which he could not

understand or did not believe could be substantiated, he would blurt right out among

these prospects that he didn't believe it. Finally it disturbed these committees so much,

and raised so many doubts in their minds, that one of my chief associates said: `Here,

Kruesi, we don't want you to come to these meetings any longer. You are too painfully

honest.' I said to him: `We always tell the truth. It may be deferred truth, but it is the

truth.' He could not understand that."

Various reasons conspired to cause the departure from Menlo Park midway in the

eighties. For Edison, in spite of the achievement with which its name will forever be

connected, it had lost all its attractions and all its possibilities. It had been outgrown in

many ways, and strange as the remark may seem, it was not until he had left it behind and

had settled in Orange, New Jersey, that he can be said to have given definite shape to his

life. He was only forty in 1887, and all that he had done up to that time, tremendous as

much of it was, had worn a haphazard, Bohemian air, with all the inconsequential

freedom and crudeness somehow attaching to pioneer life. The development of the new

laboratory in West Orange, just at the foot of Llewellyn Park, on the Orange Mountains,

not only marked the happy beginning of a period of perfect domestic and family life, but

saw in the planning and equipment of a model laboratory plant the consummation of

youthful dreams, and of the keen desire to enjoy resources adequate at any moment to

whatever strain the fierce fervor of research might put upon them. Curiously enough,

while hitherto Edison had sought to dissociate his experimenting from his manufacturing,

here he determined to develop a large industry to which a thoroughly practical laboratory

would be a central feature, and ever a source of suggestion and inspiration. Edison's

standpoint to-day is that an evil to be dreaded in manufacture is that of overstandardization,

and that as soon as an article is perfect that is the time to begin

improving it. But he who would improve must experiment.

The Orange laboratory, as originally planned, consisted of a main building two hundred

and fifty feet long and three stories in height, together with four other structures, each one

hundred by twenty-five feet, and only one story in height. All these were substantially

built of brick. The main building was divided into five chief divisions--the library, office,

machine shops, experimental and chemical rooms, and stock-room. The use of the

smaller buildings will be presently indicated.

Surrounding the whole was erected a high picket fence with a gate placed on Valley

Road. At this point a gate-house was provided and put in charge of a keeper, for then, as

at the present time, Edison was greatly sought after; and, in order to accomplish any work

at all, he was obliged to deny himself to all but the most important callers. The keeper of

the gate was usually chosen with reference to his capacity for stony-hearted implacability

and adherence to instructions; and this choice was admirably made in one instance when

a new gateman, not yet thoroughly initiated, refused admittance to Edison himself. It was

of no use to try and explain. To the gateman EVERY ONE was persona non grata

without proper credentials, and Edison had to wait outside until he could get some one to

identify him.