The Social Side Of Edison -8

The Social Side Of Edison -8

 The conversations with Edison that elicited these stories brought out some details as to

peril that attends experimentation. He has confronted many a serious physical risk, and

counts himself lucky to have come through without a scratch or scar. Four instances of

personal danger may be noted in his own language: "When I started at Menlo, I had an

electric furnace for welding rare metals that I did not know about very clearly. I was in

the dark-room, where I had a lot of chloride of sulphur, a very corrosive liquid. I did not

know that it would decompose by water. I poured in a beakerful of water, and the whole

thing exploded and threw a lot of it into my eyes. I ran to the hydrant, leaned over

backward, opened my eyes, and ran the hydrant water right into them. But it was two

weeks before I could see.

"The next time we just saved ourselves. I was making some stuff to squirt into filaments

for the incandescent lamp. I made about a pound of it. I had used ammonia and bromine.

I did not know it at the time, but I had made bromide of nitrogen. I put the large bulk of it

in three filters, and after it had been washed and all the water had come through the filter,

I opened the three filters and laid them on a hot steam plate to dry with the stuff. While I

and Mr. Sadler, one of my assistants, were working near it, there was a sudden flash of

light, and a very smart explosion. I said to Sadler: `What is that?' `I don't know,' he said,

and we paid no attention. In about half a minute there was a sharp concussion, and Sadler

said: `See, it is that stuff on the steam plate.' I grabbed the whole thing and threw it in the

sink, and poured water on it. I saved a little of it and found it was a terrific explosive. The

reason why those little preliminary explosions took place was that a little had spattered

out on the edge of the filter paper, and had dried first and exploded. Had the main body

exploded there would have been nothing left of the laboratory I was working in.

"At another time, I had a briquetting machine for briquetting iron ore. I had a lever held

down by a powerful spring, and a rod one inch in diameter and four feet long. While I

was experimenting with it, and standing beside it, a washer broke, and that spring threw

the rod right up to the ceiling with a blast; and it came down again just within an inch of

my nose, and went clear through a two-inch plank. That was `within an inch of your life,'

as they say.

"In my experimental plant for concentrating iron ore in the northern part of New Jersey,

we had a verti- cal drier, a column about nine feet square and eighty feet high. At the

bottom there was a space where two men could go through a hole; and then all the rest of

the column was filled with baffle plates. One day this drier got blocked, and the ore

would not run down. So I and the vice-president of the company, Mr. Mallory, crowded

through the manhole to see why the ore would not come down. After we got in, the ore

did come down and there were fourteen tons of it above us. The men outside knew we

were in there, and they had a great time digging us out and getting air to us."