The Social Side Of Edison -9

The Social Side Of Edison -9

 Such incidents brought out in narration the fact that many of the men working with him

had been less fortunate, particularly those who had experimented with the Roentgen Xray,

whose ravages, like those of leprosy, were responsible for the mutilation and death of

at least one expert assistant. In the early days of work on the incandescent lamp, also,

there was considerable trouble with mercury. "I had a series of vacuum-pumps worked by

mercury and used for exhausting experimental incandescent lamps. The main pipe, which

was full of mercury, was about seven and one-half feet from the floor. Along the length

of the pipe were outlets to which thick rubber tubing was connected, each tube to a pump.

One day, while experimenting with the mercury pump, my assistant, an awkward country

lad from a farm on Staten Island, who had adenoids in his nose and breathed through his

mouth, which was always wide open, was looking up at this pipe, at a small leak of

mercury, when the rubber tube came off and probably two pounds of mercury went into

his mouth and down his throat, and got through his system somehow. In a short time he

became salivated, and his teeth got loose. He went home, and shortly his mother appeared

at the laboratory with a horsewhip, which she proposed to use on the proprietor. I was

fortunately absent, and she was mollified somehow by my other assistants. I had given

the boy considerable iodide of potassium to prevent salivation, but it did no good in this

case.

"When the first lamp-works were started at Menlo Park, one of my experiments seemed

to show that hot mercury gave a better vacuum in the lamp than cold mercury. I

thereupon started to heat it. Soon all the men got salivated, and things looked serious; but

I found that in the mirror factories, where mercury was used extensively, the French

Government made the giving of iodide of potassium compulsory to prevent salivation. I

carried out this idea, and made every man take a dose every day, but there was great

opposition, and hot mercury was finally abandoned."

It will have been gathered that Edison has owed his special immunity from "occupational

diseases" not only to luck but to unusual powers of endurance, and a strong physique,

inherited, no doubt, from his father. Mr. Mallory mentions a little fact that bears on this

exceptional quality of bodily powers. "I have often been surprised at Edison's wonderful

capacity for the instant visual perception of differences in materials that were invisible to

others until he would patiently point them out. This had puzzled me for years, but one

day I was unexpectedly let into part of the secret. For some little time past Mr. Edison

had noticed that he was bothered somewhat in reading print, and I asked him to have an

oculist give him reading-glasses. He partially promised, but never took time to attend to

it. One day he and I were in the city, and as Mrs. Edison had spoken to me about it, and

as we happened to have an hour to spare, I persuaded him to go to an oculist with me.

Using no names, I asked the latter to examine the gentleman's eyes. He did so very

conscientiously, and it was an interesting experience, for he was kept busy answering Mr.

Edison's numerous questions. When the oculist finished, he turned to me and said: "I

have been many years in the business, but have never seen an optic nerve like that of this

gentleman. An ordinary optic nerve is about the thickness of a thread, but his is like a

cord. He must be a remarkable man in some walk of life. Who is he?"