The Stock Ticker - 4

The Stock Ticker - 4

There is a calm sense of detachment about this description that has been possessed by the

narrator even in the most anxious moments of his career. He was determined to see all

that could be seen, and, quitting his perch on the telegraph booth, sought the more

secluded headquarters of the pool forces. "A friend of mine was an operator who worked

in the office of Belden & Company, 60 Broadway, which were headquarters for Fisk. Mr.

Gould was up-town in the Erie offices in the Grand Opera House. The firm on Broad

Street, Smith, Gould & Martin, was the other branch. All were connected with wires.

Gould seemed to be in charge, Fisk being the executive down-town. Fisk wore a velvet

corduroy coat and a very peculiar vest. He was very chipper, and seemed to be lighthearted

and happy. Sitting around the room were about a dozen fine-looking men. All had

the complexion of cadavers. There was a basket of cham- pagne. Hundreds of boys were

rushing in paying checks, all checks being payable to Belden & Company. When James

Brown, of Brown Brothers & Company, broke the corner by selling five million gold, all

payments were repudiated by Smith, Gould & Martin; but they continued to receive

checks at Belden & Company's for some time, until the Street got wind of the game.

There was some kind of conspiracy with the Government people which I could not make

out, but I heard messages that opened my eyes as to the ramifications of Wall Street.

Gold fell to 132, and it took us all night to get the indicator back to that quotation. All

night long the streets were full of people. Every broker's office was brilliantly lighted all

night, and all hands were at work. The clearing-house for gold had been swamped, and all

was mixed up. No one knew if he was bankrupt or not."

Edison in those days rather liked the modest coffee- shops, and mentions visiting one.

"When on the New York No. 1 wire, that I worked in Boston, there was an operator

named Jerry Borst at the other end. He was a first-class receiver and rapid sender. We

made up a scheme to hold this wire, so he changed one letter of the alphabet and I soon

got used to it; and finally we changed three letters. If any operator tried to receive from

Borst, he couldn't do it, so Borst and I always worked together. Borst did less talking than

any operator I ever knew. Never having seen him, I went while in New York to call upon

him. I did all the talking. He would listen, stroke his beard, and say nothing. In the

evening I went over to an all-night lunch-house in Printing House Square in a basement--

Oliver's. Night editors, including Horace Greeley, and Henry Raymond, of the New York

Times, took their midnight lunch there. When I went with Borst and another operator,

they pointed out two or three men who were then celebrated in the newspaper world. The

night was intensely hot and close. After getting our lunch and upon reaching the

sidewalk, Borst opened his mouth, and said: `That's a great place; a plate of cakes, a cup

of coffee, and a Russian bath, for ten cents.' This was about fifty per cent. of his

conversation for two days."

The work of Edison on the gold-indicator had thrown him into close relationship with

Mr. Franklin L. Pope, the young telegraph engineer then associated with Doctor Laws,

and afterward a distinguished expert and technical writer, who became President of the

American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1886. Each recognized the special ability of

the other, and barely a week after the famous events of Black Friday the announcement of

their partnership appeared in the Telegrapher of October 1, 1869. This was the first

"professional card," if it may be so described, ever issued in America by a firm of

electrical engineers, and is here reproduced. It is probable that the advertisement, one of

the largest in the Telegrapher, and appearing frequently, was not paid for at full rates, as

the publisher, Mr. J. N. Ashley, became a partner in the firm, and not altogether a

"sleeping one" when it came to a division of profits, which at times were considerable. In

order to be nearer his new friend Edison boarded with Pope at Elizabeth, New Jersey, for

some time, living "the strenuous life" in the performance of his duties. Associated with

Pope and Ashley, he followed up his work on telegraph printers with marked success.

"While with them I devised a printer to print gold quotations instead of indicating them.

The lines were started, and the whole was sold out to the Gold & Stock Telegraph

Company. My experimenting was all done in the small shop of a Doctor Bradley, located

near the station of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Jersey City. Every night I left for

Elizabeth on the 1 A.M. train, then walked half a mile to Mr. Pope's house and up at 6

A.M. for breakfast to catch the 7 A.M. train. This continued all winter, and many were

the occasions when I was nearly frozen in the Elizabeth walk." This Doctor Bradley

appears to have been the first in this country to make electrical measurements of

precision with the galvanometer, but was an old-school experimenter who would work

for years on an instrument without commercial value. He was also extremely irascible,

and when on one occasion the connecting wire would not come out of one of the binding

posts of a new and costly galvanometer, he jerked the instrument to the floor and then

jumped on it. He must have been, however, a man of originality, as evidenced by his

attempt to age whiskey by electricity, an attempt that has often since been made. "The

hobby he had at the time I was there," says Edison, "was the aging of raw whiskey by

passing strong electric currents through it. He had arranged twenty jars with platinum

electrodes held in place by hard rubber. When all was ready, he filled the cells with

whiskey, connected the battery, locked the door of the small room in which they were

placed, and gave positive orders that no one should enter. He then disappeared for three

days. On the second day we noticed a terrible smell in the shop, as if from some dead

animal. The next day the doctor arrived and, noticing the smell, asked what was dead. We

all thought something had got into his whiskey-room and died. He opened it and was

nearly overcome. The hard rubber he used was, of course, full of sulphur, and this being

attacked by the nascent hydrogen, had produced sulphuretted hydrogen gas in torrents,

displacing all of the air in the room. Sulphuretted hydrogen is, as is well known, the gas

given off by rotten eggs."