Work And Invention In Boston - 3

Work And Invention In Boston - 3

"The next night about 1 A.M. this operator, on the press wire, while I was standing near a

House printer studying it, pulled out a glass insulator, then used upside down as a

substitute for an ink-bottle, and threw it with great violence at me, just missing my head.

It would certainly have killed me if it had not missed. The cause of the trouble was that

this operator was doing the best he could not to break, but being compelled to, opened his

key and found he couldn't. The press matter came right along, and he could not stop it.

The office boy had put the ink in a few minutes before, when the operator had turned his

head during a lull. He blamed me instinctively as the cause of the trouble. Later on we

became good friends. He took his meals at the same emaciator that I did. His main object

in life seemed to be acquiring the art of throwing up wash-pitchers and catching them

without breaking them. About one-third of his salary was used up in paying for pitchers."

One day a request reached the Western Union Telegraph office in Boston, from the

principal of a select school for young ladies, to the effect that she would like some one to

be sent up to the school to exhibit and describe the Morse telegraph to her "children."

There has always been a warm interest in Boston in the life and work of Morse, who was

born there, at Charlestown, barely a mile from the birthplace of Franklin, and this request

for a little lecture on Morse's telegraph was quite natural. Edison, who was always ready

to earn some extra money for his experiments, and was already known as the bestinformed

operator in the office, accepted the invitation. What happened is described by

Adams as follows: "We gathered up a couple of sounders, a battery, and sonic wire, and

at the appointed time called on her to do the stunt. Her school-room was about twenty by

twenty feet, not including a small platform. We rigged up the line between the two ends

of the room, Edison taking the stage while I was at the other end of the room. All being in

readiness, the principal was told to bring in her children. The door opened and in came

about twenty young ladies elegantly gowned, not one of whom was under seventeen.

When Edison saw them I thought he would faint. He called me on the line and asked me

to come to the stage and explain the mysteries of the Morse system. I replied that I

thought he was in the right place, and told him to get busy with his talk on dots and

dashes. Always modest, Edison was so overcome he could hardly speak, but he managed

to say, finally, that as his friend Mr. Adams was better equipped with cheek than he was,

we would change places, and he would do the demonstrating while I explained the whole

thing. This caused the bevy to turn to see where the lecturer was. I went on the stage, said

something, and we did some telegraphing over the line. I guess it was satisfactory; we got

the money, which was the main point to us." Edison tells the story in a similar manner,

but insists that it was he who saved the situation. "I managed to say that I would work the

apparatus, and Mr. Adams would make the explanations. Adams was so embarrassed that

he fell over an ottoman. The girls tittered, and this increased his embarrassment until he

couldn't say a word. The situation was so desperate that for a reason I never could explain

I started in myself and talked and explained better than I ever did before or since. I can

talk to two or three persons; but when there are more they radiate some unknown form of

influence which paralyzes my vocal cords. However, I got out of this scrape, and many

times afterward when I chanced with other operators to meet some of the young ladies on

their way home from school, they would smile and nod, much to the mystification of the

operators, who were ignorant of this episode."

Another amusing story of this period of impecuniosity and financial strain is told thus by

Edison: "My friend Adams was working in the Franklin Telegraph Company, which

competed with the Western Union. Adams was laid off, and as his financial resources had

reached absolute zero centigrade, I undertook to let him sleep in my hall bedroom. I

generally had hall bedrooms, because they were cheap and I needed money to buy

apparatus. I also had the pleasure of his genial company at the boarding-house about a

mile distant, but at the sacrifice of some apparatus. One morning, as we were hastening to

breakfast, we came into Tremont Row, and saw a large crowd in front of two small

`gents' furnishing goods stores. We stopped to ascertain the cause of the excitement. One

store put up a paper sign in the display window which said: `Three-hundred pairs of

stockings received this day, five cents a pair--no connection with the store next door.'

Presently the other store put up a sign stating they had received three hundred pairs, price

three cents per pair, and stated that they had no connection with the store next door.

Nobody went in. The crowd kept increasing. Finally, when the price had reached three

pairs for one cent, Adams said to me: `I can't stand this any longer; give me a cent.' I gave

him a nickel, and he elbowed his way in; and throwing the money on the counter, the

store being filled with women clerks, he said: `Give me three pairs.' The crowd was

breathless, and the girl took down a box and drew out three pairs of baby socks. `Oh!'

said Adams, `I want men's size.' `Well, sir, we do not permit one to pick sizes for that

amount of money.' And the crowd roared; and this broke up the sales."

It has generally been supposed that Edison did not take up work on the stock ticker until

after his arrival a little later in New York; but he says: "After the vote-recorder I invented

a stock ticker, and started a ticker service in Boston; had thirty or forty subscribers, and

operated from a room over the Gold Exchange. This was about a year after Callahan

started in New York." To say the least, this evidenced great ability and enterprise on the

part of the youth. The dealings in gold during the Civil War and after its close had

brought gold indicators into use, and these had soon been followed by "stock tickers," the

first of which was introduced in New York in 1867. The success of this new but still

primitively crude class of apparatus was immediate. Four manufacturers were soon busy

trying to keep pace with the demands for it from brokers; and the Gold & Stock

Telegraph Company formed to exploit the system soon increased its capital from

$200,000 to $300,000, paying 12 per cent. dividends on the latter amount. Within its first

year the capital was again increased to $1,000,000, and dividends of 10 per cent. were

paid easily on that sum also. It is needless to say that such facts became quickly known

among the operators, from whose ranks, of course, the new employees were enlisted; and

it was a common ambition among the more ingenious to produce a new ticker. From the

beginning, each phase of electrical development--indeed, each step in mechanics--has

been accompanied by the well-known phenomenon of invention; namely, the attempt of

the many to perfect and refine and even re-invent where one or two daring spirits have

led the way. The figures of capitalization and profit just mentioned were relatively much

larger in the sixties than they are to-day; and to impressionable young operators they

spelled illimitable wealth. Edison was, how ever, about the only one in Boston of whom

history makes record as achieving any tangible result in this new art; and he soon longed

for the larger telegraphic opportunity of New York. His friend, Milt Adams, went West

with quenchless zest for that kind of roving life and aimless adventure of which the

serious minded Edison had already had more than enough. Realizing that to New York he

must look for further support in his efforts, Edison, deep in debt for his embryonic

inventions, but with high hope and courage, now made the next momentous step in his

career. He was far riper in experience and practice of his art than any other telegrapher of

his age, and had acquired, moreover, no little knowledge of the practical business of life.

Note has been made above of his invention of a stock ticker in Boston, and of his

establishing a stock-quotation circuit. This was by no means all, and as a fitting close to

this chapter he may be quoted as to some other work and its perils in experimentation: "I

also engaged in putting up private lines, upon which I used an alphabetical dial

instrument for telegraphing between business establishments, a forerunner of modern

telephony. This instrument was very simple and practical, and any one could work it after

a few minutes' explanation. I had these instruments made at Mr. Hamblet's, who had a

little shop where he was engaged in experimenting with electric clocks. Mr. Hamblet was

the father and introducer in after years of the Western Union Telegraph system of time

distribution. My laboratory was the headquarters for the men, and also of tools and

supplies for those private lines. They were put up cheaply, as I used the roofs of houses,

just as the Western Union did. It never occurred to me to ask permission from the

owners; all we did was to go to the store, etc., say we were telegraph men, and wanted to

go up to the wires on the roof; and permission was always granted.

"In this laboratory I had a large induction coil which I had borrowed to make some

experiments with. One day I got hold of both electrodes of the coil, and it clinched my

hand on them so that I couldn't let go. The battery was on a shelf. The only way I could

get free was to back off and pull the coil, so that the battery wires would pull the cells off

the shelf and thus break the circuit. I shut my eyes and pulled, but the nitric acid splashed

all over my face and ran down my back. I rushed to a sink, which was only half big

enough, and got in as well as I could and wiggled around for several minutes to permit

the water to dilute the acid and stop the pain. My face and back were streaked with

yellow; the skin was thoroughly oxidized. I did not go on the street by daylight for two

weeks, as the appearance of my face was dreadful. The skin, however, peeled off, and

new skin replaced it without any damage."