EDISON OUT TO BEAT THE KAISER.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 1 November 1917, Page 3

EDISON OUT TO BEAT THE KAISER.

BATTLE OF WITS SILENTLY

FOUGHT OUT

Thomas A. Edison versus Ger~ many.

This is the battle that is being silently fought. A little red brick building, covered with ivy, is the famous inventor's laboratory. "I have no right to talk about it —ask the Secretary of the Navy," was the message that came from the closely guarded sanctum, in respose to an enquiry on Edison's work.

"The old man," as he is known to his associates, has started out to beat the Kaiser just as methodically as he started out to perfect electric lights and phonographs. To-day, says an American writer, when he climbed from his dusty " flivver " and punched his time card —it registered 8.30 a.m. Yesterday he plunged in at 8.45 and out at 12.30 a.m. —nearly 16 hours later.

War seemed distant from the little red brick building to-day. It is surrounded by fifty modern industrial structures, crowded with 5,400 men and women, making such peaceful devices as motion picture machines and storage batteries. But-quiet menwith sharp eyes stood in every doorway. Signs glared from every side warning employees against'"} ■•' '&%."

Inside xj ' barbed rail with Ejdi^T^weH" a few men with ''deep-lined faces. Outsiders had fleeting glimpses of them as they darted past all in a tearing hurry. Tne Kaiser would probably give an army division for what these men know,

Edison was in the greatest rush of all. The detective at his heels had to half trot at times to keep pace with the man he was to watch. —American Exchange.