THE VALUE OF AN EDISON.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9469, 11 June 1909, Page 7

THE VALUE OF AN EDISON.

What is the money value of Edison’s inventions to the world? Elec•trio lighting owes its adoption to the ,perfecting of the Edison-Swan incandescent lamp. Thdre are to-day in the United States over 40,000,000 of ■these lamps connected with 5000 central stations, with capital obligations of a billion dollars, The gross earnings of these stations amount to about 235 million dollars .yearly. Private plants account for 25,000,000 more lamps, and represent about five hundred "million dollars of capital .invested. Forty great factories for ' making the lamps represent about twenty-five million dollars capital. It was Edison who, by almost superhuman pertinacity, laid the foundation of all this—-his lamp was not ■made until almost every possibility had been exhausted by the method ‘Of trial and error. Edison, again, was the first man to devise, construct, and operate a practicable •electric railroad. This was the starting point for electric traction, and, although its development is the work of many inventors, we can put ■down to Mr Edison’s account the •beginning of the 68,636 electric cars owned by American companies working 38,812 miles of track, and having a capitalisation of over four billion dollars. Bell invented the telephone, bnt Edison made it a practical success, and his inventions may be found in every one of the 7,000,000 telephones in the United States. His invention of the quadruples telegraph has been estimated to have saved the ' State twenty million dollars in line construction. The phonograph companies of Orange, N .J., ■employ 3600 people, and have a payroll of two million and a quarter dollars, Mora than a million and a quarter phonographs have been sold in the last 20 years, and for them have been made 97,845,000 records—this is the yinost appalling of Edison’s achievements. Turning to the cinematograph, Edison’s firm has made 131,000 machines, and millions of feet of film ; this is only a fractional part of the industry, for 10,000' moving picture shows are operating in the United i States at the present time. The Edison cement corporation in five years has become the fourth largest producer in the United States, the present rate of production being 2,500,000 barrels a year. Huxley once said that a Faraday was cheap at £IOO,OOO. The world has moved sinoe_ then. Mr Edison’s brain is worth its weight in xadinm!