ABOUT A GREAT INVENTOR.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 252, 17 October 1908, Page 3

ABOUT A GREAT INVENTOR.

News comes from America that Mr. Thomas A. Kdison has turned his afteatiou seriously to the construction of au a-roplaiie. Although lie has not previously taken much practical interest in the Hying machine, Edison has long been ol the opinion that the solving of the problem, of aerial navigation 'i s only a matter of time. Writing of tile cily of one hundred years hence, lie has said':

•' I'crhups by Unit time people will have become so accustomed to aerial .navigation that they will consider themselves very close to the ground when they are 300 feet up. in the air." The world will watch with great interest the experiments of the latest recruit to the rapid-ly-growing names of aerial enthusiasts, for it knows that once Edison has set his mind, on a certain object nothing will prevent him from persevering until he succeeds.

Last year Mr, Edison stated that he had given up money-making and intended to devote the rest of his fife to scientific pursuits of iv niore .profound nature than he had liHlierto indulged in. "As an inventor I was always engaged i,n the application of science to industry," lie said, "Every investigation and experiment had a. commercial end in view. It did not deal primarily with fundamental, scientific Jaws, hut with concrete things that had a definite commercial value in the market to-day. Sow I am entirely in a dillVrent line of endeavour, and I care little whether it brings money or not so long as it adds to the smiii total of human knowledge and furnish-s some benelit to mankind."

Jlr. iMlisou was always of an inventive I turn of mind, and the story of his ''in-' vcution" lias often lieeii the cause of amusement among hi* numerous friends, tine day, when lie was a small boy of live, his parents missed him. and a leimthv search failed to reveal his whereabouts. At hist his elder sist-r discovered him in the fowl house, where, he said, he intended to remain for the next ilirec weeks! Ilis clothes were Ml a terrible c lition. being smothered with crushed eggs. " What ave you do-' ing, Tom?" asked his sister in' alarm] •• Well, 1 thought if the hens could linleif; the eggs hv sitting oil them, so could! I," replied the little genius, as he was led forth to be washed, |

Edison has often been credited witlil inventing the most extraordinary things,' and he i s sometimes put to a great deal of trouble to disprove the crroneoiisf statement.-', that are made cimecrn'og him. Some time, ago an American journal stated that he had invented a wonderful shirt that would last a man for twelve months without requiring to lie washed. This shirt, it was stated] was made of 305 layers of material—tin! composition of which no tine knew bufl the inventnr-and all the wearer had to' do to return it ti> its original spotlessness was to tear oil' one of the layers,l when lie would have practically a new] shirt. This announcement was reprinted in various other journals, with the) result that Mr. Edison received tliou-j sands of orders for an invention that he had never even dreamed of.