EDISON'S EARLY STRUGGLES A STAR OF HOPE FOR OUR BOYS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 46, 14 November 1907, Page 30

EDISON'S EARLY STRUGGLES A STAR OF HOPE FOR OUR BOYS

A Wellington man who had. been on a business visit had the good fortune to meet the great scientist, Mr Thomas Edison, who, in the course of conversation, expressed his intention of -visiting New Zealand at some future date. In view of the possi"bility of such a visit, the following particulars of the early struggles and ultimate success of the distinguished inventor and scientist, as recorded in a Press interview, will be of special interest to our readers •.—. — ' I'll tell you how I happened .to get into telegraphing first ' (said Mr Edison to the interviewer). ' When the battle of Pittsburg Landing was fought, the first report which -reached Detroit announced that there were' sixty thousand killed "and wounded. 'I was a train newsboy then, and I told the telegraph operator at the Detroit station that if he would wire the main facts of the battle along the A line, so that announcements could be put up "on the station bulletin boards, I would give " Harper's Weekly " to him for six months free of cost. 'I used to sell about forty newspapers . on the trip. - This time I made up my mind that I ought to take a thousand, but when I counted my money I found I had. only enough to buy four hundred. ' Then it occurred to me' that if I could^ get to Wilbur F. Storey, the proprietor of the ' Detroit Free Press,' I might be able to work out of my difficulty. I climbed up the stairs to his office and said : '"Mr Storey, I have only got money enough to buy -four hundred papers, and I want six hundred more. I thought I might get trusted for them. I'm a. newsboy." P got my thousand papers, all right. ' - ' _ - 'That was a great day for me. At the first station the crowd was so big that I thought it was an excursion crowd. But no: when the people caught sight of me they began tp yell for papers. I just doubled the price on the spot, and charged ten cents instead of five cents for a copy. ' When I got to the last station I jumped the price up to twenty-five cents a copy, and sol.l all I had left. I made seventy-five or a hundred dollars in that one trip, and I tell you I felt mighty good. ' That called my attention to what a telegraph operator could do. I thought to myself that telegraphing was simply * great, and T made up my mind to become an' operator' as soon as possible. ' The first serious thing I invented was a machine which would count the votes in Congress in a very few moments. It was a good machine, too, but when I took it to Washington they said to me : ' " Young man, that's the last thing we want here ! Filibustering and the delay in counting the vote are the only means we have of defeating bad legislation." 'My next practical invention was the quadruplex telegraph. I started in to work on the Atlantic and Pacific telegraph line Rochester and New York, but there was a chump at the other end of the wire, and the demonstration -ended in a fizzle. It was years before the quadruplex was adopted. ' That landed me in New York without a cent in my pocket. I went to an operator and managed to borrow a dollar. I lived on that for a week, but I had to" "park it " a little.- Oh, I didn't mind it, and I never did care much about eating, anyhow. 'Then I hustled for something to do. I could have got a job as an operator at ninety dollars a month, but 1 wanted a chance to do something better. I happened one day into the office of a " gold ticker " company which had about five hundred subscribers. - , - . , ' I was standing beside the apparatus when it gave a terrific rip-roar and suddenly stopped. In a few minutes hundreds of messenger boys blocked up the doorway and yelled for some one to fix the tickers in their office. The man in charge of the place was simply flabbergasted, so I stepped up to him and said : ' " I think I know what's the matter." ' I simply had to remove a loose contact spring which had fallen between the wheels. The result was that I was employed to take charge of the service at three hundred dollars a month. I almost fainted when I heard how much salary I was to get. ' Then I joined hands with a man named Callahan, and we got up several improved types of stock tickers. These Improvements were a. success. ' "

' When the day of settlement for my inventions approached, I began to wonder how much money I would get. I was pretty raw and knew nothing about business, but I hoped that I might get 5,000 dollars. - 'I dreamed of what I could do with big money like that, of the tools and other things I could buy to work out inventions; but I knew Wall street to be a pretty bad place, and had a general suspicion that a man was apt to get beat out of his money there. So I tried to keep my hopes down, but the thought of 5,000 dollars kept rising in my mind. ' Well, one day I was sent for by the president of the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company to talk about a settlement for my improvements. He was General Marshall Lefferts, colonel of the Seventh Regiment. ' I tell you, I was trejnbling all over with embarrassment, and when I got in his presence my vision of 5,000 dollars began to vanish. When he asked me how much' I wanted I was afraid to speak. ' I feared that if I mentioned- 5,000 dollars I might get nothing. . ~~ - 'That was one of the most painful and exciting momenta of -my life. My, how I beat my brains to know what to say. Finally I said : '"Suppose you make me an offer." 'By that time I was scared. I was more than ' scared— l , was paralysed. - " "'How would 40,000 dollars do?" asked General Lefferts. -, 'It was all I could do to keep my face straight and my knees from giving way." I was afraid he would hear my heart beat. . - - ' With a great effort I said -that I guessed that would be all right. He, said they would have the contract ready in a few days, and I could come back and sign it. In the meantime I scarcely slept. I couldn't believe it. 'When I went back the contract was read, and I signed it in a hurry. I don't know even now what was in it. A cheque - for 40,000 dollars was handed me, and I went to the bank as fast -as my feet would carry me. - • 'It was the" first time I was ever inside of a bank. I got in line, and when my turn came I handed in my cheque. Of course, I had not indorsed it. ; 'The teller looked at 'it. then pushed it back to me and roared out something which I could not understand, being partly deaf. My heart sank and my legs trembled. I handed the cheque back to him, but again he pushed it back with the same unintelligible explosion of words. * '-That settled it.\ I went out of the bank feeling miserable. I was the victim of another Wall street " skin game." I never felt worse in my ..life. 'I went around to the brother of the treasurer who had drawn the' cheque and said : " I'm skinned, all right." ' When I told him my story, he burst" out laughing ; and when we went into the treasurer's office to explain matters there was a loud roar of laughter at my expense. They sent somebody to the bank with me, and the bank officials thought it so great a joke that they played a trick on me by paying the whole 40,000 dollars in ten, twenty, and fifty-dollar bills. 'It made an enormous pile of money. I stuffed the bills in my inside pockets and outside pockets, my trouser - pockets and everywhere I could put them/ Then I started for my home in Newark. I wouldn't sit) on a seat with anybody on the train nor let anybody approach-me. When I got -to my room I couldn't sleep for fear of being robbed. - 'So the next day I took it back to General Lefferts and told him I didn't know where to keep it. He had it placed- in a bank to my credit, and that was my first bank account.- With that money I opened a new shop and worked out new apparatus. 'Then the quadruplex was installed. I sold that to Jay Gould and the Western Union Company for 30,000 dollars. -The -next invention was the mimeograph, a copying machine. 'When Bell got out his telephone the transmitter, and-re-ceiver were one. Professor Orton, of 'the Western Union Company, asked me to do something to make 'the telephone a commercial success. 'I tackled it, and got up the present transmitter. The Western Union Company eventually made millions of dollars out of it. I got 100,OCO dollars for it. ■ " l 'At last President Orton sent for me ans said : '-' Young man, how much do you want in full payment for all the inventions you have given the Western Union Company ?" ' ' * 'I ha_d 40,000 dollars in my mind, but my tongue wouldn't move. I nadn t the nerve to name such a sum. ' " Make me an offer," I ventured. '"How would'loo,ooo dollars seem to you?" he asked. _ ' I almost fell over. It made'me dizzy, but I kept m\Tface and answered, with as much coolness as I could muster, that the offer appeared to be a fair one. Then another -thought occurred to me, and I- said that I would accept 100,000 dollars if the company would keep it and pay me in seventeen yearly instalments. „ „ -..''</ „ ' I knew that if I got it all at once it would soon co in experiments. It took me seventeen years to get that money, and it -was one of the wisest things I ever did. By putting a check on my extravagance I alwayl had funds.' * P^ing a cnecK