THOMAS A. EDISON,

AND OTHER GREAT INVENTORS AND THEIR

INVENTIONS.

ROBABLY no man in the United States is better known or more universally interesting than "The Wizard of Menlo Park," the inventor of the electric lamp, the dynamo, the phonograph, the "stock ticker," the elec tric pen, and the mimeograph, and the discoverer and improver of innumerable things in the field of electricity. And yet, high as is the position that Edison has even now reached, he began at the very bottom. He was the son of a poor man, a village jack-of-all-trades, whose home was at Milan, Ohio, where the boy was born in 1847. While he was a child the family moved to Port Huron, Michigan. In his whole life Thomas had but two months of regular schooling; the rest of his education was given him by his mother. But he had a restless, inquiring mind, an insatiable appetite for knowledge. ten years old he read Gibbon and Hume, and was fascinated by books of chemistry, which he pored over long before he could pronounce the names of the substances which he read about.

When only

When Edison was twelve years of age, he became a newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railway. With the business of selling papers and candies on the trains, however, he still kept going his old hobby of chemistry, and established an amateur laboratory in one corner of the baggage-car, where he amused himself at leisure moments. One day, while he was absent from the car, a bottle of phosphorus was upset, and the car set on fire. This put an end to his chemical experiments for a time. The baggage master kicked his chemical apparatus out of the car, and Edison was obliged to set up his business in some other place.

On one of his trips to Chicago, the publisher of one of the Chicago dailies made him a present of a lot of worn-out type, with which Edison improvised a printing-office, and began to publish a paper of his own, entitled The Grand Trunk Herald, which gave such items of news as the removal of a brakeman

or baggage-master to New York, or told how a train hand fell and hurt his leg. One day, during the war, he persuaded a telegraph operator at Chicago to send to the principal stations on the road a bulletin of the great battle of Shiloh, in consequence of which, when the train arrived, great crowds of people were at the stations hankering after papers, which Edison sold them at an immense profit. This turned his attention to telegraphing, to which he soon became devoted.

About this time a stroke of luck came to him in saving the child of a telegraph operator from being killed by a train. The grateful father rewarded the boy by teaching him telegraphing. Thomas rigged up wires and batteries in his old home at Port Huron, and devoted all his spare hours to practice. When he was eighteen, he secured a position at Indianapolis, and while there he worked out his first invention, an automatic register for receiving messages and transferring them to another wire. In this rude machine was contained the germ of the phonograph, which he perfected years after.

By dint of incessant practice, Edison became an extremely expert and swift operator; but his usefulness was always limited by his tendency to contrive schemes for saving labor. On one occasion, when he was night operator, he was required every half hour to telegraph the word "six" to the superintendent, to show that he was awake and attending to business. The ingenious young man contrived a machine which did the work for him, and spent the time poring over his beloved chemistry. This little artifice being discovered, he lost his situation by his cleverness.

The beginning of Edison's career as an inventor was not more successful than is usual. He was undoubtedly ingenious, but his ingenuity actually prevented him from being a good telegraph operator. After a time, however, he found his niche. He drifted to New York, where, after vainly endeavoring to interest the telegraph companies in his inventions, he established himself as an expert in odd jobs pertaining to telegraphing. One day the Western Union wire to Albany would not work. The company's regular electricians experimented for days, but without success, and finally, as a forlorn hope, Edison was sent for. He seated himself at the instrument and got connection with Albany by way of Pittsburgh. Then he called for the best operator at the other end of the line, and with him experimented for two hours with currents of different intensities. At the end of this time he told the officers that the trouble was at a certain point on the line, and what it was. They telegraphed the office nearest that point, giving the necessary directions, and in an hour the wire was working properly. This established his reputation as an expert, and he soon began to rise in this line of business.

Edison's first large profits came to him from the "stock ticker," an invention for reporting in brokers' offices the prices of stocks on the exchange, which

WORK AT MENLO PARK.

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is now in universal use. He settled himself in Newark, N. J., where he rented a shop and began to manufacture his machines.

His connection with capitalists led to his making a proposition to an association of wealthy men to experiment with electric lighting, they to supply the capital. He removed his shop to Menlo Park, a quiet and secluded place, where he carried on his experiments, which soon resulted in success. This placed

him in an independent position, and from that time to the present his success has been only a question of degree.

Edison is a man of infinite pertinacity and great endurance. When he becomes interested in solving an important question, he is entirely oblivious of