Edison’s Warehouse as an Aid.
Mr. Edison, for aid in finding just the substance he needs for a new purpose, has at his laboratory in Orange, New Jersey, a large store-room filled with materials of all kinds. He may wish a particularly high degree of elasticity, hardness, abrasive power, or what not; to provide these he has gathered a wide diversity of woods, ivories, fibres, horn, glass, porcelain, metals pure and alloyed, alkalis, acids, oils, varnishes and so on. Take one example from among many which might be given from his shelves; he finds that a sapphire furnishes the best stylus wherewith to cut a channel on a phonographic cylinder. Hard, flinty particles from the air are apt to enter the wax, so as to blunt a cutting edge. Diamonds would be best as channelers, but their cost obliges him to choose sapphires as next best; they are purchasable at reasonable prices and last ten years under ordinary conditions of wear.
CHAPTER XII
PROPERTIES—Continued
Producing more and better light from both gas and electricity . . . The Drummond light . . . The Welsbach mantle . . . Many rivals of carbon filaments and pencils . . . Flaming arcs and tubes of mercury vapor.