THOMAS A. EDISON, THE GREATEST INVENTOR OF ELECTRICAL MACHINERY IN THE WORLD
His parentage
199. The Wizard of the Electrical World. Thomas A. Edison was born in 1847 at Milan, Ohio. His father's people were Dutch and his mother's were Scotch. When he was seven years of age his parents removed to Port Huron, Michigan.
EDISON SELLING PAPERS AFTER THE BATTLE OF PITTSBURG LANDING
Edison owed his early training to his mother's care. At the age of twelve he was reading such books as Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume's History of England, Newton's Principia, and Ure's Dictionary of Science. The last-named book was too full of mathematics for him.
A tireless reader
That Edison was a great reader is proved by his resolution to read all the books in the Detroit Free Library! He did finish "fifteen feet of volumes" before any one knew what he was doing.
In 1862 General Grant fought the terrible battle of Pittsburg Landing. Everybody wanted to hear the news. Edison bought a thousand newspapers, boarded a train, and the engineer allowed him a few minutes at each station to sell papers.
His experience as a newsboy
As the first station came in sight, Edison looked ahead and saw a wild crowd of men. He grabbed an armful of papers, rushed out, and sold forty before the train left. At the next station the platform was crowded with a yelling mob. He raised the price to ten cents, but sold one hundred fifty.
Finally he reached Port Huron. The station was a mile from town. Edison seized his papers. He met the crowd coming just as he reached a church where a prayer meeting was being held. The prayer meeting broke up, and though he raised his price to twenty-five cents he "took in a young fortune."
Experimenting in electricity
Edison began very early to make experiments in electricity. After rigging up a line at home, hitching the wire to the legs of a cat, and rubbing the cat's back vigorously, he saw the failure of his first experiment—the cat would not stand!
Saves a life and receives lessons in telegraphy
At Mt. Clemens, one day, young Edison saw a child playing on the railroad with its back to an on-coming freight train. He dashed at the child, and both tumbled to the ground at the roadside. For this act of bravery the telegraph operator gave him lessons in telegraphy.
THOMAS ALVA EDISON
After a photograph from life
Makes a set of telegraphic instruments
Becomes a tramp telegrapher
200. Begins to Study Electricity. He studied ten days, then disappeared. He returned with a complete set of telegraphic instruments made by his own hand! After his trade was learned he began a period of wandering as a telegraph operator. For many boys still in their teens this would have been a time of destruction, but Edison neither drank nor smoked. He wandered from Adrian to Fort Wayne, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Memphis, and Boston, stopping for shorter or longer periods at each place.
By the time he was twenty-two he had invented and partly finished his plan of sending two dispatches along the same wire at the same time. This was equal to doubling the number of wires in use.
Repairs electric machinery and gains a situation
Edison was a poor boy and was two or three hundred dollars in debt. He went from Boston to New York. The speculators in Wall Street were wild with excitement, for the electric machinery had broken down. Nobody could make it work. Edison pushed his way to the front, saw the difficulty, and at once removed it.
All were loud in their praise of Edison. On the next day he was engaged to take charge of all the electric machinery at three hundred dollars per month.
Receives forty thousand dollars for his inventions
After a time he joined a company and gave his time to working out inventions. The company finally sent a number of men to ask Edison how much he would take for his inventions. He had already decided to say five thousand dollars. But when the men came he said that he did not know. He was dumfounded when they offered him forty thousand dollars!
Establishes his first workshop
201. Edison's Inventions. In 1873 Edison established his first laboratory or workshop in Newark, New Jersey. Here he gathered more than three hundred men to turn out the inventions pertaining to electricity which his busy brain suggested. They were all as enthusiastic over the inventions as Edison himself. No fixed hours of labor in this shop! When the day's work was done the men often begged to be allowed to return to the shop to complete their work.
More inventions
Builds a new laboratory and gathers a fine library
Many telegraph and telephone inventions were made in this laboratory. There were forty-five inventions all told. They brought in so much money that Edison decided they must have a better place to work. He built at Menlo Park, New Jersey, twenty-four miles from New York City, the finest laboratory then in the world. On instruments alone he spent $100,000. In the great laboratory at Menlo Park Edison gathered one of the finest scientific libraries that money could buy. This library was for the men in the factory—to help them in their inventions and to give them pleasure.
THE PHONOGRAPH
Invents the microphone
The microphone is one of Edison's inventions. Its purpose is to increase sound while sending it over the wire. The passing of a delicate camel's-hair brush is magnified so as to seem like the roar of a mighty wind in a forest of giant pines.
The megaphone
Next came the megaphone, an instrument to bring far-away sounds to one's hearing. By means of this instrument, persons talking a long distance apart are able to hear each other with ease.
The phonograph, which can reproduce the human voice and other sounds almost perfectly, was invented by Edison in 1876.
EDISON'S GREAT WORKSHOP AT ORANGE, NEW JERSEY
Edison's first phonograph
Sounds reach the ear by means of air waves which the sounding body sets in motion. In Edison's first phonograph these waves struck a bit of taut parchment, and were marked by a needle on a tinfoil disc. But tinfoil does not hold its shape well. In 1888 Edison patented a better phonograph in which the record was made on a wax disc.
Phonograph records are now made with one hundred grooves to an inch. Each groove is not more than four one-thousandths of an inch deep. A lever tipped with sapphire cuts the grooves. Its tiny marks have been photographed—one way of seeing a sound!
What the phonograph does
The phonograph is used everywhere for amusement. It preserves the voices of great singers for the future. With it songs and bits of folklore can be collected in languages that are now dying out.
The electric light
Edison has put into practical use many principles discovered by other men. He does not claim to be the discoverer of the electric light. He did much, however, to make it useful to people in lighting their houses, and also in lighting great cities.
The first great electrical exhibition
In the winter of 1880, in Menlo Park, Edison gave to the public an exhibition of his electric light. Visitors came from all parts of the country to see this wonderful show. Seven hundred lights were put up in the streets, and inside the buildings. Edison had produced a much better light than any that had been used before.
202. A Great New Industry. Edison also had a part in another invention for which Americans can claim most of the credit—moving pictures.
Settling a racetrack dispute
A dispute about horseracing did most for the discovery of moving pictures. The question was whether a horse ever had all four feet off the ground at once. To settle it, Edward Muybridge, an employee of the government, was called in. He stretched cords, fastened to the shutters of a row of cameras, across a racetrack. As the horse ran past, it took its own pictures. Later Muybridge made a camera which would take pictures very quickly, but he could not show his pictures well.
Edison's camera
Edison in 1892 invented a camera which used long strips of celluloid film. These pictures were looked at through a slot by one person at a time.
Another government worker, C. Francis Jenkins, invented the first complete moving picture machine in 1894.
The moving picture business
At first people were slow to welcome the new kind of play. Now it is claimed that our fifth largest industry is moving pictures. Probably as many tickets are sold here each year as there are people in the world.
Moving pictures of the war
In the war each army had its own moving picture camera men. They took pictures of ships torpedoed, of airplane battles, and of the fighting among the icy peaks of the Alps, often at great danger to their own lives. Great events of world history like the signing of the armistice can now be recorded for future times. Such pictures teach us things that cannot easily be learned from books.
Many schools have a machine of their own, and use moving pictures as a part of their regular class work. The subject is first outlined, then the pictures are shown, and afterwards the pupils write about what they have learned.
Moving pictures in schools
Some schools have films of their own. Others find it easy to get them. Our government sends out educational films on silo building, dairying, airplane manufacture, and many government activities. Business firms have films to loan on shoes, soap, automobiles, and other things they make. Regular film companies have pictures of animal life, the natural wonders of our country, current events, foreign countries, and other subjects suitable for school use, such as the teaching of cube root by moving picture cartoons.
Outside of schools moving pictures can be used for educational purposes in social service and Americanization work. One state, North Carolina, has trucks carrying moving picture machines for many of its counties. Programs of educational and amusing pictures can be given regularly in small towns with these machines.