There was the Microphone, which is much like the Telephone, except that in the Microphone the sound is magnified. There was the Megaphone, which brings far-away sounds near, so that cattle crunching grass six miles off could be heard distinctly at Menlo Park! There was the Kinetoscope we all know, which by swiftly passing pictures—as many as forty-six a second—seems to give us a single person in motion, somewhat on the lines of that toy of our childhood, “The Wheel of Life.” And there was the grand king of inventions—the Phonograph—that overtops all the rest.
We know it, all of us, by this time. We have listened to it, with the tubes at our ears, while the voice of someone speaking at a distance is distinctly borne to us, or the strains of a song sung by some great singer.
In 1888 Edison sent his first phonogram by steamer to England. His friend here had only to take out the wax cylinder, put it into his machine, and set it in motion, and lo! it seemed to him as if Edison himself were in the room talking to him!
Great men all over the world recorded their astonishment and their praises of the wonderful invention. The Queen sent him a message of congratulation. People flocked to every exhibition to see it—to the French one from countries all over Europe. They saw it and straightway went into raptures. Edison himself, looking into the future, seemed to see volumes it might yet be brought to do. It might be used to write letters merely from dictation. It might be used to make clocks speak—to tell when it was time to come to meals. It might be used for toys. A tiny phonograph might be placed inside a doll, and it would straightway “talk”; or in a toy animal, and it would grunt and growl!
What a strange thing that in this world of passing-away and change we should be able to preserve from destruction such treasures sheltered in a wax cylinder—some great man’s words of wisdom, or the silver tones of a sweet musician!
The more Edison’s brain accomplished the more did it seem able to do. As a man he showed himself untiring as when a boy. He went on discovering. He invented a way of telegraphing from a moving train. He invented an Electric Railroad, that drew delighted thousands at the Chicago Exhibition.
In 1879 his attention turned to lighting, and he bent all his energies on inventing an Incandescent lamp for electric light. He spent days working at a sort of white heat. He began on the 16th October, but mishaps and accidents seemed to threaten his invention.
“Let us,” he cried to his partner in a ferment of excitement—“let us make a lamp before we sleep, or die in the attempt.” On the morning of the 21st it was done!
It astonished the world. It opened up possibilities for miners and divers, and for men everywhere.
On the occasion of its exhibition people flocked from all parts of the United States. Special trains were run. The same furore over the marvel reigned at the Paris Exposition, and at every other exhibition. And through it all—a fame, a popularity enough to turn the head of most mortals—the man remained the same—modest, simple, unpretentious.