“‘You are the first man in the country’, ticked in the instrument, ‘that could ever take me at my fastest, and the only one who could ever sit at the other end of my wire for more than two hours and a half. I’m proud to know you.’”
While employed as telegraph operator Edison’s inventive mind was hard at work. Accordingly, when but 25 seventeen years of age he invented the Duplex telegraph which made it possible “to send two messages in opposite directions on the same wire at the same time, without causing any confusion.”
Though a brilliant operator, young Edison found it difficult to hold a job, as he was always neglecting his regular work to “fool with experiments,” as his employers put it.
Accordingly, when twenty-one years of age, he found himself in New York City seeking work. Suppose we invite Mr. Edison to tell us of this dramatic period of his life.
“On the third day after my arrival, while sitting in the office of the Laws Gold Repeating Telegraph Company, the complicated general instrument for sending messages on all the lines suddenly came to a stop with a crash. Within two minutes over three hundred boys,––a boy from every broker in the street, rushed upstairs and crowded the long aisle and office that hardly had room for one hundred, all yelling that such and such a broker’s wire was out of order and to fix it at once. It was pandemonium, and the man in charge became so excited that he lost control of all the knowledge he ever had. I went to the indicator and, having studied it thoroughly, knew where the trouble ought to be, and found it.”
“One of the innumerable contact springs had broken off and had fallen down between the two gear wheels and stopped the instrument; but it was not very noticeable. As I went out to tell the man in charge what the matter 26 was, George Laws, the inventor of the system, appeared on the scene, the most excited person I had seen. He demanded of the man the cause of the trouble, but the man was speechless. I ventured to say that I knew what the trouble was, and he said, ‘Fix it! Fix it! Be quick!’ I removed the spring and set the contact wheels at zero; and the line, battery, and inspecting men scattered through the financial district to set the instruments. In about two hours, things were working again. Mr. Laws came to ask my name and what I was doing. I told him and he asked me to come to his private office the following day. He asked me a great many questions about the instruments and his system, and I showed him how he could simplify things generally. He then requested that I should come next day. On arrival, he stated at once that he had decided to put me in charge of the whole plant, and that my salary would be three hundred dollars a month.”
“This was such a violent jump from anything I had ever seen before, that it rather paralyzed me for a while. I thought it was too much to be lasting; but I determined to try and live up to that salary if twenty hours a day of hard work would do it.”
It is needless to say that he made good in the biggest and best sense of the word.
It was at this time that Mr. Edison, now twenty-one years of age, invented an electric stock ticker for which he received forty thousand dollars.