It was as a telegrapher, which he became at eighteen, that his inventive genius first displayed itself. One after another various devices for improving telegraphic service flowed from his fertile mind, until, after his astonishing success in inventing a duplex and quadruplex telegraph, he was able to command the support of a group of New York capitalists in carrying through a long series of experiments that finally resulted in the invention of the now familiar Edison electric light.
Had it been for only this one invention Edison’s name would be gratefully remembered for all time. But to strengthen his claims on the gratitude of his countrymen and of posterity there has since come from his New Jersey laboratory a succession of inventions,—to name only a few, the phonograph, the kinetoscope, the mimeograph, the storage battery, and the “talking moving pictures,”—which have meant new openings for capital, new opportunities for labor, and an incalculable enlargement of the resources of the human race. Whitney, Fulton, Howe, Morse, Bell, Edison,—clearly it is only simple historic justice to rate these great inventors with the great statesmen, warriors, and pioneers who in days gone by have won undying fame as makers of the American republic.
EDISON LISTENING TO THE PHONOGRAPH
SUPPLEMENTARY READING
| Leading American Inventors | George Iles |
| Inventors | P. G. Hubert, Jr. |
| Four American Inventors | F. M. Perry |
| Edison—His Life and Inventions | F. L. Dyer and T. C. Martin |
| Bell’s Electric Speaking Telephone | George B. Prescott |
| Samuel Finley Breese Morse | J. Trowbridge |
| Life of Robert Fulton | T. W. Knox |
| Memoir of Eli Whitney | D. Olmstead |
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