“How did you manage to attract public attention to your ability?” I questioned.
“I didn’t manage,” said the Wizard. “Some things I did created comment. A device that I invented in 1868, which utilized one sub-marine cable for two circuits, caused considerable talk, and the Franklin telegraph office of Boston gave me a position.”
It is related of this, Mr. Edison’s first trip East, that he came with no ready money and in a rather dilapidated condition. His colleagues were tempted by his “hayseed” appearance to “salt” him, as professional slang terms the process of giving a receiver matter faster than he can record it. For this purpose, the new man was assigned to a wire manipulated by a New York operator famous for his speed. But there was no fun at all. Notwithstanding the fact that the New Yorker was in the game and was doing his most speedy clip, Edison wrote out the long message accurately, and, when he realized the situation, was soon firing taunts over the wire at the sender’s slowness.
“Had you patented many things up to the time of your coming East?” I queried.
“Nothing,” said the inventor, ruminatively. “I received my first patent in 1869.”
“For what?”
“A machine for recording votes, and designed to be used in the State Legislature.”
“I didn’t know such machines were in use,” I ventured.
“They ar’n’t,” he answered, with a merry twinkle. “The better it worked, the more impossible it was; the sacred right of the minority, you know,—couldn’t filibuster if they used it,—didn’t use it.”
“Oh!”