Edison, as a master mechanic, furnished all this, or at least so nearly solved the problem as to entitle him to claim credit for having given the electric light to the world—a better illuminant than gas in every way, and destined some day to be infinitely cheaper.
With regard to Edison's work upon the telegraph, telephone, electric railway, dynamo, the ore-extracting machines, the electric pen, and a score of other inventions which have made him the most profitable customer of the United States Patent Office in this or any other generation, the labor of this remarkable genius has also been largely that of one who made practical and useful the dreams of others. And I am by no means sure that the man who does this is not entitled to more credit than he who simply suggests that such and such a wonder might be accomplished and stops there. It is certain that before Edison we had no electric lights; now we have them in every important building in the country, and ere long shall have them everywhere.
Edison dislikes intensely the term discoverer as applied to himself. "Discovery is not invention," he once remarked in the course of an interesting talk with Mr. George Parsons Lathrop, printed in Harper's Magazine. "A discovery is more or less in the nature of an accident. A man walks along the road intending to catch the train. On the way his foot kicks against something, and looking down to see what he has hit, he sees a gold bracelet embedded in the dust. He has discovered that, certainly not invented it. He did not set out to find a bracelet, yet the value of it is just as great to him at the moment as if, after long years of study, he had invented a machine for making a gold bracelet out of common road metal. Goodyear discovered the way to make hard rubber. He was at work experimenting with india-rubber, and quite by chance he hit upon a process which hardened it—the last result in the world that he wished or expected to attain. In a discovery there must be an element of the accidental, and an important one, too; while an invention is purely deductive. In my own case but few, and those the least important, of my inventions owed anything to accident. Most of them have been hammered out after long and patient labor, and are the result of countless experiments all directed toward attaining some well-defined object. All mechanical improvements may safely be said to be inventions and not discoveries. The sewing-machine was an invention. So were the steam-engine and the typewriter. Speaking of this latter, did I ever tell you that I made the first twelve typewriters at my old factory in Railroad Avenue, Newark? This was in 1869 or 1870, and I myself had worked at a machine of similar character, but never found time to develop it fully."
Edison Listening to his Phonograph.
There is one great invention, however, for which Edison deserves credit, both as discoverer and practical inventor—the phonograph. Here was a genuine discovery. The phonograph knows no other parent than Edison, and he has brought it to its present condition by devotion and tireless skill. I have always believed in the phonograph as an instrument destined to play some day an important part among the blessings that ingenuity has given to man. There are still obstacles in the way of its practical success, but that the missing screw or spring—perhaps no more than that—will be found in the near future, is not doubted by any competent observer.
Thomas Alva Edison was born February 11, 1847, at Milan, Erie County, O., an obscure canal village. When a small boy, his family, a most humble one (his father being a village jack-of-all-trades, living upon odd jobs done for neighboring farmers), moved to Port Huron, Mich., where Edison's boyhood was passed. There his father was in turn tailor, well-digger, nursery-man, dealer in grain, lumber, and farm lands. His parents were of Dutch-Scotch descent and gave him the iron constitution that enables him to-day, at the age of forty-seven, to tire out the most robust of his assistants. One of his ancestors lived to the age of one hundred and two, and another to the age of one hundred and three, so that we may reasonably expect the famous inventor to open the door for us to still other wonders of which we do not yet even dream. His mother, born in Massachusetts, had a good education and at one time taught school in Canada. Of regular schooling, young Edison had but two months in his life. Whatever else he knew as a boy he learned from his mother. There are no records showing extraordinary promise on his part. He was an omnivorous reader, having an intense curiosity about the world and its great men. At ten years of age he was reading Hume's "England," Gibbon's "Rome," the Penny Encyclopædia, and some books on chemistry.
At the age of twelve he entered upon his life work as newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railroad of Canada and the Michigan Central, selling papers, books, candies, etc., to the passengers.
"Were you one of the train-boys," he was once asked, "who sold figs in boxes with bottoms half an inch thick?"