"I'll make a statue of that man," said Edison to me one day when he was still groping in the dark for the secret of his temporary defeat, "and I'll illuminate it brilliantly with Edison lamps and inscribe it: 'This is the man who said the Edison lamp would not burn.'"
To go back to Edison, shaking his bottle in the sunlight, his brown study gave way to a pleasant smile of welcome when I had made my business known. "Take a look at these filings," he said, making room for me at the bench. "See how curiously they settle when I shake the bottle up. In alcohol they behave one way, but in oil in this way. Isn't that the most curious thing you ever saw—better than a play at one of your city theatres, eh?" and he chuckled to himself as he shook them up again.
"What I want to know," he went on, more to himself than to me, "is what they mean by it, and I'm going to find out." To me the interesting spectacle was Edison tossing up his bottle and watching the filings settle, and not the curious behavior of the filings.
When he put the bottle by, with a deep sigh, he took me over the whole place, pointing out with particular pride the apparatus for making the paper carbons for the lamps, and the new forms of Sprengel mercury pumps that did better work in extracting air from the lamps than any yet devised.
Looking back to that first visit to Edison, the first of perhaps a score that I have had occasion to make him in the last fifteen years, what impressed me most was the immensity of the field in which he takes an interest. Ask Edison what he thinks will be the next step in the development of the sewing-machine, or the telescope, the microscope, the steam-engine, the electric-motor, the reaping-machine, or any device by which man accomplishes much work in little time, and invariably it will be found that he has some novel ideas upon the subject, perhaps fanciful in the extreme, but practical enough to show that he has pondered the matter. He shares the opinion of the gentleman who insists that whatever is is wrong, but only to this extent: that whatever is might be better. Authority means nothing to him; he must test for himself. For instance, it is well known that he rejects the Newtonian theory in part and holds that motion is an inherent property of matter; that it pushes, finding its way in the direction of least resistance, and is not pulled or attracted. "It seems to me," he said once, "that every atom is possessed by a certain amount of primitive intelligence. Look at the thousand ways in which atoms of hydrogen combine with those of other elements, forming the most diverse substances. Do you mean to say that they do this without intelligence? Atoms in harmonious and useful relation assume beautiful or interesting shapes and colors, or give forth a pleasant perfume, as if expressing their satisfaction. In sickness, death, decomposition, or filth the disagreement of the component atoms immediately makes itself felt by bad odors." It is partly due to this belief in the sensibility of atoms that Edison attributes his faith in an intelligent Creator.
Handwritten letter.
It is hard to say into what field of inquiry Edison has not dipped. He told me once that whenever he travelled he carried a note-book with him, in which he jotted down suggestions for experiments to be made. Railway journeys, at a time when Edison was a constant traveller, were productive of much material of this kind, for the inventor never sleeps when travelling, and his brain works, going over, even in a doze, the thousand and one aspects of his work, and evolving theories to be dismissed almost as soon as evolved. His mind, when at rest, reviews his day's work almost automatically, just as a chess player's brain will, after an exciting game, go over every situation in a half dream-like condition and evolve new solutions. He has great respect for even what appear to be the most inconsequential observations, provided they are made by a competent person, and a large force in his splendid laboratory at Orange is always employed in studies that appear to the outsider to be aimless; for instance, the action of chemicals upon various substances or upon each other. Strips of ivory in a certain oil become transparent in six weeks. A globule of mercury in water takes various shapes for the opposite poles of the electric-battery upon the addition of a little potassium. There is no present use for the knowledge of such facts, but it is recorded in voluminous note-books, and some day the connecting-link in the chain of an invaluable discovery may here be found.
My next visit to Menlo Park was a few months later, when I found Edison in bed sick with disappointment. The lamps had again taken to antics for which no remedy or explanation could be discovered. There was an air of desolation over the place. The laboratory was cold and comfortless. Upon every side were signs of strict economy. Most of the assistants were young men glad to work for little or nothing. For the last month Edison had been working in the direction of a general improvement of all parts of the lamp instead of devoting himself to one feature. Expert glass-blowers were brought to Menlo Park, the air-pumps were made more perfect, new substances were tried for carbons. All this had taken time, during which outsiders freely predicted failure. The stock in the enterprise fell to such a price that it was hard to raise money for the maintenance of the laboratory. It was argued, and with some truth, as I have had occasion to remark, that Edison had really discovered nothing new; he had attempted to do what a dozen famous men had tried before him and he had failed. The quotations of New York gas stocks rose again.