“Were you good at saving your own money?” I asked.
“No,” he said, smiling. “I never was much for saving money, as money. I devoted every cent, regardless of future needs, to scientific books and materials for experiments.”
“You believe that an excellent way to succeed?”
“Well, it helped me greatly to future success.”
“What was your next invention?” I inquired.
“An automatic telegraph recorder—a machine which enabled me to record dispatches at leisure, and send them off as fast as needed.”
“How did you come to hit upon that?”
“Well, at the time, I was in such straits that I had to walk from Memphis to Louisville. At the Louisville station they offered me a place. I had perfected a style of handwriting which would allow me to take legibly from the wire, long hand, forty-seven and even fifty-four words a minute, but I was only a moderately rapid sender. I had to do something to help me on that side, and so I thought out that little device.”
Later, he pointed out an article by one of his biographers, in which a paragraph, referring to this Louisville period, says:—
“True to his dominant instincts, he was not long in gathering around him a laboratory, printing office and machine shop. He took press reports during his whole stay, including, on one occasion, the Presidential message, by Andrew Johnson, and this at one sitting, from 3:30 P. M. to 4:30 A. M.