He would be seen at times reading a scientific paper and then disappearing to buy a few sundries for experiments. Returning from the drug store with his chemicals, he would not be seen again until required by his duties, or until he had found out for himself, if possible, the truth of the statement he had been reading. If wanted for his experiment, he did not hesitate to make free use of the watchmaker's tools that lay on the table in the front window. His one idea was to do quickly when he wanted to do; and this tendency is still one of his marked characteristics.
The telegrapher's position at Stratford Junction, Canada, was taken by Edison in 1863, when he was sixteen years old, and paid him twenty-five dollars per month. In speaking of it he has since remarked that there was little difference between the telegraph of that time and that of to-day. He says: "The telegraph men couldn't explain how it worked, and I was always trying to get them to do so. I think they couldn't. I remember the best explanation I got was from an old Scotch line repairer employed by the Montreal Telegraph Company, which operated the railroad wires. He said that if you had a dog like a dachshund, long enough to reach from Edinburgh to London, if you pulled his tail in Edinburgh he would bark in London. I could understand that, but I never could get it through me what went through the dog or over the wire."
Edison was ever keenly anxious to add to his stock of experimental apparatus, as an incident of this period shows: "While working at Stratford Junction," he says, "I was told by one of the freight conductors that in the freight-house at Goodrich there were several boxes of old broken-up batteries. I went there and found over eighty cells of the well-known Grove nitric-acid battery. The operator there, who was also agent, when asked by me if I could have the electrodes of each cell, which were made of sheet platinum, gave his permission readily, thinking they were of tin. I removed them all, and they amounted to several ounces in weight. Platinum even in those days was very expensive, costing several dollars an ounce, and I owned only three small strips. I was overjoyed at this acquisition, and those very strips and the reworked scrap are used to this day in my laboratory, over forty years later."
It was while he was employed as a night operator at Stratford Junction that Edison's inventiveness was first displayed. In order to make sure that the operators were not asleep they were required to send the signal "6" to the train despatcher's office every hour during the night. Now, Edison spent all day in study and experiment, but he needed sleep, just as any healthy youth does, and so he made a small wheel with notches on the rim and attached it to the clock and line. At night he connected it with the circuit, and at each hour the wheel revolved and automatically sent in the dots required for "sixing."
The invention was a success, but the train despatcher soon noticed that frequently, in spite of the regularity of the report, Edison's office could not be raised even if a message were sent immediately after. An investigation followed, which revealed this ingenious device, and he received a reprimand.
A serious occurrence that might have resulted in accident drove him soon after from Canada, although the youth could hardly be held to blame for it. Edison says: "This night job just suited me, as I could have the whole day to myself. I had the faculty of sleeping in a chair any time for a few minutes at a time. I taught the night yardman my call, so I could get half an hour's sleep now and then between trains, and in case the station was called the watchman would awaken me. One night I got an order to hold a freight train, and I replied that I would. I rushed out to find the signalman, but before I could find him and get the signal set the train ran past. I ran to the telegraph office, and reported that I could not hold her. The train despatcher, on the strength of my message that I would hold the train, had permitted another to leave the last station in the opposite direction. There was a lower station near the junction, where the day operator slept. I started for it on foot. The night was dark, and I fell into a culvert and was knocked senseless."
Fortunately, the two engineers saw each other approaching and stopped in time to prevent an accident. Edison, however, was summoned to the general manager's office to be tried for neglect of duty. During the trial two Englishmen called, and while they were talking with the manager the youthful operator slipped out, jumped on a freight train going to Sarnia, and was not happy until the ferry-boat from Sarnia had landed him safe on the Michigan shore.
The same winter, of 1863-64, while at Port Huron, Edison had a further opportunity of showing his ingenuity. An ice-jam had broken the telegraph cable laid in the bed of the river across to Sarnia, and communication was interrupted. The river is three-quarters of a mile wide, and could not be crossed on foot, nor could the cable be repaired.
Edison suggested using the steam whistle of a locomotive to give the long and short signals of the Morse code. An operator on the Sarnia shore was quick enough to understand the meaning of the strange whistling, and thus messages were sent in wireless fashion across the ice-floes in the river.
Young Edison had no inclination to return to Canada after his late experience there. He decided, however, that he would stick to telegraphy as a business, and, after a short stay at home in Port Huron, set out to find work as an operator in another city. And thus he commenced the roaming and drifting life which in the next five years took him all over the Middle States.