From Memphis Edison went to Louisville. Here he remained for about two years. It was while he was there that he perfected the peculiar vertical style of writing which has since been his characteristic style. He says of this form of writing, an example of which is given above: "I developed this style in Louisville while taking press reports. My wire was connected to the 'blind' side of a repeater at Cincinnati, so that if I missed a word or sentence, or if the wire worked badly, I could not break in and get the last words, because the Cincinnati man had no instrument by which he could hear me. I had to take what came. When I got the job the cable across the Ohio River at Covington, connecting with the line to Louisville, had a variable leak in it, which caused the strength of the signaling current to make violent fluctuations. I obviated this by using several relays, each with a different adjustment, working several sounders all connected with one sounding-plate. The clatter was bad, but I could read it with fair ease. When, in addition to this infernal leak, the wires north to Cleveland worked badly it required a large amount of imagination to get the sense of what was being sent. An imagination requires an appreciable time for its exercise, and as the stuff was coming at the rate of thirty-five to forty words a minute, it was very difficult to write down what was coming and imagine what wasn't coming. Hence it was necessary to become a very rapid writer, so I started to find the fastest style. I found that the vertical style, with each letter separate and without any flourishes, was the most rapid, and that, the smaller the letter, the greater the rapidity. As I took on an average from eight to fifteen columns of news report every day, it did not take long to perfect this method."
The telegraph offices of those early days were very crude as compared with the equipments of modern times. The apparatus was generally in a very poor condition, and the wiring was of a haphazard kind. The conditions during the time of the Civil War all tended to demoralization, both of operators and apparatus.
Indeed, the following story, related by Edison, illustrates the lengths to which telegraphers could go at a time when they were in so much demand: "When I took the position there was a great shortage of operators. One night, at 2 A.M., another operator and I were on duty. I was taking press report, and the other man was working the New York wire. We heard a heavy tramp, tramp, tramp on the rickety stairs. Suddenly the door was thrown open with great violence, dislodging it from one of the hinges. There appeared in the doorway one of the best operators we had, who worked daytime, and who was of a very quiet disposition except when intoxicated. He was a great friend of the manager of the office. His eyes were bloodshot and wild, and one sleeve had been torn away from his coat. Without noticing either of us, he went up to the stove and kicked it over. The stove-pipe fell, dislocated at every joint. It was half full of exceedingly fine soot, which floated out and completely filled the room. This produced a momentary respite to his labors. When the atmosphere had cleared sufficiently to see he went around and pulled every table away from the wall, piling them on top of the stove in the middle of the room. Then he proceeded to pull the switchboard away from the wall. It was held tightly by screws. He succeeded, finally, and when it gave way he fell with the board, and, striking on a table, cut himself so that he soon became covered with blood. He then went to the battery-room and knocked all the batteries off on the floor. The nitric acid soon began to combine with the plaster in the room below, which was the public receiving-room for messengers and bookkeepers. The excess acid poured through and ate up the account-books. After having finished everything to his satisfaction, he left. I told the other operators to do nothing. We would leave things just as they were, and wait until the manager came. In the meantime, as I knew all the wires coming through to the switchboard, I rigged up a temporary set of instruments so that the New York business could be cleared up, and we also got the remainder of the press matter. At seven o'clock the day men began to appear. They were told to go downstairs and await the coming of the manager. At eight o'clock he appeared, walked around, went into the battery-room, and then came to me, saying: 'Edison, who did this?' I told him that Billy L. had come in full of soda-water and invented the ruin before him. He walked back and forth about a minute, then, coming up to my table, put his fist down, and said: 'If Billy L. ever does that again I will discharge him.' It was needless to say that there were other operators who took advantage of that kind of discipline, and I had many calls at night after that, but none with such destructive effects."
Incidents such as these, together with the daily life and work of an operator, presented one aspect of life to our young operator in Louisville. But there was another, more intellectual side, in the contact afforded with journalism and its leaders, on which Mr. Edison looks back with great satisfaction. "I remember," he says, "the discussions between the celebrated poet and journalist George D. Prentice, then editor of the Courier-Journal, and Mr. Tyler, of the Associated Press. I believe Prentice was the father of the humorous paragraph of the American newspaper. He was poetic, highly educated, and a brilliant talker. He was very thin and small. I do not think he weighed over one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Tyler was a graduate of Harvard, and had a very clear enunciation, and, in sharp contrast to Prentice, he was a large man. After the paper had gone to press Prentice would generally come over to Tyler's office, where I heard them arguing on the immortality of the soul, etc. I asked permission of Mr. Tyler if, after finishing the press matter, I might come in and listen to the conversation, which I did many times after. One thing I never could comprehend was that Tyler had a sideboard with liquors and generally crackers. Prentice would pour out half a glass of what they call corn whisky, and would dip the crackers in it and eat them. Tyler took it sans food. One teaspoonful of that stuff would put me to sleep."
Mr. Edison throws also a curious side-light on the origin of the comic paragraph in the modern American newspaper, as distributed instantly throughout the country through the telegraph. "It was the practice of the press operators all over the country at that time, when a lull occurred, to start in and send jokes or stories the day men had collected; and these were copied and pasted up on the bulletin-board. Cleveland was the originating office for 'press,' which it received from New York and sent out simultaneously to Milwaukee, Chicago, Toledo, Detroit, Pittsburg, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Vincennes, Terre Haute, St. Louis and Louisville. Cleveland would call first on Milwaukee and ask if he had anything. If so, he would send it, and Cleveland would repeat it to all of us. Thus any joke or story originating anywhere in that area was known the next day all over. The press men would come in and copy anything which could be published, which was about three per cent. I collected, too, quite a large scrap-book of it, but, unfortunately, I have lost it."
Edison was always a great reader, and was in the habit of buying books at auctions and second-hand stores. One day at an auction he bought twenty unbound volumes of the North American Review for two dollars. These he had bound and delivered at the telegraph office. One morning, about three o'clock, he started off for home at a rapid pace with ten volumes on his shoulder. Very soon he became conscious of the fact that bullets were flying around him. He stopped, and a breathless policeman came up and seized him as a suspicious character, ordering him to drop his parcel and explain matters. Opening the package, he showed the books, somewhat to the disgust of the officer, who imagined he had caught a burglar sneaking away with his booty. Edison explained that, being deaf, he had heard no challenge, and therefore had kept moving; and the policeman remarked, apologetically, it was well for Edison he was not a better shot.
Through all his travels Edison has preserved these books, and he has them now in his library at Llewelyn Park, Orange, New Jersey.
After two years at Louisville, Edison went back North as far as Detroit, but soon returned to Louisville. At this time there was a great deal of exaggerated talk and report about the sunny life and easy wealth of South America. This idea appealed especially to telegraph operators, and young Edison, with his fertile imagination, was readily inflamed with the glowing idea of these great possibilities.