"In this laboratory I had a large induction coil which I had borrowed to make some experiments with. One day I got hold of both electrodes of the coil, and it clinched my hands on them so that I couldn't let go. The battery was on a shelf. The only way I could get free was to back off and pull the coil, so that the battery wires would pull the cells off the shelf and thus break the circuit. I shut my eyes and pulled, but the nitric acid splashed all over my face and ran down my back. I rushed to a sink, which was only half big enough, and got in as well as I could and wiggled around for several minutes to permit the water to dilute the acid and stop the pain. My face and back were streaked with yellow; the skin was thoroughly oxidized. I did not go on the street by daylight for two weeks, as the appearance of my face was dreadful. The skin, however, peeled off, and new skin replaced it without any damage."
With all the practical work he was now doing, Boston seemed to be too limited a sphere, and Edison longed for the greater opportunities of New York. His friend Adams went West to continue a life of roving and adventure, but the serious-minded Edison had had more than enough of aimless roaming, and had determined to forge ahead on the lines on which he was working.
Realizing that he must look to New York to better his fortunes, Edison, deep in debt for his new inventions, but with high hope and courage, now made the next momentous step in his career.
IX
FROM POVERTY TO INDEPENDENCE
Edison came first to New York in 1868, with his early stock printer, which he tried unsuccessfully to sell. He went back to Boston, and, quite undismayed, got up a duplex telegraph. "Toward the end of my stay in Boston," he says, "I obtained a loan of money, amounting to eight hundred dollars, to build up a peculiar kind of duplex telegraph for sending two messages over a single wire simultaneously. The apparatus was built, and I left the Western Union employ and went to Rochester, New York, to test the apparatus on the lines of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph between that city and New York. But the assistant at the other end could not be made to understand anything, notwithstanding I had written out a very minute description of just what to do. After trying for a week I gave it up and returned to New York with but a few cents in my pocket."
No one could have been in direr poverty than Edison when the steamboat landed him in New York in 1869. He was in debt, and his few belongings in books and instruments had to be left behind. He was not far from starving.
After leaving the boat his first thought was for breakfast; but he was without money to obtain it. He walked the streets, and in passing a wholesale tea house saw a man "tasting" tea, so he went in and asked the "taster" if he might have some tea. His request was granted, and this was his first breakfast in New York.
He knew a telegraph operator in the city, and in the course of the day succeeded in finding him, but he also was out of work, and the best he could do was to lend Edison one dollar.