The boys' life of Edison

by Wm. H. Meadowcroft

For making the dynamos he secured a large works on Goerck Street, New York, and gave its management to Mr. Batchelor. For the underground conductors and their parts a building on Washington Street was rented and the work done under the superintendence of Mr. Kruesi. In still another factory building there were made the smaller appliances, such as sockets, switches, fixtures, meters, safety fuses and other details. This latter plant was at first owned by Mr. Sigmund Bergmann, who had worked with Edison on telephones and phonographs, but later Mr. Edison and E. H. Johnson became partners.

Still another difficulty presented itself. There were no men who knew how to do wiring for electric lights, except those who had been with Edison at Menlo Park. This problem was solved by opening a night-school at No. 65 Fifth Avenue in which a large number of men were educated and trained for the work by Edison's associates. Many of these men have since become very prominent in electrical circles.

Thus, in planning these matters, and in guiding the operations in these four shops in New York, and with all the work he was doing on new experiments and inventions there and at Menlo Park, and in making preparations for the first central station in New York City, Edison was a prodigiously busy man. He worked incessantly, and it is safe to say that he did not average more than four hours' sleep a day.

He was the center and the guiding spirit of those intensely busy times. The aid of his faithful associates was invaluable in the building up of the business, but he was the great central storehouse of ideas, and it is owing to his undaunted courage, energy, perseverance, knowledge and foresight, that the foundations of so great an art have been so well laid.

As has been well said by Major S. B. Eaton, who was president and general manager of the Edison Electric Light Company in its earliest years: "In looking back on those days and scrutinizing them through the years, I am impressed by the greatness, the solitary greatness, I may say, of Mr. Edison. We all felt then that we were of importance, and that our contribution of effort and zeal was vital. I can see now, however, that the best of us was nothing but the fly on the wheel. Suppose anything had happened to Edison? All would have been chaos and ruin. To him, therefore, be the glory, if not the profit."

Early in 1881 comparatively few people had seen the incandescent light. In order to make the public familiar with it, the Edison company equipped its office building with fixtures and lamps, the latter being lighted by current from a dynamo in the cellar. In the evenings the house was thrown open to visitors until ten or eleven o'clock. Thousands of people flocked to see the new light, which in those days was regarded as wonderful and mysterious, for while the lamps gave a soft, steady illumination, there was no open flame, practically no heat, no danger of fire, and no vitiation of air. For the most part of four years the writer spent his evenings receiving these visitors if no important business was in progress at the moment.

Mr. Edison and his shops had scarcely time to get well on their feet before a rush of business set in. How this business rapidly developed and grew until it became of very great magnitude is a matter of history, which we shall not attempt to relate here.

Some idea of this wonderful development, as it has gone on through the years that have passed since 1880, may be formed when it is stated that at this time there are more than one hundred millions of incandescent lamps in daily use in the United States alone. Every one of these lamps and the fundamental principles upon which they are operated rest upon the foundations which Edison laid so well.

One of Mr. Edison's interesting stories of the early days relates to the making of the lamps. He says:

"When we first started the electric light we had to have a factory for manufacturing lamps. As the Edison light company did not seem disposed to go into manufacturing, we started a small lamp factory at Menlo Park with what money I could raise from my other inventions and royalties and some assistance. The lamps at that time were costing about one dollar and twenty-five cents each to make, so I said to the company: 'If you will give me a contract during the life of the patents I will make all the lamps required by the company and deliver them for forty cents.' The company jumped at the chance of this offer, and a contract was drawn up. We then bought at a receiver's sale at Harrison, New Jersey, a very large brick factory building which had been used as an oil-cloth works. We got it at a great bargain, and only paid a small sum down, and the balance on mortgage. We moved the lamp works from Menlo Park to Harrison. The first year the lamps cost us about one dollar and ten cents each. We sold them for forty cents; but there were only about twenty or thirty thousand of them. The next year they cost us about seventy cents, and we sold them for forty. There were a good many, and we lost more money the second year than the first. The third year I succeeded in getting up machinery and in changing the processes, until it got down so that they cost somewhere around fifty cents. I still sold them for forty cents, and lost more money that year than any other, because the sales were increasing rapidly. The fourth year I got it down to thirty-seven cents, and I made all the money in one year that I had lost previously. I finally got it down to twenty-two cents, and sold them for forty cents; and they were made by the million. Whereupon the Wall Street people thought it was a very lucrative business, so they concluded they would like to have it, and bought us out.