EDISON HONOURED.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 250, 22 October 1928, Page 7

EDISON HONOURED.

Veteran Inventor Receives

U.S. Decoration.

PRESENT FROM BRITAIN.

(Australian and N.Z. Press Association.) NEW YORK, October 21. The veteran inventor Thomas A. Edison was honoured yesterday at We6t Orange, New Jersey, at a unique ceremony in which the nation participated by means of wireless. The President, Mr. Coolidge, also shared in it by broadcasting a speech of praise. A message from Mr. Coolidge said: Noble, kindly servant of the United States and benefactor of mankind, may you long be spared to continue your work and to inspire those who will carry forward your torch. Mr. Edison was the recipient of a Congressional medal of honour. This was presented to him by Mr. A. W. Mellon, United States Secretary of the Treasury, in the laboratory where the inventor has perfected the greater number of his devices. The British Charge d'Affaires, Mr. Ronald Campbell, returned to Mr. Edison the first gramophone he made, which he had lent to the Kensington Museum in 1888. Mr. Edißon thanked Mr. Campbell and said hiß original electric lamp wag still in the museum at South Kensington, but that would remain there, as it was a present from him.

Mr. Edison is probably the greatest inventor that the world has even seen. His first experiments were concerned with the increasing of land telegraphy. He then turned to telephony, introducing many new improvements. Electricity then claimed his attention, and he did much to further the existing knowledge of that muchly-needed power. Daring the war Mr. Edison was obliged to take up the problems of organic chemical' manufacture, owing to the shortage of the substances needed for the manufacture of gramophone records. Invention was, in spite of his. brilliant results, a matter of hard work systematically directed to the achievement of clearly defined ends.