SCIENCE UP TO DATE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17329, 18 November 1916, Page 13

SCIENCE UP TO DATE.

THE WORLD’S GREATEST INVENTOR.—I; (By JAMES COLLIER.) Thomas Alva Edison was born at tho fulness of the time, on February 11, 1847, when the advent of electricity in some of its most striking forms , had opened up new paths and invited noyel application. ■ Ho possessed that first title to'l talent—he camo of a mixed stock. The ancestral Edisons, like the Roosevelts, were of Dutch race, and, emigrating from Holland about tho middle of the eighteenth century, settled in Now Jersey. (The initial “ e” in tho name has always been sounded long in tlio family, as it is m Dutch.) Edison was born at the pretty little village of Milan.—not in Italy, hut in Ohio. His father was a man of many trades, 'and latterly kept a hotel at Vienna—not in Austria, but again in Ohio. The rebellious spirit that had led his father to join the rebels in Canada camo out in his_ son’s originality, persistence and inventiveness, and tho son’s forcefulness of character was plainly inherited from ancestors who were true nonconformists (in the widest senso). From them, most of whom lived to a great age, lie derived his fiery energy, his irtm endurance and his grim determination. He had an abnormally large brain, and though his father was a six-footer, he himself was short and at first frail. The mother of David Hume said of her illustrious son in his boyhood: “ Oor Davy , is uncommon wake-minded ” (weak-minded), and young Edison was often set down as lacking ordinary acumen. His inventiveness was evidently hereditary, and had previously shown itself in a'paternal uncle. He received little scholastic instruction (three months in all), hut before lie was twelve years old ho had read through some standard histories. He did not regret the absence of a college, education. “ College-bred men,” lie said in later years, " are nob worth a damn.” That is, they nvo incapable equally of originating or .even developing an invention. ' THE EXPERIMENTER. Edison exhibited the usual variety of occupations proper to tho American. He was a domostio gardener, and opened a vegetable store, but soon tired of the business. He became a newspaper distributor by train, and learnt tho comp9sitor’s art, and, indeed, everything'connected with tho production of a newspaper; he composed, printed, edited, published/ and sold a “ Weekly Herald.” He was then less than fifteen years old. ■ It was doubtless the first newspaper in tho world that was printed and produced on a train in motion. Ho was permitted to use’ an empty train compartment, which ho soon equipped with an extraordinary amount of apparatus—jars and test-tubes, batteries and bottles. Unluckily, an accident, for which he was not to blame, set the compartment on fire, certainly by means of his chemicals, and the irate conductor ejected Edison, his laboratory, printing plant and all from the train. At tl)e same time ho gave him a box on the .ears that made him deaf through life. It was far from being an unmixed I misfortune. When sitting in an operator’s room, lie could hear only the tick of his own machine, and was not bothered by other instru--. ments. Ho was necessitated to improve tho telephone-transmitter, if lie was to hear what was said. , Bell’s magnetic receiver was too weak to be commercially used; Edison made the telephone commercial; that, at all events; his claim. It was the same with the phonograph. Its early defect was that it reproduced tho overtones discovered by Helmholtz to accompany all tones. " He did' overcome that grand, defect I He worked for more than a year for twenty hours a day, Sundays thrown in, to got tho word "specie” recorded and reproduced. This done, all was done. And his nerves wero preserved intact fill his days. To hunt Broadway (in New York) was quiet as a village. AN APPRENTICESHIP. Ejected from the railway, Edison reconstituted his laboratory aud continued his newspaper. At fourteen he was probably tho * youngest, publisher and editor alive. Ho met with somo mishaps. Changing its name to “Paul Pry,” he made.it the vehicle of venomous personalities, and ho was tossed into a river by one of his victims. Wisely, lie abandoned that questionable way of making a living. He continued his self-education. He was an omnivorous reader and spent hours in the public library at Detroit. By actual observation and trial, he made himself thoroughly familiar with .the mechanism of 'the steam-locomotive, furnace, boiler, valves, levers, and gear. He acted in the spirit of the hero of Disraeli’s first novel —that adventures are to the adventurous, and he had some remarkable adventures. A railway journey, when ho acted as driver, aud a night-tramp of horror surpass most things in fiction. A bra\x act, when he saved the life of a bo™ by tearing him out of the jaws of an approaching train, got him to be made a train telegraphist. He soon mastered the Morse code, and he himself made a small and neat set of instruments. For sometimes eighteen hours a day he worked enthusiastically. A hoy of sixteen, he was engrossed by his experiments and scientific reading. -Always experimenting, he mnde swift headlong trial of anything that camo to hand, when ho was filled with the fervour of. a new experiment. VAGRANCY. From 1863 to 1868, when he was from sixteen to twontv-one, Edison drifted.all over the Middle States in quest of a job, but vagrancy did not crumble this rolling stone. His eventful story was only one of many. Some of these wonderful operators—hundreds of them—have risen to high and important offices. Two at' least have been Governors of States, two have been Cabinet Ministers, and two assistantMinisters: a large number of them presidents of the great railway systems, presidents of tho telephone system, of the Adams Express, of the telegraph and cable companies, etc. But many of them became -tramp-operators, closing each period of work with a debauch. Milton Adams was their Gil Bias. Edison, too, had the "wander-lust’’-—the passion for roving; and he Was a nomad and an Ishmaelite. But he never ceased to study, explore, or experiment. Ho’ had other originalities: He practised so as to "sense .the meaning” of a line at a glance. In that way several volumes .can,_ he pernsed in a day, and the acquisitions of the Buckles, the Macaulays, and the Actons are accounted for. WANDERING AND INVENTING. He w r andered from Detroit to New Orleans, through Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville and Memphis, and from Canada to Michigan. He continued to work at the great railways with the equally great telegraph companies. . At one of these, the Indiana, he made his first telegraphic invention, which he applied, many years after, for - transferring messages from one wire to another; and this instrument first suggested to him the idea of the phonograph, while he was at work on the telephone. According to one crack operator, Edison was always " monkeying ” with batteries and circuits, and he was ever devising easier ways or doing things. . Ho fitted up batterycircuits. Ho used to play jokes on his brother-operators, as they upon him, though with loss success; and no killed rats. He spent most of his jftisijxo in making. .

' At Memphis (Tennessee), repeating a previous experience, ho was made to “ move on,” because ho had the folly to improve on existing apparatus. Ho did not invent the auto-repeater, lie says, but he succeeded in connecting Now York and New Orleans for the first time since the war. Having succeeded where a potted operator, had failed, he was again dismissed, without explanation. At Louisville (Kentucky) he hit and perfected the peculiar vertical penmanship Uliati got into fashion and afterwards got him a situation. It was tho most rapid as well as the easiest to read. But we have been able to let only gleams of light play on the peculiarities of that strange hand of telegraph operators and their vicissitudes. Olio aspect of thoir careers should not be omitted. It bears closely on the present juncture. General Grant spoke with high’eulogy of "the organisation and discipline ot this bravo and intelligent body of men. The moment that troops wero ready to go into camp, the telegraphists woiild put up their wiles. Now, as then, their sendees are incommensurable.

IN BOSTON. The year 18(38 found tho nomad for the first time iiv, Boston, where the chivalry of a friend and Ins legible vertical penmanship at once proculcd him a job. Yet ho was unprepossessing iii appearance, uncouth in manner, aud a clieiver of tobacco. He was soon known as the best-informed operator in tho office, and ho might have been called tho most resourceful as well. He,suffered from some deficiencies. Unlike the true Yankee, ho was no orator; when there were more than two or three persons in a room, they radiated somo unknown influence that paralysed his vocal Chords. Blit his breadth of forehead and his strong nose betokened strength, and ljc proved to he eminently capable. , , , „ Ho had hardly settled in ‘ the hub of the universe” when ho invented a vote recorder to enable a .Congressional vote to be taken in a minute. After tho voterecorder he invented a stock-ticker, and started a ticker service, or stock quotation circuit, in Boston. He put up private telegraph lines, and used an alphabetical dial instrument for telegraphing between business establishments^—a forerunner, he truly says, cf modern telephony. , In his laboratory he continued the chemical experiments which qualified him to cope with •difficulties in some later inventions. Small as 'well as great things attracted the magician s wand. To protect himself from some petty annoyances lie invented an automatic electrocuting device. It was a continuation of his Western campaign against rats. N IN NETT YORK. From mere restlcssn: or. in hope of selling his stock-printer, Edison went in 1868 to New York.. In. 1869 he got up a duplex telegraph for transmitting two messages 'simultaneously , over a 'single wire, but his assistant at Dio other end of the 'line proved incapable, and the thing fell through, it anticipated a discovery of later years. Soon after came tho, crisis of Ins fortunes. ; Ont at elbows, lie found shelter in tho battery room of the Gold Indicator Company, whore he had an opportunity of studying tho indicators and the complicated general transmitter. One day the transmitter stopped with a crash. The consequent confusion was indescribable. He alon'e could put mutters' to rights. Next day ho was placed in charge of the whole plant at £6O per month, and although it seemed too good to he real, he determined to live Up to-: (namely, be worth) that salary, if twenty hours’ hard work a day vyould do it. , Edison gives an account or Black Friday at Now York, in 1869, when Jay Gould and his crowd cornered the gold market, which shows how intimately such an instrument as an indicator mav bo involved in a financial crisis. Then Wall Street became a pandemonium and the Stock Exchange Bcdlam. 'ln it a banker weut mad with excitement and strain, and it took five men to hold him. Through the action of the Treasury gold fell to 132, from near 200, to which. Gould had forced it up. and it took Edison and his men all night to work it ba’ck to that quotation. *■ . FRESH EXPERIMENTING. Edison continued to* perfect the stock-ticker. He exhibited and worked a successful device that would bring a ticker in a broker’s office to unison with the central station, thereby saving much labour and trouble. At one time 1200 instruments wero in use. No substitute and no competitor has ever been invented, but it. is now dimmed and overlaid by a series of improvements. For it'and other inventions he received £BOOO. It throws light on the financial condition of the United States that this was the first, cheque he had ever handled, and he did not know that it had to be endorsed. He was now, at twenty-two, independent. At least, so ho says; but he was often enough in difficulties in immediately succeeding years. We may add that he was not!, only an electrician himself, hut the trainer of others. Eight presidents of the Electric Institute were at different, times in his employ.