FAMOUS INVENTOR IS INTERVIEWED.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18189, 23 June 1927, Page 14

FAMOUS INVENTOR IS INTERVIEWED.

THOMAS EDISON HAS GREAT PERSONALITY. Mr Thomas Edison, the famous inventor, recently , celebrated his 80th birthday. This article by H.F., in the London “Daily Mail,” who visited him, gives a vivid idea of a great personality:— “Come right in.” The old face was smiling—not at all the face of a famous man with any amount of work yet to do, who was interrupted by “a visitor from London, England.” That was how a friend introduced me, and the welcome I got from Mr Edison could not have been warmer if I had been a king. (It would probably not have been so warm, my friend told me.) No one was ever less a respecter of persons than the world-famous inventor. He is a respecter of nothing but—good work. He will not even admit that he has any title to gratitude or admiration. Which is absurd. He couldn’t give me long, but the short talk I had with him proved that he is no less great as a man than he is as a mind. When I said something to show that I felt it an honour to be received by him in his workshop, he just put the compliment by as if that sort of thing didn’t interest him. It doesn't. It is his humour that saves him from the foibles which afflict so manv famous people. It is his strong sense of reality, of the connection between

causes and effects, that keeps him fit and active, in mind and bodv both, in spite of his SO years. He told’me the recipe for good health:—“Eat what you like, but eat very little of it.” lie sticks to that. What he likes is what he knows will agree with him. He has never been a total abstainer from alcohol, but the very small amount he takes couldn't affect a mouse. Cigars he used to smoke at one time seven or eight a day. Now he smokes very little indeed. In a case in his study there are rows and rows of medais which he and his inventions have had conferred on them. They give some idea of the number of conveniences and pleasures which the world owes to him. He says, with a slight impatience, “Well, if I hadn't invented ’em, someone else sure would have.” Which is. of course, true, but it is most unlikely that any one man could' have hit upon so many improvements in so many different lines. Telephones, phonographs, incandescent electric lamps, moving pictures— of all these he was a pioneer. In a hundred other directions he has cleared up difficulties and laid down paths for other men to follow. A business man as well as a tcientist, he has made his discoveries yield unto him, and not to exploiters, their profit. Vet he has never cared about nionev for its own sake. “I've seen it kill too many people," he says grimly. n e , s still inclined to be rather untidy in his

dress, as he was when lie applied for his first newspaper job in a “hickory shirt, a pair of butternut pants tucked into the tops of boots too large for him and guiltless of blacking." lie is still absent minded, because he still gets absorbed in problems to be solved. His deafness increases, but it does not trouble him greatly “Think of all the stuff I'd have to listen to,” he chuckles. What T like to remember chiefly about him is the kindliness of his smile.