Edison at Threescore.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 8, 1 June 1907, Page 299

Edison at Threescore.

Mr. Thos. A. Edison is just sixty years old, but instead of taking chloroform, according to the Oslerian theory that a man's life ends at three-score years, the famous inventor (we gather from the New York Tribune) has lately announced that he is going to start afresh in a new field of scientific endeavour. For the last forty years Mr. Kdison has devoted his energies almost wholly to the perfection of inventions which he believed " could be made to pay/ and which in some instances have met with such success that they have revolutionised many phases of modern life, have brought the inventor fame and riches, and have added so greatly to the wealth of the whole world that at the present time there are 250,000 persons in various countries employed in industries which he has founded.

FUTURE PLANS. In the future Mr. Edison proposes to work untrammelled by commercial fetters. He hopes to solve many a scientific problem vitally associated with human life, even though his discovery may not be a moneymaking scheme : " For many years I have longed to take up purely scientific investigation," said Mr. Edison, in talking with some friends on his sixtieth birthday, " but there have been so many things to engross my attention that I have had to defer this kind of work. For years, however, I have been making preparations for this task. I have kept notes of curious things which I have observed in my various experiments, but which at the time were only side-issues. These side vistas into the realms of science have so charmed me, that now I intend to retrace my steps and strike out in search of the truths I know must lie somewhere beyond my former horizon." By means of investigations based on the data of his note-books and scrap-books, he hopes to throw light on many subjects which now appear to him as dark mysteries.

A SUPREME INTELLIGENCE. When the inventor was asked if his theories of evolution and cellular adjustment made him a disbeliever in the Supreme Being, he replied :—: — "Not at all. No person can be brought in close contact with the mysteries of nature or make a study of chemistry, or of the laws of growth, without being convinced that behind it all there is a supreme intelligence. I do not mean to say a supreme law, for that implies no consciousness, but a supreme mind operating through unchangeable laws. I am convinced of that, and I think that I could — perhaps I may some time — demonstrate the existence of such an intelligence through the operation of these mysterious laws with the certainity of a demonstration in mathematics." Mr. Edison's year has been crowded with labour. For the last forty he has worked on an average sixteen hours a day, so that, judged by the eight-hour day, he has already lived a century.