Heroes of the Telegraph

His pedigree has been traced for two centuries to a family of prosperous millers in Holland, some of whom emigrated to America in 1730. Thomas, his grea

e patriarchal term of 102, his son to 103, and Samuel, the father of t

r trade, and afterwards in grain. He resided for a time in Canada, where, at Vienna, he was married to Miss Nancy Elliott, a popular teacher in the high school. She was of Sco

he was known to outjump 260 soldiers of a regiment quartered at Fort Gratiot, in Michigan. His wife was a fine-looking woman, intelligent,

3,000 inhabitants, mostly occupied with the grain and timber trade. Mr. Edison dwelt in a plain cot

mble in the woods, or play on the banks of the river, and could repeat the songs of the boatmen ere he was five

ld one day that a goose hatches her goslings by the warmth of her body, the child was m

e view of the broad river, with the Canadian hills beyond. His mother undertook his education, and with the exception of two months he never went to school. She directed his opening mind to the acquisition of knowledge, and often read aloud t

early playthings being steam-engines and the mechanical powers. But it is like eno

ubigne's HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION; Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, and Sears' HISTORY OF THE WO

and Detroit. The post enabled him to sleep at home, and to extend his reading by the public library at Detroit. Like the boy Ampere, he proposed, it

essed on. Burton's ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, Ure's DICTIONARY OF CHEMISTRY, did not come amiss; but in Victor Hugo's LES MISERABLES and THE TOILERS OF THE SEA he found a tr

empt the passengers. Ere long he conceived the plan of publishing a newspaper of his own. Having bought a quantity of old type at the office of the DETROIT FREE PRESS, he installed it in a spingless car, or 'caboose' of the train meant for a smoking-room, but too uninviting to be much used by the passengers. Here he set the type, and printed a smallsheet about a foot square by pressing it with his hand. The GRAND TRUNK HERALD, as he called it, was a weekly organ, price three cen

c and literary work apart, and the smoking-car was tra

sure by making experiments. One day, through an extra jolt of the car, a bottle of phosphorus broke on the floor, a

PRY. It boasted of several contributors and a list of regular subscribers. One of these (Mr. J.H.B.), while smarting under what he considered a malicious libel, met the editor one day on the b

driver on the locomotive. After he had gained an insight into the working of the locomotive he would run the train himself; but on one occasion he pumped so much water into t

or was run on trees, and insulated with bottles, and the apparatus was home-made, but it seems to have been of some use. Mr. James D. Reid, author of THE TELEGRAPH IN AMERICA, would have us believe that an attempt was made to utilise the electricity obtai

Huron, from being run over by an approaching train, and the grateful father, Mr. J. A. Mackenzie, learning of his interest in the telegraph, offered to teac

e skill; and after six months, finding his extra pay withheld, he obtained an engagement as night operator at Stratford, in Canada. To keep him awake the operator was required to report the word 'six,' an office call, every half-hour to the manager of the circuit. Edison fulfilled the r

certainty, repeated it back again. When he rushed out of the office to deliver it the train was gone, and a collision seemed inevitable; but, fortunately, the opposing trains met on a strai

ween Port Huron and Sarnia, on the opposite shore. Communication was therefore interrupted until Edison mounted a locomotive and sounded the whistle in short and lo

repairing telegraph apparatus and making crude experiments. One day he violated the rules of the office by mo

ing. But although he tried to overcome his faults by the device of employing an auxiliary receiver working at a slower rate than the direct one, he was found incompetent, and transferred to a day wire at Cincinnati. Determined to excel, however, he took shift for the night men as often as he could, and after several months, when a delegation of Cleveland operators came to organise a branch of the Telegraphers' Union, and th

me wire, one from each end; but his efforts met with no encouragement. Men of routine are apt to look with disfavour on men of originality; they do not wish to be disturbed from the official groove; and if they are not jealous of improvement, they have often a narrow-minded contempt or suspicion of the servant who is given to invention, thinking him an oddity who is wasting tim

own throughout: the length and breadth of the States. But for his genius and aspirations, Edison might have yielded to the seductions of this happy-go-lucky, free, and frivolous existence. Dissolute comrades at Memphis won upon his good nature; but though

e found himself without a dollar. Transported to Decatur, he walked to Nashville, where he found another operator, William Foley, in the like straits, and they went in compan

ressing circumstances, Edison's prospects of becoming an inventor seemed further off than ever. Perhaps he began to fear that stern necessity would grind him down, and keep him struggling for a livelihood. None of his improvements had brought him any advantage. His efforts to invent had been ridiculed and discountenanced. Nobody had recognised his talent, at least as a thing of value and worthy of encourageme

epicted the inferiority of other countries, and especially of South America, in such vivid colours, that he changed his intenti

nd improved his penmanship until he could write a fair round backhand at the rate of forty-five words a minute-that is to say, the utmost that

hours, Edison would sometimes find two or three of them asleep in his bed with th

o interfere with the instruments and their connections. He could not res

harged for this, but soon obtained another engagement as a press operator in Cincinnati. He spent his leisure in the Mechanics' Library, studying works on electricity and general scienc

ion Telegraph Company, recommended Edison to his manager, Mr. G. F. Milliken, as a good man to work the New York wire, and the berth was offered to Edison by telegraph. He accepted, and left at once for B

truck air, and pestilent habit of trying some new crotchet. Himself an inventor, Milliken recognised in his deep-set eye and musing brow the fire of a sup

for use on private lines, and an electro-chemical vote recorder, which the Legislature of Massachusetts declined to adopt. With the ass

he wall, and connected these to the poles of a battery in such a way that when the insects ran towards the bait which he had provided, they stepped from

After repeated failures he chanced to enter the office of the Laws Gold Reporting Telegraph Company while the instrument which Mr. Laws had invented to report the fluctuations of the money market had broken d

ny, and henceforth his career as an inventor was secure. The Gold Indicator Company afterwards gave him a responsible position. He improved their indicator, and invented the Gold and Stock Quotation Printer, an apparatus for a similar purpose. He entered i

legraph Company, as a salaried inventor, they having the option of

of his mind, which literally teemed with projects. His brain was no longer a prey to itself from the 'local action,' or waste energy of restrained ideas and revolving thoughts. [The term 'local action' is applied by electricians to the waste which goes on in a voltaic battery, although its current is not flowing in th

arrived at the factory. The model had acted well, but the first instruments made after it proved a failure. Edison thereupon retired to the upper floor of the factory with some of his best workmen,

spiration of his ideas, he is apt to make no distinction between day and night, until he arrives at a result which he considers to be satisfactory one way or the other. His meals are brought to him in the laboratory, and hastily eaten, although his dwelling is quite near. Long watchfulness and labour seem to

d constitution, sound as it is, would probably break down. Still, he appears to be ageing before his time, and some of hi

own by means of an electro-magnet actuated by an intermittent current of electricity. The writing is traced with the needle, which perforates another sheet o

eldest child, Mary Estelle, was playfully surnamed 'Dot,' and his second, Thomas Alva,

The President of the Western Union reported that it had saved the Company 500,000 dollars a year in the construction of new lines. Edison also improved the Bain chemical telegraph, until it attained an incredible speed. Bain had left it capable of recording 200 words a minute; but Edison, by dint of searching a pile of books ordered

Railroad, and about twenty-four miles from New York. Here on some rising ground he built a wooden tenement, two stories high,

abinet replete with instruments of precision, and a large airy workshop, provided w

es, recalled some school of handicraft. There were no rigid hours, no grinding toil under the jealous eye of the overseer. The spirit of competition and commercial rivalry was absent. It was not a question of wrin

telegraphic apparatus, lenses, crucibles, and pieces of his own inventions. A perfect tangle of telegraph wires coming from all parts of the Union were focussed at one end of the room. An ash-covered forge, a cabinet organ, a rust

mouth firm, the forehead wide and full above, but not very high. It was shaded by dark chestnut hair, just silvered with grey. His most remarkable features were his eyes, which are blue-grey and deeply set, with an intense and piercing expression. When his attention was not

s of polish, were good enough for this inspired workman. An old silver watch, sophisticated with magnetism, and keeping an eccentric time peculiar to it, was his only ornament

like a wizard over the smoky fumes of some lurid lamps arranged o

ent begins to click. The inventor strikes a grotesque attitude, a herring in one hand and a biscuit in the other, and with a voice a little muffled with a mouthful of both, translates aloud, slowly, the sound intelligible to hi

t tempt him to sit through two hours of 'personal glorification.' He dislikes notoriety, thinking that a man is to be 'measured by what he does, not by what is said about him.' But he likes to talk about his inventions and show them to visitors at Menlo Park. In disposition he

tions, but the others, including mathematicians, chemists, electricians, secretary, bookkeeper, and mechanics, were paid a salary. They were devoted to Edison, who, though

manufactories. But Edison seems to have been the first to organise a staff of trained assistants to hunt up useful facts in books, old and modern, and discover fresh ones by experiment, in order to develop his ideas or suggest new ones, together with skilled workmen to embody them in the fittes

e is the go

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whole civilised world. Expense was disregarded in making the laboratory as efficient as possible; the very best equipment was provided, the ablest assistan

out. But occasionally the suggestion was nothing more than this: 'I want something that will do so-and-so. I believe it will be a good thing, and can be done.' The assistant was on his mettle, and either failed or triumphe

discovery was made at 4 P.M., and Edison telegraphed it to his patent agent, who immediately drew up the specification, and at nine o'clock next morning cabled it to London. Before

ished to see the laboratory and the man. Although he had chosen that out-of-the-way place to avoid disturbance, they were never denied: and he often took a pleasure in showing his models, or explaining the work on which he was engaged. There was no affectation of mystery, no attempt at keeping his experiments a sec

creature is an infallible sign of its inferiority, and that in proportion as it rises in the scale of being, its head is found to differ from its tail. Now, in the Bell apparatus, the transmitter and the receiver were alike, and hence Clerk Maxwell hinted that it would n

voice is relatively faint. Edison adopted the principle of making the vibrations of the voice control the intensity of a current which was independently supplied to the line by a voltaic battery. The plan of Bell, in short, may be compared to a man who employs hi

matter of fact, powdered carbon and plumbago had been used in making small adjustable rheostats by M. Clerac, in France, and probably also in Germany, as early as 1865 or 1866. Clerac's device consisted of a small wooden tube containing the material, and fitted with contacts for the current, which appear to have adjusted the pressure. Moreover,

n line. It consisted of an electro-magnet with double poles and an armature which pressed upon a disc or discs of plumbago, through which the local current Passed. The electro-magnet was excited by the main line current and the armature attracted to its poles at every signal, thus pressing on the plumbago, and by

fibres and sheets of silk, were tried as the sensitive material, but finally abandoned in favour of a small cake or wafer of compressed lamp-black, obtained from the smoke of burning oil, such as benzolene or rigolene. This was the celebrated 'carbon butto

he point of the stylus was found to slip or 'skid' every time a current passed between them, as though it had been oiled. If your pen were the stylus, and the paper on which you write the surface, each wave of electricity passing from the nib to the paper would make the pen start, and

ndrical surface of prepared chalk. The undulatory current from the line was passed through the stylus and the chalk, while the latter was moved by turning a handle; and at every pulse of the electricity the friction between the pin and chalk was diminished, so that the stylus slipped upon its surface. The consequence was a vibration of the mica diaphragm to which the stylus was attached. Thus the undulatory current was able to establish vibrations of the disc, which communicated themselves to the air and reproduced th

parody, and to hear it singing a song, and quavering jauntily on the high notes, was irresistibly funny. Instrumental notes were given in all their purity, and, after the phonograph, there was nothing more magical in the whole range of science than to hear that fragment of common chalk distilling to the air the liquid melody of sweet bells jingling i

Professor Hughes and his friend, Mr. W. H. Preece, who had visited Edison at Menlo Park, with having 'stolen his thunder.' The imputation was indignantly denied, and it was obvious to all impartial electricians that Professor Hughes had arrived at his results by a path quite independent of the carbon transmitter, and discovered a

ard carbon, were found to regulate the current in accordance with the vibrations of the voice. Edison therefore discarded the soft and fragile button, replacing it by contacts of hard carbon and metal, in short, by a form of microphone. The carbon, or microphone transmitter, was found superio

attery and the button. The apparatus consisted of a telephone button placed between two discs of platinum and connected in circuit with the battery and a sensitive galvanometer. The strip was supported so that one end bore upon the button with a pressure which could be regulated by an adjustable screw at the other. The strip expanded or contracted when exposed to heat or cold, and thrust itself upon the button more or less, thereby varying the electric current and deflecting the

vulcanite, was capable of deflecting the needle of the galvanometer. When gelatine is subs

organs and complicated levers, manipulated by an operator. But the phonograph was automatic, and returned the words which had been spoken into it by a purely mechanical mimicry. It captured and imprisoned the sounds as the photograph retained the images of light. The colours of Nature were lost in the photograph, but the phonograph was said to preserve the qualities even of the human voice. Yet this wonderful appliance had neither ton

tian, and the modern printing-press have culminated in the phonograph, by which the living words can be preserved into the future. In the light of a new discovery, we are apt to wonder why our fathers were so blind as not to see it. When a new invention has been made, we ask ourselves, Why was it not thought of before? The discovery seems obvious, and the invention simple, after we know them. Now that speech itself can be sent a thousand miles away, or heard a thousand years after, we discern in these achievements two goals toward which we have been making, and at which we should arr

his labours, not from within, in looking back, not forward, even his most remarkable discovery is but the testimony of his own littleness. The veil of darkness only serves to keep these little powers at work. Men have sometimes a foreshadowing of what will come to pass without distinctly seeing it. In mechanical affairs, the notion of a telegraph is very old, and pro

nds us of Munchausen's trumpet) is found in the NATURAL MAGICK of John Baptista Porta, the celebrated Neapolitan philosopher, and published at London in 1658. He proposes to confine the sound of the voice in leaden pipes, such as are used for speaking through; and he goes on to say that 'if any man, as the words are spoken, shall stop the end of the pipe, and he that is at the other end shall do the like, the voice may be intercepted in the middle, and be shut up as in a prison, and when the mouth is op

Brewster surmised that a talking machine mould be invented before the end of the century. Mary Somerville, in her CONNECTION OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES, wrote some fifty years ago: 'It may be presumed that ultimately the utterances or pronunciation of modern languages will be conveyed, not only to the eye, but also to the ear of posterity. Had the ancients possessed the means of transmitting such definite sounds, the civilised world must have responded in sympathetic notes at the distance of many ages.' In the MEMOIRES DU GEANT of M. Nadar

nt. But modern science, and in particular the invention of the telephone with its vibrat

ingenious writers, the announcement that a means of hoarding s

ice. Tennyson exclaims, 'Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, and the

sses of her od

h magic treasur

ower all spirit

ls of crystal

in youth, and

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SPIRIT OF SOLI

se soft orbs has

oo enamoured

music in her

aper; and it only remained to impress them on a solid surface in such a manner as to regulate the vibrations of an artificial tympanum or drum

this wise. During the spring of 1877, he was trying a device for making a telegraph message, received on one line, automatically repeat itself along another line. This he did by embossing the Morse signals on the travelling paper instead of merely inking them, and then causing the paper to pass under the point of a stylus, which, by rising and falling in the indentations, opened and closed a sending key included in the circuit of the second line. In this way the received message transmitted itself further, without the aid of a telegraphist. Edison was running the cylinder which carried the embossed paper at a high speed one day, partly, as we are told, for amusement, and partly to test the rate at which a clerk could read a message. As the speed was raised, the paper gave out a humming rhythmic sound in passing under the stylus. The separate signals of the message could no longer be distinguished by the ear, and the instrument seemed to be speaki

delicacies of speech, and it occurred to him that if these vibrations could be impressed on a yielding material, as the Morse signals were embossed upon the paper, the indentations would reproduce the speech, just as the furrows of the paper reproduced the Morse signals. The tympanum vibrating in the curves of speech was instantly united in his imagination with the embossing stylus and the long and short i

the point of the indenting stylus to sink into the yielding foil as it was thrust up and down by the vibrating tympanum. This apparatus-the first phonograph-was published to

with a crank, and rotated by handle. A heavy flywheel was attached to give it uniformity of motion. A sheet of tinfoil formed the record, and the delivery could be heard by a roomful of people. But articulation was sacrificed at the expense of loudness. It was as though a parrot or a punchinello spoke, and sentences which were unexpected could not be understood. Clearly, if the phonograph were to become a practical instrument, it required to be much improved. Nevertheless this apparatus sufficiently demon

w laboratory at Orange, New Jersey, was completed. Of late he has occupied the latter premises, and improved the phonograph so far that it is now a serviceable instrument. In one of his 1878 patents, the use of wax to take the records in place of tinfoil is indicated, and it is chiefly to the adoption of this material that the success of the 'perfected phonogr

h a magnifying glass can the undulations caused by the vibrating stylus be distinguished. This tube of wax is filed upon a metal barrel like a sleeve, and the barrel, which forms part of a horizontal spindle, is rotated by means of a silent electro-motor, controlled by a very sensitive governor. A motion of translation is also given to the barrel as it revolves, so that the marking stylus held over it describes a spiral pa

eplaced by a conical funnel inserted by its small end over the diaphragm, which thereby utters its message aloud. It is on this plan that Edison has now constructed a phonograph which delivers its reproduction to a roomful of people. Keys and pedals are provided with which to stop the apparatus either in recording or receiving, and in the latter case to hark back and repeat a word or sentence if required. This is a convenient arrangement in using the phonograph for correspondence or dictation. Each instrument, as we have seen, can be employed for receiving as well as recording; and as all are made to one pattern, a phonogram coming from any one, in any art of the world, can be reproduced in any other instrument. A little box with do

hness and precision. These are, chiefly, the barrel or cylinder, C, on which the hollow wax is placed; the spindle, S, which revolves the cylinder and wax; and the two tympana, T, T', which receive the sounds and impress them on the soft surface of the wax. A governor, G, regulates the movement of the spindle; and there are other ingenious devices for starting and stopping the apparatus

h aims at recording and reproducing actual speech or music is, of course, capable of infinite refinem

G. E. Gouraud, we have had an opportunity of testing one. A number of phonograms, taken in Edison's laboratory, w

crystal sil

et solo, concert piece of cornet, violin, and piano, and a very beautiful duet of cornet and piano. The tones and cadences were admirably rendered, and the ear could also faintly distinguish the noises of the laboratory. Speaking was represented by a phonogram containing a dialogue between Mr. Edison and Colonel Gouraud which had been imprinted some three weeks before in America. With thi

we can listen to its wailing, for the phonograph reproduces every kind of sound, high or low, whistling, coughing, sneezing, or groaning. It gives the

ed, inaudible notes can be raised or lowered, as the case may be, to audibility. The phonograph will register notes as low as ten vibrations a second, whereas it is well known the lowest note audible to the human ear is sixteen vibrations a second. The instrument is equally capable of service and entertainment. It can be used as a stenograph, or shorthand-wri

mechanical memory more faithful than the living one. Its evidence may even be taken in a court of law in place of documents, and it is conceivable that some important action might be settled by the voice of this DEUS EX MACHINA. Will it therefore add a new terror to modern life? Shall a visitor have to be careful what he says in a neighbour's house, in case his word

bly be applied to advertising and communicating purposes. The hours of the day, for example, can be called out by a clock, the starting of a train announced, and the merits of a particular commodity descanted on. All these uses are possible; but it is in a literary sense that the phonograph is more interesting. Books can now be spoken by their authors, or a good elocutionist, and published in phonograms, which will appeal to the ear of the 'reader' instead of to his eye. 'On, four cylinders 8 inches long, with a diameter of 5,' says Edison, 'I can put the whole of NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.' To the invalid, especially, this use woul

chords.' Lovers of music, like the inventor himself, will be able to purchase songs and pieces, sung and played by eminent performers, and reproduce them

their dead. We are able to cherish the very accents of ours, and, as it were, defeat the course of time and break the silence of the grave. The voices of illustrious persons, heroes and statesmen, orators, actors, and sin