



Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger





EDISON HIS LIFE AND INVENTIONS

By Frank Lewis Dyer

General Counsel For The Edison Laboratory And Allied Interests

And

Thomas Commerford Martin

Ex-President Of The American Institute Of Electrical Engineers



CONTENTS

     INTRODUCTION
     I.        THE AGE OF ELECTRICITY
     II.       EDISON'S PEDIGREE
     III.      BOYHOOD AT PORT HURON, MICHIGAN
     IV.       THE YOUNG TELEGRAPH OPERATOR
     V.        ARDUOUS YEARS IN THE CENTRAL WEST
     VI.       WORK AND INVENTION IN BOSTON
     VII.      THE STOCK TICKER
     VIII.     AUTOMATIC, DUPLEX, AND QUADRUPLEX TELEGRAPHY
     IX.       THE TELEPHONE, MOTOGRAPH, AND MICROPHONE
     X.        THE PHONOGRAPH
     XI.       THE INVENTION OF THE INCANDESCENT LAMP
     XII.      MEMORIES OF MENLO PARK
     XIII.     A WORLD-HUNT FOR FILAMENT MATERIAL
     XIV.      INVENTING A COMPLETE SYSTEM OF LIGHTING
     XV.       INTRODUCTION OF THE EDISON ELECTRIC LIGHT
     XVI.      THE FIRST EDISON CENTRAL STATION
     XVII.     OTHER EARLY STATIONS--THE METER
     XVIII.    THE ELECTRIC RAILWAY
     XIX.      MAGNETIC ORE MILLING WORK
     XX.       EDISON PORTLAND CEMENT
     XXI.      MOTION PICTURES
     XXII.     THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EDISON STORAGE BATTERY
     XXIII.    MISCELLANEOUS INVENTIONS
     XXIV.     EDISON'S METHOD IN INVENTING
     XXV.      THE LABORATORY AT ORANGE AND THE STAFF
     XXVI.     EDISON IN COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURE
     XXVII.    THE VALUE OF EDISON'S INVENTIONS TO THE WORLD
     XXVIII.   THE BLACK FLAG
     XXIX.     THE SOCIAL SIDE OF EDISON
     APPENDIX
     LIST OF UNITED STATES PATENTS
     FOREIGN PATENTS
     INDEX



INTRODUCTION

PRIOR to this, no complete, authentic, and authorized record of the work
of Mr. Edison, during an active life, has been given to the world. That
life, if there is anything in heredity, is very far from finished; and
while it continues there will be new achievement.

An insistently expressed desire on the part of the public for a
definitive biography of Edison was the reason for the following pages.
The present authors deem themselves happy in the confidence reposed in
them, and in the constant assistance they have enjoyed from Mr. Edison
while preparing these pages, a great many of which are altogether
his own. This co-operation in no sense relieves the authors of
responsibility as to any of the views or statements of their own that
the book contains. They have realized the extreme reluctance of Mr.
Edison to be made the subject of any biography at all; while he has felt
that, if it must be written, it were best done by the hands of friends
and associates of long standing, whose judgment and discretion he could
trust, and whose intimate knowledge of the facts would save him from
misrepresentation.

The authors of the book are profoundly conscious of the fact that the
extraordinary period of electrical development embraced in it has been
prolific of great men. They have named some of them; but there has
been no idea of setting forth various achievements or of ascribing
distinctive merits. This treatment is devoted to one man whom his
fellow-citizens have chosen to regard as in many ways representative of
the American at his finest flowering in the field of invention during
the nineteenth century.

It is designed in these pages to bring the reader face to face with
Edison; to glance at an interesting childhood and a youthful period
marked by a capacity for doing things, and by an insatiable thirst for
knowledge; then to accompany him into the great creative stretch of
forty years, during which he has done so much. This book shows him
plunged deeply into work for which he has always had an incredible
capacity, reveals the exercise of his unsurpassed inventive ability, his
keen reasoning powers, his tenacious memory, his fertility of resource;
follows him through a series of innumerable experiments, conducted
methodically, reaching out like rays of search-light into all the
regions of science and nature, and finally exhibits him emerging
triumphantly from countless difficulties bearing with him in new arts
the fruits of victorious struggle.

These volumes aim to be a biography rather than a history of
electricity, but they have had to cover so much general ground in
defining the relations and contributions of Edison to the electrical
arts, that they serve to present a picture of the whole development
effected in the last fifty years, the most fruitful that electricity has
known. The effort has been made to avoid technique and abstruse phrases,
but some degree of explanation has been absolutely necessary in regard
to each