or baggage-master to New York, or told how a train hand fell and hurt his leg. One day, during the war, he persuaded a telegraph operator at Chicago to send to the principal stations on the road a bulletin of the great battle of Shiloh, in consequence of which, when the train arrived, great crowds of people were at the stations hankering after papers, which Edison sold them at an immense profit. This turned his attention to telegraphing, to which he soon became devoted.

About this time a stroke of luck came to him in saving the child of a telegraph operator from being killed by a train. The grateful father rewarded the boy by teaching him telegraphing. Thomas rigged up wires and batteries in his old home at Port Huron, and devoted all his spare hours to practice. When he was eighteen, he secured a position at Indianapolis, and while there he worked out his first invention, an automatic register for receiving messages and transferring them to another wire. In this rude machine was contained the germ of the phonograph, which he perfected years after.

By dint of incessant practice, Edison became an extremely expert and swift operator; but his usefulness was always limited by his tendency to contrive schemes for saving labor. On one occasion, when he was night operator, he was required every half hour to telegraph the word "six" to the superintendent, to show that he was awake and attending to business. The ingenious young man contrived a machine which did the work for him, and spent the time poring over his beloved chemistry. This little artifice being discovered, he lost his situation by his cleverness.

The beginning of Edison's career as an inventor was not more successful than is usual. He was undoubtedly ingenious, but his ingenuity actually prevented him from being a good telegraph operator. After a time, however, he found his niche. He drifted to New York, where, after vainly endeavoring to interest the telegraph companies in his inventions, he established himself as an expert in odd jobs pertaining to telegraphing. One day the Western Union wire to Albany would not work. The company's regular electricians experimented for days, but without success, and finally, as a forlorn hope, Edison was sent for. He seated himself at the instrument and got connection with Albany by way of Pittsburgh. Then he called for the best operator at the other end of the line, and with him experimented for two hours with currents of different intensities. At the end of this time he told the officers that the trouble was at a certain point on the line, and what it was. They telegraphed the office nearest that point, giving the necessary directions, and in an hour the wire was working properly. This established his reputation as an expert, and he soon began to rise in this line of business.

Edison's first large profits came to him from the "stock ticker," an invention for reporting in brokers' offices the prices of stocks on the exchange, which

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is now in universal use. He settled himself in Newark, N. J., where he rented a shop and began to manufacture his machines. His connection with capitalists led to his making a proposition to an association of wealthy men to experiment with electric lighting, they to supply the capital. He removed his shop to Menlo Park, a quiet and secluded place, where he carried on his experiments, which soon resulted in success. This placed

THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE.

him in an independent position, and from that time to the present his success has been only a question of degree.

Edison is a man of infinite pertinacity and great endurance. When he becomes interested in solving an important question, he is entirely oblivious of

the passage of time and of physical needs. At one time, when his printing telegraph for some reason gave out and ceased to work, he worked for sixty hours without intermission, taking no sleep or rest, having for his only food crackers and cheese, at which he nibbled from time to time as he worked. At another time all of the electric lamps burning in Menlo Park suddenly gave out. The inventor was almost stunned. For five days he worked at the problem, giving neither himself nor his assistants any rest. At the end of that time the difficulty was still unsolved, and Edison went to bed sick with disappointment and anxiety. Ordinarily he is one of the most considerate of men, but on this occasion he was much surprised when, at the end of fifteen hours' incessant work, it was suggested that rest and refreshments were in order. Time proved the trouble to be in the imperfect exhaustion of the air from the globes in which the filament burned, and long and persevering application was required to devise means for more completely exhausting it. Finally this was accomplished, and the incandescent light became a practical success.

Edison's mind is that of the typical inventor. He says of himself that his first thought on looking at any machine or contrivance whatever is to imagine how it could be improved. With him it is a maxim that "whatever is, is wrong," or at least that it might and ought to be better. This peculiarity has made him one of the most fertile inventors of history, but it also results in his being entirely wrapped up in the one absorbing pursuit. His ideal of luxury, when riches came to him, was not fast horses, or social enjoyment, or even distinction. but a perfect workshop, which had hitherto cost so much as to be unattainable to him. In his laboratory he has gathered every substance known to sciencesolid, fluid, and gas. Every effort is made to have at his command all the known resources of scientific research. Forty-five scientific journals, in different languages, are received in his library, and systematically indexed as fast as received, so that every item of information which they contain is right at his hand at any moment. In such respects Edison's workshop at Menlo Park is unique. It is hard to conceive of a chemical or mechanical experiment for which he is not perfectly equipped.

Edison says of himself that he is a poor business man. He hates routine. Going over and over again the regular round of a business system is intolerable to him. Most men are creatures of habit, and need to have their daily task laid out for them. They want to work without thinking. Edison cannot. His thought runs away with him. This tendency of his mind is well illustrated by his experience in manufacturing. When he had perfected his "stock ticker," he took a contract to manufacture some hundreds of them at a shop at Newark, N. J. "I was a poor manufacturer," he declares, "because I could not let well enough alone. My first impulse, upon taking in my hand any machine, from an egg-beater to an electric motor, is to seek a way of improving it. Therefore,

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as soon as I have finished a machine I am anxious to take it apart again in order to make an experiment. That is a costly mania for a manufacturer.'

The visitor to Edison's laboratory finds the master a rather tall, compactlybuilt man, with a somewhat boyish, clean-shaven face, which seems made prematurely old by intense thought and application. Over his clothes he wears a blouse, which is stained with acids. "Good clothes are thrown away on me," he says. “I feel it is wrong to wear any, and I never put on a new suit when I can help it." His hands are discolored with chemicals and oil, and his hair has also received some touches, for he has a habit of wiping his fingers upon it. He is somewhat deaf, and watches his visitor's lips closely to catch what he is saying. He is kind and genial, and patient in explanation to those of inquiring minds. Edison is one of the busiest men in the world. Each invention or improvement seems only to widen the field. These are only tools," he says, "with which we may accomplish still greater wonders. The very fact that this century has accomplished so much in the way of invention makes it more than probable that the next century will do far greater things."

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OTHER GREAT INVENTORS AND THEIR INVENTIONS.

Great inventions are not necessarily large or costly. The scythe is a simple tool, and inexpensive; yet the practical perfecting of it by Joseph Jenks, almost at the outset of farm-life in New England, is

an epoch-mark in agriculture. It was the beginning of a new order of things. Putting curved fingers to the improved scythe-blade and snath furnished the American grain cradle, a farm-tool perfect of its kind, and likely to hold its place as long as grain is grown on uneven ground.

The plow supplied to the Colonial farmers was as venerable as the reaping-hook. It had been substantially unimproved for four thousand years. years. The moment our people were free to manufacture for themselves, they set about its improvement in form and material; the very first patent granted by the Patent Office being for an improved plow of cast-iron. The best plow then in use was a rude affair, clumsily made, hard to guide, and harder to draw. Its improvement engaged the attention of many

inventors, notably President Jefferson, who experimented with various forms, and made a mathematical investigation of the shape of the mould-board, to determine the form best suited for the work. He was the first to discover the importance of straight lines from the sole to the top of the share and mould

board. Colonel Randolph, Jefferson's son-in-law, "the best farmer in Virginia,” invented a side-hill plow. Smith was the first to hitch two plows together; and Allen, by combining a number of small plow-points in one implement, led the way to the production of the infinite variety of horse-hoes, cultivators, and the like. But Jethro Wood, of New York, probably did more than any other man to perfect the cast-iron plow, and to secure its general use in place of the cumbrous plows of the earlier days. His skill as an inventor, and his pluck as a fighter against stolid ignorance and prejudice, for the advancement of sensible plowing, cost himwhat they ought to have gained for him-a fortune. The use of cast-iron plows had become general by 1825.

COLONIAL PLOW WITH WOODEN MOLD-BOARD.

ELI WHITNEY AND THE COTTON-GIN.

Whitney was a New England genius, who graduated at Yale in 1792, and went to Georgia to teach school, living in the family of General Greene's widow. Having heard much of the slow and tedious work of separating the cotton from the seed, Whitney undertook to make a machine for doing the work, which he did in the same year, 1792. When it was introduced, the entire cotton crop of the country could have been grown on a single field of two hundred acres. A good day's work for a man was cleaning four or five pounds of lint, or a bale of cotton in three months. Whitney's gin enabled a man to do the same work in six days. As a consequence of the cheaper and more rapid means of preparing it with the Whitney gin, the cotton crop of the South rose to sudden prominence. In 1800 it was eighteen million pounds; the next year, forty million. Ten years later it was eighty million pounds, which product was more than doubled in the next ter