The Boyhood of Great Inventors Part 7

The whole civilised world bewailed his going. He had lived long enough for it to realise and appreciate the mark he had made on the age. But most of all did the colliers mourn him--the men to whom he had been as a kindly father, a leader, a hero. They laid him in the quiet little churchyard at Chesterfield, and they raised monuments to him all over the country, as a grateful people will do,--erected statues and memorial schools, and painted portraits. But a man like George Stephenson needs no memorial of stone. He has left an undying work to speak for him, and a character that has moved men to admiration everywhere for its simplicity, combined with its greatness, its manliness, that made it possible for him, the poor collier's son, to meet on equal ground--himself also being a man--men of the highest rank in the land.

We cannot, any of us, imitate his genius or his power of invention, or his splendid physical strength, but it is within the scope of all of us, however young or insignificant, to copy his conscientious, unwearied hard work.

"Ah, ye lads," he used to say to young men when he was himself an old one, in his broad, honest Doric, "there's none o' ye know what _wark_ is!"

He has left us a splendid example of patience, content, courage, attention to detail. But most precious of all, of a heart that beat as kindly in old age as in youth, that made him dearly loved by his workmen, and that never turned away from hearing and helping those in trouble.

Riches and success and prosperity, crowding upon him in later years, had no power to spoil the simple beauty of his character, for the Wylam collier's son, besides being the world's honoured inventor, was also "one of Nature's gentlemen."

THOMAS ALVA EDISON.

To see as a boy the greatest inventor of the age, we shall have to cross the Atlantic and take a journey to the United States of America. England has done wonders in the way of discovery and invention, but it is to New England, as we call it, because she is a daughter of the old Mother Country, that we must go for a brightness and a sharpness of wit that sometimes make us think of the flash of polished steel.

We all know the name of Edison. It is not a name of history, for he is living to-day, a man still in his prime, still sending out from that wonderful brain of his things that astonish men, and have won for him the name of the "wonder-worker of the modern world."

I have before me as I write the picture of a square, brick house, with outside shutters hooked back, a white paling half encircling it, and a couple of bare, leafless trees before it. The house is plain and poor, and has a strangely unfamiliar look to our English eyes, but it is of the deepest interest to us as the birthplace of Thomas Edison.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDISON IN HIS LABORATORY.]

The boy first saw the light in 1847, and though he came into the world with but a poor provision waiting him, he found himself welcomed with a very wealth of love and tenderness. Mrs. Edison had Scotch blood in her veins, and she was a mother in a thousand. It is a common thing in history to find that a son draws his greatness, many of his best qualities, from his mother, and this son took many of his from Mrs.

Edison. She was his constant companion, his loving nurse, his gentle teacher during those early years of life that leave so deep an impress on the "afterwards."

The child was seven years old when the Edison family moved to a place called Port Huron, and there he began to spend every spare moment in reading. So earnest was he that he set himself to read through the Detroit Free Library, and had devoured a close row of volumes before his attempt was discovered.

Strange and solemn sound some of the t.i.tles of the books he read when he was twelve years old--a time when most boys are lightly dipping into newspapers and magazines and books of adventure. Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Hume's _History of England_, Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.

In 1862, when he was barely fifteen years old, he came out more fully from the shelter of home and mixed with the busy world, making a place in it for himself by his own young wits. He was a newspaper boy, and sold his papers like other boys, not stopping still in one place, but going on the train to different stations along the line, and selling as he went.

About this time there was a great fever and ferment in America. The North were fighting with the South, and people panted for news of each battle as it took place. Papers with reports were devoured as soon as printed.

"Now," thought Edison, "is my chance," and there began to work in the brain of the boy a big scheme. As the first step to carrying it out, he betook himself to the station telegraph clerk.

"If," he said, "you will let me wire the war news on a few stations ahead, and have it written up on the blackboard, I will promise you some papers, and now and then a magazine."

He repeated his request to the different clerks along the line. His eager face and twinkling eyes and earnest words won all hearts, and his request was granted. He next went to the editor of a well-known paper.

"Give me a thousand copies," he begged, "and I will pay out of the proceeds of my venture." Here, again, he succeeded. And now it remained but to get the engine-driver to promise him a few minutes at the different stations, and he started on his venture.

At the first stopping-place he had been wont to sell some half-dozen papers. That day, as he looked out, the platform was strangely crowded, and it suddenly dawned on him, from the eager faces of the people and their excited gestures, that it was _papers_ they wanted! He dashed on to the platform, and in a few minutes had sold forty at five cents each, or about a penny of our money. It was much the same at the next station.

The people had read the headings on the station blackboard, and they crowded on to the platform, an excited, hustling mob, for papers! It dawned on the boy, here was a chance to raise his prices, so he doubled them, and sold 150 where he had used to sell a dozen! It was the same all along the line. At the last station--Port Huron--his home, the people were most excited of all. The town was a mile from the station.

Edison started off with his papers, but was met half-way by an eager, hurrying crowd. They all wanted news. He stopped, drawing up in front of a church where a prayer-meeting was being held. Presently the people poured out and surrounded the boy, willingly paying him five times the usual price of his paper. He began "to take in," as he expressed it, in his own terse, telling words, "a young fortune."

After this the busy boyish brain began to look eagerly ahead, to face life seriously. He did not start off on a fresh tack. He took hold of what was nearest to his hand, and he bent his mind on improving that. He had found people were in a hurry for news. The quicker they got it the better they were pleased. Nothing could surely be quicker than that they should get it damp from the press! So it flashed into his brain--why not print a paper on the train?

The question was no sooner asked than answered.

He looked about till he lighted on an old car, and he rigged it up as a printing-office with old types and stereos he begged from a newspaper office. In this novel press-room he threw off sheet after sheet of what he called _The Grand Trunk Herald_, the first and last paper ever printed on a train. The boy of fifteen was editor, compositor, and newsvendor in one. The paper "caught on," and the circulation went up to 400.

But, alas! misfortune was soon to overwhelm the young adventurer. One unlucky day the printing-office--the old car, which grew daily more decrepit and unequal to the jolting of the journey--by a more violent lurch than usual threw over a bottle of phosphorus. The cork flew out, and in a few seconds the car was in flames. They were easily enough got under, but Edison's venture had received its deathblow. The furious car-conductor would henceforth have none of him. He boxed his ears, and pitched him on to the platform along with his precious belongings--the whole paraphernalia of his craft.

It is a sorry picture that presents itself to our mind's eye. The boy standing half stunned, the rubbish and _debris_ of his belongings strewn at his feet, and the cherished old jolting car, the scene of his labours, gradually fading into distance! It seemed as if his bright dreams were all extinguished, his golden hopes doomed to come to nothing. As he stood there he faced it all--a mere boy low down in the world, badly fed, poorly clothed, almost penniless, but we do not hear that he either flinched or complained, or that a boyish sob rose in his throat. He was made of the stuff of the Stoic. It is our hearts that are sore and anguished, not chiefly for the hopes and dreams disappointed, but because of a terrible calamity that befell him then, when he was perhaps hardly conscious of it; but that grew darker and weightier as the years rolled on.

When the irritated conductor had boxed the boy's ears, so brutal had been his onslaught that the delicate nerves were injured for life, and now with the flight of years has come deafness to wrap the great inventor in a partial mantle of silence. It is perhaps we who feel most the infinite pathos of the thing, while the man himself bears his affliction with the same n.o.ble patience with which he accepted disappointment long years ago as a boy.

At that time he straightway turned his eyes bravely homewards. He picked up his precious belongings, and carried them to a cellar in his father's house.

It was about this time that his mind began to bend towards that which has ever held for him a keen interest through life--the Telegraph. A waking ambition in him desired strongly to perfect himself in it. He was poor and friendless, and yet firmly, doggedly resolved to get on somehow. So out of his scant earnings--still as newsboy--he bought a book on Telegraphy, and this he pored over night and day.

And now at this early age I think the great inventor must have touched that mine that was afterwards to yield him so wondrously of its wealth.

The boyish mind was putting out feelers, gropingly at first, in the direction of creation, that divine faculty that is granted to so few of us. We can recognise the seed in its first tiny sproutings. He and a boy friend resolved to make a telegraph. They made a line of wire between their houses, insulated with bottles, and crossed under a busy thoroughfare by means of an old cable found in the bed of the Detroit River. The first magnets were wound with wire and swathed in ancient rags, and a piece of spring bra.s.s formed the key. Edison pressed two large and formidable-looking cats into his service, tied a wire to their legs, and applied friction to their backs. But the experiment ended in failure. The cats, frightened and furious, resented the liberty, and parted company with, the wire, das.h.i.+ng off in different directions.

But failure never discouraged Edison, nor stayed the working of his brain. He was a true philosopher, and he was, like an elastic ball, possessed of enormous rebound.

Handed down to us there is a story of the boy which, while it may not throw much light on his brain, throws some on his heart and on his ready courage. He was still a newspaper boy on the trains, and while at most stations a few minutes was the limit of waiting, at a certain station where shunting took place the minutes ran to half an hour. The boy was wont to spend this half-hour with the stationmaster's child, of whom he was fond, or to loiter about his garden. On this particular day the engine-driver had unlinked the cars in a siding, and one was being sent with a good deal of impetus to join another portion. It came on steadily, no one on it to control it, and right in its path was the unconscious baby smiling in the morning suns.h.i.+ne. Not a moment was to be lost. Edison threw down his papers and his hat on the platform and dashed to the rescue. And not a second too soon. As he threw himself and the child free of the line the car pa.s.sed and struck his heel. The two fell with such violence on the gravel beyond that the stone particles were driven into their flesh, but they were safe!

The grateful father was at a loss how he could show his grat.i.tude to the rescuer of his child. He had little money and no reward to give. At last a plan occurred to him.

"I will teach you telegraphing," he said to the boy, "and prepare you for the position of night operator at not less than twenty-five dollars a month."

Edison was delighted. The bargain was struck. The wage seemed, no doubt, a small fortune to the boy--rather more than five of our English pounds.

And now he had got his "toe on the tape," his foot on the ladder, if it were only on the lowest round. In three months he could teach his master, and the promised situation was got for him. From that he pa.s.sed to other situations, and gradually he began to make his mark.

He had a mind wonderfully quick to see a difficult situation and to deal with it.

There is a story told of how one winter a severe frost had coated the great river between Port Huron and Sarnia, how the cable was broken, and people could neither get news nor send it to the opposite bank of the river. The spot was crowded with people, baffled and vexed. Edison came along with a brain rarely at fault and faced the thing. Suddenly, to the onlookers' astonishment, he mounted a locomotive and sent a piercing whistle across the water, imitating by the toots of the engine the dots and dashes of the telegraph system.

In this way he shouted--

"Holloa, Sarnia! Sarnia, do you get what I say?"

At first there was silence on the part of the telegraph man across the water. The people on the bank were breathless with excitement. At last the reply came clear--thrilling. The man on the other side had understood, and the two cities could "talk" again to each other.

After this, people began to hear of Edison's fame. But the mania for experiments had seized him. The cut-and-dried monotonous routine of work seemed flat and stale to him by comparison. It was as if an enchanted region of fairyland had been opened to the boy. To be allowed to revel in it he denied himself food and necessary sleep. When he was seventeen years old he invented a telegraph instrument that would transfer writing from one line to another without the help of the operator.

There were no want of openings now for him to choose from, but sometimes doors after they had been opened were rudely shut again through envy and evil feeling. In the great world of invention and discovery there are perhaps more "ups and downs" than in any other. Some of Edison's fellow-workers were kind and generous--others were jealous and detracting. One manager did him an ill turn. He was unequal to completing a discovery he had begun. On the thing being shown him, Edison immediately "saw a light" and brought it to completion, but jealousy crept into the man's small mind and he dismissed the boy on a false charge.

So at seventeen he was thrown again on the world. Money was still scarce. Books and instruments and calls from home swallowed up the most of it. The boy was chafing under ill-treatment and a sense of injustice.

The want of sleep, perhaps of proper food, was telling on him, but he looked forward with a clear, undaunted eye. He wanted to reach a certain town where he believed work awaited him. It meant a walk of a hundred miles. He was weak, disheartened, ill-prepared for it, but he did it.

He arrived footsore and weary, with torn shoes and tattered clothes, and his worldly possessions tied in a handkerchief on his back.

In this shabby plight he presented himself at the telegraph office. He was eyed coldly enough at first, but by-and-by when tests were given he stood the tests. There was that in the eager eyes and underneath the shabby clothes that could not but make itself felt as a power. He began work. At first his fellow-clerks laughed at him. In time they were won over, and later he stood out as a workman of the first order.

He began to collect about him materials for printing--machinery without which he never felt quite happy. He did a clever thing one day in the office that brought him into notice. He took a press report at one sitting--a sitting that lasted from 3.30 p.m. till 4.30 a.m.! After that he carefully divided it into paragraphs so that each printer would have exactly three lines to print, and so that a column could be set up in two or three minutes!