The Story of Edison. By Frank Mundell. (Jarrold and Sons.)
—Thirty-five years ago Thomas Edison sold newspapers, fruit,
&c., on the Grand Trunk Railway between Detroit and Port
Huron. It will make the mouths of English lads who follow the trade water to hear that in the usual way he made £100 of annual profit. His first great coup was this. A compositor of the Detroit Free Press showed him the proof of a description of the battle of Pittsburg. Ho got the telegraph operator at Detroit to wire to
each principal station on the line the fact of the battle and of the estimated loss in killed and wounded (sixty thousand). He then bought fifteen hundred copies of the paper (getting them on trust by the intervention of the editor). At the first station, where the
usual sale was two, he sold forty ; at the next, instead of twelve, he sold one hundred and fifty, and at double price. At Port
Huron he took his station at the door of a church where a prayer- meeting was being held. "In two minutes the prayer-meeting was adjourned," and Edison sold the balance of his copies at
Is. Old. each. It was, as he says, " a young fortune" to him.
"I determined at once to become a telegraph operator." His first invention was not altogether of happy omen. Every telegraph
operator had to telegraph "6" every half-hour to show that he
was there and not asleep. Edison contrived an arrangement which did it mechanically. For some time, indeed, his ingenuity stood in his way. Experiments, sometimes of the jocose kind, tempted him irresistibly. As he steadied down, he began to work on more and more remunerative things. His progress we cannot attempt to follow. Our readers will find it told intelligibly by Mr, Mundell.
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