7. CHAPTER VII
THE STOCK TICKER
"THE letters and figures used in the language of
the tape,'' said a well-known Boston stock
speculator, "are very few, but they spell ruin in
ninety-nine million ways.'' It is not to be inferred,
however, that the modern stock ticker has anything
to do with the making or losing of fortunes. There
were regular daily stock-market reports in London
newspapers in 1825, and New York soon followed the
example. As far back as 1692, Houghton issued in
London a weekly review of financial and commercial
transactions, upon which Macaulay based the lively
narrative of stock speculation in the seventeenth
century, given in his famous history. That which
the ubiquitous stock ticker has done is to give
instantaneity to the news of what the stock market is
doing, so that at every minute, thousands of miles
apart, brokers, investors, and gamblers may learn
the exact conditions. The existence of such facilities
is to be admired rather than deplored. News is vital
to Wall Street, and there is no living man on whom
the doings in Wall Street are without effect. The
financial history of the United States and of the world,
as shown by the prices of government bonds and
general securities, has been told daily for forty years
on these narrow strips of paper tape, of which thousands
of miles are run yearly through the "tickers''
of New York alone. It is true that the record of the
chattering little machine, made in cabalistic abbreviations
on the tape, can drive a man suddenly to the
very verge of insanity with joy or despair; but if
there be blame for that, it attaches to the American
spirit of speculation and not to the ingenious mechanism
which reads and registers the beating of the
financial pulse.
Edison came first to New York in 1868, with his
early stock printer, which he tried unsuccessfully to
sell. He went back to Boston, and quite undismayed
got up a duplex telegraph. "Toward the end
of my stay in Boston,'' he says, "I obtained a loan
of money, amounting to $800, to build a peculiar
kind of duplex telegraph for sending two messages
over a single wire simultaneously. The apparatus
was built, and I left the Western Union employ and
went to Rochester, New York, to test the apparatus
on the lines of the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph between
that city and New York. But the assistant at
the other end could not be made to understand anything,
notwithstanding I had written out a very
minute description of just what to do. After trying
for a week I gave it up and returned to New York
with but a few cents in my pocket.'' Thus he who
has never speculated in a stock in his life was destined
to make the beginnings of his own fortune by providing
for others the apparatus that should bring to the
eye, all over a great city, the momentary fluctuations
of stocks and bonds. No one could have been in
direr poverty than he when the steamboat landed
him in New York in 1869. He was in debt, and his
few belongings in books and instruments had to be
left behind. He was not far from starving. Mr.
W. S. Mallory, an associate of many years, quotes
directly from him on this point: "Some years ago
we had a business negotiation in New York which
made it necessary for Mr. Edison and me to visit the
city five or six times within a comparatively short
period. It was our custom to leave Orange about
11 A.M., and on arrival in New York to get our lunch
before keeping the appointments, which were usually
made for two o'clock. Several of these lunches were
had at Delmonico's, Sherry's, and other places of
similar character, but one day, while en route, Mr.
Edison said: `I have been to lunch with you several
times; now to-day I am going to take you to lunch
with me, and give you the finest lunch you ever had.'
When we arrived in Hoboken, we took the downtown
ferry across the Hudson, and when we arrived
on the Manhattan side Mr. Edison led the way to
Smith & McNell's, opposite Washington Market, and
well known to old New Yorkers. We went inside and
as soon as the waiter appeared Mr. Edison ordered
apple dumplings and a cup of coffee for himself. He
consumed his share of the lunch with the greatest
possible pleasure. Then, as soon as he had finished,
he went to the cigar counter and purchased cigars.
As we walked to keep the appointment he gave me
the following reminiscence: When he left Boston and
decided to come to New York he had only money
enough for the trip. After leaving the boat his first
thought was of breakfast; but he was without money
to obtain it. However, in passing a wholesale tea-house
he saw a man tasting tea, so he went in and
asked the `taster' if he might have some of the tea.
This the man gave him, and thus he obtained his first
breakfast in New York. He knew a telegraph operator
here, and on him he depended for a loan to tide
him over until such time as he should secure a position.
During the day he succeeded in locating this operator,
but found that he also was out of a job, and that the
best he could do was to loan him one dollar, which
he did. This small sum of money represented both
food and lodging until such time as work could be
obtained. Edison said that as the result of the time
consumed and the exercise in walking while he found
his friend, he was extremely hungry, and that he gave
most serious consideration as to what he should buy
in the way of food, and what particular kind of food
would be most satisfying and filling. The result was
that at Smith & McNell's he decided on apple dumplings
and a cup of coffee, than which he never ate anything
more appetizing. It was not long before he
was at work and was able to live in a normal manner.''
During the Civil War, with its enormous increase
in the national debt and the volume of paper money,
gold had gone to a high premium; and, as ever, by its
fluctuations in price the value of all other commodities
was determined. This led to the creation of a
"Gold Room'' in Wall Street, where the precious
metal could be dealt in; while for dealings in stocks
there also existed the "Regular Board,'' the "Open
Board,'' and the "Long Room.'' Devoted to one,
but the leading object of speculation, the "Gold
Room'' was the very focus of all the financial and
gambling activity of the time, and its quotations
governed trade and commerce. At first notations in
chalk on a blackboard sufficed, but seeing their
inadequacy, Dr. S. S. Laws, vice-president and actual
presiding officer of the Gold Exchange, devised and
introduced what was popularly known as the "gold
indicator.'' This exhibited merely the prevailing
price of gold; but as its quotations changed from
instant to instant, it was in a most literal sense "the
cynosure of neighboring eyes.'' One indicator looked
upon the Gold Room; the other opened toward the
street. Within the exchange the face could easily be
seen high up on the west wall of the room, and the
machine was operated by Mr. Mersereau, the official
registrar of the Gold Board.
Doctor Laws, who afterward became President of
the State University of Missouri, was an inventor of
unusual ability and attainments. In his early youth
he had earned his livelihood in a tool factory; and,
apparently with his savings, he went to Princeton,
where he studied electricity under no less a teacher
than the famous Joseph Henry. At the outbreak of
the war in 1861 he was president of one of the
Presbyterian synodical colleges in the South, whose
buildings passed into the hands of the Government.
Going to Europe, he returned to New York in 1863,
and, becoming interested with a relative in financial
matters, his connection with the Gold Exchange soon
followed, when it was organized. The indicating
mechanism he now devised was electrical, controlled
at central by two circuit-closing keys, and was a
prototype of all the later and modern step-by-step printing
telegraphs, upon which the distribution of financial
news depends. The "fraction'' drum of the indicator
could be driven in either direction, known as
the advance and retrograde movements, and was
divided and marked in eighths. It geared into a
"unit'' drum, just as do speed-indicators and
cyclometers. Four electrical pulsations were required to
move the drum the distance between the fractions.
The general operation was simple, and in normally
active times the mechanism and the registrar were
equal to all emergencies. But it is obvious that the
record had to be carried away to the brokers' offices
and other places by messengers; and the delay,
confusion, and mistakes soon suggested to Doctor Laws
the desirability of having a number of indicators at
such scattered points, operated by a master transmitter,
and dispensing with the regiments of noisy
boys. He secured this privilege of distribution, and,
resigning from the exchange, devoted his exclusive
attention to the "Gold Reporting Telegraph,'' which
he patented, and for which, at the end of 1866, he
had secured fifty subscribers. His indicators were
small oblong boxes, in the front of which was a long
slot, allowing the dials as they travelled past, inside,
to show the numerals constituting the quotation;
the dials or wheels being arranged in a row
horizontally, overlapping each other, as in modern fare
registers which are now seen on most trolley cars.
It was not long before there were three hundred
subscribers; but the very success of this device brought
competition and improvement. Mr. E. A. Callahan,
an ingenious printing-telegraph operator, saw that
there were unexhausted possibilities in the idea, and
his foresight and inventiveness made him the father
of the "ticker,'' in connection with which he was
thus, like Laws, one of the first to grasp and exploit
the underlying principle of the "central station'' as
a universal source of supply. The genesis of his
invention Mr. Callahan has told in an interesting way:
"In 1867, on the site of the present Mills Building on
Broad Street, opposite the Stock Exchange of today,
was an old building which had been cut up to
subserve the necessities of its occupants, all engaged
in dealing in gold and stocks. It had one main entrance
from the street to a hallway, from which entrance
to the offices of two prominent broker firms
was obtained. Each firm had its own army of boys,
numbering from twelve to fifteen, whose duties were
to ascertain the latest quotations from the different
exchanges. Each boy devoted his attention to some
particularly active stock. Pushing each other to
get into these narrow quarters, yelling out the prices
at the door, and pushing back for later ones, the
hustle made this doorway to me a most undesirable
refuge from an April shower. I was simply whirled
into the street. I naturally thought that much of
this noise and confusion might be dispensed with, and
that the prices might be furnished through some
system of telegraphy which would not require the
employment of skilled operators. The conception of
the stock ticker dates from this incident.''
Mr. Callahan's first idea was to distribute gold
quotations, and to this end he devised an "indicator.''
It consisted of two dials mounted separately, each
revolved by an electromagnet, so that the desired
figures were brought to an aperture in the case
enclosing the apparatus, as in the Laws system. Each
shaft with its dial was provided with two ratchet
wheels, one the reverse of the other. One was used in
connection with the propelling lever, which was provided
with a pawl to fit into the teeth of the reversed
ratchet wheel on its forward movement. It was thus
made impossible for either dial to go by momentum
beyond its limit. Learning that Doctor Laws, with
the skilful aid of F. L. Pope, was already active in the
same direction, Mr. Callahan, with ready wit, transformed
his indicator into a "ticker'' that would make
a printed record. The name of the "ticker'' came
through the casual remark of an observer to whom
the noise was the most striking feature of the
mechanism. Mr. Callahan removed the two dials, and,
substituting type wheels, turned the movements face
to face, so that each type wheel could imprint its
characters upon a paper tape in two lines. Three
wires stranded together ran from the central office
to each instrument. Of these one furnished the current
for the alphabet wheel, one for the figure wheel,
and one for the mechanism that took care of the
inking and printing on the tape. Callahan made the
further innovation of insulating his circuit wires,
although the cost was then forty times as great as
that of bare wire. It will be understood that
electromagnets were the ticker's actuating agency. The
ticker apparatus was placed under a neat glass shade
and mounted on a shelf. Twenty-five instruments
were energized from one circuit, and the quotations
were supplied from a "central'' at 18 New Street.
The Gold & Stock Telegraph Company was promptly
organized to supply to brokers the system, which
was very rapidly adopted throughout the financial
district of New York, at the southern tip of Manhattan
Island. Quotations were transmitted by the
Morse telegraph from the floor of the Stock Exchange
to the "central,'' and thence distributed to the
subscribers. Success with the "stock'' news system was
instantaneous.
It was at this juncture that Edison reached New
York, and according to his own statement found
shelter at night in the battery-room of the Gold
Indicator Company, having meantime applied for a
position as operator with the Western Union. He
had to wait a few days, and during this time he seized
the opportunity to study the indicators and the complicated
general transmitter in the office, controlled
from the keyboard of the operator on the floor of the
Gold Exchange. What happened next has been the
basis of many inaccurate stories, but is dramatic
enough as told in Mr. Edison's own version: "On the
third day of my arrival and while sitting in the office,
the complicated general instrument for sending on all
the lines, and which made a very great noise, suddenly
came to a stop with a crash. Within two minutes
over three hundred boys—a boy from every broker
in the street—rushed up-stairs and crowded the long
aisle and office, that hardly had room for one hundred,
all yelling that such and such a broker's wire was out
of order and to fix it at once. It was pandemonium,
and the man in charge became so excited that he lost
control of all the knowledge he ever had. I went to
the indicator, and, having studied it thoroughly, knew
where the trouble ought to be, and found it. One of
the innumerable contact springs had broken off and
had fallen down between the two gear wheels and
stopped the instrument; but it was not very noticeable.
As I went out to tell the man in charge what
the matter was, Doctor Laws appeared on the scene,
the most excited person I had seen. He demanded
of the man the cause of the trouble, but the man was
speechless. I ventured to say that I knew what the
trouble was, and he said, `Fix it! Fix it! Be quick!'
I removed the spring and set the contact wheels at
zero; and the line, battery, and inspecting men all
scattered through the financial district to set the
instruments. In about two hours things were working
again. Doctor Laws came in to ask my name and
what I was doing. I told him, and he asked me to
come to his private office the following day. His
office was filled with stacks of books all relating to
metaphysics and kindred matters. He asked me a
great many questions about the instruments and his
system, and I showed him how he could simplify
things generally. He then requested that I should
call next day. On arrival, he stated at once that
he had decided to put me in charge of the whole
plant, and that my salary would be $300 per month!
This was such a violent jump from anything I had
ever seen before, that it rather paralyzed me for a
while, I thought it was too much to be lasting, but
I determined to try and live up to that salary if
twenty hours a day of hard work would do it. I
kept this position, made many improvements, devised
several stock tickers, until the Gold & Stock
Telegraph Company consolidated with the Gold Indicator
Company.'' Certainly few changes in fortune
have been more sudden and dramatic in any
notable career than this which thus placed an ill-clad,
unkempt, half-starved, eager lad in a position
of such responsibility in days when the fluctuations
in the price of gold at every instant meant fortune or
ruin to thousands.
Edison, barely twenty-one years old, was a keen
observer of the stirring events around him. "Wall
Street'' is at any time an interesting study, but it
was never at a more agitated and sensational period
of its history than at this time. Edison's arrival in
New York coincided with an active speculation in
gold which may, indeed, be said to have provided him
with occupation; and was soon followed by the attempt
of Mr. Jay Gould and his associates to corner
the gold market, precipitating the panic of Black
Friday, September 24, 1869. Securing its import
duties in the precious metal and thus assisting to
create an artificial stringency in the gold market, the
Government had made it a practice to relieve the
situation by selling a million of gold each month.
The metal was thus restored to circulation. In some
manner, President Grant was persuaded that general
conditions and the movement of the crops would be
helped if the sale of gold were suspended for a time;
and, this put into effect, he went to visit an old
friend in Pennsylvania remote from railroads and
telegraphs. The Gould pool had acquired control of
$10,000,000 in gold, and drove the price upward
rapidly from 144 toward their goal of 200. On Black
Friday they purchased another $28,000,000 at 160,
and still the price went up. The financial and
commercial interests of the country were in panic; but
the pool persevered in its effort to corner gold, with
a profit of many millions contingent on success.
Yielding to frantic requests, President Grant, who
returned to Washington, caused Secretary Boutwell,
of the Treasury, to throw $4,000,000 of gold into the
market. Relief was instantaneous, the corner was
broken, but the harm had been done. Edison's remarks
shed a vivid side-light on this extraordinary
episode: "On Black Friday,'' he says, "we had a
very exciting time with the indicators. The Gould
and Fisk crowd had cornered gold, and had run the
quotations up faster than the indicator could follow.
The indicator was composed of several wheels; on
the circumference of each wheel were the numerals;
and one wheel had fractions. It worked in the same
way as an ordinary counter; one wheel made ten
revolutions, and at the tenth it advanced the adjacent
wheel; and this in its turn having gone ten revolutions,
advanced the next wheel, and so on. On the
morning of Black Friday the indicator was quoting
150 premium, whereas the bids by Gould's agents in
the Gold Room were 165 for five millions or any part.
We had a paper-weight at the transmitter (to speed
it up), and by one o'clock reached the right quotation.
The excitement was prodigious. New Street,
as well as Broad Street, was jammed with excited
people. I sat on the top of the Western Union telegraph
booth to watch the surging, crazy crowd. One
man came to the booth, grabbed a pencil, and
attempted to write a message to Boston. The first
stroke went clear off the blank; he was so excited that
he had the operator write the message for him. Amid
great excitement Speyer, the banker, went crazy and
it took five men to hold him; and everybody lost their
head. The Western Union operator came to me and
said: `Shake, Edison, we are O. K. We haven't got
a cent.' I felt very happy because we were poor.
These occasions are very enjoyable to a poor man;
but they occur rarely.''
There is a calm sense of detachment about this
description that has been possessed by the narrator
even in the most anxious moments of his career. He
was determined to see all that could be seen, and,
quitting his perch on the telegraph booth, sought the
more secluded headquarters of the pool forces. "A
friend of mine was an operator who worked in the
office of Belden & Company, 60 Broadway, which
were headquarters for Fisk. Mr. Gould was up-town
in the Erie offices in the Grand Opera House. The firm
on Broad Street, Smith, Gould & Martin, was the other
branch. All were connected with wires. Gould seemed
to be in charge, Fisk being the executive down-town.
Fisk wore a velvet corduroy coat and a very peculiar
vest. He was very chipper, and seemed to be light-hearted
and happy. Sitting around the room were
about a dozen fine-looking men. All had the complexion
of cadavers. There was a basket of champagne.
Hundreds of boys were rushing in paying
checks, all checks being payable to Belden & Company.
When James Brown, of Brown Brothers &
Company, broke the corner by selling five million
gold, all payments were repudiated by Smith, Gould
& Martin; but they continued to receive checks at
Belden & Company's for some time, until the Street
got wind of the game. There was some kind of conspiracy
with the Government people which I could
not make out, but I heard messages that opened my
eyes as to the ramifications of Wall Street. Gold fell
to 132, and it took us all night to get the indicator
back to that quotation. All night long the streets
were full of people. Every broker's office was brilliantly
lighted all night, and all hands were at work.
The clearing-house for gold had been swamped, and
all was mixed up. No one knew if he was bankrupt
or not.''
Edison in those days rather liked the modest coffee-shops,
and mentions visiting one. "When on the
New York No. 1 wire, that I worked in Boston, there
was an operator named Jerry Borst at the other end.
He was a first-class receiver and rapid sender. We
made up a scheme to hold this wire, so he changed
one letter of the alphabet and I soon got used to it;
and finally we changed three letters. If any operator
tried to receive from Borst, he couldn't do it, so Borst
and I always worked together. Borst did less talking
than any operator I ever knew. Never having seen
him, I went while in New York to call upon him. I
did all the talking. He would listen, stroke his
beard, and say nothing. In the evening I went over
to an all-night lunch-house in Printing House Square
in a basement—Oliver's. Night editors, including
Horace Greeley, and Henry Raymond, of the
New
York Times, took their midnight lunch there. When
I went with Borst and another operator, they pointed
out two or three men who were then celebrated in the
newspaper world. The night was intensely hot and
close. After getting our lunch and upon reaching the
sidewalk, Borst opened his mouth, and said: `That's
a great place; a plate of cakes, a cup of coffee, and
a Russian bath, for ten cents.' This was about fifty
per cent. of his conversation for two days.''
The work of Edison on the gold-indicator had
thrown him into close relationship with Mr. Franklin
L. Pope, the young telegraph engineer then associated
with Doctor Laws, and afterward a distinguished
expert and technical writer, who became
President of the American Institute of Electrical
Engineers in 1886. Each recognized the special ability
of the other, and barely a week after the famous
events of Black Friday the announcement of their
partnership appeared in the Telegrapher of October
1, 1869. This was the first "professional card,'' if
it may be so described, ever issued in America by a
firm of electrical engineers, and is here reproduced.
It is probable that the advertisement, one of the largest
in the Telegrapher, and appearing frequently, was
not paid for at full rates, as the publisher, Mr. J. N.
Ashley, became a partner in the firm, and not altogether
a "sleeping one'' when it came to a division
of profits, which at times were considerable. In
order to be nearer his new friend Edison boarded with
Pope at Elizabeth, New Jersey, for some time, living
"the strenuous life'' in the performance of his duties.
Associated with Pope and Ashley, he followed up his
work on telegraph printers with marked success.
"While with them I devised a printer to print gold
quotations instead of indicating them. The lines were
started, and the whole was sold out to the Gold &
Stock Telegraph Company. My experimenting was
all done in the small shop of a Doctor Bradley,
located near the station of the Pennsylvania Railroad
in Jersey City. Every night I left for Elizabeth on
the 1 A.M. train, then walked half a mile to Mr. Pope's
house and up at 6 A.M. for breakfast to catch the
7 A.M. train. This continued all winter, and many
were the occasions when I was nearly frozen in the
Elizabeth walk.'' This Doctor Bradley appears to
have been the first in this country to make electrical
measurements of precision with the galvanometer,
but was an old-school experimenter who would work
for years on an instrument without commercial value.
He was also extremely irascible, and when on one
occasion the connecting wire would not come out of
one of the binding posts of a new and costly galvanometer,
he jerked the instrument to the floor and then
jumped on it. He must have been, however, a man
of originality, as evidenced by his attempt to age
whiskey by electricity, an attempt that has often
since been made. "The hobby he had at the time
I was there,'' says Edison, "was the aging of raw
whiskey by passing strong electric currents through
it. He had arranged twenty jars with platinum
electrodes held in place by hard rubber. When all
was ready, he filled the cells with whiskey, connected
the battery, locked the door of the small room in
which they were placed, and gave positive orders
that no one should enter. He then disappeared for
three days. On the second day we noticed a terrible
smell in the shop, as if from some dead animal. The
next day the doctor arrived and, noticing the smell,
asked what was dead. We all thought something
had got into his whiskey-room and died. He opened
it and was nearly overcome. The hard rubber he
used was, of course, full of sulphur, and this being
attacked by the nascent hydrogen, had produced
sulphuretted hydrogen gas in torrents, displacing all
of the air in the room. Sulphuretted hydrogen is,
as is well known, the gas given off by rotten eggs.''
Another glimpse of this period of development is
afforded by an interesting article on the stock-reporting
telegraph in the Electrical World of March 4, 1899,
by Mr. Ralph W. Pope, the well-known Secretary of
the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, who
had as a youth an active and intimate connection
with that branch of electrical industry. In the course
of his article he mentions the curious fact that Doctor
Laws at first, in receiving quotations from the Exchanges,
was so distrustful of the Morse system that
he installed long lines of speaking-tube as a more
satisfactory and safe device than a telegraph wire.
As to the relations of that time Mr. Pope remarks:
"The rivalry between the two concerns resulted in
consolidation, Doctor Laws's enterprise being
absorbed by the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company,
while the Laws stock printer was relegated to the
scrap-heap and the museum. Competition in the
field did not, however, cease. Messrs. Pope and
Edison invented a one-wire printer, and started a
system of `gold printers' devoted to the recording
of gold quotations and sterling exchange only. It
was intended more especially for importers and
exchange brokers, and was furnished at a lower price
than the indicator service.... The building and
equipment of private telegraph lines was also entered
upon. This business was also subsequently absorbed
by the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company, which was
probably at this time at the height of its prosperity.
The financial organization of the company was peculiar
and worthy of attention. Each subscriber for
a machine paid in $100 for the privilege of securing
an instrument. For the service he paid $25 weekly.
In case he retired or failed, he could transfer his
`right,' and employees were constantly on the alert
for purchasable rights, which could be disposed of
at a profit. It was occasionally worth the profit to
convince a man that he did not actually own the
machine which had been placed in his office.... The
Western Union Telegraph Company secured a majority
of its stock, and Gen. Marshall Lefferts was
elected president. A private-line department was
established, and the business taken over from Pope,
Edison, and Ashley was rapidly enlarged.''
At this juncture General Lefferts, as President of
the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company, requested
Edison to go to work on improving the stock ticker,
furnishing the money; and the well-known "Universal''
ticker, in wide-spread use in its day, was one
result. Mr. Edison gives a graphic picture of the
startling effect on his fortunes: "I made a great many
inventions; one was the special ticker used for many
years outside of New York in the large cities. This
was made exceedingly simple, as they did not have
the experts we had in New York to handle anything
complicated. The same ticker was used on the London
Stock Exchange. After I had made a great number
of inventions and obtained patents, the General
seemed anxious that the matter should be closed up.
One day I exhibited and worked a successful device
whereby if a ticker should get out of unison in a
broker's office and commence to print wild figures,
it could be brought to unison from the central station,
which saved the labor of many men and much trouble
to the broker. He called me into his office, and said:
`Now, young man, I want to close up the matter of
your inventions. How much do you think you should
receive?' I had made up my mind that, taking into
consideration the time and killing pace I was working
at, I should be entitled to $5000, but could get along
with $3000. When the psychological moment arrived,
I hadn't the nerve to name such a large sum,
so I said: `Well, General, suppose you make me an
offer.' Then he said: `How would $40,000 strike
you?' This caused me to come as near fainting as I
ever got. I was afraid he would hear my heart beat.
I managed to say that I thought it was fair. `All
right, I will have a contract drawn; come around in
three days and sign it, and I will give you the money.'
I arrived on time, but had been doing some considerable
thinking on the subject. The sum seemed to
be very large for the amount of work, for at that time
I determined the value by the time and trouble, and
not by what the invention was worth to others. I
thought there was something unreal about it. However,
the contract was handed to me. I signed without
reading it.'' Edison was then handed the first
check he had ever received, one for $40,000 drawn
on the Bank of New York, at the corner of William
and Wall Streets. On going to the bank and passing
in the check at the wicket of the paying teller, some
brief remarks were made to him, which in his deafness
he did not understand. The check was handed
back to him, and Edison, fancying for a moment that
in some way he had been cheated, went outside "to
the large steps to let the cold sweat evaporate.'' He
then went back to the General, who, with his secretary,
had a good laugh over the matter, told him the check
must be endorsed, and sent with him a young man
to identify him. The ceremony of identification
performed with the paying teller, who was quite merry
over the incident, Edison was given the amount in
bundles of small bills "until there certainly seemed
to be one cubic foot.'' Unaware that he was the victim
of a practical joke, Edison proceeded gravely to
stow away the money in his overcoat pockets and all
his other pockets. He then went to Newark and sat
up all night with the money for fear it might be
stolen. Once more he sought help next morning,
when the General laughed heartily, and, telling the
clerk that the joke must not be carried any further,
enabled him to deposit the currency in the bank and
open an account.
Thus in an inconceivably brief time had Edison
passed from poverty to independence; made a deep
impression as to his originality and ability on
important people, and brought out valuable inventions;
lifting himself at one bound out of the ruck of
mediocrity, and away from the deadening drudgery of the
key. Best of all he was enterprising, one of the
leaders and pioneers for whom the world is always
looking; and, to use his own criticism of himself, he
had "too sanguine a temperament to keep money
in solitary confinement.'' With quiet self-possession
he seized his opportunity, began to buy machinery,
rented a shop and got work for it. Moving quickly
into a larger shop, Nos. 10 and 12 Ward Street,
Newark, New Jersey, he secured large orders from
General Lefferts to build stock tickers, and employed
fifty men. As business increased he put on a night
force, and was his own foreman on both shifts. Half
an hour of sleep three or four times in the twenty-four
hours was all he needed in those days, when one
invention succeeded another with dazzling rapidity,
and when he worked with the fierce, eruptive energy
of a great volcano, throwing out new ideas incessantly
with spectacular effect on the arts to which they
related. It has always been a theory with Edison that
we sleep altogether too much; but on the other hand
he never, until long past fifty, knew or practiced the
slightest moderation in work or in the use of strong
coffee and black cigars. He has, moreover, while
of tender and kindly disposition, never hesitated to
use men up as freely as a Napoleon or Grant; seeing
only the goal of a complete invention or perfected device,
to attain which all else must become subsidiary.
He gives a graphic picture of his first methods as a
manufacturer: "Nearly all my men were on piece
work, and I allowed them to make good wages, and
never cut until the pay became absurdly high as they
got more expert. I kept no books. I had two hooks.
All the bills and accounts I owed I jabbed on one
hook; and memoranda of all owed to myself I put
on the other. When some of the bills fell due, and
I couldn't deliver tickers to get a supply of money, I
gave a note. When the notes were due, a messenger
came around from the bank with the note and a
protest pinned to it for $1.25. Then I would go to
New York and get an advance, or pay the note if I
had the money. This method of giving notes for
my accounts and having all notes protested I kept
up over two years, yet my credit was fine. Every
store I traded with was always glad to furnish goods,
perhaps in amazed admiration of my system of doing
business, which was certainly new.'' After a while
Edison got a bookkeeper, whose vagaries made him
look back with regret on the earlier, primitive method.
"The first three months I had him go over the books
to find out how much we had made. He reported
$3000. I gave a supper to some of my men to celebrate
this, only to be told two days afterward that
he had made a mistake, and that we had lost $500; and
then a few days after that he came to me again and
said he was all mixed up, and now found that we had
made over $7000.'' Edison changed bookkeepers, but
never thereafter counted anything real profit until he
had paid all his debts and had the profits in the bank.
The factory work at this time related chiefly to
stock tickers, principally the "Universal,'' of which
at one time twelve hundred were in use. Edison's
connection with this particular device was very
close while it lasted. In a review of the ticker art,
Mr. Callahan stated, with rather grudging praise,
that "a ticker at the present time (1901) would be
considered as impracticable and unsalable if it were
not provided with a unison device,'' and he goes on
to remark: "The first unison on stock tickers was
one used on the Laws printer.[7.1]
It was a crude and unsatisfactory piece of mechanism and necessitated
doubling of the battery in order to bring it into action.
It was short-lived. The Edison unison comprised a
lever with a free end travelling in a spiral or worm
on the type-wheel shaft until it met a pin at the end
of the worm, thus obstructing the shaft and leaving
the type-wheels at the zero-point until released by
the printing lever. This device is too well known to
require a further description. It is not applicable
to any instrument using two independently moving
type-wheels; but on nearly if not all other instruments
will be found in use.'' The stock ticker has
enjoyed the devotion of many brilliant inventors—
G. M. Phelps, H. Van Hoevenbergh, A. A. Knudson,
G. B. Scott, S. D. Field, John Burry—and remains in
extensive use as an appliance for which no substitute
or competitor has been found. In New York the
two great stock exchanges have deemed it necessary
to own and operate a stock-ticker service for the sole
benefit of their members; and down to the present
moment the process of improvement has gone on,
impelled by the increasing volume of business to be
reported. It is significant of Edison's work, now
dimmed and overlaid by later advances, that at the
very outset he recognized the vital importance of
interchangeability in the construction of this delicate
and sensitive apparatus. But the difficulties of these
early days were almost insurmountable. Mr. R. W.
Pope says of the "Universal'' machines that they were
simple and substantial and generally satisfactory,
but adds: "These instruments were supposed to have
been made with interchangeable parts; but as a
matter of fact the instances in which these parts
would fit were very few. The instruction-book prepared
for the use of inspectors stated that `The parts
should not be tinkered nor bent, as they are accurately
made and interchangeable.' The difficulties encountered
in fitting them properly doubtless gave rise to a
story that Mr. Edison had stated that there were three
degrees of interchangeability. This was interpreted to
mean: First, the parts will fit; second, they will almost
fit; third, they do not fit, and can't be made to fit.''
This early shop affords an illustration of the manner
in which Edison has made a deep impression on the
personnel of the electrical arts. At a single bench
there worked three men since rich or prominent.
One was Sigmund Bergmann, for a time partner with
Edison in his lighting developments in the United
States, and now head and principal owner of electrical
works in Berlin employing ten thousand men. The
next man adjacent was John Kruesi, afterward engineer
of the great General Electric Works at
Schenectady. A third was Schuckert, who left the
bench to settle up his father's little estate at Nuremberg,
stayed there and founded electrical factories,
which became the third largest in Germany, their
proprietor dying very wealthy. "I gave them a good
training as to working hours and hustling,'' says their
quondam master; and this is equally true as applied
to many scores of others working in companies bearing
the Edison name or organized under Edison
patents. It is curiously significant in this connection
that of the twenty-one presidents of the national
society, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers,
founded in 1884, eight have been intimately
associated with Edison—namely, Norvin Green and
F. L. Pope, as business colleagues of the days of which
we now write; while Messrs. Frank J. Sprague, T. C.
Martin, A. E. Kennelly, S. S. Wheeler, John W.
Lieb, Jr., and Louis A. Ferguson have all been at one
time or another in the Edison employ. The remark
was once made that if a famous American teacher
sat at one end of a log and a student at the other end,
the elements of a successful university were present.
It is equally true that in Edison and the many men
who have graduated from his stern school of endeavor,
America has had its foremost seat of electrical
engineering.
[[7.1]]
This I invented as well.—T. A. E.