The Bismarck Tribune Newspaper, October 19, 1931, Page 6

T Edison His Inventions Are | Valued by Congress | At $15,599,000,000 By 1928, When He Received Congressional Medal, He Had Taken Out 1,328 Patents Directly or Indirectly Affecting Many Industries SLEPT LITTLE; FIGURED HIS OWN AGE AT 155 YEAR Commercial Electric, ‘Light, Heat, and Power Industry Made Possible By ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’; Phonograph Was His Favorite Invention TACK Associated Press Biographical Editor In October, 1928, Thomas Alva Edison was presented with the gold medal of the Congress of the United States, the re-; verse side of which bore the inscription: “He illuminated th path of progress by his inventions.” On that occasion President Coolidge saluted the venerable and renowned inventor thus: “Noble, kindly servant of the United States and benefactor of mankind.” These two sentences tell tersely and vividly did, and was, most useful and fruitful of American lives. For more than 50 years Edison conceived ideas and the: turned out devices founded upon them. An invention was bor: what Ediso: of the Edison -brain on the average of about one every tw weeks, and his registration of approximately 1,200 patents at Washington made him the most prolific inventor of his time and, perhaps, of all time. Edison was foremost not only in the number of his it ventio: both commonplace and marvelous, in the life of the world. Ti latter fact probably was due to the economic and financial fai ure of his first pa Young Man Perfects Vote Recording Machine and encompass the achievements of one of the} but also because of the remarkably high percentage of his discoveries and evolutions that became practical factors. HE BISMARCK TRIBUNE, Was ‘Servant of U. S | Shortly afterward he was in the op- erating room of the Gold and Stock ; Telegraph Company seeking employ- ‘ment when the circuit, over whici {fluctuations in gold prices were sent to several hundred brokers’ offices, broke down. immediately was hired as superin- tendent at $300 a month. He set about to improve the tickers then in use and brought out new in- ventions, among which was the Unt- S| versal stock ticker. In less than a jMoney from his inventions, and opened a manufacturing plant at New- ark, N. J., to fulfill a contract with the Western Union, which had taken an option on his patents. For six years the factory continued to turn out tickers while Edison ap- Plied himself to the perfection of many telegraphic inventions, includ- ing the automatic, duplex, quadru- plex, sextuplex and multiplex sys- tems, the development of which saved the investment of millions of dollars in wires. Concluding that the manu- facturing business was interfering with his inventing, he gave up the factory and established his first lab- oratory at Menlo Park in 1876, The year before Edison had dis- covered the previously unknown and unique electric phenomena which he called “etheric force.” later recog- nized as due to eleciric waves in free Space and which became the founda- tion of wireless telegraphy. When he was able to worl: on his inventions unhampered, Edison’ pro- duced them rapidly. In his first two years at Menlo Park he brotight out the carbon telephone transmitter, which made telephony a commercial art and included the microphone, which makes radio possible. The favorite of Edison's early in- ventions was the phonograph, which Runs Factory Six Years ie | a ay 0; 1 e I When a young man working as a telegraph operator at Boston, Edison perfected an electrical vote recording machine, which he endeavored to haze! Massachusetts officials adopt. It was rejected “because it would work” and! thus would prevent filibustering. Thus convinced that he had wasted a lot of time and money, the young inventor resolved “never to work upon any invention unless beforehand I satisfied myself beyond a doubt that it woul be useful in the field for which it was intended.” strictly to that rule. During the greater part of his active life Edison devoted him to inventions* of telephone and telegraph; the phonograph and moving picture machines. In 1926, in connection with the 47th anniversary of his invention of the incandescent lamp, Edison said his inventions that underlie the electric light and power industry he considered the most im} Two years later Arthur Williams, vice-president of the New York Ediso Company, estimated that the value of the enterprises which owed their ori- gin, in part at least, to Edison genius, in circulation. With the outbreak of the World! —— oe te War, the Edison works, among many | CXperimenting in the baggage car, American industries, faced a sericus situation because of the cessation of imports of various chemicals for which the United States had depend- ed upon Europe. The “Wizard of Menlo Park,” as Edison had come 1) be known, then plunged into the mysteries of synthetic chemistry ana evolved processes for the manufac- ture of various products that were needed in industry and which be- came essential in the manufacture of munitions after the United States en- tered the war. Before that step was taken by the Amercian government, Edison had been named by Josephus Daniels, then Secretary of the Navy, head of the Naval Consulting Board, the membership of which included a score of Americans preeminent in the field of inventive research. At the time Edison was working nearly 18 hours a day to help overcome the handicap with which his own industries were confronted, but he said he was “not too busy to lend a hand to Uncle Sam.” Later when the war became an actual part of the nation’s busi- ness he devoted his entire time in his laboratory and aboard a vessel Provided by the Navy Department to government problems of the war and continued those activities until the of the armistice, Yet with all that he had contrib- uted to the progress of life and for the benefit of mankind, Edison was not content. He tumed in his lat- ter years to a new field of endeavor, devoting a great deal of his time to investigations and experiments look- ing toward the production of rubber On one of his runs as a train bo; Edison proved a hero at Mount Clet ens, Mich., when he snatched in front of a train. In gratitude, father taught Edison telegraph When he became proficient as an o| to his natural bent work, the possibilities of electricity which li for scientifi him to delve further into its myste: Made Head of Board over. dren, Marion Estelle, Thomas A., Ji 1884 and two years later the invent or married Mina M. Miller. children, Madeline, Charles Theodore, were born of this union. After he learned telegraphy, Edi Son became an operator for the Wes! ern Union at Port Huron, Mich., an tion, Can. he conceived the idea for his first There, the story is told, ders for an all-night vigil promu! gated by the circuit manager. son might fall asleep at his lone! nal. Thereafter, he adhered self largely | n electrical nature, foremost of which were the tneati- descent lamp and systems for the transmission of electric light, heat and power; apparatus and machines to improve systems of communication by portant of his works.imeter during a transit of Venus and represented five times all the monzy!time the electri bottle of phosphorus tipped over and! jumini set fire to the car and he was ousted. | ‘M-iary piece of thread for a filament the! he produced the first incandescent young son of the station agent from the cuit, maintained its ineandescence for erator, his experjence proved an aid. The increased knowledge of had gained from telegraphy impelled jes and into the work which even- tually made him famous the world In 1873, Edison married Mary G. Stillwell, by whom he had three chil- and William L. Mrs. Edison died in Three and later night operator for the Grand} Trunk Railway at Stratford Junc- contrivance, a device to thwart or- The latter, fearing that young Edi Post, ordered him to tick off the sig- nal “six” every half hour. That, to Edison, seemed senseless, so he rigged up a wheel with notches that auto- matically ticked off the required sig-! he produced in 1877, When he heard his first contrivance repeat after him the verse about Mary's Little Lamb, he remarked that it seemed even to him “almost supernatural.” It was not many years after that the in- ventor saw his prediction come true, that the talking machine would be as familiar in as many thousand of homes as was the piano at that time. ct Works on Electric Light Tn the summer of 1878 Edison ac- companied an astronomical party to’ Rawlins, Wyo., to test his microtasi- m2 {upon his return began working on the electric light problem. Up to that light. was known only in the form of the powerful arc {light to illuminate streets. His prob- a! lem was to make it a practical il- ation for the home. He worked steadily until October| Y»| 1879, when by carbonizing an ordin- lamp and which, when put into a cir- {more than 40 hours. In two months ;the thing was so perfected that the first public demonstration of the lic} Jamps, 700 in number, was given at| {Menlo Park on the night of Dec. 31, , 1979, and attracted hundreds of peo- ple. In less than two years the first factory for manufacturing the lamps was established. The popularity of} the new form of illumination was in- stantaneous and grew. into the use of almost countless millions of in- candescent lamps the world over. | With that success, Edison contin- ued his work in the electrical field and invented radical improvements in the construction of dynamos, mak- ing them suitable for generators for systems of distribution, regulation and measurement of electric current. He also produced sockets, switches and various other appliances and im- provements in systems that enabled the introduction commercially of elec- tric light, heat and power. Between 1880 and 1687, in the de-j velopment, improvement and exploit- ation of these systems, Edison took out upwards of 300 patents, many of which became of fundamental im-! jPortance in other branches of the/ electrical industry, including the elec-| tric railway. In the same years hz worked on a system of wireless tele-; graphy (by induction) to and from trains in motion, or between moving trains and railway stations, which was installed in 1887 on the Lehigh Valley Railroad. he (Ss ies t= nd 1- ly Edison volunteered to, j “chase” the trouble, rectified it and year he received $40,000, the first; ' 4 charted, and, filling many volumes, finally was placed in the government, archives at Washington for possible future use. . i] Produce Many Results l| Among the major problems on which Edison and his assistants sent definite results to Weshington were: An obstruction device for torpedoes; submarine searchlights, airplane de- tectors, device’ for quick turning of ships, submarine buoys for coast pa- trol, ship camouflaging and the burn- ing of anthracite, expansion of tor- pedo power, oleum cloud shells, For protection against submarines and mines: A safety device for bring- ing merchant ships out of mined har- bors; destruction of periscopes by machine guns, a sound range to It cate the position of a gun, detect of submarines by sound from moving ships, the detection on a moving ves- sel of torepdoes by submarines, Water-penetrating projectile and turbine-headed projectiles, observa- tion of periscopes by a silhouette pro- cess, reduction of the rolling of ships at sea, induction balance for sub- marine detection, stability of sub- merged submarines, a method of “blinding” submarines and peri- scopes. ‘What was regarded as one of the most important of the protective in- ventions was Edison’s device for quickly changing the course of a ship gut of the path of a torpedo. With his listening device aboard a vessei it was possible to hear a torpedo as far away as 3,000 yards. In a test, a ship 325 feet long, loaded with 4,- 200 tons of coal, was turned at right angles to her previous course with an advance of only 200 feet, Resumed Personal Affairs from plants, shrubs and bushes in the United States in order to meet a Possible emergency and to give the rubber trade a new “miracle” to round out his career of invention. Thomas Alva Edison was born at Milan, Ohio, February 11, 1847, the son of Samuel and Nancy Elliott Edi- son. His ancestors emigrated from Holland to the United States in 1730, The family of the inventor was noted, especially on his father’s side for longevity. His great-grandfather, @ pm@sperous New York banker of Revolutionary times, lived to be 104, and his grandfather 102, His father was 94 when he died. Commenting on that family record when he was 76, Edison said he was only middle aged and “I don't expect to lower the family average.” Edison's mother, who was born in Edison left his job at Stratford Junction in haste without even the formality of a resignation when he permitted a train, which he was di- rectetl_to stop, to pass by the sta- tion. Taking time to reply to the or- der, he found upon reaching the sta- | tion platform that the train had gone by. A disastrous collision was averted only because the engineers! of the two trains traveling toward each other on straightaway track his laboratory to West Orange, N. J. where he began a new era of invei tion and in four years took out mor than 80 patents. Some of these wer improvements on things he had pre. viously evolved, while others wer. the motion picture camera. Meat while, he embarked on an extensi scale in the manufacture and sale o; | Dhonographs and records and dictat: ing machines, In the latter year Edison moved new machines and devices, including} After the war Edison resumed the direction of his personal affairs and ‘continued improving and perfecting ’¢;many technical processes and mech- e|anisms. Upon the completion of -i these he turned his attention to the production of rubber in the United States. 2 ©!became defective and in later years it was said that so far as noise was it | “{concerned Broadway to him was as were able to stop them in time. Making his way to Port Huron, Experiments On Battery Edison later went to Fort Wayne, i | | jragher than being a handicap to the ‘quiet as a village street. The defect, || inventor, was said to have been a Ind., and then to Indianapolis, where he began experimenting on his idca of the repeater. His positions were of short duration for after leaving Indianapolis he went to Cincinnati and then worked in Louisville and | century Edison worked on the produc | tion of the Edison Alkaline storage | relating to the methods and process: battery, made numerous inventions! New England, had been a teacher in @ Canadian high school and from her he received most of his early educa. tion. It has been recorded that Eqi- son spent not more than two months altogether in school. At the age of 12 he had read a number of treatises on scientific subjects as wel? as othe: works such as Gibbons’ “Decline and Pall of the Roman Empire.” | About that time he engaged in a! variety of business enterprises, in-| office manager. cluding newsboy on the Grand Trunk Railway between Port Huron and De- troit, proprietor of a newstand and book store and of a vegetable market, | and employing 11 boys to assist him | In these various activities, turned to journalism and with some'pet on the floor of the manager’ old equipment from the Detroit Free | office. Press, set up his shop in the baggage! car of his train. There he published the Grand Trunk Herald, said to| have been the first newspaper pub- | shed aboard a train, This yenturs| continued for nearly a year and was/ Suspended when he was denied fur-| ther. use of the baggage car. {| Made Chemical Experiments From his early reading of sclentitic! , Edison was led into chemical! experiments, end to his rai jut all his money into his exper ments. {he retained for two years. experiment. The fluid self as a clever operator and hi hands” in the business. ¢ set up a small workshop, w! he continued experimenting on a d Plex system of telegraphy. After t! Tejection of his vote one of which put anjchine. on which he llroad newspaper. | Memphis. He was then 17 and a liv- jing refutation of the old saying “th clothes make the man,” for he had | While working at Memphis he per. fected his repeater and by its use was 1} the first operator to bring New O: leans into direct communication wit New York. But he los: his job be- cause of jealousy on the part of the He walked back tc/ | Louisville and got his old job, which Then he {lost that when he tipped over a bot. tle of chemical in the course of an! trickied At 15 ine} through the floor and ruined the car- Working as an operator in severa!; other cities, Edison finally landed in| the Western Union office at Boston. By that time he had established him- ad won | & reputation for one of the “cleanest In Boston “recording ma- took out his first: While | Patent, he went to New York in 1869.' jes of producing Portland cement, im-| | Proved his phonograph and iniro-! ; duced his Universal motor for oper- ating dictating machines. In 1912 brought out the kinetophone, or talk-| jing motion picture, and by 1914 nad! perfected after four years’ work hisi |disk phonograph, which commenced | | @ new era in talking machines. | | It was in that year that Edison} jturned his attention to synthetic! chemistry, first to overcome the| handicap caused by the embargo placed by England and Germany on the exportation of carbolic acid at, the outbreak of the World war. After | devising a plan to make the actd,| Edison began the erection of a plan:! and the manufacture of the acid w commenced in 18 days. Later he! erected other plants in which weve produced benzol, toluol. solvent naph- tha, xylol, and other chemicals. With his appointment as president| of the Naval Consulting Board and the entrance of the United States in- to the World War, Edison devoted his time entirely to problems of national defense. This work, which was brought to a close by the signing ot} the armistice, lasted nearly two years, During that time Edison and his as: sociates gathered an immense amount. of data, which was tabulated and e h 's | blessing in that it sheltered him from For the first decade of the 20th | useless irritations and annoyances. He once said it wi | about, beey would be deaf “because of our |icreasingly noisy civilization.” Edison was an indefatigable work- er, & fact that was the basis for sev- eral stories regarding the small! amount of sleep in which he in-| dulged. However, he was known to have put in long hours at his labora- tory, hours that were interrupted at! times only when Mrs. Edison drove in an electric runabout and its suc- cessor ‘automobiles to the laboratory and insisted that he také @ recess for a drive. Usually there were argu: ments about the useless loss of time, but usually Mrs. Edison had her way The inventor insisted that mosi| People ate too much and slept tov! much. When he reached his 65th) birthday anniversary he figured that) jas nothing to worry| that within 100 years every- jat that time he had lived 115 year: ‘That is,” he explamed, “working as other men do, I have done enough to} make me 115 years old. And I hope| to keep on for 20 years more, which. figuring at the average man’s labor per day, would make me 155 years! old. Then I may learn to play bridge with the ladies.” Lie In the later years of his life, Edi- son’s birthday anniversaries were re- cognized all over the world and were made the occasions for congratula- tory messages from rulers and prom- inent persons in many countries. And on those days he usually had a mess- | Many years ago Edison's hearing | Life of World’s Greatest Inventor in age ‘for the world, delivered in the curse of interviews with newspaper men, During one of these interviews he was asked, if he thought it fair Question, what was his income from incandescent lamps, phonographs, moving pictures, telephones, storage batteries and other products of his dpventions which had been patented and commercialized. | Didn't Know Exactly | ‘Why, I'd tell you in a minute !f 1 knew exactly myself,” he replied, “but I don't. The only way for me to get rich is to die. I make a whole lot of money, but I save only what would | be the salary of a railroad president. Money always had a habit of getting away from me becuse I am always ) experimenting and that costs a heap.” Knowing his weakness for money, he said that when he sold to the Western Union the inventions he had jcontrived for that company, it paid him $100,000, but he declined to take it in a lump sum. Remarking that that was a lot of money at that time, jhe said: “I knew I was a goner if I took’ all that money at once. So I made the agreement read that I was +» Mankind’s Benefactor’ 1) { late years was the help he gave high The pictures above show the high in the career of Thomas A. Edison, the world’s greatest inventor. The numbered sketches show: 1, Edison as a boy of 10, working in the chemical laboratory which he Started in the basement of his home. 2. How he put up a telegraph line from the railway station to the near- by village of Port Huron, Mich. He was then 15 years old. 3. In 1871 he helped build a type- writer, the forerunner ‘of the mod- ern writing machine. 4. In 1877 he invented the carbon telephone transmitter, the first known ancestor of the radio micro- phone. i 5. He invented the phonograph the same year. The first words repro- duced on it were this statement: “Mary had a little lamb.” 6. In 1879 he invented the electric lamp, turning night into day for mil- lions throughout the world. 7. In 1891 he invented a motion picture machine, parent to the mod- ern motion picture projector. It was @ box-like affair in which the pic- tures revolved rapidly, giving the {impression of motion. Only one per- {Son could look into it at a time. 4 8 When enthused about a project he would work long hours at a time, to get it in 17 installments. They j lasted over 17 years and I kept feed- iing ‘em into the mill.” The total product of that “mill” Was prodigious. By 1928 when he re- ceived the Congressional Gold Medal, Edison had taken out 1,328 patents ; and the monetary value of the indus- | tries either based wholly upon his in- ventions or materially aided by his discoveries was estimated officially at the Midas-like total of $15,599,000,000, This indicated that the inventor had been instrumental in an average of $30,000,000 a year or more to the nation’s wealth over a period of more than half a century, the list of enterprises in which he could claim a part ranging from the telc- graph, to which he devoted his earli- ést attention, down to the moving Pictures and radio, ‘The national congress made this official summary of the worth of the inventor *® the nation: Electric railways ...... $6,500,000,000 | Electric lighting . 5,000,000,000 Moving pictures . 1,250,000,000 Telephones Electric suppl! Telegraph . Concrete Car shops Phonographs o Dynamos and motor: Electric fixtures . Wireless telegraph . Batteries 4 The fact lectric railways and electric lighting topped the list of values emphasized that they were twins of the Edison brain, having been worked out in the. 1879-1882 per- jod which saw the labor on the in- candescent lamp and the Edison dy- namo brought to fruition, | Electric Line In 1880 ! The pioneer electric line was buiit in 1880. In the same year was begun the manufacture of electric lamps, witches, sockets, chandeliers and other devicss which permitted in- svallation of the first “3 wire system” | 1881. The next year the first com mercial lighting central station in t! United States was opened by the Edi- son interests at 255-257 Pearl street, New York. The whole civilized world took cognizance of this period of Edison development in 1929 when it cele- brated with an “Edison Jubilee Year” the 50th anniversary of the invention of the filament lamp. Europe, Asia, Africa and South America joined with North America in doing honor to the man who had freed industry @nd households from dependence up- on oil and gas for illumination. He took it all with characteristically simple modesty. Another typical action of Edison’: of distribution at Sunbury, Pa., bell getting only four hours of sleep daily for weeks at a time. 9. His last great dream was un- finished. In 1930 he said if he lived five years more he would devise com- mercial means of getting rubber from the golden rod which, would enable the world to grow a rubber crop in 12 months time. In the center at the left, Edison is ‘shown congratulating Wilbur B. Hus- ton of Fort Madison, Wash., winner] of @ contest among the nation’s high school boys to select the one best adapted to a scientific career. At the right is a picture of the inventor taken at Fort Myers, Fla. on the day he observed his eighty third birthday anniversary, At the bottom is a reproduction of the paper which Edison issued while a news “butcher” on the Grand Trunk reurued. | He, fed up his ied ing equipment in a gage car is customers the news while it was “hot.” He then was only 15 years old. The inset shows Edison as he looked at, that time. school youths ambitious for a tech- nical education. The typical part of this movement was the practicality with which the scheme was worked out so as to bring prize students from every state together in a nation-wide contest. The examinations which deter- mined the ultimate yearly winners were not only technical, but designed | as well to test the general intelli- gence and intellectual alertness of ithe boys. A foundation of common ;Sense coupled with talent for scien- tific research was emphasized by the founder Of the tests as requisite for! success, illustrating the tenacity with which he clung through the years to his determination to work only for results which would be useful. Edison was in his 82nd year when the United States government hun- ored him by presenting him with the Congressional Gold Medal “in com-|the Legion of Honor. He received memoration of his: achievements in|honors from several other foreign illuminating the path of progress} governments as well as medals from through the development and appli-| scientific and engineering societies cation of his inventions.” The exer-|and honorary degrees from several cises, which were broadcast over a! American colleges and universities, radio network, took place at the Edi-| Edison was one of that quartet of son laboratory at West Orange, andj famous business men whose close included an address by President| friendship was manifested in their Coolidge, broadcast from Washing-/ annual vacations taken together. The ton, The president praised the in-!others were Henry Ford, Harvey 8. ventor as “vepveseniine the finest) Firestone and the late John Bur- tradition of our citizenship.” roughs, After the death of Bur- At the same time Coolidge sent the kindly servant of the United States long be spared to continue your work and to inspire those who will carry forward your torch.” The medal was presented by An- drew W. Mellon, secretary of the treasury. The French government honored Edison by making him in turn a chevalier, officer and commander of Honored In 82nd Year i following message to Edison: “Noble, | and benefactor of mankind, may you| Pictures Troughs the other three continued their annual outings together for sev- eral years, | It was on one of these trips that | Edison first became interested in the jidea of growing rubber in the United States. In the course of @ discussion on rubber, Ford expressed apprehen- sion that the foreign supply soon would be exceeded ‘by the demand |and, turning to Edison, asked, “Why |don’t you do something about it ” “I will immediately,” replied Edi- son, The inventor then acquired planta- tions on which to grow various plants and weeds from which he ‘could ob- tain certain amounts of rubber and sent agents all over the country to collect specimens with which he could experiment. Park Home i Besides his at West Orange, N. J., the inventor maintained @ residence at Fort My- ters, Ela., where he spent the winters for several years past.