The great principle of the dynamo, or electric generator, was discovered by Faraday and Henry but the process of its development into an agency of practical power consumed many years; and without the dynamo for the generation of power the electric motor had to stand still and there could be no practicable application of electricity to transportation, or manufacturing, or lighting.So it was that, except for the telegraph, whose story is told in another chapter, there was little more American achievement in electricity until after the Civil War.
The arc light as a practical illuminating device came in 1878.It was introduced by Charles F.Brush, a young Ohio engineer and graduate of the University of Michigan.Others before him had attacked the problem of electric lighting, but lack of suitable carbons stood in the way of their success.Brush overcame the chief difficulties and made several lamps to burn in series from one dynamo.The first Brush lights used for street illumination were erected in Cleveland, Ohio, and soon the use of arc lights became general.Other inventors improved the apparatus, but still there were drawbacks.For outdoor lighting and for large halls they served the purpose, but they could not be used in small rooms.Besides, they were in series, that is, the current passed through every lamp in turn, and an accident to one threw the whole series out of action.The whole problem of indoor lighting was to be solved by one of America's most famous inventors.
The antecedents of Thomas Alva Edison in America may be traced back to the time when Franklin was beginning his career as a printer in Philadelphia.The first American Edisons appear to have come from Holland about 1730 and settled on the Passaic River in New Jersey.Edison's grandfather, John Edison, was a Loyalist in the Revolution who found refuge in Nova Scotia and subsequently moved to Upper Canada.His son, Samuel Edison, thought he saw a moral in the old man's exile.His father had taken the King's side and had lost his home; Samuel would make no such error.So, when the Canadian Rebellion of 1837 broke out, Samuel Edison, aged thirty-three, arrayed himself on the side of the insurgents.This time, however, the insurgents lost, and Samuel was obliged to flee to the United States, just as his father had fled to Canada.He finally settled at Milan, Ohio, and there, in 1847, in a little brick house, which is still standing, Thomas Alva Edison was born.
When the boy was seven the family moved to Port Huron, Michigan.
The fact that he attended school only three months and soon became self-supporting was not due to poverty.His mother, an educated woman of Scotch extraction, taught him at home after the schoolmaster reported that he was "addled." His desire for money to spend on chemicals for a laboratory which he had fitted up in the cellar led to his first venture in business."By a great amount of persistence," he says, "I got permission to go on the local train as newsboy.The local train from Port Huron to Detroit, a distance of sixty-three miles, left at 7 A.M.and arrived again at 9.30 P.M.After being on the train for several months I started two stores in Port Huron--one for periodicals, and the other for vegetables, butter, and berries in the season.
They were attended by two boys who shared in the profits."Moreover, young Edison bought produce from the farmers' wives along the line which he sold at a profit.He had several newsboys working for him on other trains; he spent hours in the Public Library in Detroit; he fitted up a laboratory in an unused compartment of one of the coaches, and then bought a small printing press which he installed in the car and began to issue a newspaper which he printed on the train.All before he was fifteen years old.
But one day Edison's career as a traveling newsboy came to a sudden end.He was at work in his moving laboratory when a lurch of the train jarred a stick of burning phosphorus to the floor and set the car on fire.The irate conductor ejected him at the next station, giving him a violent box on the ear, which permanently injured his hearing, and dumped his chemicals and printing apparatus on the platform.
Having lost his position, young Edison soon began to dabble in telegraphy, in which he had already become interested, "probably," as he says, "from visiting telegraph offices with a chum who had tastes similar to mine." He and this chum strung a line between their houses and learned the rudiments of writing by wire.Then a station master on the railroad, whose child Edison had saved from danger, took Edison under his wing and taught him the mysteries of railway telegraphy.The boy of sixteen held positions wt small stations near home for a few months and then began a period of five years of apparently purposeless wandering as a tramp telegrapher.Toledo, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Memphis, Louisville, Detroit, were some of the cities in which he worked, studied, experimented, and played practical jokes on his associates.He was eager to learn something of the principles of electricity but found few from whom he could learn.
Edison arrived in Boston in 1868, practically penniless, and applied for a position as night operator."The manager asked me when I was ready to go to work.'Now,' I replied." In Boston he found men who knew something of electricity, and, as he worked at night and cut short his sleeping hours, he found time for study.
