“Oh!”
“Yes, it was an ingenious thing. Votes were clearly pointed and shown on a roll of paper, by a small machine attached to the desk of each member. I was made to learn that such an innovation was out of the question, but it taught me something.”
“And that was?”
“To be sure of the practical need of, and demand for, a machine, before expending time and energy on it.”
“Is that one of your maxims of success?”
“It is.”
In this same year, Edison came from Boston to New York, friendless and in debt on account of the expenses of his experiment. For several weeks he wandered about the town with actual hunger staring him in the face. It was a time of great financial excitement, and with that strange quality of Fortunism, which seems to be his chief characteristic, he entered the establishment of the Law Gold Reporting Company just as their entire plant had shut down on account of an accident in the machinery that could not be located. The heads of the firm were anxious and excited to the last degree, and a crowd of the Wall street fraternity waited about for the news which came not. The shabby stranger put his finger on the difficulty at once, and was given lucrative employment. In the rush of the metropolis, a man finds his true level without delay, especially when his talents are of so practical and brilliant a nature as were this young telegrapher’s. It would be an absurdity to imagine an Edison hidden in New York. Within a short time, he was presented with a check for $40,000, as his share of a single invention—an improved stock printer. From this time, a national reputation was assured him. He was, too, now engaged upon the duplex and quadruplex systems—systems for sending two and four messages at the same time over a single wire—which were to inaugurate almost a new era in telegraphy.
POVERTY AS AN INCENTIVE TO EFFORT.
Recalling the incident of the Law Gold Reporting Company, I inquired: “Do you believe want urges a man to greater efforts and so to greater success?”
“It certainly makes him keep a sharp lookout. I think it does push a man along.”
“Do you believe that invention is a gift, or an acquired ability?”
“I think it’s born in a man.”
“And don’t you believe that familiarity with certain mechanical conditions and defects naturally suggest improvements to any one?”
“No. Some people may be perfectly familiar with a machine all their days, knowing it inefficient, and never see a way to improve it.”
“What do you think is the first requisite for success in your field, or any other?”
“The ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.”
“Do you have regular hours, Mr. Edison?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, “I do not work hard now. I come to the laboratory about eight o’clock every day and go home to tea at six, and then I study or work on some problem until eleven, which is my hour for bed.”
“Fourteen or fifteen hours a day can scarcely be called loafing,” I suggested.
“Well,” he replied, “for fifteen years I have worked on an average of twenty hours a day.”
That astonishing brain has been known to puzzle itself for sixty consecutive hours over a refractory problem, its owner dropping quietly off into a long sleep when the job was done, to awake perfectly refreshed and ready for another siege. Mr. Dickson, a neighbor and familiar, gives an anecdote told by Edison which well illustrates his untiring energy and phenomenal endurance. In describing his Boston experience, Edison said he bought Faraday’s works on electricity, commenced to read them at three o’clock in the morning and continued until his room-mate arose, when they started on their long walk to get breakfast. That object was entirely subordinated in Edison’s mind to Faraday, and he suddenly remarked to his friend: “Adams, I have got so much to do, and life is so short, that I have got to hustle,” and with that he started off on a dead run for his breakfast.
NEVER DID ANYTHING WORTH WHILE BY CHANCE.
“Are your discoveries often brilliant intuitions? Do they come to you while you are lying awake nights?” I asked him.
“I never did anything worth doing by accident,” he replied, “nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.
“I have always kept,” continued Mr. Edison, “strictly within the lines of commercially useful inventions. I have never had any time to put on electrical wonders, valuable only as novelties to catch the popular fancy.”
“What makes you work?” I asked with real curiosity. “What impels you to this constant, tireless struggle? You have shown that you care comparatively nothing for the money it makes you, and you have no particular enthusiasm for the attending fame. What is it?”
“I like it,” he answered, after a moment of puzzled expression. “I don’t know any other reason. Anything I have begun is always on my mind, and I am not easy while away from it, until it is finished; and then I hate it.”
“Hate it?” I said.
“Yes,” he affirmed, “when it is all done and is a success, I can’t bear the sight of it. I haven’t used a telephone in ten years, and I would go out of my way any day to miss an incandescent light.”
“You lay down rather severe rules for one who wishes to succeed in life,” I ventured, “working eighteen hours a day.”
“Not at all,” he said. “You do something all day long, don’t you? Every one does. If you get up at seven o’clock and go to bed at eleven, you have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain with most men that they have been doing something all the time. They have been either walking, or reading, or writing, or thinking. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things and I do it about one. If they took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one object, they would succeed. Success is sure to follow such application. The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object—one thing to which they stick, letting all else go.”
OPPORTUNITIES FOR FUTURE INVENTORS.
“You believe, of course,” I suggested, “that much remains to be discovered in the realm of electricity?”
“It is the field of fields,” he answered. “We can’t talk of that, but it holds the secret which will reorganize the life of the world.”
“You have discovered much about it,” I said, smiling.
“Yes,” he said, “and yet very little in comparison with the possibilities that appear.”
“How many inventions have you patented?”
“Only six hundred,” he answered, “but I have made application for some three hundred more.”
“And do you expect to retire soon, after all this?”