This result I felt especially exasperated at when a year afterwards the secretary of the lighting company, who had his office at the station, told me that he had done something of which he knew his directors would not approve; he had sold every light they were able to furnish. He had felt safe in doing this, because no one of the engines had failed them for an instant. For his part he could not see what those men were there for--they had absolutely nothing to do except to start and stop the engines as required and attend to the oiling. Their principal occupation seemed to be waiting on visitors. This great disaster would have been avoided if Mr. Merrick had conferred with me with respect to Mr. Dolan’s most important request. We should have had a man there who would have told the truth about the engines, and would have impressed every visitor with the enormous advantage of the high-speed engine, not only for that service, but also for every use to which steam power can be applied. It will be observed that this disaster was widespread and continuous. It not only caused a great immediate loss, but its ultimate injury was beyond all computation. Its effect was that the Porter-Allen engine was shut out of the boundless field of generating electricity for light and power purposes, a field which was naturally its own. The following story is too good to keep, although the incident had no effect that I am aware of to accelerate my downward progress. While in Newark I had built for Mr. Edison an engine for his experimental plant at Menlo Park. The satisfaction this engine gave may be judged by what follows: One day I had a call from Mr. Edison, accompanied by Charles L. Clarke, his engineer. They had been walking very rapidly, and Mr. Edison, who was rather stout, was quite out of breath. As soon as they were seated, without waiting to recover his wind Mr. Edison began, ejaculating each sentence while catching his breath: “Want a thousand engines.” “Thousand engines.” “Want you to make the plans for them.” “Have all the shops in New England working on the parts.” “Bring them here to be assembled.” “Thousand engines.” In the conversation that followed I gently let Mr. Edison down, not to the earth, but in sight of it. The result was that two or three weeks afterwards I was injudicious enough to accept from him an order for twenty-four engines, luckily all of one size and type. This was to be a rush order, but it called for new drawings and patterns, as he wanted a special proportion of diameter and stroke, larger diameter and shorter stroke than those in my table. Before the drawings and patterns were completed, Mr. Edison, or the people associated with him, discovered that they had no place to put more than six of these engines, so the order was reduced to six. These were for a station which was being prepared on the west side of Pearl Street, a few doors south of Fulton, New York City. Three of these engines were finished first.