The boys' life of EdisonMeadowcroft, Wm. H. (William Henry)
General
The boys' life of Edison
Meadowcroft, Wm. H. (William Henry)
Edison, Thomas A. (Thomas Alva), 1847-1931 -- Juvenile literature
We have been able to take only a passing glance at the great results
achieved by Edison in his nine years' work on this remarkable plant--a
work deserving of most serious study. The story would be incomplete,
however, if we did not mention his labors on putting the fine ore in
the form of solid briquettes.
When the separated iron was first put on the market it was found that
it could not be used in that form in the furnaces. Edison was therefore
obliged to devise some other means to make it available. After a long
series of experiments he found a way of putting it into the form of
small, solid briquettes. These answered the purpose exactly.
This called for a line of new machinery, which he had to invent to
carry out the plan. When this was completed, the great rocks went in at
one end of the works and a stream of briquettes poured out of the other
end, being made by each briquetting machine at the rate of sixty per
minute.
Thus, with never-failing persistence, infinite patience, intense
thought and hard work, Edison met and conquered, one by one, the
difficulties that had confronted him. Furnace trials of his briquettes
proved that they were even better than had been anticipated. He had
received some large orders for them and was shipping them regularly.
Everything was bright and promising, when there came a fatal blow.
The discovery of rich Bessemer ore in the Mesaba range of mountains in
Minnesota a few years before had been followed by the opening of the
mines there about this time. As this rich ore could be sold for three
dollars and fifty cents per ton, as against six dollars and fifty cents
per ton for Edison's briquettes, his great enterprise must be abandoned
at the very moment of success.
It was a sad blow to Edison's hopes. He had spent nine years of hard
work and about two millions of his own money in the great work that had
thus been brought to nought through no fault of his. The project had
lain close to his heart and ambition, indeed he had put aside almost
all other work and inventions for a while.
For five of the nine years he had lived and worked steadily at Edison
(the name of the place where the works were located), leaving there
only on Saturday night to spend Sunday at his home in Orange, and
returning to the plant by an early train on Monday morning. Life at
Edison was of the simple kind--work, meals, and a few hours' sleep day
by day, but Mr. Edison often says he never felt better than he did
during those five years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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