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
In the early days of the Orange laboratory some of the upper rooms
contained cots for the benefit of the night-workers. In spite of the
strenuous nights and days the spirit of fun was frequently in evidence.
One instance will serve as an illustration.
One morning about two-thirty the late Charles Batchelor said he was
tired and would go to bed. Leaving Edison and the others busily
working, he went out and returned quietly in slippered feet, with
his night-gown on, the handle of a feather-duster down his back
with the feathers waving over his head, and his face marked. With
unearthly howls and shrieks, _a l'Indien_, he pranced about the room,
incidentally giving Edison a scare that made him jump up from his work.
He saw the joke quickly, however, and joined in the general merriment
caused by this prank.
A description of the laboratory building would be incomplete without
mention of room Number 12. This is one of Edison's favorite rooms,
where he may frequently be found seated at a plain table in the center
of the room deeply intent on one of his numerous problems. It is a
plain little room, but seems to exercise a nameless fascination for him.
Passing out of the building, we come to the four smaller buildings,
which are known as Numbers One, Two, Three, and Four. The building
Number One is called the galvanometer room. Edison originally planned
that this should be used for the most delicate and minute electrical
measurements. He went to great expense in fitting it up and in
providing a large number of costly instruments, but the coming of the
trolley near by a few years afterward rendered the room utterly useless
for this purpose. It is now used as an experimental room, chiefly for
motion-picture experiments.
Building Number Two is quite an important one. As the visitor arrives
at the door he is quite conscious that it is a chemical-room. Here
a corps of chemists is constantly kept busy in carrying out the
various experiments Mr. Edison has given them to perform. This room is
also one of his special haunts. He may be seen here very frequently
experimenting in person, or seated at a plain little table figuring out
some new combination that he has in mind.
A chemical store-room and a pattern-maker's shop occupy building Number
Three, while Number Four, which was formerly used for ore concentrating
experiments, is now used as a general stock-room.
We have only attempted to afford the reader a passing glance of this
interesting laboratory, which for many years has been the headquarters
of Edison and the central source of inspiration for the great
industries he has established at Orange. Around it are grouped a number
of immense concrete buildings in which the manufacture of phonographs,
motion-pictures, and storage batteries is carried on, giving employment
to as many as four thousand people during busy times.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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