"After leaving my first job at Stratford Junction I got a position as operator on the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern at Adrian, Michigan, in the division superintendent's office. As usual, I took the 'night trick,' which most operators disliked, but which I preferred, as it gave me more leisure to experiment. I had obtained from the station agent a small room, and had established a little shop of my own. One day the day operator wanted to get off, and I was on duty. About nine o'clock the superintendent handed me a despatch which he said was very important, and which I must get off at once. The wire at the time was very busy, and I asked if I should break in. I got orders to do so, and, acting under those orders of the superintendent, I broke in and tried to send the despatch; but the other operator would not permit it, and the struggle continued for ten minutes. Finally I got possession of the wire and sent the message. The superintendent of telegraph, who then lived in Adrian and went to his office in Toledo every day, happened that day to be in the Western Union office up-town--and it was the superintendent I was really struggling with! In about twenty minutes he arrived, livid with rage, and I was discharged on the spot. I informed him that the general superintendent had told me to break in and send the despatch, but the general superintendent then and there repudiated the whole thing. Their families were socially close, so I was sacrificed. My faith in human nature got a slight jar." From Adrian Edison went to Toledo, Ohio, and secured a position at Fort Wayne, on the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad. This was a "day job," and he did not like it. Two months later he drifted to Indianapolis, arriving there in the fall of 1864, when for the first time he entered the employ of the Western Union Telegraph Company, with which in later years he entered into closer relationship. At this time, however, he was assigned to duty at Union Station, at a salary of seventy-five dollars a month. He did not stay long in Indianapolis, however, leaving in February, 1865, and going from there to Cincinnati. This change was possibly caused by one of his early inventions, which has been spoken of by an expert as probably the most simple and ingenious arrangement of connections for a repeater.