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 addition to all this work, Edison gave attention to many other
things. One of them was the first typewriter. In the early 'seventies
Mr. D. N. Craig, who was interested in the automatic, brought with him
from Milwaukee a Mr. Sholes, who had a wooden model of a machine to
which had been given the then new and unfamiliar name of "typewriter."
Mr. Craig was interested in the machine and put the model in Edison's
hands to perfect.
"This typewriter proved a difficult thing," says Edison, "to make
commercial. The alignment of the letters was awful. One letter would
be one-sixteenth of an inch above the others, and all the letters
wanted to wander out of line. I worked on it till the machine gave
fair results. Some were made and used in the office of the Automatic
Company. Craig was very sanguine that some day all business letters
would be written on a typewriter. He died before that took place;
but it gradually made its way. The typewriter I got into commercial
shape is now known as the Remington. I now had five shops, and with
experimenting on this new scheme I was pretty busy--at least I did not
have ennui."
Later on, after the automatic was completed, and Edison was installing
the system for the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company he says:
"About this time I invented a district messenger call-box system, and
organized a company called the Domestic Telegraph Company, and started
in to install the system in New York. I had great difficulty in getting
subscribers, having tried several canvassers, who, one after the other,
failed to get subscribers. When I was about to give it up a test
operator named Brown, who was on the Automatic Telegraph wire between
New York and Washington, which passed through my Newark shop, asked
permission to let him try and see if he couldn't get subscribers. I had
very little faith in his ability to get any, but I thought I would give
him a chance, as he felt certain of his ability to succeed. He started
in, and the results were surprising. Within a month he had procured two
hundred subscribers, and the company was a success. I have never quite
understood why six men should fail absolutely, while the seventh man
should succeed. Perhaps hypnotism would account for it. This company
was sold out to the Atlantic and Pacific Company."
This was not the first time that Edison had worked on district
messenger signal boxes, for as far back as 1872 he had applied for a
patent on a device of this kind. Although he was not the first, he was
a very early inventor in this field.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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