Some idea of this wonderful development, as it has gone on through the years that have passed since 1880, may be formed when it is stated that at this time there are more than one hundred millions of incandescent lamps in daily use in the United States alone. Every one of these lamps and the fundamental principles upon which they are operated rest upon the foundations which Edison laid so well. One of Mr. Edison's interesting stories of the early days relates to the making of the lamps. He says: "When we first started the electric light we had to have a factory for manufacturing lamps. As the Edison light company did not seem disposed to go into manufacturing, we started a small lamp factory at Menlo Park with what money I could raise from my other inventions and royalties and some assistance. The lamps at that time were costing about one dollar and twenty-five cents each to make, so I said to the company: 'If you will give me a contract during the life of the patents I will make all the lamps required by the company and deliver them for forty cents.' The company jumped at the chance of this offer, and a contract was drawn up. We then bought at a receiver's sale at Harrison, New Jersey, a very large brick factory building which had been used as an oil-cloth works. We got it at a great bargain, and only paid a small sum down, and the balance on mortgage. We moved the lamp works from Menlo Park to Harrison. The first year the lamps cost us about one dollar and ten cents each. We sold them for forty cents; but there were only about twenty or thirty thousand of them. The next year they cost us about seventy cents, and we sold them for forty. There were a good many, and we lost more money the second year than the first. The third year I succeeded in getting up machinery and in changing the processes, until it got down so that they cost somewhere around fifty cents. I still sold them for forty cents, and lost more money that year than any other, because the sales were increasing rapidly. The fourth year I got it down to thirty-seven cents, and I made all the money in one year that I had lost previously. I finally got it down to twenty-two cents, and sold them for forty cents; and they were made by the million. Whereupon the Wall Street people thought it was a very lucrative business, so they concluded they would like to have it, and bought us out. "When we formed the works at Harrison we divided the interests into one hundred shares or parts at one hundred dollars par. One of the boys was hard up after a time, and sold two shares to Bob Cutting. Up to that time we had never paid anything, but we got around to the point where the board declared a dividend every Saturday night. We had never declared a dividend when Cutting bought his shares, and after getting his dividends for three weeks in succession he called up on the telephone and wanted to know what kind of a concern this was that paid a weekly dividend. The works sold for $1,085,000."