490 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of galvanic batteries. On one of the tables is a phonograph, run by 

 steam-power, with a belt through the floor to the machine-shop, and 

 beside it a copy of Poe's poems. In the rear of the room is a fine pipe- 

 organ, with an open Moody and Sankey book on it. At the opposite 

 end of the room stands Mr. Edison, telling the writer that there is no 

 philosopher like Herbert Spencer, no writer like Victor Hugo, and no 

 poet like Edgar A. Poe. 



The Associated Press wires run through his laboratory, and anon 

 he picks up his telephone and chats with Philadelphia, or with Prof. 

 Barker, at the University of Pennsylvania. When visitors call to see 

 him, they are most likely to inquire for Mr. Edison from the man him- 

 self a boyish face, an unostentatious manner, a careless dress, and, 

 in fact, the unchanged whole that formerly put in an appearance as the 

 new man at the Boston office. The crowd of farm-boys that come over 

 to see the wonderful talking-machine find him as ready to gratify their 

 curiosity as the more pretentious "professor." While carrying on his 

 manufacturing at Newark, he married, and well, Dot and Dash are 

 the nicknames of the little girl and boy that come every once in a 

 while to " see the wheels go round." 



We cannot here speak at length of his numerous inventions. He 

 owns one hundred and fifty patents, but of these only about a dozen are 

 of real value, the others are taken out to guard all approaches to the 

 valuable patents. Among his pet patents are his quadruplex telegraphy, 

 by which four messages may be sent at the same time over the same 

 wire ; his electric pen, for multiplying copies of letters or drawings, and 

 which consists of a tubular pen in which a needle plays with a sewing- 

 machine-like motion driven by electricity, which perforates the lines 

 drawn with it, the perforated sheet being afterward inked and used in 

 a press ; the ink is pressed through the minute perforations and leaves 

 on another sheet a finely-dotted tracing like the original. His carbon 

 telephone and the phonograph are, perhaps, the most marvelous of his 

 inventions. 



When Mr. Gray brought out his musical telephone, which set stu- 

 dents to experimenting in that direction, Mr. Edison was trying to im- 

 prove the Reuss telephone, the invention of a German. Mr. Gray's 

 apparatus gave promise of furnishing a method of multiplex telegraphy 

 a subject in which Mr. Edison, as we have seen, was interested. 

 Between Mr. Gray and Mr. Edison an understanding was arrived at 

 by which Mr. Edison was to leave Mr. Gray to carry out his invention 

 unmolested in the direction of multiplex telegraphy ; while Mr. Gray, 

 on the other hand, would not interfere with Mr. Edison's attempt to 

 make a speaking apparatus. While Mr. Edison had all but succeeded 

 in making the electro-magnet telephone, Mr. Bell hit it and brought 

 it out at the Centennial. Mr. Edison acknowledged himself fairly 

 anticipated, and began to experiment with a view to finding a sub- 

 stance that would be elastic, so to speak, to the passage of a current 



