Radio Boys Cronies Part 3

"I wonder if the Professor thinks we're millionaires." Bill was plainly disappointed.

"Oh, well, he didn't finish what he was saying to us. Let's listen to the weather report," demanded Gus, ever optimistic and joyful.

The words came clearer than ever out of that wonderful horn. There was to be rain that afternoon--local thunderstorms, followed by clearing and cooler. On the morrow it would be cloudy and unsettled.

Bill felt as though that prediction suited his mental state! Gus was never the kind to worry; he sat smiling at the horn and he received with added pleasure the music of a band which followed. And then came the second talk on the boyhood of the master of invention.

"It has been said," spouted the horn, "that high mental characteristics are accompanied by heroic traits. Whether true or not generally, it was demonstrated in young Edison and it governed his learning telegraphy and the manner thereof. The story is told by the telegraph operator at Mt.

Clemens, where the red-headed conductor threw the train boy and his laboratory off the train.

"'Young Edison,' says the station agent, 'had endeared himself to the station agents, operators and their families all along the line. As the mixed train did the way-freight work and the switching at Mt. Clemens, it usually consumed not less than thirty minutes, during which time Al would play with my little two-and-a-half-year old son, Jimmy.

"'It was at 9:30 on a lovely summer morning. The train had arrived, leaving its pa.s.senger coach and baggage car standing on the main track at the north end of the station platform, the pin between the baggage and the first box car having been pulled out. There were about a dozen freight cars, which had pulled ahead and backed in upon the freight-house siding. The train men had taken out a box car and pushed it with force enough to reach the baggage car without a brakeman controlling it.

"'At this moment Al turned and saw little Jimmy on the main track, throwing pebbles over his head in the suns.h.i.+ne, all unconscious of danger. Das.h.i.+ng his papers and cap on the platform he plunged to the rescue.

"'The train baggage man was the only eyewitness. He told me that when he saw Al jump toward Jimmy he thought sure both boys would be crushed.

Seizing Jimmy in his arms just as the box car was about to strike them, young Edison threw himself off the track. There wasn't a tenth of a second to lose. By this instinctive act he saved his own life, for if he had thrown the little chap first and then himself, he would have been crushed under the wheels.

"'As it was, the front wheel struck the heel of the newsboy's boot and he and Jimmy fell, face downward on the sharp, fresh-gravel ballast so hard that they were both bleeding and the baggage man thought sure the wheel had gone over them. To his surprise their injuries proved to be only skin deep.

"'I was in the ticket office when I heard the shriek and ran out in time to see the train hands carrying the two boys to the platform. My first thought was: 'How can I, a poor man, reward the dear lad for risking his life to save my child's?' Then it came to me, 'I can teach him telegraphy.' When I offered to do this, he smiled and said, 'I'd like to learn,' and learn he did. I never saw any one pick it up so fast. It was a sort of second nature with him. After the conductor treated him so badly, throwing off his apparatus, boxing his ears and making him hard of hearing, Al seemed to lose his interest in his business as train boy.

"'Some days Al would stop at my station at half past nine in the morning and stay all day while the train went on to Detroit and returned to Mt.

Clemens in the evening. The train baggage man who saw Al rescue Jimmy would get the papers in Detroit and bring them up to Mt. Clemens for him. During these long hours the Edison boy made rapid progress in learning. And every day he made the most of the half hour or more of practice he had while the train stopped at Mt. Clemens each way.

"'At the end of a couple of weeks I missed him for several days. Next time he dropped off he showed me a set of telegraph instruments he had made in a gunshop in Detroit, where the stationer who had sold him goods had told the owner of the machine shop the story of the printing press.'

"The first place young Edison worked after he was graduated from the Mt.

Clemens private school of telegraphy was in Port Huron, his home town.

Here he had too many boy friends to let him keep on the job as a youthful telegrapher should. Besides, he had a laboratory in his home and found it too fascinating to take enough sleep. Between too much side work and mischief, young Edison sometimes found himself in trouble. Some of his escapades he has described to his friend and a.s.sistant, William H. Meadowcroft.

"'About every night we could hear the soldiers stationed at Fort Gratiot. One would call out: "Corporal of Guard Number One!" This was repeated from one sentry to another till it reached the barracks and "No. 1" came out to see what was wanted. The Dutch boy (who used to help me with the papers) and I thought we would try our hand in military matters.

"'So one dark night I called, "Corporal of the Guard Number One!" The second sentry, thinking it had come from the man stationed at the end, repeated this, and the words went down the line as usual. This reached Corporal Number One, and brought him back to our end only to find out that he had been tricked by someone.

"'We did this three times, but on the third night they were watching.

They caught the Dutch boy and locked him up in the fort. Several soldiers chased me home. I ran down cellar where there were two barrels of potatoes and a third which was almost empty. I dumped the contents of three barrels into two, sat down, pulled the empty barrel over my head, bottom upwards. The soldiers woke my father, and they all came hunting for me with lanterns and candles.

"'The corporal was perfectly sure I had come down cellar. He couldn't see how I had got away, and asked father if there wasn't a secret place for me to hide in the cellar. When father said "No," he exclaimed, "Well, that's very strange!"

"'You can understand how glad I was when they left, for I was in a cramped position, and as there had been rotten potatoes in that barrel, I was beginning to feel sick.

"'The next morning father found me in bed and gave me a good switching on my legs--the only whipping I ever received from him, though mother kept behind the old clock a switch which had the bark well worn off! My mother's ideas differed somewhat from mine, most of all when I mussed up the house with my experiments.

"'The Dutch boy was released the next morning.'

"Another escapade described by Edison was pulled off on the Canada side of the St. Clair, in Port Sarnia, opposite Port Huron.

"'In 1860 the Prince of Wales (afterward King Edward) visited Canada.

Nearly every lad in Port Huron, including myself, went over to Sarnia to see the celebration. The town was profusely draped in flags--there were arches over some streets--and carpets were laid on the crossings for the prince to walk on.

"'A stand was built where the prince was to be received by the mayor.

Seeing all these arrangements raised my idea of the prince very high.

But when he finally came I mistook the Duke of Newcastle for Albert Edward. The duke was a very fine-looking man. When I discovered my mistake--the Prince of Wales being a mere stripling--I was so disappointed that I couldn't help mentioning the fact. Then several of us American boys expressed our belief that a prince wasn't much after all! One boy got well whipped for this and there was a free-for-all fight. The Canucks attacked the Yankee boys and, as they greatly outnumbered us, we were all badly licked and I got a black eye. This always prejudiced me against that kind of ceremonial and folly.'"

CHAPTER VII

THE MAKING OF AN INVENTOR

"It was during the time young Edison was employed at Port Huron," the radio continued, "that the cable under River St. Clair between that city and Port Sarnia was severed by an ice jam. The river at that point is three quarters of a mile wide. Navigation was suspended and the ice had broken up so that the stream could not be crossed on foot nor could the broken cable lying in the bed of the river be mended.

"The ingenious young telegrapher suggested signaling Sarnia by giving, with the whistle of a locomotive, the dot-and-dash letters of the Morse telegraph code. Or course, this strange whistling caused considerable wonderment on the Canada side until a shrewd operator recognized the long-and-short telegraph letters, and communication was at once established--important messages being transmitted by steam whistles--a gigantic system of broadcasting. This was a simple way out of a sublime difficulty involving the affairs of two great peoples.

"But the too-enterprising operator had started so much trouble for himself that he decided to find employment where his mind would not be distracted from his job or tempted away from working out his chemical and electrical experiments. Because of these he preferred the position of night operator. His telegraph work was really a side line.

"On these accounts he found a job as night operator at Stratford Junction, Canada West, as Ontario was then called. He was only sixteen but his salary of twenty-five dollars a month seemed very small after making ten or twelve dollars a day as 'candy butcher.' But on account of the chances it gave him for experimenting, he resigned himself to the smallness of his pay. The treatment he had received at the hands of that train conductor had convinced him that he could not follow his bent while working all day on the railroad.

"Mr. Edison likes to tell of the prevailing ignorance of the science of telegraphy. He once told a friend:

"'The telegraph men themselves seemed unable to explain how the thing worked, though I was always trying to find out. The best explanation I got was from an old Scotch line repairer employed by the Montreal Telegraph Company, then operating the railway wires. Here is the way he described it: "If you had a dachshund long enough to reach from Edinburgh to London, and pulled his tail in Edinburgh he would bark in London!"

"'I could understand that, but I never could get it through me what went through the dog or over the wire.'

"It was at Stratford Junction that the Edison boy began his career of invention. From the first his chief aim was the saving of labor. In order to be sure that the operators all along the line were not asleep at their posts, they were required to send to the train dispatcher's office a certain dot-and-dash signal every hour in the night. Young Edison was like young Napoleon in grudging himself the necessary hours of sleep. While the ingenious lad was fond of machinery--to make a machine of himself was utterly distasteful to him. It was against his principles and instincts to do anything a mere machine could do instead.

So he made a little wheel with a few notches in the rim, with which he connected the clock and the transmitter, so that at the required instant every hour in the night the wheel revolved and sent the proper signal to headquarters. Meanwhile that wily young operator slept the sleep of the genius, if not of the just. Of one experience at this little place Edison relates:

"'This night job just suited me, as I could have the whole day to myself. I had the faculty of sleeping in a chair any time for a few minutes at a time. I taught the night yardman my call, so I could get half an hour's sleep now and then between trains, and in case the station was called the watchman was to wake me. One night I got an order to hold a freight train, and I replied that I would do so. I ran out to find the signal man, but before I could locate him and get the signal set--_the train ran past!_ I rushed back to the telegraph office and reported that I could not hold it.

"'But on receiving my first message that I would hold the freight, the dispatcher let another train leave the next station going the opposite way. There was a station near the Junction where the day operator slept.

I started to run in that direction, but it was pitch dark. I fell down a culvert and was knocked senseless.'

"The two engineers, with a feeling that all was not as it should be, kept a sharp lookout and saw each other just in time to avert a fatal accident. But young Edison was cited to trial, for gross neglect of duty, by the general manager. During an informal hearing two Englishmen called on the manager. While he was talking with them the young night operator disappeared. Boarding a freight train bound for Port Sarnia, he made his escape from the five-years' term in prison threatened by the irate manager. Edison afterward confessed that his heart did not leave his throat until he had crossed the ferry to Port Huron and 'one wide river' lay between him and the Canadian authorities.

"Following his escape from Canada young Edison knocked about the home country, North and South. As it was during the Civil War he had some peculiar adventures. After making a long circuit, broken in many places by 'short circuits,' the journeyman telegrapher landed in Port Huron, and wrote his friend Adams, then in Boston to find him a job.

"His friend relates that he asked the Boston manager of the Western Union Telegraph office if he wanted a first-cla.s.s operator from the West.

"'What kind of copy does he make?'" was the manager's first query.

"Adams continues:

"'I pa.s.sed Edison's letter through the window for his inspection. He was surprised, for it was almost as plain as print, and asked:

"'Can he take it off the wire like that?'