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281
Heroes of the Telegraph
·
John Munro
217
Mere
knowledge,
uncombined
in
the
imagination,
does
not
bear
fruit
in
new
inventions.
It
is
from
the
union
of
different
facts
that
a
new
idea
springs.
A
scholar
is
apt
to
be
content
with
the
acquisition
of
knowledge,
which
remains
passive
in
his
mind.
An
inventor
seizes
upon
fresh
facts,
and
combines
them
with
the
old,
which
thereby
become
nascent.
Through
accident
or
premeditation
he
is
able
by
uniting
scattered
thoughts
to
add
a
novel
instrument
to
a
domain
of
science
with
which
he
has
little
acquaintance.
Nay,
the
lessons
of
experience
and
the
scruples
of
intimate
knowledge
sometimes
deter
a
master
from
attempting
what
the
tyro,
with
the
audacity
of
genius
and
the
hardihood
of
ignorance,
achieves.
Theorists
have
been
known
to
pronounce
against
a
promising
invention
which
has
afterwards
been
carried
to
success,
and
it
is
not
improbable
that
if
Edison
had
been
an
authority
in
acoustics
he
would
never
have
invented
the
phonograph.
It
happened
in
this
wise.
During
the
spring
of
1877,
he
was
trying
a
device
for
making
a
telegraph
message,
received
on
one
line,
automatically
repeat
itself
along
another
line.
This
he
did
by
embossing
the
Morse
signals
on
the
travelling
paper
instead
of
merely
inking
them,
and
then
causing
the
paper
to
pass
under
the
point
of
a
stylus,
which,
by
rising
and
falling
in
the
indentations,
opened
and
closed
a
sending
key
included
in
the
circuit
of
the
second
line.
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