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281
Heroes of the Telegraph
·
John Munro
235
CHAPTER
X.
DAVID
EDWIN
HUGHES.
There
are
some
leading
electricians
who
enjoy
a
reputation
based
partly
on
their
own
efforts
and
partly
on
those
of
their
paid
assistants.
Edison,
for
example,
has
a
large
following,
who
not
only
work
out
his
ideas,
but
suggest,
improve,
and
invent
of
themselves.
The
master
in
such
a
case
is
able
to
avail
himself
of
their
abilities
and
magnify
his
own
genius,
so
to
speak.
He
is
not
one
mind,
but
the
chief
of
many
minds,
and
absorbs
into
himself
the
glory
and
the
work
of
a
hundred
willing
subjects.
Professor
Hughes
is
not
one
of
these.
His
fame
is
entirely
self-earned.
All
that
he
has
accomplished,
and
he
has
done
great
things,
has
been
the
labour
of
his
own
hand
and
brain.
He
is
an
artist
in
invention;
working
out
his
own
conceptions
in
silence
and
retirement,
with
the
artist's
love
and
self-absorption.
This
is
but
saying
that
he
is
a
true
inventor;
for
a
mere
manufacturer
of
inventions,
who
employs
others
to
assist
him
in
the
work,
is
not
an
inventor
in
the
old
and
truest
sense.
Genius,
they
say,
makes
its
own
tools,
and
the
adage
is
strikingly
verified
in
the
case
of
Professor
Hughes,
who
actually
discovered
the
microphone
in
his
own
drawing-room,
and
constructed
it
of
toy
boxes
and
sealing
wax.
He
required
neither
lathe,
laboratory,
nor
assistant
to
give
the
world
this
remarkable
and
priceless
instrument.
Having
first
become
known
to
fame
in
America,
Professor
Hughes
is
usually
claimed
by
the
Americans
as
a
countryman,
and
through
some
error,
the
very
date
and
place
of
his
birth
there
are
often
given
in
American
publications;
but
we
have
the
best
authority
for
the
accuracy
of
the
following
facts,
namely
that
of
the
inventor
himself.
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