Heroes of the Telegraph

The ready ingenuity of Edison is shown by his device for killing the cockroaches which overran the Boston office. He arranged some strips of tinfoil on the wall, and connected these to the poles of a battery in such a way that when the insects ran towards the bait which he had provided, they stepped from one foil to the other, and completed the circuit of the current, thus receiving a smart shock, which dislodged them into a pail of water, standing below. In 1870, after two years in Boston, where he had spent all his earnings, chiefly on his books and workshop, he found himself in New York, tramping the streets on the outlook for a job, and all but destitute. After repeated failures he chanced to enter the office of the Laws Gold Reporting Telegraph Company while the instrument which Mr. Laws had invented to report the fluctuations of the money market had broken down. No one could set it right; there was a fever in the market, and Mr. Laws, we are told, was in despair. Edison volunteered to set it right, and though his appearance was unpromising, he was allowed to try. The insight of the born mechanic, the sleight of hand which marks the true experimenter, have in them something magical to the ignorant. In Edison's hands the instrument seemed to rectify itself. This was his golden opportunity. He was engaged by the company, and henceforth his career as an inventor was secure. The Gold Indicator Company afterwards gave him a responsible position. He improved their indicator, and invented the Gold and Stock Quotation Printer, an apparatus for a similar purpose. He entered into partnership with Mr. Pope and Mr. Ashley, and introduced the Pope and Edison Printer. A private line which he established was taken over by the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company, and soon their system was worked almost exclusively with Edison's invention.