Morning journal and courier., 1880-08-11

egraph Company took up his cause and re- tained him at a salary to give them the first bid upon any improvements in telegraphy that he might invent. With this arrange ment and the remnant of his $1 500 for an instrument worth $100, GOO at least he went out to Newark and established himself in meagrely-equipped laboratory, which soon be- came the wonder of that provincial city. It
 was here that he discovered that new element ary force which MT. J. Norman Lockyer, the editor of Nature, had such 8 hearty laugh oyer-as it rested upon phenomenon per fectIy familiar to advanced electricians He had his revenge on Lockyer, however, for the slur put upon his new force, in 1878, when
 that gentleman came over to this country to take notes of the total eclipse of the sun, and proved to his compeers on the expedition that the most pretentious physical astronomer in England actually did not know how to take photograph of the corona, and had to employ a travelling photographer for that service. But the new force was myth, notwithstand- ino and since then the ssMenlo Park magi- cian', has restrained himself from dabbling in the abstract sciences, and stuck to his busi- ness as an inventor, without regard to the forces of the universe. In the course of the last II years he has taken out 233 patents. But it must not be concluded that these all, or even many of them represent original inventions in the proper sense of the term. On the contrary,
 
 of every kind, however trlhlng apparently, as fast as they were elaborated, and many of
 his patents thus relate to the same general idea He has no less than 35 patents related to automatic telegraphs to duplex and quadrup1ex, 38 to telegraph printing, and more to trifing emendations of the Morse alphabet in one way and another. When one comes to an analysis and grouping of all his 1 patents, they appear to revolve about four 1 general ideas. The first is the vibratory l principle of telegraphing, which was his ear- l Hest dream, and upon which duplex and quad ruplex transmission are based. The second 1 is the idea of transmitting the sound of the l human voice, which has given rise to the tel 1 ephone the phonograph, and allied instru- ments; the third, the conversion of electrici- | ty into light, and the fourth, the use of cleo ! tricity as a motive power-the conversion of molecular into molar motion, of agitation of particles into movement of masses. There is 1 dispute about his originality in the first of l these central conceptions of his work; in the | second, third, and fourth so far as the cen l tral conceptions are concerned, they have l been the common property of scientific men for the last 15 or 20 years; but his marvellous 1 ingenuity in their various applications is be- l yond question.
 ! The discoverer of vocal transmission, if 1 one may accept the testimony of such an au- 1 thority as Prof. Farmer, was A. G. Holcombe, whose instrument the first telephone, is still | 1 has been a dream of electricians since Sir l Humphrey Davy. Who discovered the prin- I ciple upon which the electric engine is found 1 ed-that when dynamo-electrica generator l run by steam or other power in Newark, for l instance, is connected with another in New 1 York, it sets the latter in motion, and thus 1 furnishes motive power by which factories 1 may be operated economically, with the 1 source of energy miles or hundreds of miles 1 distant one knows; but the principle l upon which Edison operates his electrical ! railway, over the hills at Menlo Park, whisk- 1 ing man through space at the rate of 40 miles an hour, without steam or any visible source of energy save an electrical bobbin, has been perfectly well understood, though
 not successfully applied, for the last 10 years at least. Of scientific originality there is l none involved in this marvellous journey by l rail of invention and applied science vast ] deal for the problem has been often tried, ! and as often has failed, although the princi- pie was familiar.
 The number of Edison's inventions now in operation, and, with an exception or two, paying him an income is not so large as l would be inferred from running over his re- cords of experiment., comprising severallpon- derous volumes. There are among them the American District Telegraph, the electric pen, ! the repeater telegraph, the duplex telegraph, quadruplex telegraph, stock quotation regis ter, automatic telegraph system, telephone,
 
 1 magnetic repeater electric light and electric
 railroad-the latter in the mining regions of l the West, being adapted to grades that cannot
 be climbed by steam, besides costing for 1 roadbed in hilly country not more than half 1 what steam railway costs, and for equip ments hardly one-fourth the sum.
 Edison talks enthusiastically of the time l when electrical engines will be employed on ! the Pennsylvania railroad, and says he can
 readily obtain speed of 50 to 60 miles an
 hour with less danger of accident than occurs l with steam for the rails transmit the energy
 that moves the train, and the instant the en- zine leaves the track this energy ceases to be in communication with it. The other day, at a speed of 40 miles an hour, and with only a 12 year old boy to run the engine, curves of
 such short radii that steam locomotive would l inevitably have left the track and broken our
 necks, were rounded in perfect safety with 1 out slackening. The light, open car in which | the party rode swayed and oscillated, an
 came near whisking the passengers off at a | tangent into a sand bank, but the wheels, at- | tracted by that mysterious energy by which 1 the whole was moved, adhering firmly to the l rails. It must be owned that on the return ! trip Edison's guests were little more vigi- 1 lant when they went round the curves. The source of power in the little engine-also pro- 1 vided with electrical brakes that arrest it's motion almost tinstantaneously-is an electric al bobbin, or rather an armature, revolving 1 between the poles of magnet, in the same manner as in ordinary generator of the
 Edison -Siemens pattern. Two tracks trans init the energy to the wheels of the engine, l the whole train being thus an armature that
 connects the extended poles of the powerful generator in the laboratory, and thus estab- l fishes circuit. From the wheels the current flows through the bobbin, which revolves be- tween the poles of the stationary magnet. To stop the train, it is only necessary to take the
 current through 8 copper wire, instead of the l armature, and this is done by the merest pressure of finger upon button. In ex- 1 periments that have been conducted upon @
 section of the road having rising grade of 50 feet to the mile, (about 1 foot in every 100) l this little engine has drawn loads that would
 severely tax the capacity of 8 locomotive up
 on the ordinary grades allowable railways 1 operated by steam. The Pennsylvania Rail 1 road Company talks of trying electricity as 1 motor-so Edison says-with freight trains
 first, and then, if satisfactory, for passenger l transit but this probably lies pretty far in
 the future. The economy of electricity as
 motor, utilizing many horsepower from l 300 pounds of coal as steam from TOO, is not l in question; but whether it would prove as l reliable in all sorts of weather is something that only experience can determine.
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