The Arizona sentinel., 1886-09-11
EDISON'S LATEST IDEA.
An Instrument for Utilizing Earth Cur
 rents m Place of Telegraph Wires.


 rents m Place of Telegraph Wires.
 When Thomas Edison, the whilom wizard of Menlo Park brought his bride to his eighty thousand dollar resi- dence on the Orange Mountain about two months ago, he also determined to bring his workshop within easy access from his residence. Carrying out his purpose the great electrician has been busy for period of six weeks in put ting up workshop in East Newark, and there he was found this morning, breezy. blue-eyed, little stouter than he was two years ago and a trife more settled.
 ''I am workingman now," he said smilingly ''I bring my lunch with me in the morning, for 1 can not afford to spare the time to go home to dinner. Of course, you know that 1 have be- come a Jerseyman once more. 1 have given up my laboratory in New York, and every thing is now at the factory here in East Newark"
 'At what are you working now"
 '1 am simply trying to cheapen the electric lamps and the cartoons. have had men almost all over the United States and South America looking for a vegetable or mineral substance from which carbon points might be made. Prof Hedden, of Newark, mineralo- gist, in travelling through the Southern States, failed to find what I wanted, but he discovered the 'Heddenite' and a for tune in North Carolina"
 Have you done nothing recently with electricity?"
 ''You newspaper people," sad Mir. Edison, laughing, ''think that I always must have just completed some won- derful invention, which I ought to tell you about. Why don't you devour each others fiction? An American corre- spondent wrote to Berlin paper recent ly tremendous story about my having invented wonderful shirt of ge!ati ne, made transparent by electrical treat ment. This shirt was supposed to be built in layers of almost inconceivable thinness. Each layer was white and adhesive, and could be taken off when soiled, and as there were just 365 layers, and it was calcul- ated that each sheet would last day, a gelatine garment would last a year. Well, this marvellous tale went the rounds of the European press and at last it was reprinted in Brazil. The gullibility Cs the South American may appreciated when it is known that soon after the shirt story met their eyes the Brazilians began to send me drafts and cheeks for shirts. One idiotic diamond dealer," addeI MT. Edison, mirthfully, 'sent me draft for $500 on the Bank of England. He wrote that he didn' know how much the shirts were, but he did not think they ought to cost over d hundred pounds apiece.
 Seriously" said he, drawing out a sheet of paper and pencil, ''there is but one idea 1 am thinking of that care to talk about. As soon as can find time to go to Florida am going to make some experiments with earth cur rents. 1 can not do it here because there is too much mineral in the soil. In Florida it is all sand, There are currents of electricity passing all the time through the earth; their direct ons, however, are unknown. I propose to arrange eight currents, radiating in as many di- rections from a central point. 1 will place man at each circuit to test the power of the currents. It is well-known that if an earth current crosses a wire at right angles there is but little, if any, effect made upon it. The greatest power is felt where the wire and currents run in parallel directions. In Boston l have run wire six hours with the aurora borealis without bat tery. If 1 had had rod at that time running from New York to Boston I would have had electric power enough to run all the machinery in Boston,
 'After you understand the earih's currents, what then?"
 "Well, knowledge of them may rev. olutionize telegraphy. It may revolu- tionize the meteorological bureau sys- tenn and make it possible to forecast the weather exactly. have an idea that it may do something still greater, but do not care to talk about it at present. wires sooner or later will be a thing of the past, 1 believe. They are expensive and cumbersome, and why use them if you can make an in- strument that will be sensitive to the natural earth currentS?" Grk (N. J.) Cor. ~. r. MdiI.