San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1893-08-26
EDISON ON THE FAIR.
The Great Inventor Talks to a Re-
porter.

porter.
at is hard to say what l really
do think about the fair. 1t is so
big. OF course it is all marvellous"
said Thomas Edison, the Wizard
of Menlo park, last evening to a
reporter for the Inter Ocean.
81 haven't seen half of it yet. |
am doing it this way, up one isle,
and down the other" and the
great inventor drew an imaginary
plat of his peregrinatiOns in the
air with his hand. NATURALLY the
Mines and Mining and the Elec-
tricity buildings interest me more
than any thing else; the Mines
building more. than the Electric
ity. But after all, the Manufact-
ures' building is the most wonder
full.
Thomas A. Edison is seeing the
Fair incog,-as much so as his face,
familiar to so many thousands,
will permit. In his maturer years
Edison skaters all the messy, an
cient traditions about wizards.
People whose ideas of wizards have
been nodded by stories of long
bearded Merlins and shriveled
Fausts puttering about among sim
lister looking walls and mixing dam
gerous liquids with palsied hands
are surprised when they see Edi-
son.
HOW THE WIZARD REALLY LOOKS
He is thoroughly comfortable
and undeniably human. His face
is full and touched with the flush
of health. The common portrait
which shows him with his chin
buried in his hand, a solemn, far
way look in his eyes, is badly in
error. His eyes are full of laugh
ter of the ripping variety. AL
though he has wrought more Won
ders than all of the mystesious
Merlins and sOmber Fausts in
history, his countenance is rich
in good humor. AS great
a genius as Carlyle or
Beethoven, he has neither the
vinegary mind of the one nor the
melancholy of the other. He has
also a splendid regard for a lay
mans ignorance of scientific terms
and in describing one experiment
and another will make an evident
effort to contine himself to CONVEX
sational English.
He laughed heartily when in
formed yesterday that Chicago
was the hotbed of the world for
airship inventors.
81 know it," he said. "They
haven't found the secret yet, but
they will some day. 1t will come"
"Have you ever entered the air
ship field, yourself?"
"Yes; indeed | have. | have tried
a number of devices, but they
haven't worked. Once | placed an
aerial motor on pair of Fair
banks scales. and set it going. 1t
| frightened the scales, but it didn't
| fly" And the wizard laughed at
the recollection.
ALL IT LACKED WAS SPEED.
"AnOther time | rugged up an
umbrella-lille disc of shutters, and
connected it with a rapid piston in
a perpendicular cylinder. These
shutters would open and shut. If
| could have gotten sufficient speed,
say a mile a second, the inertia or
resistance of the air would have
been as great as steel, and the quick
operation of these shutters would
| have driven the machine upward.
But | couldn't get the speed. | be-
lieve that before the air-ship men
succeed they will have to do away
with the buOyancy chamber.
"But the secret will come out
some day l am sure"
Like the world at large which
ridiculed the first locomotive, the
first telephone, and almost every
great innovation, Edison takes a
humorous view of all his expert
ments, and seemingly enjoys a
failure.
81 have tried all kinds of plans
to explain psychical force" he said
with smile. 1--WE experimental
on hypnOtism by placing a mans
head in an immense magnetic
plane, but it didn't work. We
tried telepathy, too, but without
success"
THE KINOGRAPH NEXT.
"Have you any more wonders
like the photograph in the expert
mental stage?"
mo, nothing but the kinograph,
which is now almost perfected. 1t
r6prOduces, by rapid succession
of small DhOtODraDhS every motion