The Birmingham age-herald., 1905-03-26


 10 prove his case and bring the suit to speedy conclusion. It is only necessary to produce in court the particular note DOCK bearing report of the disputed invention, and show how 1t was worked out from It's initial conception to tbe complete stage. The eloquence of its pages, signed and witnessed, is irresista- Dle, and no claim, however logical it may appears on it's surface, can withstand against the silent testimony of the mos ton" book
 13 Months to Find One Substance. | In one of his notion books k foupa a long list of materials which he fried when attempting to make a perfect car pon button for the telephone. The story IS told in detail, and is as fascinating aa a fairy-tae. It shows that it took thir- teen months of daily experimenting to nnd the exact material he was loolxina 'or' and at the end of 1t all an accident gave him the clue he had worked so hard to ind. This was nothing more or less than smoking kerosene lamp. Edison was looking at 1t absent-mindedIy his head full of that elusive carbon button. suddenly he leaped up and made a wild grap for the glass chimney. The idea had come to him that perhaps kerosene soot would suit his purpose He locked himself | into his laboratory, and began to scrana away the soot from the lamp chimney. and when he had expermented with 1t he whooped like schoolboy, for at last he l had found the best material for hIs but , ton.
 But the development of Edison's in- vention to perfect the glow or inean- descent lamp, and of his own discovery. the talking photograph, take up the greastest number of the motion" books. To glance over his comments in regard ff fIa AIa Dtrtr srlr Io.. the truth of the axiom that some things are not as simple as they look. and cer- tainly the lamp is one of these things. A small glass globe. bulged and slightly pointed trickily looped flament, with tips of plantinum; cap of grass or vitrite and that seems all. But is 1t all? Ask Edison. He will tell you-that is, he may do so if he does not see you coming and has not time to run away--that the dif- faculties he had overcome before discov- ering how to make the "inslde wire" that tiny thread or filament, bear the bur- den and heat not only of the day, but tho ten-fold worse night, nearly downed him.
 His motion" book tells exhaustive1y of the gradual steps made in working out his ideas on the subject of perfect cleo tric glow lamp. Every experiment is carefully written up, and attached to the pages are scraps of the different materials which he tried, including rags and tex tiles steeped in chemical solutions. vari- ous sorts of papers, species of woods. out CT and inner bark and Indian corn stalks On the final page is a specimen of Chi- nese bamboo, from which he obtained the Ideal carbon used now in making the horseshoe for the incandescent lamp.
 Dates Back to 1877.
 There are at least fifty motion" books dealing exclusively with the phonograph , Edison has acted the role of stepfather, so to speak, to many of the inventions with which his name is associated, for he has genius for improvement and facile advance fin every line of discovery, and rart of his mission in life is to perfect the work of visionaries. But he is own father to the photograph, and it enjoys the distinction of being prime favorite among his brain-chlldren.
 The motion" books prove that the dls- covery of the phenomena on which this product of electro-mechanical science Is based dates back to 1877, while its inventor was engaged in experimenting for totul- ly different end. Its underlying principle is thr same law of acoustics appearing in the te'erhone-namely, that sound con sists in a series of waves spreading from a given source, and that their impaa at any distance is in exact ratio to the rdtch ami volume of the original note.
 Ten years after his discovery that contradictions whether of the human voice or some other agency, can be mechanically produced at any time after their occurrence, Mr. Edison agatn took up his invention and produced in 1889 the phonograph as 1t Is n, known. In the wonderful notebooks he dwells upon the manifold uses to which the in- strument can be put. According to his ideas. 1t will eventually take the place of shorthand reporters for the business man will talk into the photograph what he wishes to write and will then send the sheets directly to his correspondents who will lay them on another phono- graph and listen to what they have to say. Through its medium grand opera can be enjoyed by poor people to whom a seat in the Metropolitan would repre- sent half a weeks wages. It can be utilized. also as a teacher of language, and "shut-ins" who cannot go to church may listen to in preaching in the voice of some noted divine.
 A glance through many of the '.no- tion' books shows that hundreds of MT. Edison's inspirations failed to pan out when thoroughly tested. But he is quite content. and will not listen for a mo- menf to a hint that his IN. G." entries represent a waste of time. On the con- trary, he says very emphatically that he has learned as much through his failures as he ever has done through his greatest successes.