The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1914-10-15
NEXT WEDNESDAY
TO BE EDISON DAY
(By Alya L. Day)

3
Milan, Ohio. February IL. lS47. The
ancestral Edisons came from Holland
[ in 1870 and took up farming land along
/ the Passaie river in New Jersey. The
nomsdie Edison family moved to Nova
Scotia in 1904 and later took up Can
adian land at Bayfield,, on Lake Huron.
Still later they moved to Vienna. on
Lake Erie. Here Samuel Edison, father
of Thomas Alva, kept hotel and was
married to Miss Nancy Elliott. school
teacher, in 1928. A threatened revolt
in Canada against English rule at this
time caused an exodus of the partiei-
pants to the United States. among
them Samuel Edison. The Canadian
home forfeited. Samuel Edison settled
down at Milan. Ohio, in 1912, and
among several other enterprises began
the making of shingles.
Edison's mother was an attractive
and educated woman. She was born in
Chenango county, N. Y, in 1910, and
was the daughter of Rev. John Elliott,
Baptist minister. As a boy Edison
was none too strong and for this reason
did not 60 to school as soon as the other
boys. In 1854 Milan began to decline
in business way and the Edison fam
ily removed to Port Huron, Mich, and
occupied handsome new house which
was unfortunately burned down shortly
after the Civil war. Samuel Edison
became interested in the grain and
lumber business and the family was
we'll to do and stood high in the society
of the community.
Young Edison attended school at Port
Huron for just three months when his
teachers gave him up in despair. He
was always at the foot of his class.
After this short course he studied at
home with his mother, and his father
added a small sum of money for each
new book mastered. In the cellar of
this home Edison installed his first
laboratory" where he performed GER
tain dubious chemical experiments and
tested out the formulas encountered in
his scientific reading. 1t was to secure
money for these experiments that Edi-
son turned newsboy and in 1859 began
selling papers on the trains of the
Grand Trunk between Port Huron and
Detroit. Nearly all the profits from his
enterprise went to support his labora-
tory and chemical experiments. And
very soon he had installed in the bag
gage car small laboratory where he
could experiment during the leisure
hours of the daily run. Because of an
accident in this laboratory, which set
fire to the car, Edison was thrown off
the train and this ended his career as
newsboY.
Aside from his laboratory experience
with electricity, Edison learned tele-
graphy by installing short line be-
tween his fathers house and the home
of boy friend. Homemade apparatus
was used, but the line worked we'll
enough for all purposes. Soon there
after he began work as a regular rail-
road telegrapher. During the next five
years Edison drifted all over the middle
states, working as telegraph operator.
He secured his first patent June ],
1869. for vote recording device which
he perfected in Boston, but could not
prevail upon congress to adopt. Then
he began experimenting with stock
tickers, improving those in existence
and perfeeting new and better ones
until he finally sold his first invention
for $40, 900. Thus in a short time he
passed from poverty to independence,
having gone to New York without
cent of money. With this money he
opened machine shop in Newark and
began to make stock tickers.
Now began the years of EdisOn's
greatest activities, when he worked 20
hours day, stealing maps on work
benches, in corridors, and wherever he
could. From 1869, the date of his first
patent, up to the summer of 1910 no
fewer than 1928 separate patents had
been applied for in his name. The
height of activity was in 1882 when l4l
patents were applied for. He perfect
ed automatic telegraphy, made suc-
cessful typewriter, perfected device
whereby four messages could be sent
over the same wire, invented the phon-
ograph and then spent several years
working at the new telephone appar-
atus, perfecting the receiver.
The invention of the electric lamp
was but an incident of those strenuous
days. Work went on necessarily day
and night in those years of 1878 and
1879. To go off home to sleep was re-
garded almost as treason, as dis
graceful concession to mere human
weakness. One might get wink or
two at the laboratory, IL some place of
concealment could be found. One of
Edison's favorite resorts was the cup
board under the stairway. where he
was often luxuriousy ensconced among
the dust brooms and scrubbing pals, or
inside roll top desk.
The world was searched for the right
material to make the incandescent lamp
feasible, profitable. commercial prop
osition. Edison ran the gamut of the
metals. All kinds of pastes were tried
as bases for carbon filament in the lit
tie bulb of glass-also cotton thread,
paper and anything under the sun that
would carbonize readily and hang to-
gether as "filament" when the cleo
tric Juice" was turned on to it. Edi-
son even made carbonized filaments
out of the very fiery whiskers of one of
his staff. He insisted that by doing
this be was already half way up the
spectrum and got flying start with a
dull red glow.
He came at last to bamboo for the
filament material to be put in his in
candescent lamps. Not only did Edison
lay violent hands on all the bamboo he
could secure from palm leaf fans up
TO fishing rods, but he gutted the ter
restrial sphere of its supplies. For
nearly 10 years the Edison lamp was
made with bamboo filament, and to that
lamp must be attributed in large de-
gree the marvellous development of
electric lighting and power all over the
world, as we'll as the creation of the
modern central station industry, which
in the United States alone represents
an investment of over So. 500, 900, 900
and annual earnings of over $3.50, 900, :
900. Even as late as 1908 few special
types of Edison bamboo lamps were
being made. But Edison himself did
not regard the bamboo lamp as the
'Iast word" Paralleling the carbon
flament lamps of bamboo, there soon
appeared the ''squirted' filament en-
ploying carbonized cellulose in one
/ a,1