The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-08-05
The Worlds Greatest Inventor


 Edison is acclaimed as the world s greatest inventor. After he had achieved success $ an inventor and manufacturer, he dropped everything else and adopted invention for his life work, in 1S76 After that he simply had to make good or be- come a laughing stock. Edison made good. He is also the worlds greatest experienmenter. He tries thousands and thousands of ways to do a thing, and never quits until he has either found a way or proved to his satisfaction that it cannot be done
 Edison has worked harder and slept less than any other great man in history-he once worked continuously, without mo- ment's sleep, for five days and nights, while perfecting the phonograph. He has conducted more experiments than any other human being. He has taken out upwards of 100 patents in one year and has secured grand total of over i1000 patents, record unapproached by any other individual in this country or abroad. H He has tasted the bitterest defeats and lost all his money time and again. He spent five solid years and over $2000. coo creating a plan and a plant to extract ores by magnets from powdered rock, only to find that the discovery of unlimite ed whole process profitless and it had to be abandoned, leaving him grievously in debt but undaunted in spirit.
 Difficulties which would drive normal mortals to despair only light up Edison s enthusiasm and stimulate his determina- ton to triumph. If a thing won't work one way, he tries it another way-5000 other ways, 10000 other ways, 10000 other ways if necessary. He has sent botan- ists, mineralogists chemists, geologists. and others into the most remote unciviliz- ed hooks of the earth in search of some fiber or other elusive material which the indefatigable experimenter calculated might prove the missing link in chain of experiments-one expert circumscribed the globe in search of a species of bam- boo which Edison figured might supply just the right filament for his in-the- making incandescent lamp, while other explorers combed the fastnesses of South America for fiber which might still better serve the purpose.
 With Edison inventing is the result of successful experimenting on definite lines. His greatest achievements have not been in originating ideas for new achievements, but in carrying to fruition what others have dreamed of accomplishing but failed to atrain Edison is doer rather than q. samer He too, of course. has dream ed but his fame rests less upon his dreams than upon what he has done. He did not originate the telegraph or the telephone; he was not the inventor of electric lighting; the electric railway was not first thought of by him; others had made moving pictures-of a kind; the re- ccrding of the human voice for reproduce tion was not an idea born in his brain; nor was he the first to think of storing electric energy in a battery
 But without Edison the world would not be enjoying these adjuncts of progress las it is today. His has been the master mind, his the master hand in bringing them to flower and fruition. Where oth- CTS had failed, he has succeeded. Where others brought forth only ideas. he has created actualities.