About Thomas Elva Edsion

 Thomas Elva Edison

PRIOR to this, no complete, authentic, and authorized record of the work

of Mr. Edison, during an active life, has been given to the world. That

life, if there is anything in heredity, is very far from finished; and

while it continues there will be new achievement.

An insistently expressed desire on the part of the public for a

definitive biography of Edison was the reason for the following pages.

The present authors deem themselves happy in the confidence reposed in

them, and in the constant assistance they have enjoyed from Mr. Edison

while preparing these pages, a great many of which are altogether

his own. This co-operation in no sense relieves the authors of

responsibility as to any of the views or statements of their own that

the book contains. They have realized the extreme reluctance of Mr.

Edison to be made the subject of any biography at all; while he has felt

that, if it must be written, it were best done by the hands of friends

and associates of long standing, whose judgment and discretion he could

trust, and whose intimate knowledge of the facts would save him from

misrepresentation.

The authors of the book are profoundly conscious of the fact that the

extraordinary period of electrical development embraced in it has been

prolific of great men. They have named some of them; but there has

been no idea of setting forth various achievements or of ascribing

distinctive merits. This treatment is devoted to one man whom his

fellow-citizens have chosen to regard as in many ways representative of

the American at his finest flowering in the field of invention during

the nineteenth century.

It is designed in these pages to bring the reader face to face with

Edison; to glance at an interesting childhood and a youthful period

marked by a capacity for doing things, and by an insatiable thirst for

knowledge; then to accompany him into the great creative stretch of

forty years, during which he has done so much. This book shows him

plunged deeply into work for which he has always had an incredible

capacity, reveals the exercise of his unsurpassed inventive ability, his

keen reasoning powers, his tenacious memory, his fertility of resource;

follows him through a series of innumerable experiments, conducted

methodically, reaching out like rays of search-light into all the

regions of science and nature, and finally exhibits him emerging

triumphantly from countless difficulties bearing with him in new arts

the fruits of victorious struggle.

These volumes aim to be a biography rather than a history of

electricity, but they have had to cover so much general ground in

defining the relations and contributions of Edison to the electrical

arts, that they serve to present a picture of the whole development

effected in the last fifty years, the most fruitful that electricity has

known. The effort has been made to avoid technique and abstruse phrases,

but some degree of explanation has been absolutely necessary in regard

to each group of inventions. The task of the authors has consisted

largely in summarizing fairly the methods and processes employed by

Edison; and some idea of the difficulties encountered by them in

so doing may be realized from the fact that one brief chapter, for

example,--that on ore milling--covers nine years of most intense

application and activity on the part of the inventor. It is something

like exhibiting the geological eras of the earth in an outline lantern

slide, to reduce an elaborate series of strenuous experiments and a vast

variety of ingenious apparatus to the space of a few hundred words.

A great deal of this narrative is given in Mr. Edison's own language,

from oral or written statements made in reply to questions addressed to

him with the object of securing accuracy. A further large part is based

upon the personal contributions of many loyal associates; and it is

desired here to make grateful acknowledgment to such collaborators as

Messrs. Samuel Insull, E. H. Johnson, F. R. Upton, R. N Dyer, S. B.

Eaton, Francis Jehl, W. S. Andrews, W. J. Jenks, W. J. Hammer, F. J.

Sprague, W. S. Mallory, and C. L. Clarke, and others, without whose

aid the issuance of this book would indeed have been impossible. In

particular, it is desired to acknowledge indebtedness to Mr. W. H.

Meadowcroft not only for substantial aid in the literary part of the

work, but for indefatigable effort to group, classify, and summarize the

boundless material embodied in Edison's note-books and memorabilia of

all kinds now kept at the Orange laboratory. Acknowledgment must also

be made of the courtesy and assistance of Mrs. Edison, and especially

of the loan of many interesting and rare photographs from her private

collection.