Edison, His Life and Inventions by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

05 – Arduous Years In The Central West

December 28, 2021·52 min·3 clips

A drunken operator in Louisville kicks over the stove, smashes the switchboard, and spills nitric acid on the books.

1. Edison, His Life and Inventions chapter 5 follows Thomas Edison’s "Arduous Years in the Central West" across Adrian, Cincinnati, Memphis, Louisville, and New Orleans. 2. Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin present Edison through his own recollections, because his letters and anecdotes supply the chapter’s main evidence. 3. The episode asks how Edison’s telegraph years in the Midwest and South shaped his habits, inventions, and working methods. 4. At Adrian, Michigan, Edison says he preferred the night trick because it gave him more leisure to experiment. 5. He describes being ordered to "break in" on a busy wire and fighting another operator for ten minutes before sending an urgent dispatch. 6. The Adrian episode ends with the superintendent arriving "livid with rage" and Edison being discharged on the spot. 7. Edison then moves to Cincinnati, where Milton F. Adams remembers him as about eighteen, thin, uncouth in manner, and unusually capable at the key. 8. Adams says Edison spent much of his time "monkeying with the batteries and circuits" and also rigged a "rat paralyzer" in the cellar. 9. The Cincinnati office becomes a place where Edison and Adams watch the news of Lincoln’s assassination arrive by telegraph on April 14, 1865. 10. Edison notes that the operator handled the news so mechanically that he copied the shooting before understanding its significance. 11. The chapter also places Edison among Cincinnati’s theatergoing telegraphers, who listened to Forrest, John McCullough, and music at the Llewellyn Garden over the Rhine. 12. A separate Cincinnati anecdote tells how L. C. Weir copied Louisville messages with unusual speed and helped illustrate the skill level of the telegraph fraternity. 13. Edison’s promotion to first-class operator follows his all-night work during a Cleveland union delegation’s absence and his successful handling of the press report. 14. From there he drifts south again to Memphis, where military control, press work, and an auto-repeater experiment lead to another discharge. 15. He says that after nearly starving at Cater, Alabama, he borrowed enough money for food in Nashville and then secured a pass to Louisville. 16. Louisville becomes the chapter’s longest stop, and Edison says he improved press handling by using several relays and then perfecting his vertical style of writing. 17. He explains that the style was forced by a bad cable across the Ohio River at Covington, weak northbound wires, and the need to write 35 to 40 words a minute. 18. The Louisville office is described as filthy, damaged, and dangerous, with rotten copper wires, nitric acid batteries, and a layout Edison calls a "deplorable condition." 19. The tone is memoir-like and anecdotal, with technical detail, workplace humor, and frequent quotations from Edison and Adams. 20. Readers interested in early telegraph practice, Edison’s working habits, and Civil War-era communications will get the most from it.

As heard by us

A stalled wartime dispatch shows the improvisation behind Edison's early telegraph years.

Thomas Edison's Central West years come through as a restless run of night shifts, improvised experiments, and moves made in pursuit of telegraph work. In Adrian, Michigan, he takes the unwanted night trick because it gives him room to test ideas in a small shop of his own.

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You follow Edison through a telegraph emergency: Louisville will not answer, Washington's cipher is piling up, and General Thomas needs it at Nashville.

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