called to the manager, "The break is two miles below
Poughkeepsie--I've ordered the section-boss at Poughkeepsie to take a
repairer on his handcar and go and fix it!"

Of course, this plain telegraph-operator had no right to order out a
section-boss; but nevertheless he did it. He shouldered responsibility
like Tom Potter of the C., B. & Q.

Not long after the Albany experience, Edison was in New York, not looking
for work as some say, but nosing around Wall Street investigating the
"Laws Automatic Ticker." The machine he was looking at suddenly stopped,
and this blocked all the tickers on the line. An expert was sent for, but
he could not start it.

"I'll fix it," said a tall, awkward volunteer, the same which was Edison.

History is not yet clear as to whether Edison had not originally "fixed"
it, and Edison so far has not confessed.

And there being no one else to start the machine, Edison was given a
chance, and soon the tickers were going again. This gave him an
introduction to the stock-ticker folks, and the Western Union people he
already knew.

This was in Eighteen Hundred Seventy, and Edison was then twenty-three
years old.

He studied out how stock-reporting could be bettered and invented a plan
which he duly patented, and then laid his scheme before the Western Union
managers.

A stock company was formed, and young Edison, aged twenty-four, was paid
exactly forty thousand dollars for his patent, and retained by the
Company as Electrical Adviser at three hundred dollars a month.

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-four, when he was twenty-seven, he had
perfected his duplex telegraph apparatus and had a factory turning out
telegraph-instruments and appliances at Newark, New Jersey, where three
hundred men were employed.

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-six, the year of the Centennial Exposition,
Edison told the Exposition Managers that if they would wait a year or so
he would light their show with electricity.

He moved to the then secluded spot of Menlo Park to devote himself to
experiments, spending an even hundred thousand dollars in equipment as a
starter. Results followed fast, and soon we had the incandescent lamp,
trolley-car, electric pen and many other inventions. It was on the night
of October the Twenty-third, Eighteen Hundred Seventy-nine, that Edison
first turned the current through an incandescent burner and got the
perfect light. He sat and looked at the soft, mild, beautiful light and
laughe