d, of the Confederate Army, who was
then attempting to march on Nashville; and it was very important that
this cipher of about twelve hundred words or so should be got through
immediately to General Thomas. I kept on calling up to 12 or 1 o'clock,
but no Louisville. About 1 o'clock the operator at the Indianapolis
office got hold of an operator on a wire which ran from Indianapolis to
Louisville along the railroad, who happened to come into his office. He
arranged with this operator to get a relay of horses, and the message
was sent through Indianapolis to this operator who had engaged horses to
carry the despatches to Louisville and find out the trouble, and get the
despatches through without delay to General Thomas. In those days the
telegraph fraternity was rather demoralized, and the discipline was very
lax. It was found out a couple of days afterward that there were
three night operators at Louisville. One of them had gone over to
Jeffersonville and had fallen off a horse and broken his leg, and was
in a hospital. By a remarkable coincidence another of the men had
been stabbed in a keno-room, and was also in hospital while the third
operator had gone to Cynthiana to see a man hanged and had got left by
the train."

I think the most important line of
investigation is the production of
Electricity direct from carbon.
Edison

Young Edison remained in Louisville for about two years, quite a long
stay for one with such nomadic instincts. It was there that he perfected
the peculiar vertical style of writing which, beginning with him in
telegraphy, later became so much of a fad with teachers of penmanship
and in the schools. He says of this form of writing, a current example
of which is given above: "I developed this style in Louisville while
taking press reports. My wire was connected to the 'blind' side of a
repeater at Cincinnati, so that if I missed a word or sentence, or if
the wire worked badly, I could not break in and get the last words,
because the Cincinnati man had no instrument by which he could hear me.
I had to take what came. When I got the job, the cable across the
Ohio River at Covington, connecting with the line to Louisville, had a
variable leak in it, which caused the strength of the signalling current
to make violent fluctuations. I obviated this by using several relays,
each with a different adjustment, working several sounders all connected
with one sounding-plate. The clatter