was bad, but I could read it with
fair ease. When, in addition to this infernal leak, the wires north to
Cleveland worked badly, it required a large amount of imagination to get
the sense of what was being sent. An imagination requires an appreciable
time for its exercise, and as the stuff was coming at the rate of
thirty-five to forty words a minute, it was very difficult to write down
what was coming and imagine what wasn't coming. Hence it was necessary
to become a very rapid writer, so I started to find the fastest style. I
found that the vertical style, with each letter separate and without
any flourishes, was the most rapid, and that the smaller the letter
the greater the rapidity. As I took on an average from eight to fifteen
columns of news report every day, it did not take long to perfect
this method." Mr. Edison has adhered to this characteristic style of
penmanship down to the present time.

As a matter of fact, the conditions at Louisville at that time were not
much better than they had been at Memphis. The telegraph operating-room
was in a deplorable condition. It was on the second story of a
dilapidated building on the principal street of the city, with the
battery-room in the rear; behind which was the office of the agent of
the Associated Press. The plastering was about one-third gone from the
ceiling. A small stove, used occasionally in the winter, was connected
to the chimney by a tortuous pipe. The office was never cleaned. The
switchboard for manipulating the wires was about thirty-four inches
square. The brass connections on it were black with age and with the
arcing effects of lightning, which, to young Edison, seemed particularly
partial to Louisville. "It would strike on the wires," he says, "with
an explosion like a cannon-shot, making that office no place for an
operator with heart-disease." Around the dingy walls were a dozen
tables, the ends next to the wall. They were about the size of those
seen in old-fashioned country hotels for holding the wash-bowl and
pitcher. The copper wires connecting the instruments to the switchboard
were small, crystallized, and rotten. The battery-room was filled
with old record-books and message bundles, and one hundred cells of
nitric-acid battery, arranged on a stand in the centre of the room. This
stand, as well as the floor, was almost eaten through by the destructive
action of the powerful acid. Grim and uncompromising as the description
reads, it was typ