hing goods stores. We stopped to ascertain the cause of the
excitement. One store put up a paper sign in the display window which
said: 'Three-hundred pairs of stockings received this day, five cents a
pair--no connection with the store next door.' Presently the other store
put up a sign stating they had received three hundred pairs, price three
cents per pair, and stated that they had no connection with the store
next door. Nobody went in. The crowd kept increasing. Finally, when the
price had reached three pairs for one cent, Adams said to me: 'I can't
stand this any longer; give me a cent.' I gave him a nickel, and he
elbowed his way in; and throwing the money on the counter, the store
being filled with women clerks, he said: 'Give me three pairs.' The
crowd was breathless, and the girl took down a box and drew out three
pairs of baby socks. 'Oh!' said Adams, 'I want men's size.' 'Well, sir,
we do not permit one to pick sizes for that amount of money.' And the
crowd roared; and this broke up the sales."

It has generally been supposed that Edison did not take up work on the
stock ticker until after his arrival a little later in New York; but he
says: "After the vote-recorder I invented a stock ticker, and started a
ticker service in Boston; had thirty or forty subscribers, and operated
from a room over the Gold Exchange. This was about a year after Callahan
started in New York." To say the least, this evidenced great ability
and enterprise on the part of the youth. The dealings in gold during the
Civil War and after its close had brought gold indicators into use, and
these had soon been followed by "stock tickers," the first of which
was introduced in New York in 1867. The success of this new but still
primitively crude class of apparatus was immediate. Four manufacturers
were soon busy trying to keep pace with the demands for it from brokers;
and the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company formed to exploit the system soon
increased its capital from $200,000 to $300,000, paying 12 per cent.
dividends on the latter amount. Within its first year the capital was
again increased to $1,000,000, and dividends of 10 per cent. were paid
easily on that sum also. It is needless to say that such facts became
quickly known among the operators, from whose ranks, of course, the new
employees were enlisted; and it was a common ambition among the more
ingenious to produce a new ticker. From the beginning, each phase
of electrical development