tem, and I was
working and thinking very hard in order to cover all the numerous parts,
in order that it would be complete in every detail. I filed a great many
applications for patents at that time, but there were seventy-eight of
the inventions I made in that period that were entirely lost to me
and my company by reason of the dishonesty of this patent solicitor.
Specifications had been drawn, and I had signed and sworn to the
application for patents for these seventy-eight inventions, and
naturally I supposed they had been filed in the regular way.

"As time passed I was looking for some action of the Patent Office, as
usual, but none came. I thought it very strange, but had no suspicions
until I began to see my inventions recorded in the Patent Office Gazette
as being patented by others. Of course I ordered an investigation, and
found that the patent solicitor had drawn from the company the fees for
filing all these applications, but had never filed them. All the papers
had disappeared, however, and what he had evidently done was to sell
them to others, who had signed new applications and proceeded to take
out patents themselves on my inventions. I afterward found that he
had been previously mixed up with a somewhat similar crooked job in
connection with telephone patents.

"I am free to confess that the loss of these seventy-eight inventions
has left a sore spot in me that has never healed. They were important,
useful, and valuable, and represented a whole lot of tremendous work
and mental effort, and I had had a feeling of pride in having overcome
through them a great many serious obstacles, One of these inventions
covered the multipolar dynamo. It was an elaborated form of the type
covered by my patent No. 219,393 which had a ring armature. I modified
and improved on this form and had a number of pole pieces placed all
around the ring, with a modified form of armature winding. I built
one of these machines and ran it successfully in our early days at the
Goerck Street shop.

"It is of no practical use to mention the man's name. I believe he is
dead, but he may have left a family. The occurrence is a matter of the
old Edison Company's records."

It will be seen from an examination of the list of patents in the
Appendix that Mr. Edison has continued year after year adding to
his contributions to the art of electric lighting, and in the last
twenty-eight years--1880-1908--has taken out no fewer than three hundre