nce of
Mr. F. L. Pope, patent adviser to the Western Union Telegraph Company,
his duplex system was tried, with encouraging results.

The ready ingenuity of Edison is shown by his device for killing the
cockroaches which overran the Boston office. He arranged some strips of
tinfoil on the wall, and connected these to the poles of a battery
in such a way that when the insects ran towards the bait which he had
provided, they stepped from one foil to the other, and completed the
circuit of the current, thus receiving a smart shock, which dislodged
them into a pail of water, standing below.

In 1870, after two years in Boston, where he had spent all his earnings,
chiefly on his books and workshop, he found himself in New York,
tramping the streets on the outlook for a job, and all but destitute.
After repeated failures he chanced to enter the office of the Laws Gold
Reporting Telegraph Company while the instrument which Mr. Laws had
invented to report the fluctuations of the money market had broken down.
No one could set it right; there was a fever in the market, and Mr.
Laws, we are told, was in despair. Edison volunteered to set it right,
and though his appearance was unpromising, he was allowed to try.

The insight of the born mechanic, the sleight of hand which marks the
true experimenter, have in them something magical to the ignorant. In
Edison's hands the instrument seemed to rectify itself. This was his
golden opportunity. He was engaged by the company, and henceforth his
career as an inventor was secure. The Gold Indicator Company afterwards
gave him a responsible position. He improved their indicator, and
invented the Gold and Stock Quotation Printer, an apparatus for a
similar purpose. He entered into partnership with Mr. Pope and Mr.
Ashley, and introduced the Pope and Edison Printer. A private line which
he established was taken over by the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company,
and soon their system was worked almost exclusively with Edison's
invention.

He was retained in their service, and that of the Western Union
Telegraph Company, as a salaried inventor, they having the option of
buying all his telegraphic inventions at a price to be agreed upon.

At their expense a large electrical factory was established under his
direction at Newark, New Jersey, where he was free to work out his
ideas and manufacture his apparatus. Now that he was emancipated from
drudgery, and fairly started on the walk which Nature h