Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1883 — Edison as an Operator. [ARTICLE]

Edison as an Operator.

“Edison used to work the Other end of a circuit with me,” says a telegraph operator, “and I knew him when he was in Memphis some thirteen or fourteen years ago. He always looked ratty and never spent his money on clothes, but the reason was that he was always tinkering with some new contrivance or other, and spent his money in paying for material to work out his inventions. He used to take press in Memphis. He was as fast as they make ’em, and his copy never gave a telegraph editor a bit of trouble. He had a way while waiting for copy of drawing caricatures, illustrating the character of news he was getting, and putting them along in the spaces of the copy he sent into the press. This made one of the papers up there, I forget which, red-hot, and it opened on him and had a good deal to do with his being fired by the manager. Edison didn’t want the fool editor to print his funny pictures in his telegraphic news. He only drew them for his own amusement. When he went to Boston with his yellow linen breeches on in the middle of winter, the manager of the office, finding he was an expert, hired him to keep the repeaters in order. Edison worked a part of two days, and then was caught by the manager of the office fooling with some contrivance of his own. ‘Thought I hired you to keep those repeaters in ordej,’ said the manager. ‘You did,’ said Edison, ‘but I’ve put a kink or two into them that will make them keep themselves to order.’ From that day his fortune was made.”