What a strange thing that in this world of passing-away and change we should be able to preserve from destruction such treasures sheltered in a wax cylinder--some great man's words of wisdom, or the silver tones of a sweet musician!
The more Edison's brain accomplished the more did it seem able to do. As a man he showed himself untiring as when a boy. He went on discovering. He invented a way of telegraphing from a moving train. He invented an Electric Railroad, that drew delighted thousands at the Chicago Exhibition.
In 1879 his attention turned to lighting, and he bent all his energies on inventing an Incandescent lamp for electric light. He spent days working at a sort of white heat. He began on the 16th October, but mishaps and accidents seemed to threaten his invention.
"Let us," he cried to his partner in a ferment of excitement--"let us make a lamp before we sleep, or die in the attempt." On the morning of the 21st it was done!
It astonished the world. It opened up possibilities for miners and divers, and for men everywhere.
On the occasion of its exhibition people flocked from all parts of the United States. Special trains were run. The same furore over the marvel reigned at the Paris Exposition, and at every other exhibition. And through it all--a fame, a popularity enough to turn the head of most mortals--the man remained the same--modest, simple, unpretentious.
From Menlo Park he went to Orange. His laboratory there was fitted up with everything conceivable that an inventor red-hot and eager might want at a moment's notice. And yet often the workrooms presented the strangest appearance of disorder. Workmen sometimes stretched on benches or floor after a heavy strain, the great master himself thrown down--a stick under his head, a coat wound round it for a pillow, and so snatching a short interval of sleep! He will not be interrupted by visitors. In this great world of his own he seems at times to live a sort of separate existence.
We are amazed, dazzled, astonished by the tremendous results one man in his lifetime has achieved. He has not been content to take some thing and modify and improve it and set it to a new purpose as men whom we call inventors have done in all ages. But he seems to have called upon the very forces of nature to do his bidding. It is almost as if he had harnessed the winds, the air, sound, electricity, for his purposes.