A little while afterward, as poor as ever and as unattractive in dress, he walked into the telegraph office in Boston, where he had procured work. His co-workers there, thinking they would have some fun at his expense, set him to receiving messages from the most rapid operators in New York. Instead of throwing up his hands in defeat, as his companions expected, he received the messages easily, with a good margin to spare, and asked the operator sending at the other end of the line to "please send with the other foot." He was at once placed regularly on the New York wire. While in Boston, Edison opened a small workshop, put many of his ideas into definite shape, and took out his first patent. It was upon a chemical apparatus to record votes. He tried to introduce this into Congress, but failed, although he proved that it "would work."
He left Boston not only without money, but in debt, and went to New York. This was in 1871 when he was twenty-four years old. At that time an apparatus called a "gold indicator" was in use in the offices of about six hundred brokers, to show fluctuations in the prices of gold. The system was operated from a central office near Wall street. One day this central office was filled with six hundred messenger boys, each bringing the complaint that the machinery had broken. No one knew how to repair it. A stranger walked up, looked at the apparatus, and said to the manager, "Mr. Law, I think I can show you where the trouble is." The machinery was repaired, the office was cleared, and order was restored. "What is your name, sir?" asked the delighted manager. "Edison," was the reply. He was engaged as superintendent at a salary of $200 per month, and from that hour his fortunes were assured.
Edison at once busied himself with inventing. He improved and invented various machines used in the stock markets, and in 1872 perfected his system of duplex telegraphy. Two years later he brought out the wonderful quadruplex system, by which four messages may be sent over the same wire at the same time. This system saved millions of dollars and dispensed with thousands of miles of poles and wires.
He started a large factory at Newark, New Jersey, employing some three hundred men. Sometimes he was working on as many as forty-five improvements and original inventions at once. In 1876 he stopped manufacturing and turned all his attention to inventing. In that year he established a laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, twenty-five miles from New York City. When this laboratory was outgrown, he founded a new one at Orange, New Jersey, the largest laboratory ever established by one man for scientific research and invention. It comprises one building 250 feet long and three stories high, and four smaller buildings, each one hundred feet long and one story high. The principal building contains a library of thirty thousand reference books, a lecture room, and an exhibition room, where a remarkable collection of instruments of almost every kind is to be seen.