'Now,' I replied." In Boston he
found men who knew something of electricity, and, as he worked at
night and cut short his sleeping hours, he found time for study.
He bought and studied Faraday's works. Presently came the first
of his multitudinous inventions, an automatic vote recorder, for
which he received a patent in 1868. This necessitated a trip to
Washington, which he made on borrowed money, but he was unable to
arouse any interest in the device. "After the vote recorder," he
says, "I invented a stock ticker, and started a ticker service in
Boston; had thirty or forty subscribers and operated from a room
over the Gold Exchange." This machine Edison attempted to sell in
New York, but he returned to Boston without having succeeded. He
then invented a duplex telegraph by which two messages might be
sent simultaneously, but at a test the machine failed because of
the stupidity of the assistant.
Penniless and in debt, Edison arrived again in New York in 1869.
But now fortune favored him. The Gold Indicator Company was a
concern furnishing to its subscribers by telegraph the Stock
Exchange prices of gold. The company's instrument was out of
order. By a lucky chance Edison was on the spot to repair it,
which he did successfully, and this led to his appointment as
superintendent at a salary of three hundred dollars a month.
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