When
a change in the ownership of the company threw him out of the
position he formed, with Franklin L. Pope, the partnership of
Pope, Edison, and Company, the first firm of electrical engineers
in the United States.
Not long afterwards Edison brought out the invention which set
him on the high road to great achievement. This was the improved
stock ticker, for which the Gold and Stock Telegraph Company paid
him forty thousand dollars. It was much more than he had
expected. "I had made up my mind," he says, "that, taking into
consideration the time and killing pace I was working at, I
should be entitled to $5000, but could get along with $3000." The
money, of course, was paid by check. Edison had never received a
check before and he had to be told how to cash it.
Edison immediately set up a shop in Newark and threw himself into
many and various activities. He remade the prevailing system of
automatic telegraphy and introduced it into England. He
experimented with submarine cables and worked out a system of
quadruplex telegraphy by which one wire was made to do the work
of four. These two inventions were bought by Jay Gould for his
Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company. Gould paid for the
quadruplex system thirty thousand dollars, but for the automatic
telegraph he paid nothing.
Pages:
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204