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PRIOR to this, no complete, authentic,
and authorized record of the work of Mr.
Edison, during an active life, has been given
to the world. That life, if there is anything
in heredity, is very far from finished; and
while it continues there will be new
achievement.
An insistently expressed desire on the part of
the public for a definitive biography of Edison
was the reason for the following pages. The
present authors deem themselves happy in the
confidence reposed in them, and in the constant
assistance they have enjoyed from Mr. Edison
while preparing these pages, a great many of
which are altogether his own. This
co-operation in no sense relieves the authors of
responsibility as to any of the views or
statements of their own that the book contains.
They have realized the extreme reluctance of
Mr. Edison to be made the subject of any
biography at all; while he has felt that, if it
must be written, it were best done by the hands
of friends and associates of long standing,
whose judgment and discretion he could trust,
and whose intimate knowledge of the facts would
save him from misrepresentation.
The authors of the book are profoundly conscious
of the fact that the extraordinary period of
electrical development embraced in it has been
prolific of great men. They have named some of
them; but there has been no idea of setting
forth various achievements or of ascribing
distinctive merits. This treatment is devoted
to one man whom his fellow-citizens have chosen
to regard as in many ways representative of the
American at his finest flowering in the field of
invention during the nineteenth century.
It is designed in these pages to bring the
reader face to face with Edison; to glance at
an interesting childhood and a youthful period
marked by a capacity for doing things, and by an
insatiable thirst for knowledge; then to
accompany him into the great creative stretch of
forty years, during which he has done so much.
This book shows him plunged deeply into work for
which he has always had an incredible capacity,
reveals the exercise of his unsurpassed inventive
ability, his keen reasoning powers, his
tenacious memory, his fertility of resource;
follows him through a series of innumerable
experiments, conducted methodically, reaching
out like rays of search-light into all the
regions of science and nature, and finally
exhibits him emerging triumphantly from countless
difficulties bearing with him in new arts the
fruits of victorious struggle.
These volumes aim to be a biography rather than
a history of electricity, but they have had to
cover so much general ground in defining the
relations and contributions of Edison to the
electrical arts, that they serve to present a
picture of the whole development effected in the
last fifty years, the most fruitful that
electricity has known. The effort has been made
to avoid technique and abstruse phrases, but
some degree of explanation has been absolutely
necessary in regard to each group of inventions.
The task of the authors has consisted largely in
summarizing fairly the methods and processes
employed by Edison; and some idea of the
difficulties encountered by them in so doing may
be realized from the fact that one brief
chapter, for example,--that on ore
milling-- covers nine years of most intense
application and activity on the part of the
inventor. It is something like exhibiting the
geological eras of the earth in an outline
lantern slide, to reduce an elaborate series of
strenuous experiments and a vast variety of
ingenious apparatus to the space of a few hundred
words.
A great deal of this narrative is given in Mr.
Edison's own language, from oral or written
statements made in reply to questions addressed
to him with the object of securing accuracy. A
further large part is based upon the personal
contributions of many loyal associates; and it
is desired here to make grateful acknowledgment
to such collaborators as Messrs. Samuel
Insull, E. H. Johnson, F. R. Upton,
R. N Dyer, S. B. Eaton, Francis
Jehl, W. S. Andrews, W. J. Jenks,
W. J. Hammer, F. J. Sprague, W.
S. Mallory, an, C. L. Clarke, and
others, without whose aid the issuance of this
book would indeed have been impossible. In
particular, it is desired to acknowledge
indebtedness to Mr. W. H. Meadowcroft not
only for substantial aid in the literary part of
the work, but for indefatigable effort to
group, classify, and summarize the boundless
material embodied in Edison's note-books and
memorabilia of all kinds now kept at the Orange
laboratory. Acknowledgment must also be made of
the courtesy and assistance of Mrs. Edison,
and especially of the loan of many interesting
and rare photographs from her private
collection.
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