During this vacation at Port Huron his ingenuity showed itself in a more creditable guise. An 'ice-jam' occurred on the St. Clair, and broke the telegraph cable between Port Huron and Sarnia, on the opposite shore. Communication was therefore interrupted until Edison mounted a locomotive and sounded the whistle in short and long calls according to the well-known 'Morse,' or telegraphic code. After a time the reporter at Sarnia caught the idea, and messages were exchanged by the new system.
His next situation was at Adrian, in Michigan, where he fitted up a small shop, and employed his spare time in repairing telegraph apparatus and making crude experiments. One day he violated the rules of the office by monopolising the use of the line on the strength of having a message from the superintendent, and was discharged.
He was next engaged at Fort Wayne, and behaved so well that he was promoted to a station at Indianapolis. While there he invented an 'automatic repeater,' by which a message is received on one line and simultaneously transmitted on another without the assistance of an operator. Like other young operators, he was ambitious to send or receive the night reports for the press, which demand the highest speed and accuracy of sending. But although he tried to overcome his faults by the device of employing an auxiliary receiver working at a slower rate than the direct one, he was found incompetent, and transferred to a day wire at Cincinnati. Determined to excel, however, he took shift for the night men as often as he could, and after several months, when a delegation of Cleveland operators came to organise a branch of the Telegraphers' Union, and the night men were out on 'strike,' he received the press reports as well as he was able, working all the night. For this feat his salary was raised next day from sixty-five to one hundred and five dollars, and he was appointed to the Louisville circuit, one of the most desirable in the office. The clerk at Louisville was Bob Martin, one of the most expert telegraphists in America, and Edison soon became a first-class operator.
In 1864, tempted by a better salary, he removed to Memphis, where he found an opportunity of introducing his automatic repeater, thus enabling Louisville to communicate with New Orleans without an intermediary clerk. For this innovation he was complimented ; but nothing more. He embraced the subject of duplex telegraphy, or the simultaneous transmission of two messages on the same wire, one from each end; but his efforts met with no encouragement. Men of routine are apt to look with disfavour on men of originality; they do not wish to be disturbed from the official groove ; and if they are not jealous of improvement, they have often a narrow-minded contempt or suspicion of the servant who is given to invention, thinking him an oddity who is wasting time which might be better employed in the usual way. Atelegraph operator, in their eyes, has no business to invent. His place is to sit at his instrument and send or receive the messages as fast as he can, without troubling his mind with inventions or anything else.
When his shift is over he can amuse himself as he likes, provided he is always fit for work. Genius is not wanted.
The clerks themselves, reckless of a culture which is not required, and having a good string to their bow in the matter of livelihood, namely, the mechanical art of signalling, are prone to lead a careless, gay, and superficial life, roving from town to town throughout: the length and breadth of the States. But for his genius and aspirations, Edison might have yielded to the seductions of this happy-go-lucky, free, and frivolous existence. Dissolute comrades at Memphis won upon his good nature; but though he lent them money, he remained abstemious, working hard, and spending his leisure upon books and experiments. To them he appeared an extraordinary fellow; and so far from sympathising with his inventions, they dubbed him 'Luny,' and regarded him as daft.
What with the money he had lent, or spent on books or apparatus, when the Memphis lines were transferred from the Government to a private company and Edison was discharged, he found himself without a dollar.
Transported to Decatur, he walked to Nashville, where he found another operator, William Foley, in the like straits, and they went in company to Louisville. Foley's reputation as an operator was none of the best;but on his recommendation Edison obtained a situation, and supported Foley until he too got employment.
The squalid office was infested with rats, and its discipline was lax, in all save speed and quality of work, and some of his companions were of a dissipated stamp. To add to his discomforts, the line he worked was old and defective; but he improved the signals by adjusting three sets of instruments, and utilising them for three different states of the line. During nearly two years of drudgery under these depressing circumstances, Edison's prospects of becoming an inventor seemed further off than ever. Perhaps he began to fear that stern necessity would grind him down, and keep him struggling for a livelihood. None of his improvements had brought him any advantage. His efforts to invent had been ridiculed and discountenanced. Nobody had recognised his talent, at least as a thing of value and worthy of encouragement, let alone support. All his promotion had come from trying to excel in his routine work. Perhaps he lost faith in himself, or it may be that the glowing accounts he received of South America induced him to seek his fortune there. At all events he caught the 'craze' for emigration that swept the Southern States on the conclusion of the Civil War, and resolved to emigrate with two companions, Keen and Warren.
