CHAPTER XVIII. Edison had no sooner designed his dynamo in 1879 than he adopted the same form of machine for use as a motor. The two are shown in the Scientific American of October 18, 1879, and are alike except that the dynamo is vertical and the motor lies in a horizontal position. The article remarking, This was but an evidence of his early appreciation of the importance of electricity as a motive power. But it will probably surprise many people to know that he was the inventor of an electric motor before he perfected his incandescent lamp. His interest in the subject went back to his connection with General Le Ferts in the first days of the Revolution of the Stockticker. While Edison was carrying on his shop at Newark, New Jersey, there was considerable excitement in electrical circles over the pain motor in regard to the alleged performance of which Governor Cornell of New York and other wealthy capitalists were quite enthusiastic. Pain had a shop in Newark and in one small room was the motor weighing perhaps 600 pounds. It was of circular form encased in iron with the ends of several small magnets sticking through the floor. A pulley and belt connected to a circular saw larger than the motor permitted large logs of oak timber to be sawed with ease with the use of two small cells of battery. Edison's friend, General Le Ferts, had become excited and was determined to invest a large sum of money in the motor company. But knowing Edison's intimate familiarity with all electrical subjects, he was wise enough to ask his young expert to go and see the motor with him. At an appointed hour Edison went to the office of the motor company and found there the venerable Professor Morse, Governor Cornell, General Le Ferts, and many others who had been invited to witness a performance of the motor. They all proceeded to the room where the motor was at work. Pain put a wire in the binding post of the battery. The motor started and an assistant began sowing a heavy oak log. It worked beautiful and so great was the power developed, apparently from the small battery, that Morse exclaimed, I am thankful I have lived to see this day. But Edison kept a close watch on the motor. The results were so foreign to his experience that he knew there was a trick in it. He soon discovered it. While holding his hand on the frame of the motor, he noticed a tremble coincident with the exhaust of an engine across the alleyway. And he knew then that the power came from the engine by a belt under the floor, shifted on and off by a magnet, the other magnet being a blind. He whispered to the General to put his hand on the frame of the motor, watch the exhaust, and note the coincident tremble. The General did so, and in about fifteen seconds he said, well Edison, I must go now. This thing is a fraud. And thus he saved his money, although others not so shrewdly advised were easily persuaded to invest by such a demonstration. A few years later, in 1878, Edison went to Wyoming with a group of astronomers to test his tazimeter during an eclipse of the sun, and saw the land white to harvest. He noticed the long halls to market or elevator that the farmers had to make with their loads of grain at great expense, and conceived the idea that as ordinary steam railroad service was too costly, light electric railways might be constructed that could be operated automatically over simple tracks, the propelling motor being controlled at various points. Cheap to build and cheap to maintain, such roads would be a great boon to the newer farming regions of the West, where the highways were still of the crudest character, and where transportation was the gravest difficulty with which the settlers had to contend. The plan seems to have haunted him, and he's no sooner worked out a generator and motor that owing to their low internal resistance could be operated efficiently, then he turned his hand to the practical trial of such a railroad applicable to both the haulage of freight and the transportation of passengers. Early in 1880, when the tremendous rush of work involved in the invention of the incandescent lamp intermitted a little, he began the construction of a stretch of track close to the Menlo Park Laboratory, and at the same time built an electric locomotive to operate over it. This is a fitting stage at which to review briefly what had been done in electric traction up to that date. There was absolutely no art, but there had been a number of sporadic and very interesting experiments made. The honor of the first attempt of any kind appears to rest with this country and with Thomas Davenport, a self-trained blacksmith of Brandon, Vermont, who made a small model of a circular electric railway and cars in 1834, and exhibited it in the following year in Springfield, Boston, and other cities. Of course, he depended upon battery for current, but the fundamental idea was embodied of using the track for the circuit, one rail being positive and the other negative, and the motor being placed across or between them in multiple arcs to receive the current. Such are also practically the methods of today. The little model was in good preservation up to the year 1900 when, being shipped to the Paris Exposition, it was lost, the steamer that carried it floundering in mid-ocean. The very broad patent taken out by this simple mechanic so far ahead of his times was the first one issued in America for an electric motor. Davenport was also the first man to apply electric power to the printing press in 1840. In his traction work he had a close second in Robert Davidson of Aberdeen, Scotland, who in 1839 operated both a lav and a small locomotive with the motor he had invented. His was the credit of first actually carrying passengers, two at a time, over a rough plank road, while it is said that his was the first motor to be tried on real tracks, those of the Edinburgh Glasgow Road, making a speed of four miles an hour. The curse of this work, and of all that succeeded it for a score of years, was the necessity of depending upon chemical batteries for current. The machine usually being self-contained and hauling the batteries along with itself as in the case of the famous Page Experiments in April 1851, when a speed of 19 miles an hour was attained on the line of the Washington and Baltimore Road. To this unfruitful period belonged, however, the crude idea of taking the current from a stationary source of power by means of an overhead contact, which has found its practical evolution in the modern ubiquitous trolley. Although the patent for this, based on his caveat of 1879, was granted several years later than that to Steffen D. Field for the combination of an electric motor operated by means of a current from a stationary dynamo or source of electricity conducted through the rails. As a matter of fact, in 1856, and again in 1875, George F. Green, a jobbing machinist of Kalamazoo, Michigan, built small cars and tracks to which current was fed from a distant battery, enough energy being utilized to haul 100 pounds of freight or one passenger up and down a road 200 feet long. All the work prior to the development of the dynamo as a source of current was sporadic and spasmodic and cannot be said to have left any trace on the art, though it offered many suggestions as to operative methods. The close of the same decade of the 19th century that saw the electric light brought to perfection saw also the realization in practice of all the hopes of 50 years as to electric traction. Both utilizations depended upon the supply of current now cheaply obtainable from the dynamo. These arts were indeed twins, feeding at inexhaustible breasts. In 1879, at the Berlin Exhibition, the distinguished firm of Siemens, to whose ingenuity and enterprise electrical development owes so much, installed a road about one-third of a mile in length over which the locomotive hauled a train of three small cars at a speed of about 18 miles an hour, carrying some 20 persons every trip. Current was fed from a dynamo to the motor through a central third rail, the two outer rails being joined together as the negative or return circuit. Primitive but essentially successful, this little road made a profound impression on the minds of many inventors and engineers and marked the real beginning of the great new era, which has already seen electricity applied to the operation of main lines of trunk railways. But it is not to be supposed that on the part of the public there was any great amount of faith then discernible, and for some years the pioneers had great difficulty, especially in this country, in raising money for their early modest experiments. Of the general conditions at this moment, Frank J. Sprague says in an article in the Century magazine of July 1905 on the creation of the new art, Edison was perhaps nearer the verge of great electric railway possibilities than any other American. In the face of much adverse criticism he had developed the essentials of the low internal resistance dynamo with high resistance field and many of the essential features of multiple arc distribution, and in 1880 he built a small road at his laboratory at Menlo Park. On May 13th of the year named, this interesting road went into operation as the result of hard and hurried work of preparation during the spring months. The first track was about a third of a mile in length, starting from the shops, following a country road, passing around a hill at the rear and curving home in the general form of the letter U. The rails were very light. Charles T. Hughes, who went with Edison in 1879 and was in charge of much of the work, states that they were second streetcar rails insulated with tar, canvas paper, and things of that sort, asphalt. They were spiked down on ordinary sleepers laid upon the natural grade, and the gauge was about three feet six inches. At one point the grade dropped some sixty feet in a distance of three hundred and the curves were of recklessly short radius. The dynamos supplying current to the road were originally two of the standard size Z machines then being made at the laboratory, popularly known throughout the Edison ranks as long-waisted marians. And the circuits from these were carried out to the rails by underground conductors. They were not large, but twelve horsepower each, generating seventy-five amperes of current at one hundred and ten volts so that not quite twenty-five horsepower of electrical energy was available for propulsion. The locomotive built while the rail bed was getting ready was a four-wheeled iron truck, an ordinary flat dump car about six feet long and four feet wide, upon which was mounted a Z-dynamo used as a motor so that it had a capacity of about twelve horsepower. This machine was laid on its side with the armature end coming out at the front of the locomotive and the motive power was applied to the driving axle by a cumbersome series of friction pulleys. Each wheel of the locomotive had a metal rim and a center web of wood or paper mache and the current picked up by one set of wheels was carried through contact brushes and a brass hub to the motor. The circuit back to the track or the other rail being closed through the other wheels in a similar manner. The motor had its field magnet circuit in permanent connection as a shunt across the rails protected by a crude bare copper wire safety catch. A switch in the armature circuit enabled the motorman to reverse the direction of travel by reversing the current flow through the armature coils. Things went fairly well for a time on that memorable Thursday afternoon when all the laboratory force made high holiday and scrambled for a foothold on the locomotive for a trip. But the friction gearing was not equal to the sudden strain put upon it during one run and went to pieces. Some years later also Daft again tried friction gear in his historical experiments on the Manhattan elevated road but the results were attended with no greater success. The next resort of Edison was to belts. The armature shafting belted to a counter shaft on the locomotive frame and the counter shaft belted to a pulley on the car axle. The lever which through the former friction gear into adjustment was made to operate an idler pulley for tightening the axle belt. When the motor was started the armature was brought up to full revolution and then the belt was tightened on the car axle compelling motion of the locomotives. But the belts were liable to slip a great deal in the process and the chafing of the belts charred them badly. If that did not happen and if the belt was made taut suddenly the armature burned out which it did with disconcerting frequency. The next step was to use a number of resistance boxes in series with the armature so that the locomotive could start with those in circuit and then the motor man could bring it up to speed gradually by cutting one box out after the other. To stop the locomotive the armature circuit was opened by the main switch stopping the flow of current and then brakes were applied by long levers. Matters generally and the motors in particular went much better even if the locomotive was so freely festooned with resistance boxes all of perceptible weight and occupying much of the limited space. These details show forcibly and typically the painful steps of advance that every inventor in this new field had to make in effort to reach not alone commercial practicability but mechanical feasibility. It was all empirical enough but that was the only way open even to the highest talent. Smugglers landing laces and silks have been known to wind them around their bodies as being less ostentatious than carrying them in a trunk. Edison thought his resistance boxes an equally superfluous display and therefore ingeniously wound some copper resistance wires around one of the legs of the motor field magnet where it was out of the way served as a useful extra field coil in starting up the motor and dismissed most of the boxes back to the laboratory. A few being retained under the seat for chance emergencies. Like the boxes, this coil was in series with the armature and subject to plugging in and out at will by the motorman. Thus equipped, the locomotive was found quite satisfactory and long did yeoman service. It was given three cars to pull, one an open awning car with two park benches placed back to back, one a flat freight car and one box car dubbed the Pullman with which Edison illustrated a system of electric braking. Although work had been begun so early in the year and the road had been operating since May, it was not until July that Edison executed any application for patents on his electromagnetic railway engine or his ingenious braking system. Every inventor knows how largely his fate lies in the hands of a competent and alert patent attorney and both the preparation and the prosecution of his case, Mr. Sprague is justified in observing in his Century article the paucity of controlling claims obtained in these early patents is remarkable. It is notorious that Edison did not then enjoy the skillful aid in safeguarding his ideas that he commended later. The daily newspapers and technical journals lost no time in bringing the road to public attention and the New York Herald of June 25 was swift to suggest that here was the locomotive that would be most pleasing to the average New Yorker whose head has ached with noise whose eyes have been filled with dust or whose clothes have been ruined by oil. A couple of days later the daily graphic illustrated and described the road and published a sketch of a 100 horsepower electric locomotive for the use of the Pennsylvania Railroad between Perth, Amboy and Raway. Visitors of course were numerous including many curious skeptical railroad managers few if any of whom except Villard could see the slightest use for the new motive power. There is perhaps some excuse for such indifference. No men in the world have more new inventions brought to them than railroad managers and this was the rankest kind of novelty. It was not, indeed, until a year later in May 1881 that the first regular road collecting fares was put in operation a little stretch of one and a half miles from Berlin to Lichterfeld with one miniature motor car. Edison was in reality doing some heavy electric railway engineering his apparatus full of ideas, suggestions, prophecies but to the operators of long trunk lines it must have seemed utterly insignificant and excellent fooling. Speaking of this situation Mr. Edison says, one day Frank Thompson, the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad came out to see the electric light and the electric railway in operation. The latter was then about a mile long and he wrote on it, at that time I was getting out plans to make an electric locomotive of 300 horsepower with six foot drivers with the idea of showing people that they could dispense with their steam locomotives. But Mr. Thompson made the objection that it was impractical and that it would be impossible to supplant steam. His great experience and standing through a wet blanket on my hopes would perhaps be mistaken as there had been many such instances on record. I continued to work on the plans and about three years later I started to build the locomotive at the works at Gorick Street and had it about finished when I was switched off on some other work. One of the reasons why I felt the electric railway to be imminently practical was that Henry Villard, the president of the Northern Pacific said that one of the greatest things that could be done would be to build right-angle feeders to the wheat fields of Dakota and bring in the wheat to the main lines as the farmer then had to draw it from 40 to 80 miles. There was a point where it would not pay to raise it at all and large areas of the country were thus of no value. I conceived the idea of building a very light railroad of narrow gauge and had got all the data as to the winds on the planes and found that it would be possible with very large windmills to supply enough power to drive those wheat trains. Among others who visited the little road at this juncture were persons interested in the Manhattan elevated system of New York on which experiments were repeatedly tried later but which was not destined to adopt a method obviously well suited to all the conditions until after many successful demonstrations had been made on elevated roads elsewhere. It must be admitted that Mr. Edison was not very profoundly impressed with the desire entertained in that quarter to utilize any improvement, for he remarks, when the elevated railroad in New York up 6th Avenue was started there was a great clamor about the noise and injunctions were threatened. The management engaged me to make a report on the cause of the noise. I constructed an instrument that would record the sound and set out to make a preliminary report but I found that they never intended to do anything but let the people complain. It was upon the cooperation of Villard that Edison fell back and an agreement was entered into between them on September 14, 1881 which provided that the ladder would build two and a half miles of electric railway at Menlo Park equipped with three cars, two locomotives one for freight and one for passengers capacity of ladder 60 miles an hour capacity freight engine 10 tons net freight cost of handling a ton of freight per mile per horsepower to be less than ordinary locomotive. If experiments were successful Villard to pay actual outlay in experiments and to treat with the light company for the installation of at least 50 miles of electric railway in the wheat regions. Mr. Edison is authority for the statement that Mr. Villard advanced between 35,000 and 40,000 and that the work done was satisfactory but it did not end at that time in any practical results as the Northern Pacific went into the hands of a receiver and Mr. Villard's ability to help was hopelessly crippled. The directors of the Edison light company could not be induced to have anything to do with the electric railway and Mr. Insul states that the money advanced was treated by Mr. Edison as a personal loan and repaid to Mr. Villard for whom he had a high admiration and a strong feeling of attachment. Mr. Insul says among the financial men whose close personal friendship Edison enjoyed I would mention Henry Villard who I think had a higher appreciation of the possibilities of the Edison system than probably any other man of his time in Wall Street. He dropped out of the business at the time of the consolidation of the Thompson Houston Company with the Edison General Electric Company but from the earliest days of the business when it was in its experimental period when the Edison light and power system was but an idea down to the day of his death Henry Villard continued a strong supporter not only with his influence but with his money. He was the first capitalist individually Edison's experiments in electric railways. In speaking of his relationship with Mr. Villard at this time Edison says when Villard was all broken down and in a stupor caused by his disasters in connection with the northern Pacific Mrs. Villard sent for me to come and cheer him up it was very difficult to rouse him from his despair and apathy but I talked about the electric light to him and its development and told him that it would help him win it all back and put him in his former position. Villard made his great rally he made money out of the electric light and he got back control of the northern Pacific under no circumstances can a hustler be kept down if he is only square he is bound to get back on his feet Villard has often been blamed and severely criticized but he was not the only one to blame his engineers had spent twenty million dollars too much in building the road and it was not his fault if he found himself short of money and at that time unable to raise anymore. Villard maintained his intelligent interest in electric railway development with regard to which Edison remarks at one time Mr. Villard got the idea that he would run the mountain division of the northern Pacific Railroad by electricity he asked me if it could be done I said certainly it is too easy for me to undertake let someone else do it he said I want you to tackle the problem and he insisted on it so I got up a scheme of a third rail and shoe and erected it in my yard here in Orange when I got it all ready he had all his division engineers come to New York and they came over here I showed them my plans and the unanimous decision of the engineers was that it was absolutely and utterly impracticable that system is on the New York Central now and was also used on the New Haven Road in its first work with electricity at this point it may be well to cite some other statements of Edison as to kindred work with which he has not usually been associated in the public mind in the same manner I had worked out for the Manhattan Elevated Railroad a system of electrical trains and had the control of each car centered at one place multiple control this was afterward worked out and made practical by Frank Sprague I got up a slot contact for street railways with a patent on it a sliding contact in a slot Edward Lauterbach was connected with the Third Avenue Railroad in New York as council and I told him he was making a horrible mistake putting in the cable I told him to let the cable stand still and send the electricity through it and he would not have to move hundreds of tons of metal all the time he would rue the day when he put the cable in it cannot be denied that the prophecy was fulfilled for the cable was the beginning of the frightful financial collapse of the system and was torn out in a few years to make way for the triumphant trolley in the slot incidental glimpses of his work are both amusing and interesting Hughes who was working on the experimental road with Mr. Edison tells the following story to Mr. Edison one of his mechanical engineers to see the road when it was in operation and we went down one day Edison, Henderson and I and went on the locomotive Edison ran it and just after we started there was a trestle 60 feet long and 7 feet deep and Edison put on all the power when we went over it we must have been going 40 miles an hour and I could see the perspiration come out on Henderson after we got over the trestle and started on down the track Henderson said when we go back I will walk if there is any more of that kind of running I won't be in it myself to the correspondence of Grosvenor P. Lowry we are indebted for a similar reminiscence under the date of June 5, 1880 Goddard and I spent a part of the day at Menlo and all is glorious I have ridden at 40 miles an hour on Mr. Edison's electric railway and we ran off the track I protested at the rate of speed over the sharp curves designed to show the power of the engine but Edison said they had done it often finally when the last trip was to be taken I said I did not like it but would go along the track on a short curve throwing Krusey who was driving the engine with his face down in the dirt and another man in a comical somersault through some underbrush Edison was off in a minute jumping and laughing and declaring it was a most beautiful accident Krusey got up his face bleeding and a good deal shaken and I shall never forget the expression of voice and face in which he said with some foreign accent oh yes perfectly safe fortunately no other hurts were suffered and in a few minutes we had the train on the track and running again all this rough and ready dealing with grades and curves was not mere horseplay but had a serious purpose underlying it every trip having its record as to some feature of defect or improvement one particular set of experiments relating to such work was made on behalf of visitors from South America and were doubtless the first tests of the kind made for that continent where now many fine electric street and interurban railway systems are in operation Mr. Edison himself supplies the following data during the electric railway experiments at Menlo Park we had a short spur of track up one of the steep gullies about in this way Bogota the capital of Columbia is reached on muleback or was from Honda on the headwaters of the Magdalena river there were parties who wanted to know if transportation over the mule route could not be done by electricity they said the grades were excessive and it would cost too much to do it with steam locomotives even if they could climb the grades I said well it can't do much more than 45% we will try that first if it will do that it will do anything else I started at 45% I got up an electric locomotive with a grip on the rail by which it went up the 45% grade then they said the curves were very short I put the curves in we started the locomotive with nobody on it and got up to 20 miles an hour taking those curves a very short radius but it was weeks before we could prevent it from running off we had to bank the tracks up to an angle of 30 degrees before we could turn the curve and stay on these Spanish parties were perfectly satisfied we could put in an electric railway from Honda to Bogota successfully and then they disappeared I have never seen them since as usual I paid for the experiment in the spring of 1883 the electric railway company of America was incorporated in the state of New York with a capital of $2 million to develop the patents and inventions of Edison and Stefan D. Field to the latter of whom the practical work of active development was confided and in June of the same year an exhibit was made at the Chicago railway exposition which attracted attention throughout the country and did much to stimulate the growing interest in electric railway work with the aid of Messers F. B. Ray C. L. Healy and C. O. Mayew a track and locomotive were constructed for the company by Mr. Field and put in service in the gallery of the main exhibition building the track curved sharply at either end on a radius of 56 feet which was about one third of a mile the locomotive named The Judge after Justice Field an uncle of Stefan D. Field took current from a central rail between the two outer rails that were the return circuit the contact being a rubbing wire brush on each side of the third rail answering the same purpose as the contact shoe of later date the locomotive weighed three tons 12 feet long 5 feet wide and made a speed of 9 miles an hour with a trailer car for passengers starting on June 5 when the exhibition closed on June 23 this tiny but typical railroad had operated for over 118 hours had made over 446 miles and had carried 26,805 passengers after the exposition closed the output was taken during the same year to the exposition at Louisville, Kentucky where it was also successful carrying a large number of passengers it deserves note that at Chicago regular railway tickets were issued to paying passengers the first ever employed on American electric railways with this modest but brilliant demonstration to which the illustrious name of Edison attached began the outburst of excitement over electric railways much like the eras of speculation and exploitation that attended only a few years earlier the introduction of the telephone and the electric light but with such significant results that the capitalization of electric roads in America is now over four billion dollars or twice as much as that of the other two arts combined there was a tremendous rush into the electric railway field after 1883 and an outburst of inventive activity that has rarely if ever been equaled it is remarkable that except Siemens no European achieved fame in this early work while from America the ideas and appliances of Edison VanPol, Sprague, Field, Daft and Short have been carried and adopted all over the world Mr. Edison was consulting electrician for the electric railway company but neither a director nor an executive officer just what the trouble was as to the internal management of the corporation it is hard to determine a quarter of a century later but it was equipped with all the essential elements to dominate an art in which after its first efforts it remained practically supine and the interests forged ahead and weaved both the profit and the glory dissensions arose between the representatives of the field and Edison interests and in April 1890 the railway company assigned its rights to the Edison patents to the Edison General Electric Company recently formed by the consolidation of all the branches of the Edison light, power and manufacturing industry under one management the only patent rights remaining to the railway company were those under three field patents one of which with controlling claims was put in suit June 1890 against the Jamaica and Brooklyn Road Company a customer of the Edison General Electric Company this was to say the least a curious and anomalous situation voluminous records were made by both parties to the suit and in the spring of 1894 the case was argued before the late Judge Townsend who wrote a long opinion dismissing the bill of complaint see footnote 15 footnote 15 see 61 Federal Republic 655 the student will find therein a very complete and careful study of the early electric railway art after this decision was rendered the electric railway company remained for several years in a more abound condition and on the last day of 1896 its property was placed in the hands of a receiver in February of 1897 the receiver sold the three field patents to their original owner and he in turn sold them to the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company the electric railway company then went into dissolution a sad example of failure to seize the opportunity at the psychological moment and on the part of the inventor to secure any adequate return for years of effort and struggle in founding one of the great arts neither of these men was squelched by such a calamitous result but if there were not something of bitterness in their feelings as they survey what has come of their work they would not be human as a matter of fact Edison retained a very lively interest in electric railway progress long after the pregnant days at Menlo Park one of the best evidences of which is an article in the New York electrical engineer of November 18 1891 which describes some important and original experiments in the direction of adopting electrical conditions the overhead trolley had by this time begun its victorious career but there was intense hostility displayed to ward it in many places because of the inevitable increase in the number of overhead wires which carrying as they did a current of high voltage and large quantity were regarded as a menace to life and property Edison has always manifested a strong objection to overhead in modern cities and urged placing them underground and the outcry against the overhead deadly trolley met with his instant sympathy his study of the problem brought him to the development of modern substation although the twists that later evolutions have given the idea have left it scarcely recognizable Mr. Villard as president of the Edison General Electric Company requested Mr. Edison and the administration of the company to devise a street railway system which should be applicable to the largest cities where the use of the trolley would not be permitted where the slot conduit system would not be used and where in general the details of the construction should be reduced to the simplest form the limits imposed practically were such as to require that the system should not cost more than a cable road to install and be converted to his ingenious lighting plan of years earlier and thus settled on a method by which current should be conveyed from the power plant at high potential to motor generators placed below the ground in close proximity to the rails these substations would convert the current received at a pressure of say 1000 volts to one of 20 volts available between rail and rail with a corresponding increase in the volume of the current with the utilization of heavy currents at low voltage it became necessary of course to devise apparatus which should be able to pick up with absolute certainty 1000 amperes of current at this pressure through 2 inches of mud if necessary with his wanted activity and fertility Edison set about devising such a contact and experimented with metal wheels under all conditions of speed and track conditions it was several months before he could convey 100 amperes by means of such contacts but he worked out at last a satisfactory device which was equal to the task the next point was to secure a joint between contiguous rails such as would permit of the passage of several thousand amperes without introducing undue resistance this was also accomplished objections were naturally made to rails out in the open on the street surface carrying large currents at potential of 20 volts it was said that vehicles with iron wheels passing over the tracks and spouting the two rails would short circuit the current chew themselves up and destroy the dynamos generating the current by choking all that tremendous amount of energy back into them Edison tackled this objection squarely and short circuited his track with such a vehicle but succeeded in getting only about 200 amperes through the wheels the low voltage and the insulating properties of the axle grease being sufficient to account for such a result an iron bar was also used, polished and with a man standing on it to ensure solid contact but only 1000 amperes passed through it the amount required by a single car and of course much less than the capacity of the generators able to operate a system of several hundred cars further interesting experiments showed that the expected large leakage of current from the rails in wet weather did not materialize Edison found that under the worst conditions with a wet and salted track at a potential difference of 20 volts between the two rails the extreme loss was only two and one half horsepower in this respect the phenomenon followed the same rules as that to which the telegraph wires were subject namely that the loss of insulation is greater in damp murky weather when the insulators are covered with wet dust then during heavy rains when the insulators are thoroughly washed by the action of the water in like manner a heavy rainstorm cleaned the tracks from the accumulations due chiefly to the droppings of the horses which otherwise served largely to increase the conductivity of course in dry weather the loss of current was practically nothing and under ordinary conditions Edison held his system was in respect to leakage and the problems of electronic attack of the current on adjacent pipes etc as fully insulated as the standard trolley network of the day the cost of this system Mr. Edison placed at from $30,000 to $100,000 per mile of double track in accordance with local conditions and in this respect comparing very favorably with the cable systems then so much in favor for heavy traffic all the arguments that could be urged in support of this ingenious system were tenable and logical at the present moment but the trolley had its way except on a few lines where the conduit and shoe method was adopted and in the intervening years the volume of traffic created and handled by electricity in centers of dense population has brought into existence the modern subway but down to the moment of the preparation of this biography Edison has retained in transportation problems and his largest work has been that of reviving the use of the storage battery for streetcar purposes at one time there were a number of storage battery lines and cars in operation in such cities as Washington New York, Chicago, and Boston but the cost of operation and maintenance were found to be inordinately high as compared with those of the direct supply methods and the battery cars all disappeared the need for them under any conditions remained, as for example in places in greater New York where overhead trolley wires are forbidden as objectionable and where the ground is too wet or too often submerged to permit of the conduit with the slot some of the roads in greater New York have been anxious to secure such cars and as usual the most resourceful electrical engineer and inventor of these times has made the effort a special experimental track has been laid at the orange laboratory and a car equipped with the Edison storage battery and other devices has been put under severe and extended trial there and in New York Menlo Park in ruin and decay affords no traces of the early Edison electric railway work but the crude little locomotive built by Charles T. Hughes was rescued from destruction and has become the property of the Pratt Institute of Brooklyn to whose thousands of electrical students it is a constant example and incentive it was loaned in 1904 to the association of Edison illuminating companies and by it exhibited as part of the historical Edison collection at the St. Louis exposition End of Chapter 18 Chapter 19 of Edison His Life and Inventions This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by William Kevin Menier Edison His Life and Inventions by Frank Louis Dyer and Thomas Comerford Martin Chapter 19 Magnetic or Milling Work During the Hudson Fulton celebration of October 1909 Virgo Master Von Lewen of Amsterdam, member of the delegation sent officially from Holland to escort the half moon and participate in the functions of the anniversary pay to visit to the Edison laboratory at Orange to see the inventor who may be regarded as preeminent among those of Dutch descent in this country found as usual hard at work this time on his cement house of which he showed the iron molds Edison took occasion to remark that if he had achieved anything worthwhile it would have been the obstinacy and pertinacity he had inherited from his forefathers to which it may be added that not less equally have the nature of inheritance and the quality of activism been exhibited in his extraordinary predilection for the Miller's art while those Batavian ancestors on the low shores of the Swedish Zee devoted their energies to grinding grain he has been not less assiduous than they in reducing the rocks of the earth itself to flower although this phase of Mr Edison's of the world as many others of a more popular character the milling of low grade oriferous ores and the magnetic separation of iron ores have been subjective in grossing interest and studied to him for many years indeed this comparatively unknown enterprise of separating magnetically and putting into commercial form low grade iron ore as carried on at Edison New Jersey proved to be the most colossal experiment that he has ever made if a person qualified to judge were asked historically as to whether or not the enterprise was a failure he could truthfully answer both yes and no yes in that circumstances over which Mr Edison had no control compelled the shutting down of the plant at the very moment of success and no in that the mechanically successful and commercially practical results obtained after the exercise of stupendous efforts and the expenditure of a fortune are so conclusive that they must inevitably be the reliance of many future iron masters in other words Mr Edison was at least a quarter of a century ahead of the times in the work now to be considered before proceeding to the specific description of this remarkable enterprise however let us glance at an early experiment in separating magnetic iron sands on the Atlantic seashore some years ago I heard one day that down in quag long island there were immense deposits of black magnetic sand this would be very valuable if the iron could be separated from the sand so I went to quag with one of my assistants and saw there for miles large beds of black sand on the beach in layers from one to six inches thick hundreds of thousands of tons my first thought was that it would be a very easy matter to concentrate this and I found I could sell the stuff at a good price I put up a small plant but just as I got started a tremendous storm came up and every bit of that black sand went out to sea during the 28 years that have intervened it has never come back this incident was really the prelude to the development set forth in this chapter in the early 80s Edison became familiar with the fact that the eastern steel trade was suffering a disastrous change and that business was slowly drifting westward chiefly by reason of the discovery and opening of enormous deposits of high-grade iron ore in the upper peninsula of Michigan this ore could be excavated very cheaply by means of improved mining facilities and transported at low cost to lake ports hence the iron and steel mills east of the Alleghenys were compelled to rely on limited local deposits of Bessemer ore and upon foreign ores which were constantly rising in value began to sustain a serious competition with western mills even in eastern markets long before this situation arose it had been recognized by eastern iron masters that sooner or later the deposits of high-grade ore would be exhausted and in consequence there would ensue a compelling necessity to fall back on the low-grade magnetic ores for many years it had been a much discussed question how to make these ores available for transportation to distant furnaces to pay railroad charges on ores carrying perhaps 80 to 90 percent of useless material would be prohibitive hence the illumination of the worthless gang by concentration of the iron particles associated with it seemed to be the only solution of the problem many attempts had been made in bygone days to concentrate the iron in such ores by water processes but with only a partial degree of success the impossibility of obtaining a uniform concentrate was a most serious objection had there not indeed been other difficulties which rendered this method commercially impracticable it is quite natural therefore that the idea of magnetic separation should have occurred to many inventors thus we find numerous instances throughout the last century of experiments along this line and particularly in the last 40 or 50 years during which various attempts have been made by others than Edison to effect magnetic separation and bring it up to something like commercial practice at the time he took up the matter however no one seems to have realized the full meaning of the tremendous problems involved from 1880 to 1885 while still very busy in the development of his electric light system, Edison found opportunity to plan crushing and separating machinery his first patent on the subject was applied for and issued early in 1880 he decided after matured liberation that the magnetic separation of low-grade ores on a colossal scale at low cost was the only practical way of supplying the furnace man with high quality of iron ore it was his opinion that it was cheaper to quarry and concentrate lean ore in a big way than to attempt to mine under adverse circumstances limited bodies of high-grade ore he appreciated fully the serious nature of the gigantic questions involved and his plans were laid out with a view to exercising the utmost economy in design and operation of the plant in which he contemplated the automatic handling of many thousands of tons of material daily it may be stated as broadly true that Edison engineered to handle immense masses of stuff automatically while his predecessors aimed chiefly at close separation reduced to its barest crudest terms the proposition of magnetic separation is simplicity itself a piece of the ore, magnetite, may be reduced to powder and the ore particles separated therefrom by the help of a simple hand magnet to elucidate the basic principle of Edison's method, let the crushed ore fall and thin stream pass such a magnet the magnetic particles are attracted out of the straight line of the falling stream and being heavy, gravitate inwardly and fall to one side of a partition placed below the non-magnetic gang descends in a straight line to the other side of the partition thus a complete separation is affected simple though the principle appears it was in its application to vast masses of material and in the solving of great engineering problems therewith that Edison's originality made itself manifest in the concentrating works that he established in New Jersey early in the 90s not only did he develop thoroughly the refining of the crushed ore so that after it had passed the 480 magnets in the mill the concentrates came out finally containing 91 to 93% of the iron oxide but he also devised collateral machinery methods and processes all fundamental in their nature, these are too numerous to specify in detail as they extended throughout the various ramifications of the plant but the principle ones are worthy of mention such as the giant rolls for crushing, intermediate rolls, three high rolls giant cranes 215 feet long span vertical dryer, belt conveyers air separation, mechanical separation of phosphorus and perketting that Mr. Edison's work was appreciated at the time is made evident by the following extract from an article describing the Edison plant published in the Iron Age of October 28th 1897 in which after mentioning his struggle with adverse conditions it says there is very little that is showy from the popular point of view and the gigantic work which Mr. Edison has done during these years but to those who are capable of grasping the difficulties encountered Mr. Edison appears in the new light of a brilliant constructing engineer grappling with technical and commercial problems of the highest order his genius as an inventor is revealed in many details of the great concentrating plant but to our mind, originality of the highest type as constructor and designer appears in bold ways in which he sweeps aside accepted practices in this particular field and attains results not hitherto approached he pursues methods in ore dressing at which those who are trained in the usual practice may well stand aghast but considering the special features of the problem to be solved his methods will be accepted as those economically wise and expedient a cursory glance at these problems will reveal their import mountains must be reduced to dust all this dust must be handled in detail so to speak and from it must be separated the fine particles of iron constituting only one fourth or one fifth of its mass and then this iron ore must be put into such shape that it could be commercially shipped and used one of the most interesting and striking investigations made by Edison in this connection is worthy of note and may be related in his own words I felt certain that there must be large bodies of magnetite in the east which if crushed and concentrated would satisfy the needs of the eastern furnaces for steel making having determined to investigate the mountain regions of New Jersey I constructed a very sensitive magnetic needle which would dip toward the earth if brought over any considerable body of magnetic ore one of my laboratory assistants went out with me and visited many of the mines in New Jersey but did not find deposits of any magnitude one day however as we drove through the mountain range not known as iron bearing land I was astonished to find that the needle was strongly attracted and remained so thus indicating that the whole mountain was underlaid with vast bodies of magnetic ore I knew it was a commercial problem to produce high grade Bessemer ore from these deposits and took steps to acquire a large mount of the property I also planned a great magnetic survey of the east and I believe it remains the most comprehensive of its kind yet performed I had a number of men survey a strip from lower Canada to North Carolina the only instrument we used was the special magnetic needle we started in lower Canada and traveled across the line of March 25 miles then advanced south 1000 feet then back across the line of March again 25 miles then south another thousand feet across again and so on thus we advanced all the way to North Carolina carrying our cross country march from 2 to 25 miles according to geological information our magnetic needle indicated the presence and richness of the invisible deposits of magnetic ore we kept minute records of these indications and when the survey was finished we had exact information of the deposits in every part of each state we had passed through we also knew the width length and approximate depth of every one of these deposits which were enormous the amount of ore disclosed by this survey was simply fabulous how much so may be judged from the fact that in 16,000 acres immediately surrounding the mills that I afterward established at Edison were over 2 billion tons of low grade ore I also secured 16,000 acres in which the deposit was proportionately as large these few acres alone contained sufficient ore to supply the whole United States iron trade including exports for 70 years given a mountain of rock containing only one fifth to one fourth magnetic iron the broad problem confronting Edison resolved itself into three distinct parts first to tear down the mountain bodily and grind it to powder second to extract from this powder the articles of iron mingled in its mass and third to accomplish these results at a cost sufficiently low to give the product a commercial value Edison realized from the start that the true solution of this problem lay in the continuous treatment of the material with the maximum employment of natural forces and the minimal of manual labor and generated power hence all his conceptions followed this general principle so faithfully and completely that we find in the plant embodying his ideas the forces of momentum and gravity steadily in harness and keeping the traces taught while there was no touch of the human hand upon the material from the beginning of the treatment to its finish the staff being employed mainly to keep watch on the correct working of various processes it is hardly necessary to devote space to the beginnings of the enterprise although they are full of interest they served however to convince Edison that if he ever expected to carry out his schemes on the extensive scale plan he could not depend upon the market to supply suitable machinery for important operations but would be obliged to devise and build it himself thus outside the steam shovel and such staple items as engines boilers dynamos and motors all of the diverse and complex machinery of the entire concentrating plant as subsequently completed was devised by him especially for this purpose the necessity for this was due to the mainly radical variations made from accepted methods no such departure was as radical as that of the method of crushing the ore existing machinery for this purpose had been designed on the basis of mining methods then in vogue by which the rock was thoroughly shattered by means of high explosives and reduced to pieces of one hundred pounds or less these pieces were then crushed by power directly applied if a concentrating mill planned to treat five or six thousand tons per day were to be operated on the basis the investment in crushers and the supply of power would be enormous to say nothing of the risk of frequent breakdowns by reason of multiplicity of machinery in parts from a consideration of these facts and with his usual tendency to upset traditional observances Edison conceived the bold idea of constructing gigantic rolls which by the force of momentum would be capable of crushing individual rocks a vastly greater size than ever before attempted he reasoned that the advantages thus obtained would be fourfold a minimum of machinery in parts greater compactness a saving of power and greater economy in mining as this last named operation precedes the crushing let us first consider it as it was projected and carried on by him perhaps quarrying would have been a better term than mining in this case as Edison's plan was to approach the rock and tear it down bodily the faith that moves mountains had a new opportunity in work of this nature it had been customary as above stated to depend upon a high explosive such as dynamite to shatter and break the or into lumps of one hundred pounds or less this however he deemed to be a most uneconomical process for energy stored as heat units in dynamite at two hundred sixty dollars per ton was more expensive than that of calories in a ton of coal at three dollars per ton hence he believed that only the minimum of work should be done with a costly explosive and therefore plan to use dynamite merely to dislodge great masses of rock and dependent upon the steam shovel operated by coal under the boiler to displace handle and remove the rock in detail this was the plan that was subsequently put into practice in the great works at Edison New Jersey a series of three-inch holes 20 feet deep were drilled eight feet apart about 12 feet back of the ore bank and into these were inserted dynamite cartridges the blast would dislodge 30 to 35 thousand tons of rock which was scooped up by great steam shovels and loaded onto skips carried by a line of cars on a narrow gauge railroad running to and from the crushing mill here the material was automatically delivered to giant rolls the problem included handling and crushing the run of the mine without selection the steam shovel did not discriminate but picked up handily single pieces weighing five or six tons and loaded them on the skips with quantities of smaller lumps when the skips arrived at the giant rolls their contents were dumped automatically into a superimposed hopper the rolls were well named for with ear splitting noise they broke up in two seconds the great pieces of rock tossed in from the skips it is not easy to appreciate to the fool that daring exemplified in these great crushing rolls or rather rock crackers without having watched them in operation delivering their solar plexus blows it was only as one might stand in their vicinity and hear the thunderous roar accompanying the smashing and rending of the rocks as they disappeared from the view that the mine was overwhelmed with a sense of the magnificent proportions of this the enormous force exerted during this process may be illustrated from the fact that during its development and running one of the early forms of rolls pieces of rock weighing more than a half ton would be shot up in the air to a height of 20 or 25 feet the giant rolls were two solid cylinders six feet in diameter and five feet long made out of cast iron to the faces of these rolls were bolted a series of heavy chilled iron plates containing a number of projecting knobs two inches high the roll had also two rows of four inch knobs intended to strike a series of hammer-like blows the rolls were set face to face 14 inches apart in a heavy frame and the total weight was 130 tons of which 70 tons were in moving parts the space between these two rolls allowed pieces of rock measuring less than 14 inches to descend to other smaller rolls placed below the giant rolls were belt driven in opposite directions through friction clutches although the belt was not dependent upon for the actual crushing previous to the dumping of a skip the rolls were speeded up to a circumferential velocity of nearly a mile a minute thus imparting to them the terrific momentum that would break up easily in a few seconds boulders weighing five or six tons each it was as though a rock of this size had got in the way of two express trains traveling in opposite directions at nearly 60 miles an hour in other words it was the kinetic energy of the rolls that crumbled up the rocks with pile driver effect this sudden strain might have tended to stop the engine driving the rolls but by ingenious clutch arrangement the belt was released at the moment of resistance in the rolls by reason of the rocks falling between them the act of breaking and crushing would naturally decrease the tremendous momentum but after the rock was reduced and the pieces had passed through the belt would again come into play and once more speed up the rolls for a repetition of their regular prize fighter duty on leaving the giant rolls the rocks having been reduced to pieces not larger it has passed into the series of intermediate rolls of similar construction and operation by which they were still further reduced and again passed on to three other sets of rolls of smaller dimensions these latter rolls were also face lined with chilled iron plates but unlike the larger ones were positively driven reducing the rock to pieces of about one half inch size or smaller the whole crushing operation of reduction from massive boulders to small pebbly pieces having been done in less time than the telling has occupied the product was conveyed to the dryer a tower nine feet square and fifty feet high heated from below by great open furnace fires all down the inside walls at this tower were placed cast iron plates nine feet long and seven inches wide arranged alternately in fish ladder fashion the crushed rock being delivered at the top would fall down from plate to plate constantly exposing different surfaces to the heat until it landed completely dried in the lower portion of the tower it fell into conveyors which took it up to the stockhouse this method of drying was original with Edison at the time this adjunct to the plant was required the best dryer on the market was of a rotary type which had a capacity of only twenty tons per hour with the expenditure of considerable power as Edison had determined upon treating two hundred and fifty tons or more per hour he decided to devise an entirely new type of great capacity requiring a minimum of power for elevating the material to the surface of gravity for handling it during the drying process a long series of experiments resulted in the invention of the tower dryer with capacity of three hundred tons per hour the rock broken up into pieces about the size of marbles having been dried and conveyed to the stockhouse the surplusage was automatically carried out from the other end of the stockhouse by conveyors to pass through the next process by which it was reduced to a powder the machinery for accomplishing this result represented another interesting and radical departure of Edison from accepted usage he had investigated all the crushing machines in the market and tried all he could get he found them all greatly lacking in economy of operation indeed the highest results obtainable from the best were eighteen percent of actual work involving a loss of eighty two percent by friction his nature revolted at such an immense loss of power especially as he proposed the crushing of vast quantities of ore thus he was obliged to begin again at the foundation and he devised a crushing machine which has subsequently been named the three high rolls and which practically reversed the above figures as it developed eighty four percent of work done with only sixteen percent loss and friction a brief description of this remarkable machine will probably interest the reader in the two end pieces of a heavy iron frame were set three rolls or cylinders one in the center, another below and the other above all three being in a vertical line these rolls were of a cast iron three feet in diameter having chilled iron smooth face plates of considerable thickness the lowest roll was set in a fixed bearing at the bottom of the frame and therefore could only turn around on its axis the middle and top rolls were free to move up or down from and toward the lower roll and the shafts of the middle and upper rolls were set in a loose bearing which could slip up and down in the iron frame it will be apparent therefore that any material which passed in between the top and the middle rolls and the middle and the bottom rolls would be ground as fine as might be desired depending entirely upon the amount of pressure applied to the loose rolls in operation the material passed first through the upper and middle rolls and then between the middle and lowest rolls this pressure was applied in a most ingenious manner on the ends of the shafts of the bottom and top rolls were cylindrical sleeves or bearings having seven sheaves in which was run a half inch endless wire rope this rope was wound seven times over the sheaves as above and let upward over a single groove sheave which operated by the piston of an air cylinder and in this manner the pressure was applied to the rolls it will be seen therefore that the system consisted in a single rope passed over sheaves and so arranged that it could be varied in length thus providing for elasticity and exerting pressures and regulating it as desired the efficiency of this system was incomparably greater than that of any other known pressure or grinder for a while a pressure of 125,000 pounds could be exerted by these rolls friction was almost entirely eliminated because of the upper and lower roll bearings turned with the rolls and revolved in the wire rope which constituted the bearing proper the same cautious foresight exercised by Edison in providing a safety device the fuse to prevent fires in his electric light system was again displayed in this concentrating plant where to save possible injury to its expensive operating parts he devised an analogous factor providing all the crushing machinery with closely calculated safety pins which on being overloaded would shear off and thus stop the machinery at once the rocks having thus been reduced to find powder the mass was ready for screening on its way to the magnetic separators here again Edison reversed prior practice by discarding rotary screens and devising a form of tower screen which besides having a very large working capacity by gravity eliminated all power except that required to elevate the material the screening process allowed the finest part of the crushed rock to pass on by conveyor belts to the magnetic separators while the coarser particles were in like manner automatically returned to the rolls for further reduction in a narrative not intended to be strictly technical it would probably tire the reader to follow this material in detail through the numerous steps attending the magnetic separation these may be seen in a diagram reproduced from the above named article in the iron age and supplemented by the following extract from the electrical engineer New York October 28, 1897 at the start of the weakest magnet at the top freeze the purest particles and the second takes care of the others but the third catches those to which rocket hears and will extract particles of which only one eighth is iron this batch of material goes back for another crushing so that everything is subjected to an equality of refining we are now in sight of the real concentrates which are conveyed to dryer number two for drying again and are then delivered to the 50 mesh screens whatever is fine enough goes through to the eighth inch magnets and the remainder goes back for re-crushing below the eighth inch magnets the dust is blown out of the particles mechanically and then go to the four inch magnets for final cleansing and separation obviously at each step the percentage of felspar and phosphorous is less and less until in the final concentrates the percentage of iron oxide is 91 to 93% as intimated at the outset the tailings will be 75% of the rock taken from the veins of ore so that every four tons of crude raw low grade ore will have yielded roughly one ton three grade concentrate and three tons of sand the latter also having its value in various ways this sand was transported automatically by belt conveyors to the rear of the works to be stored and sold being sharp crystalline and even in quality it was a valuable byproduct finding a ready sale for building purposes railway sandboxes and various industrial uses the concentrate in fine powder reform was delivered in similar manner to a stock house as to the next step in the process now quote again from the article in the iron age while mr. Edison and his associates were working on the problem of cheap concentration of iron ore and added difficulty faced them in the preparation of the concentrates for the market furnishment object to more than a very small proportion of fine ore in their mixtures particularly when the ore is magnetic not easily reduced the problem to be solved was to market an agglomerated material so as to avoid the drawbacks of fine ore the agglomerated product must be so porous as to afford access to the furnace reducing gases to the ore it must be hard enough to bear transportation and to carry the furnace burden without crumbling to pieces it must be waterproof to a certain extent because considerations connected with securing low rates of freight make it necessary to be able to shift the concentrates in market and open coal cars exposed to snow and rain in many respects the attainment of these somewhat conflicting ends was the most perplexing of the problems which confronted mr. Edison the agglomeration of the concentrates having been decided upon two other considerations not mentioned above were of primary importance first to find a suitable cheap binding material and second it's nature must be such that very little would be necessary per ton of concentrates these severe requirements were staggering but mr. Edison's courage did not falter although it seemed a well nigh hopeless task he entered upon the investigation with his usual optimism and vim after many months of unremitting toil and research and the trial of thousands of experiments the goal was reached in the completion of a successful formula for agglomerating the fine ore and pressing it into briquettes by special machinery this was the final process requisite for the making of a completed commercial product it's practice of course necessitated the addition of an entirely new department of the works which was carried into effect by the construction and the installation of the novel mixing and briquette machinery together with extensions of the conveyors with which the plant already been liberally provided briefly described the process consisted in mixing the concentrates with a special binding material and machines of an entirely new type and in passing the resultant pasty mass into briquette machines where it was pressed into syndrilical cakes three inches in diameter and one and a half inches thick under successive pressures of 78,000 14,000 and 60,000 pounds each machine made these briquettes at the rate of 60 per minute and dropped them into bucket conveyors by which they were carried into drying furnaces through which they made five loops and were delivered to cross conveyors which carried them into the stockhouse at the end of this process the briquettes were so hard that they would not break or crumble in loading on the cars or in transportation by rail while they were so porous as to be capable of absorbing 26% of their own volume in alcohol but repelling water absolutely perfect old soaks thus with never failing persistence and patience coupled with intense work Edison met and conquered one by one the complex difficulties that confronted him he succeeded in what he set out to do and it is now to be noted that the product he had striven so sedulously to obtain was a highly commercial one for not only did the briquettes of concentrated or fulfill the purpose of their creation but in use actually tended to increase the working capacity of the furnace as the following test quoted from the Iron Age October 28 1897 will attest the only trial of any magnitude of the briquettes in the blast furnace was carried through earlier this year in the Crane Iron Works Cata Saca Pennsylvania by Leonard Peckett the furnace at which the test was made produces from 100 to 110 tons per day when running on the ordinary mixture the charging of briquettes was begun with a percentage of 25% and was carried up to 100% the following is the record of the results January 5 working percent 25 quantity of briquette tons 104 silica 2 decimal 770 phosphorus 0 decimal 830 sulfur 0 decimal 018 manganese 0 decimal 500 January 6 working percent 37 and one half quantity of briquette tons 4 and one half silica 2 decimal 620 phosphorus 0 decimal 740 sulfur 0 decimal 018 manganese 0 decimal 350 January 7 working percent 50 quantity of briquette tons 138 and one half tons silica 2.572 phosphorus 0.580 sulfur 0.015 manganese 0.200 January 8 working percent 75 quantity of briquette tons 119 silica 1 decimal 844 phosphorus 0 decimal 264 sulfur 0 decimal 022 manganese 0 decimal 200 January 9 working percent 100 quantity of briquette tons 138 and one half silica 1 decimal 712 phosphorus 0 decimal 147 sulfur 0 decimal 038 manganese 0 decimal 185 manganese 0 decimal 185 manganese 0 decimal 185 on the 9th at 5 p.m. the briquettes having been nearly exhausted the percentage was dropped to 25% and on the 10th the output dropped to 120 tons and on the 11th the furnace had resumed the usual work on the regular standard ores these figures prove that the yield of the furnace is considerably increased the crane trial was too short to settle the question to what extent the increase in product may be carried this increase in output of course means a reduction in the cost of labor and of general expenses the richness of the ore and its purity of course affect the limestone consumption in the case of the crane trial there was a reduction from 30% to 12% of the ore charge finally the fuel consumption is reduced which in the case of the eastern plants with their relatively costly coke is a very important consideration it is regarded as possible that eastern furnaces will be able to use a smaller proportion of the costlier coke and correspondingly increase an anthracite coal which is a cheaper fuel in that section so far as foundry iron is concerned the experience at Ketisakwa Pennsylvania brief as it has been shows that a stronger and tougher metal is made Edison himself tells an interesting little story in this connection when he enjoyed the active help of that noble character John Fritz the distinguished inventor and pioneer of the modern steel industry in America when I was struggling along with the iron ore concentration I went to see several blast furnace men to sell the ore at the marketplace they saw I was very anxious to sell it and they would take advantage of my necessity but I happened to go to Mr. John Fritz of Bethlehem Steel Company and told him what I was doing well he said to me Edison you are doing a good thing for the eastern furnaces they ought to help you for it will help us out I am willing to help you I mix a little sentiment with business and I will give you an order for 100,000 tons and he sat right down and gave me the order the Edison Concentrating Plant has been sketched in the briefest outline with the view of affording merely a bare idea of the great work of its projector to tell the whole story in detail and show its logical sequence step by step would take a little less than a volume in itself for Edison's method always iconoclastic when progress is in sight were particularly so at the period in question it has been said that Edison's scrap he contains the elements of a liberal education and this was essentially true for the discard during the or milling experience interesting as it might be to follow at length the numerous phases of ingenious and resourceful development that took place during those busy years the limit of present space forbids their relation it would however be denying the justice that is Edison's due to omit all mention of two hitherto unnamed items in particular that have added to the world store of useful devices we refer first to the great traveling hoisting crane having a span of 250 feet and use for hoisting loads equal to 10 tons this being the largest of the kind made up to that time and afterward used as a model by many others the second item was the ingenious and varied forms of conveyor belt devised and used by Edison at the concentrating works and subsequently developed into a separate and extensive business by an engineer to whom he gave permission to use his plans and patterns Edison's native strudeness and knowledge of human nature was put to practical use in the busy days of plant construction it was found impossible to keep mechanics on account of indifferent residential accommodations afforded by the tiny village remote from civilization among the central mountains of New Jersey this puzzling question much discussed between him and his associate Mr. W. S. Mallory and tell finally he said to the latter if he want to keep the men here we must make it attractive for the women so let us build some houses that will have running water and electric lights and rent at low rate he said to work and in a day finished a design for a type of house 50 were quickly built and fully described in advertising for mechanics 3 days advertisements brought in over 650 applications and afterward Edison had no trouble in obtaining all the first class men he required as settlers in the artificial Yosemite he was creating we owe to Mr. Mallory a characteristic story of this period as to an incidental unbending from toil which in itself illustrates the ever present determination to conquer what is undertaken along in the latter part of the 90s when the work on the problem of concentrating iron ore was in progress it became necessary when leaving the planet Edison to wait over at Lake Hapit Kong one hour for a connecting train during some of these waits Mr. Edison had seen me play billiards at the particular time this incident happened Mrs. Edison and her family were away for the summer and I was staying at the Glenmont home on the orange mountains one hot Saturday night after Mr. Edison had looked over the evening papers he said to me do you want to play a game of billiards? naturally this astonished me very much as he is a man who cares little or nothing for the ordinary games with the single exception of Partizzi of which he is very fond I said I would like to play so we went up to the billiard room of the house I took off the cloth, got out the balls picked out a cue for Mr. Edison and when we banked for the first shot I won and started the game after making two or three shots I missed and a long Karam shot was left for Mr. Edison the cue ball and object ball being within about 12 inches of each other and the other ball a distance of nearly the length of the table Mr. Edison attended to make the shot but missed it and said put the balls back so I put them back in the same position and he missed it a second time I continued at his request to put the balls back in the same position for the next 15 minutes until he could make the shot every time then he said I don't want to play anymore having taken a somewhat superficial survey of the great enterprise under consideration having had a cursory glance at the technical development of the plant up to the point of its successful culmination in the making of a marketable commercial product as exemplified in the test at the Crane Furnace let us revert to the demonstration and note the events that followed the facts of this actual test are far more eloquent than the volumes of argument would be as justification of Edison's assiduous labors over eight years and of the expenditure of a fortune and bringing his broad conception to a concrete possibility in the patient's solving of tremendous problems he had toiled up the mountainside of success scaling its topmost peak and obtaining a view of the boundless prospect but alas, the best laid plans omise and men gang aft-aggly the discovery of great deposits of rich Bessemer ore in the Missaba range of mountains in Minnesota a year or two previous to completion of his work had been followed by the opening up of those deposits and marketing of the ore it was of such rich character that being cheaply mined by greatly improved and inexpensive methods, the market price of crude ore of like iron units fell from about $6.50 to $3.50 per ton at the time when Mr. Edison was ready to supply his concentrated product at the former price he could have supplied the market and earned a liberal profit on his investment but at $3.50 per ton he was left without a reasonable chance of competition thus was swept away the possibility of reaping the reward so richly earned by years of incessant thought, labor, and care this great and notable plant representing a very large outlay of money brought to completion, ready for business and embracing some of the most brilliant and remarkable of Edison's inventions and methods must be abandoned by force of circumstances over which he had no control and with it must die the high hopes that his progressive, conquering march to success had legitimately engendered the financial aspect of these enterprises is often overlooked and forgotten in this instance it was of more than usual import and seriousness as Edison was virtually his own backer putting into the company almost the whole of all the fortune his inventions had brought him there is a tendency to deny the capital that thus takes desperate chances its full reward if things go right and to insist that it shall have barely the legal rate of interest and far less than the return of over the counter retail trade it is an absolute fact that the great electrical inventors and the men who stood behind them have had little return for their foresight and courage in this instance when the inventor was largely his own financier the difficulties and perils were redoubled let Mr. Mallory give an instance during the latter part of the panic of 1893 there came a period when we were very hard up for ready cash due largely to the panicky conditions and a large payroll had been raised with considerable difficulty a short time before payday our treasurer called me up by telephone and said I have just received the paychecks from the bank and told it my assistant who has forged my name to some of the checks has absconded with about three thousand dollars I went immediately to Mr. Edison and told him of the forgery and the amount of money taken and in what an embarrassing position we were for the next payroll when I had finished he said it is too bad the money is gone but I will tell you what to do go and see the president of the bank which paid the forged checks get him to admit the bank's liability and then say to him that Mr. Edison does not think the bank should suffer because of his honest clerk and his employee also say to him that I shall not ask them to make the amount good this was done the bank admitting its liability and being much pleased with this action when I reported to Mr. Edison he said that's alright we have made a friend of the bank and we may need friends later on and so what happened that sometime afterward when we greatly needed help in the way of loans the bank willingly gave us the accommodations we required to tide us over for a critical period this iron ore concentrating project had laying close to Edison's heart and ambition indeed it had permeated his whole being to the exclusion of almost all other investigations or inventions for a while for five years he had lived and worked steadily at Edison leaving there only on Saturday night to spend Sunday at his home in orange and returning to the plant by an early train on Monday morning life at Edison was of the simple kind work, meals and a few hours sleep day by day the local village called into existence by the concentrating works was of the most primitive nature and offered nothing in the way of frivolity or amusement even the scenery is austere hence Edison was enabled to follow his natural bent in being surrounded day and night by his responsible chosen associates with whom he worked uninterrupted by outsiders from early morning away into the late hours of the evening those who were laboring with him inspired by his unflagging enthusiasm followed his example and devoted all their waking hours to the furtherance of his plans with his zeal that ultimately bore fruit in the practical success he had recorded in view of its present status this colossal enterprise at Edison may well be likened to the prologue of a play that is subsequently to be enacted for the benefit of future generations but before reading down the curtain it is desirable to preserve the unities by quoting the words of one of the principal actors Mr. Mallory who says the concentrating works had been in operation and we had produced a considerable quantity of the briquettes and had been able to sell only a portion of them the iron market being in such condition that the blast furnaces were not making any new purchases of iron ore and were having difficulty to receive and consume the ores which had been previously contracted for so what sales we were able to make were extremely low prices my recollection being that they were between three dollars and fifty cents and three dollars and eighty cents per ton whereas when the works had started we had hoped to obtain six dollars to six dollars and fifty cents per ton for the briquettes we had also thoroughly investigated the wonderful deposit at Misaba and it was with the greatest possible reluctance that Mr. Edison was able to come finally to the conclusion that under existing conditions the concentrating plant could not be made into a commercial success this decision was reached only after the most careful investigations and calculations as Mr. Edison was just as full of fight and ambition to make it a success as when he had first started when this decision was reached Mr. Edison and I took the Jersey Central train from Edison bound for Orange and I did not look forward to the immediate future with any degree of confidence as the concentrating plant was heavily in debt without any early prospect of being able to pay off its indebtedness on the train the matter of the future was discussed and Mr. Edison said that in as much as we had the knowledge gained from our experience in the concentrating problem we must if possible apply it to some practical use and at the same time we must work out some other plans by which we could make enough money to pay off the concentrating companies indebtedness Mr. Edison stating most positively that no company with which he had personally been actively connected had ever failed to pay its debts and he did not propose to have the concentrating company any exception in the discussion that followed he suggested several kinds of work which he had in his mind and which might prove profitable we figured carefully over the probabilities of financial returns from the phonograph works and other enterprises and after discussing many plans it was finally decided that he would apply the knowledge we had gained in the concentrating plants by building a plant for manufacturing Portland cement and that Mr. Edison would devote his attention to the developing of a storage battery which did not use lead and sulfuric acids so these two lines of work were taken up by Mr. Edison with just as much enthusiasm and energy as is usual with him the commercial failure of the concentrating plant seeming not to affect his spirits in any way in fact I have often been impressed strongly with the fact that during the dark days of the concentrating problem Mr. Edison's desire was very strong that the creditors of the concentrating work should be paid in full and only once did I hear him make any reference to the financial loss which he himself made and he then said as far as I am concerned I can anytime get a job at $75 per month as a telegrapher and that will amply take care of all my personal requirements as he already stated however he started in with the maximum amount of enthusiasm and ambition and in the course of about three years we succeeded in paying off all the indebtedness of the concentrating works which amounted to several hundred thousand dollars as to the state of Mr. Edison's mind when the final decision was reached to close down if he was specially disappointed there was nothing in his matter to indicate it his every thought being for the future and as to what could be done to pull us out of the financial situation in which we found ourselves and to take advantage of the knowledge which had acquired at so great a cost it will have been gathered that the funds for this great experiment were furnished largely by Edison in fact over two million dollars were spent in the attempt Edison's philosophic view of affairs is given in the following anecdote for Mr. Mallory during the boom times of 1902 when the old general electric stock sold at its high watermark of about $330 Mr. Edison and I were on our way from the cement planted New Village New Jersey to his home Orange when we arrived at Dover New Jersey we got a New York newspaper and I called his attention to the quotation of that day on General Electric Mr. Edison then asked if I hadn't sold any of mine what would it be worth today and after some figuring I replied over four million dollars when Mr. Edison is thinking seriously over a problem he is in the habit of pulling his right eyebrow which he did now for 15 or 20 seconds then his face lighted up and he said well it's all gone but we had a hell of a good time spending it with which revelation of an attitude worthy of Mark Tapley himself this chapter may well conclude end of chapter 19 recording by William Kevin Manier Las Vegas Nevada 2008


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