Читать книгу Little Visits with Great Americans - Эндрю Карнеги - Страница 10

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“When did you begin to be interested in inventions?” I questioned.

“Well,” he said, “I began to dabble in chemistry at that time. I fitted up a small laboratory on the train.”

In reference to this, Mr. Edison subsequently admitted that, during the progress of some occult experiments in this workshop, certain complications ensued in which a jolted and broken bottle of sulphuric acid attracted the attention of the conductor. He, who had been long suffering in the matter of unearthly odors, promptly ejected the young devotee and all his works. This incident would have been only amusing but for its relation to and explanation of his deafness. A box on the ear, administered by the irate conductor, caused the lasting deafness.

“What was your first work in a practical line?” I went on.

“A telegraph line between my home and another boy’s, I made with the help of an old river cable, some stove-pipe wire, and glass-bottle insulators. I had my laboratory in the cellar and studied telegraphy outside.”

“What was the first really important thing you did?”

“I saved a boy’s life.”

“How?”

“The boy was playing on the track near the depot. I saw he was in danger and caught him, getting out of the way just in time. His father was station-master, and taught me telegraphy in return.”

Dramatic situations appear at every turn of this man’s life, though, temperamentally, it is evident that he would be the last to seek them. He seems to have been continually arriving on the scene at critical moments, and always with the good sense to take things in his own hands. The chance of learning telegraphy only gave him a chance to show how apt a pupil he was, and the railroad company soon gave him regular employment. He himself admits that, at seventeen, he had become one of the most expert operators on the road.

“Did you make much use of your inventive talent at this time?” I questioned.

“Yes,” he answered. “I invented an automatic attachment for my telegraph instrument which would send in the signal to show I was awake at my post, when I was comfortably snoring in a corner. I didn’t do much of that, though,” he went on; “for some such boyish trick sent me in disgrace over the line into Canada.”