All hands were called in to witness the phenomenon and,
recovering from their astonishment, the boys joined hands and danced
around me, singing and shouting in their excitement. Then each yelled
something at the machine--bits of slang or slurs--and it made them roar
to hear that funny little contraption 'sass back!'
"Edison has always had a saving sense of humor. Though such a driver for
work--sometimes twenty hours a day seemed too short and they often
worked all of twenty-four,--there was not unfrequently a jolly,
prank-playing relaxation among the employees in the laboratory. If some
fellow fell asleep and began snoring the others would get a record of it
and play it later for the culprit or they would fix up a 'squawkophone'
to outdo his racket. Most amusing was Edison's means of taking a short
nap by curling up in an ordinary roll-top desk, and then turning over
without falling out.
"Everybody knows Edison really invented the telephone--that is, he made
it work perfectly and brought it to the greatest commercial value, so
that a billion men, women and children are using it in nearly all the
languages and dialects in the civilized world. But he was very careful
to give Dr. Alexander Graham Bell credit for his original work on this
great invention.
"When a friend on the other side of the Atlantic wired that the English
had offered 'thirty thousand' for the rights to one of Edison's
improvements to the telephone for that country, it was promptly
accepted.
Pages:
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130