9781422277669

secondhand printing press that he had bought with his Shiloh profits. It was a jumble of news, market prices, schedule changes, and jokes. (For example, “‘Let me collect myself,’ as the man said when he was blown up by a powder mill.”) Spelling was poor. “Opisition” and “attension” were typical. But he worked the circulation up to 400 copies at eight cents. Interest in Telegraphy Bustling and inquisitive, young Thomas Edison had a finger in every pie. One day, he even drove a train. But his main interest was the electric telegraph. It was the latest means of communication and had the kind of glamour we now associate with space technology. As his Shiloh coup had proved, it could bring immediate practical benefits. For Thomas, it had a special appeal. Perhaps because of a childhood bout with scarlet fever, he had become deaf. From the age of twelve, he never heard a bird sing. But he could hear the telegraph. Morse code was transmitted by sending an electric current along a wire. At the receiving end, the current activated an electromagnet , which drew a lever toward it. When the current was broken, the lever sprang back to its original position. At each end of its swing, it struck a screw with a sharp click. The time between each pair of clicks depended on how long the sender held down his key, or switch. A long space represented a dash, a short space a dot. Instead of the “dah-dit-dah” familiar with Morse sounders, the sound of the railway telegraph was more like “umpty-iddy-umpty.” Thomas could hear these clicks clearly. In fact, he could hear them better than people with normal hearing because he was not distracted by background noises. He made his own equipment and was soon tapping out messages to a friend along a wire strung between their homes. Eventually, six houses were linked. The system finally broke down when a wandering cow knocked down a pole, became entangled in the wire, and in her panic uprooted all the other poles as well. In 1862, when he was still fifteen, Thomas was involved in an incident that changed his whole life. Every day, the train stopped at Mount Clemens station for half an hour while extra wagons were attached. These were shunted into position. On the day in question, Thomas saw Jimmy, the two-and-a-half-year-

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