Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill OUTCKOPPINGS OF GENIUS Anxious days, however, were still ahead. Edison had given up his job as a telegrapher to promote the vote machine, his first invention, and he did not intend to bind himself to an operator's table again. There were plenty of other schemes in his head waiting to be worked out. What he needed was a laboratory of his own, and skilled workmen to assist in evolving his many projects! But he might as well have wished for the moon. He had no money, and without capital it was clearly impossible to be what he most desired to be—a great inventor. In the emergency, he did what many another in search of a career has done—he somehow made his way to New York, arriving with scarcely enough cash in hand to rent a respectable lodging, much less purchase the books and apparatus which he must have. Good Luck, Fortune, Invincible Determination—what youwill—led him shortly afterward into Wall Street and to the head office of the Law Gold Indicator, where he hoped he might find an opening. And never was an arrival more opportune. The indicators or stock-tickers of this company furnished "Gold news" to five or six hundred brokerage offices. And on this particular morning the machines had chosen to balk. Not only were all the repair men on the job, but in waiting were the head officers, and the uneasy messengers from each frantic broker, who was thus put summarily out of business. Edison walked into the hubbub, and managing, at length, to get close up to the "trouble finders," stood for a few moments an interested observer, his quick eye taking in all the complexities of the machinery, and something else. Then he made his way to Mr. Law. "If you please, sir," he said quietly, "I believe I can put things to rights." The great man stared, but his reply was empha...