Not long after the Albany experience, Edison was in New York, not looking for work as some say, but nosing around Wall Street investigating the “Laws Automatic Ticker.”  The machine he was looking at suddenly stopped, and this blocked all the tickers on the line.  An expert was sent for, but he could not start it.

“I’ll fix it,” said a tall, awkward volunteer, the same which was Edison.

History is not yet clear as to whether Edison had not originally “fixed” it, and Edison so far has not confessed.

And there being no one else to start the machine, Edison was given a chance, and soon the tickers were going again.  This gave him an introduction to the stock-ticker folks, and the Western Union people he already knew.

This was in Eighteen Hundred Seventy, and Edison was then twenty-three years old.

He studied out how stock-reporting could be bettered and invented a plan which he duly patented, and then laid his scheme before the Western Union managers.

A stock company was formed, and young Edison, aged twenty-four, was paid exactly forty thousand dollars for his patent, and retained by the Company as Electrical Adviser at three hundred dollars a month.

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-four, when he was twenty-seven, he had perfected his duplex telegraph apparatus and had a factory turning out telegraph-instruments and appliances at Newark, New Jersey, where three hundred men were employed.

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-six, the year of the Centennial Exposition, Edison told the Exposition Managers that if they would wait a year or so he would light their show with electricity.

He moved to the then secluded spot of Menlo Park to devote himself to experiments, spending an even hundred thousand dollars in equipment as a starter.  Results followed fast, and soon we had the incandescent lamp, trolley-car, electric pen and many other inventions.  It was on the night of October the Twenty-third, Eighteen Hundred Seventy-nine, that Edison first turned the current through an incandescent burner and got the perfect light.  He sat and looked at the soft, mild, beautiful light and laughed a joyous peal of laughter that was heard in the adjoining rooms.  “We’ve got it, boys!” he cried, and the boys, a dozen of them, came tumbling in.  Arguments started as to how long it would last.  One said an hour.  “Twenty-four hours,” said Edison.  They all vowed they would watch it without sleep until the carbon film was destroyed and the light went out.  It lasted just forty hours.

Around Edison grew up a group of great workers—­proud to be called “Edison Men”—­and some of these went out and made for themselves names and fortunes.