he tapped Federal wires, read military messages, sent false ones, and
did serious mischief generally. It is well known that one operator can
recognize another by the way in which he makes his signals--it is his
style of handwriting. Ellsworth possessed in a remarkable degree the
skill of imitating these peculiarities, and thus he deceived the Union
operators easily. Edison says that while apparently a quiet man in
bearing, Ellsworth, after the excitement of fighting, found the tameness
of a telegraph office obnoxious, and that he became a bad "gun man"
in the Panhandle of Texas, where he was killed. "We soon became
acquainted," says Edison of this period in Cincinnati, "and he wanted me
to invent a secret method of sending despatches so that an intermediate
operator could not tap the wire and understand it. He said that if it
could be accomplished, he could sell it to the Government for a large
sum of money. This suited me, and I started in and succeeded in making
such an instrument, which had in it the germ of my quadruplex now used
throughout the world, permitting the despatch of four messages over
one wire simultaneously. By the time I had succeeded in getting the
apparatus to work, Ellsworth suddenly disappeared. Many years afterward
I used this little device again for the same purpose. At Menlo Park, New
Jersey, I had my laboratory. There were several Western Union wires cut
into the laboratory, and used by me in experimenting at night. One day
I sat near an instrument which I had left connected during the night. I
soon found it was a private wire between New York and Philadelphia, and
I heard among a lot of stuff a message that surprised me. A week after
that I had occasion to go to New York, and, visiting the office of
the lessee of the wire, I asked him if he hadn't sent such and such a
message. The expression that came over his face was a sight. He asked me
how I knew of any message. I told him the circumstances, and suggested
that he had better cipher such communications, or put on a secret
sounder. The result of the interview was that I installed for him my old