there was a flash of light and the cockroaches went into gas. This
automatic electrocuting device attracted so much attention, and got half
a column in an evening paper, that the manager made me stop it." The
reader will remember that a similar plan of campaign against rats was
carried out by Edison while in the West.

About this time Edison had a narrow escape from injury that might easily
have shortened his career, and he seems to have provoked the trouble
more or less innocently by using a little elementary chemistry. "After
being in Boston several months," he says, "working New York wire No.
1, I was requested to work the press wire, called the 'milk route,' as
there were so many towns on it taking press simultaneously. New
York office had reported great delays on the wire, due to operators
constantly interrupting, or 'breaking,' as it was called, to have words
repeated which they had failed to get; and New York claimed that Boston
was one of the worst offenders. It was a rather hard position for me,
for if I took the report without breaking, it would prove the previous
Boston operator incompetent. The results made the operator have some
hard feelings against me. He was put back on the wire, and did much
better after that. It seems that the office boy was down on this man.
One night he asked me if I could tell him how to fix a key so that it
would not 'break,' even if the circuit-breaker was open, and also so
that it could not be easily detected. I told him to jab a penful of
ink on the platinum points, as there was sugar enough to make it
sufficiently thick to hold up when the operator tried to break--the
current still going through the ink so that he could not break.

"The next night about 1 A.M. this operator, on the press wire, while
I was standing near a House printer studying it, pulled out a glass
insulator, then used upside down as a substitute for an ink-bottle,