primitively crude class of apparatus was immediate. Four manufacturers
were soon busy trying to keep pace with the demands for it from brokers;
and the Gold & Stock Telegraph Company formed to exploit the system soon
increased its capital from $200,000 to $300,000, paying 12 per cent.
dividends on the latter amount. Within its first year the capital was
again increased to $1,000,000, and dividends of 10 per cent. were paid
easily on that sum also. It is needless to say that such facts became
quickly known among the operators, from whose ranks, of course, the new
employees were enlisted; and it was a common ambition among the more
ingenious to produce a new ticker. From the beginning, each phase
of electrical development--indeed, each step in mechanics--has been
accompanied by the well-known phenomenon of invention; namely, the
attempt of the many to perfect and refine and even re-invent where one
or two daring spirits have led the way. The figures of capitalization
and profit just mentioned were relatively much larger in the sixties
than they are to-day; and to impressionable young operators they spelled
illimitable wealth. Edison was, how ever, about the only one in Boston
of whom history makes record as achieving any tangible result in this
new art; and he soon longed for the larger telegraphic opportunity of
New York. His friend, Milt Adams, went West with quenchless zest for
that kind of roving life and aimless adventure of which the serious
minded Edison had already had more than enough. Realizing that to New
York he must look for further support in his efforts, Edison, deep in
debt for his embryonic inventions, but with high hope and courage,
now made the next momentous step in his career. He was far riper in
experience and practice of his art than any other telegrapher of his
age, and had acquired, moreover, no little knowledge of the practical
business of life. Note has been made above of his invention of a stock
ticker in Boston, and of his establishing a stock-quotation circuit.
This was by no means all, and as a fitting close to this chapter he may