Edison High School - Wizard Yearbook (Minneapolis, MN)

Page 18 text:

INVENTIONS LL the fields of science have advanced through the work of Mr. Edison. He gave the world an efficient, strong, and light storage battery to replace the old type of wasteful, fragile, and heavy cell. His battery was used on a five thousand mile test trip over the roughest roads in the country, but after the test the batteries were found to be uninjured although the autos were wrecks. Mr. Edison made the electric railways a success. The experiments at Menlo Park developed the original ideas of electrically driven cars and made the electric locomotive an efficient means of transportation. The Wizard saved a great deal of money for the telegraph companies by inventing means of sending several messages over the same wire. This reduced the number of wires needed and simplified the work of “connecting the cities with a copper road for speech.” Thomas Alva Edison is an inventor of the highest type. He has an utter disregard for statements which simply say “It can’t be done.” His work is as close to perfection as he possibly can make it. He never gets discouraged, because “failure” in an experiment means greater knowledge to him—he knows one more thing that won’t work. Fourteen

Page 17 text:

THE MOTION PICTURE MACHINE HAT the phonograph has done for the ear the motion picture does for the eye. The idea of reproducing sound by machine was original with Mr. Edison but the motion picture machine has been thought of and suggested since the days of the Greeks. About 1875, a Dr. Marey, of Paris, invented a camera which, through a single lens, could take several pictures per second, and this was as far as the motion picture had advanced at the time that Mr. Edison became interested. The inventor soon found that in order to make a good motion picture machine he would have to learn photography; so with his usual vigor and thoroughness Mr. Edison read and learned all that the books could tell him of the photographic art. Then, through thousands of experiments, he found a sensitive film with which he could take fifty pictures per second and developed successful machines for taking, developing, and projecting the pictures on a screen. When the machines became a success commercially, the Wizard predicted the union of the phonograph and the motion picture to give the illusion of reality. Then, for a time, Mr. Edison worked on color pictures, but left these for more important work. Thirteen

Page 19 text:

INVENTIONS HE Wizard of Menlo Park has many triumphs to his credit, but only one of them is used in offensive warfare. When he gave that to the world, he first suggested that it would be useful as a defensive weapon. This invention is a submarine torpedo operated by electricity from shore or ship. This is an excellent weapon, because it is always under control, invisible, and capable of great destruction. Alexander Bell invented a form of telephone which would work, but without Mr. Edison’s improvements, modern commercial telephony would have been impossible. Portland cement is one of the important results of the Wizard’s ten years of work on ore crushing and concentrating plants. Mr. Edison invented many common everyday devices which we see, but he also invented many other machines which are used to manufacture these articles or are used in conjunction with them. When the inventor devises a machine, he makes several others which are used to make the first a success commercially. The Wizard is thorough, accurate, and efficient in his work. It has been said that if necessary, Mr. Edison could go into a field a mile square and select therefrom a perfect blade of grass. Fifteen