peration in the United States at the present
time, and which represent an investment of some $45,000,000. Licensees
under Edison patents in this country alone produce upward of 60,000,000
feet of films annually, containing more than a billion and a half
separate photographs. To what extent the motion-picture business may
grow in the not remote future it is impossible to conjecture, for it has
taken a place in the front rank of rapidly increasing enterprises.

The manufacture and sale of the Edison-Lalande primary battery,
conducted by the Edison Manufacturing Company at the Orange Valley
plant, is a business of no mean importance. Beginning about twenty
years ago with a battery that, without polarizing, would furnish large
currents specially adapted for gas-engine ignition and other important
purposes, the business has steadily grown in magnitude until the present
output amounts to about 125,000 cells annually; the total number of
cells put into the hands of the public up to date being approximately
1,500,000. It will be readily conceded that to most men this alone would
be an enterprise of a lifetime, and sufficient in itself to satisfy a
moderate ambition. But, although it has yielded a considerable profit to
Edison and gives employment to many people, it is only one of the many
smaller enterprises that owe an existence to his inventive ability and
commercial activity.

So it also is in regard to the mimeograph, whose forerunner, the
electric pen, was born of Edison's brain in 1877. He had been long
impressed by the desirability of the rapid production of copies of
written documents, and, as we have seen by a previous chapter, he
invented the electric pen for this purpose, only to improve upon it
later with a more desirable device which he called the mimeograph, that
is in use, in various forms, at this time. Although the electric pen had
a large sale and use in its time, the statistics relating to it are not
available. The mimeograph, however, is, and has been for many years,
a standard office appliance, and is entitled to consideration, as the
total number put into use up to this time is approximately 180,000,
valued at $3,500,000, while the annual output is in the neighborhood
of 9000 machines, sold for about $150,000, besides the vast quantity of
special paper and supplies which its use entails in the production of
the many millions of facsimile letters and documents. The extent of
production and sale of supplies