,
as it was one of the largest on record. I think it was five and one-half
inches. There were only three or four could beat it. Little Bergmann
hadn't much lung power. The old man said to him, one day: 'Let's run
up-stairs.' Bergmann agreed and ran up. When they got there Bergmann
was all done up, but my father never showed a sign of it. There was an
elevator there, and each day while it was travelling up I held the stem
of my Waterbury watch up against the column in the elevator shaft and
it finished the winding by the time I got up the six stories." This
original method of reducing the amount of physical labor involved in
watch-winding brings to mind another instance of shrewdness mentioned by
Edison, with regard to his newsboy days. Being asked whether he did not
get imposed upon with bad bank-bills, he replied that he subscribed to a
bank-note detector and consulted it closely whenever a note of any size
fell into his hands. He was then less than fourteen years old.

The conversations with Edison that elicited these stories brought out
some details as to peril that attends experimentation. He has confronted
many a serious physical risk, and counts himself lucky to have come
through without a scratch or scar. Four instances of personal danger
may be noted in his own language: "When I started at Menlo, I had an
electric furnace for welding rare metals that I did not know about
very clearly. I was in the dark-room, where I had a lot of chloride of
sulphur, a very corrosive liquid. I did not know that it would decompose
by water. I poured in a beakerful of water, and the whole thing exploded
and threw a lot of it into my eyes. I ran to the hydrant, leaned over
backward, opened my eyes, and ran the hydrant water right into them. But
it was two weeks before I could see.

"The next time we just saved ourselves. I was making some stuff to
squirt into filaments for the incandescent lamp. I made about a pound of
it. I had used ammonia and bromine. I did not know it at the time, but
I had made bromide of nitrogen. I put the large bulk of it in three
filters, and after it had been washed and all the water had come through
the filter, I opened the three filters and laid them on a hot steam
plate to dry with the stuff. While I and Mr. Sadler, one of my
assistants, were working near it, there was a sudden flash of light,
and a very smart explosion. I said to Sadler: 'What is that?' 'I don't
know,' he said, and we paid no attentio