be noticed,
however, that these records show much progression in a little over a
month. Just after the item last above extracted, the Edison shop became
greatly rushed on telegraphic inventions, and not many months afterward
came the removal to Menlo Park; hence the etheric-force investigations
were side-tracked for other matters deemed to be more important at that
time.

Doctor Beard in his previously mentioned treatise refers, on page 27, to
the views of others who have repeated Edison's experiments and observed
the phenomena, and in a foot-note says:

"Professor Houston, of Philadelphia, among others, has repeated some of
these physical experiments, has adopted in full and after but a partial
study of the subject, the hypothesis of rapidly reversed electricity
as suggested in my letter to the Tribune of December 8th, and further
claims priority of discovery, because he observed the spark of this when
experimenting with a Ruhmkorff coil four years ago. To this claim, if
it be seriously entertained, the obvious reply is that thousands of
persons, probably, had seen this spark before it was DISCOVERED by Mr.
Edison; it had been seen by Professor Nipher, who supposed, and still
supposes, it is the spark of the extra current; it has been seen by
my friend, Prof. J. E. Smith, who assumed, as he tells me, without
examination, that it was inductive electricity breaking through bad
insulation; it had been seen, as has been stated, by Mr. Edison many
times before he thought it worthy of study, it was undoubtedly seen by
Professor Houston, who, like so many others, failed to even suspect
its meaning and thus missed an important discovery. The honor of a
scientific discovery belongs, not to him who first sees a thing, but
to him who first sees it with expert eyes; not to him even who drops
an original suggestion, but to him who first makes, that suggestion
fruitful of results. If to see with the eyes a phenomenon is to discover
the law of which that phenomenon is a part, then every schoolboy who,
before the time of Newton, ever saw an apple fall, was a discoverer of
the law of gravitation...."

Edison took out only one patent on long-distance telegraphy without
wires. While the principle involved therein (induction) was not
precisely analogous to the above, or to the present system of wireless
telegraphy, it was a step forward in the progress of the art. The
application was filed May 23, 1885, at the time he was working o