ison discovered that by utilizing
a shunt around the receiving instrument, with a soft iron core, the
self-induction would produce a momentary and instantaneous reversal of
the current at the end of each impulse, and thereby give an absolutely
sharp definition to each signal. This discovery did away entirely with
sluggishness, and made it possible to secure high speeds over lines of
comparatively great lengths. But Edison's work on the automatic did
not stop with this basic suggestion, for he took up and perfected the
mechanical construction of the instruments, as well as the perforators,
and also suggested numerous electrosensitive chemicals for the
receivers, so that the automatic telegraph, almost entirely by reason of
his individual work, was placed on a plane of commercial practicability.
The long line of patents secured by him in this art is an interesting
exhibit of the development of a germ to a completed system, not, as
is usually the case, by numerous inventors working over considerable
periods of time, but by one man evolving the successive steps at a white
heat of activity.

This system was put in commercial operation, but the company, now
encouraged, was quite willing to allow Edison to work out his idea of an
automatic that would print the message in bold Roman letters instead
of in dots and dashes; with consequent gain in speed in delivery of
the message after its receipt in the operating-room, it being obviously
necessary in the case of any message received in Morse characters to
copy it in script before delivery to the recipient. A large shop was
rented in Newark, equipped with $25,000 worth of machinery, and Edison
was given full charge. Here he built their original type of apparatus,
as improved, and also pushed his experiments on the letter system so far
that at a test, between New York and Philadelphia, three thousand words
were sent in one minute and recorded in Roman type. Mr. D. N. Craig, one
of the early organizers of the Associated Press, became interested
in this company, whose president was Mr. George Harrington, formerly
Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury.

Mr. Craig brought with him at this time--the early seventies--from
Milwaukee a Mr. Sholes, who had a wooden model of a machine to which had
been given the then new and unfamiliar name of "typewriter." Craig
was interested in the machine, and put the model in Edison's hands to
perfect. "This typewriter proved a difficult th