ing.
The rods also. The whole lot, rods and rope, when ready for tube, should
have another coat, and then be placed in tube and filled. This will
do the business." Broad and large as a continent in his ideas, if ever
there was a man of finical fussiness in attention to detail, it
is Edison. A letter of seven pages of about the same date in 1887
expatiates on the vicious troubles caused by the air-bubble, and remarks
with fine insight into the problems of insulation and the idea of layers
of it: "Thus you have three separate coatings, and it is impossible an
air-hole in one should match the other."

To a man less thorough and empirical in method than Edison, it would
have been sufficient to have made his plans clear to associates or
subordinates and hold them responsible for accurate results. No such
vicarious treatment would suit him, ready as he has always been to share
the work where he could give his trust. In fact he realized, as no
one else did at this stage, the tremendous import of this novel and
comprehensive scheme for giving the world light; and he would not let
go, even if busy to the breaking-point. Though plunged in a veritable
maelstrom of new and important business interests, and though applying
for no fewer than eighty-nine patents in 1881, all of which were
granted, he superintended on the spot all this laying of underground
conductors for the first district. Nor did he merely stand around and
give orders. Day and night he actually worked in the trenches with the
laborers, amid the dirt and paving-stones and hurry-burly of traffic,
helping to lay the tubes, filling up junction-boxes, and taking part in
all the infinite detail. He wanted to know for himself how things
went, why for some occult reason a little change was necessary, what
improvement could be made in the material. His hours of work were not
regulated by the clock, but lasted until he felt the need of a little
rest. Then he would go off to the station building in Pearl Street,
throw an overcoat on a pile of tubes, lie down and sleep for a few
hours, rising to resume work with the first gang. There was a small
bedroom on the third floor of the station available for him, but
going to bed meant delay and consumed time. It is no wonder that such
impatience, such an enthusiasm, drove the work forward at a headlong
pace.

Edison says of this period: "When we put down the tubes in the lower
part of New York, in the streets, we kept a big stock of