y inventor in this new field had to make in the effort to reach not
alone commercial practicability, but mechanical feasibility. It was all
empirical enough; but that was the only way open even to the highest
talent.

Smugglers landing laces and silks have been known to wind them around
their bodies, as being less ostentatious than carrying them in a trunk.
Edison thought his resistance-boxes an equally superfluous display, and
therefore ingeniously wound some copper resistance wire around one of
the legs of the motor field magnet, where it was out of the way, served
as a useful extra field coil in starting up the motor, and dismissed
most of the boxes back to the laboratory--a few being retained under the
seat for chance emergencies. Like the boxes, this coil was in series
with the armature, and subject to plugging in and out at will by the
motorman. Thus equipped, the locomotive was found quite satisfactory,
and long did yeoman service. It was given three cars to pull, one an
open awning-car with two park benches placed back to back; one a flat
freight-car, and one box-car dubbed the "Pullman," with which Edison
illustrated a system of electric braking. Although work had been begun
so early in the year, and the road had been operating since May, it was
not until July that Edison executed any application for patents on his
"electromagnetic railway engine," or his ingenious braking system. Every
inventor knows how largely his fate lies in the hands of a competent and
alert patent attorney, in both the preparation and the prosecution
of his case; and Mr. Sprague is justified in observing in his Century
article: "The paucity of controlling claims obtained in these early
patents is remarkable." It is notorious that Edison did not then enjoy
the skilful aid in safeguarding his ideas that he commanded later.

The daily newspapers and technical journals lost no time in bringing the
road to public attention, and the New York Herald of June 25th was swift
to suggest that here was the locomotive that would be "most pleasing to
the average New Yorker, whose head has ached with noise, whose eyes have
been filled with dust, or whose clothes have been ruined with oil." A
couple of days later, the Daily Graphic illustrated and described
the road and published a sketch of a one-hundred-horse-power electric
locomotive for the use of the Pennsylvania Railroad between Perth Amboy
and Rahway. Visitors, of course, were numerous, including