statements of mining men, I concluded
I would just send down a small plant and prospect the field before
putting up a large one. This I did, and I sent two of my assistants,
whom I could trust, down to this place to erect the plant; and started
to sink shafts fifty feet deep all over the area. We soon learned that
the rich gravel, instead of being spread over an area of three by seven
miles, and rich from the grass roots down, was spread over a space of
about twenty-five acres, and that even this did not average more than
ten cents to the cubic yard. The whole placer would not give more than
one and one-quarter cents per cubic yard. As my business arrangements
had not been very perfectly made, I lost the usual amount."

Going to another extreme, we find Edison grappling with one of the
biggest problems known to the authorities of New York--the disposal of
its heavy snows. It is needless to say that witnessing the ordinary slow
and costly procedure would put Edison on his mettle. "One time when
they had a snow blockade in New York I started to build a machine with
Batchelor--a big truck with a steam-engine and compressor on it. We
would run along the street, gather all the snow up in front of us, pass
it into the compressor, and deliver little blocks of ice behind us
in the gutter, taking one-tenth the room of the snow, and not
inconveniencing anybody. We could thus take care of a snow-storm
by diminishing the bulk of material to be handled. The preliminary
experiment we made was dropped because we went into other things. The
machine would go as fast as a horse could walk."

Edison has always taken a keen interest in aerial flight, and has also
experimented with aeroplanes, his preference inclining to the helicopter
type, as noted in the newspapers and periodicals from time to time.
The following statement from him refers to a type of aeroplane of great
novelty and ingenuity: "James Gordon Bennett came to me and asked that
I try some primary experiments to see if aerial navigation was feasible
with 'heavier-than-air' machines. I got up a motor and put it on the
scales and tried a large number of different things and contrivances
connected to the motor, to see how it would lighten itself on the
scales. I got some data and made up my mind that what was needed was a
very powerful engine for its weight, in small compass. So I conceived of
an engine employing guncotton. I took a lot of ticker paper tape, turned
it into gunc