have had the privilege
of examining the voluminous records which show the flights of his
imagination, there comes a feeling of utter inadequacy to convey to
others the full extent of the story they reveal.

The few specific instances above related, although not representing a
tithe of Edison's work, will probably be sufficient to enable the reader
to appreciate to some extent his great wealth of ideas and fertility
of imagination, and also to realize that this imagination is not only
intensely practical, but that it works prophetically along lines of
natural progress.

CHAPTER XXIV

EDISON'S METHOD IN INVENTING

WHILE the world's progress depends largely upon their ingenuity,
inventors are not usually persons who have adopted invention as a
distinct profession, but, generally speaking, are otherwise engaged in
various walks of life. By reason of more or less inherent native genius
they either make improvements along lines of present occupation, or
else evolve new methods and means of accomplishing results in fields for
which they may have personal predilections.

Now and then, however, there arises a man so greatly endowed with
natural powers and originality that the creative faculty within him
is too strong to endure the humdrum routine of affairs, and manifests
itself in a life devoted entirely to the evolution of methods and
devices calculated to further the world's welfare. In other words, he
becomes an inventor by profession. Such a man is Edison. Notwithstanding
the fact that nearly forty years ago (not a great while after he had
emerged from the ranks of peripatetic telegraph operators) he was
the owner of a large and profitable business as a manufacturer of the
telegraphic apparatus invented by him, the call of his nature was too
strong to allow of profits being laid away in the bank to accumulate. As
he himself has said, he has "too sanguine a temperament to allow money
to stay in solitary confinement." Hence, all superfluous cash was
devoted to experimentation. In the course of years he grew more and
more impatient of the shackles that bound him to business routine, and,
realizing the powers within him, he drew away gradually from purely
manufacturing occupations, determining deliberately to devote his
life to inventive work, and to depend upon its results as a means of
subsistence.

All persons who make inventions will necessarily be more or less
original in character, but to the man who chooses