dressed than a tramp, but I immediately felt that there was a
great deal in him." This is the conversation that ensued, led by Mr.
Edison's question:

"What do you want?"

"Work."

"Can you make this machine work?" (exhibiting it and explaining its
details).

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, you needn't pay me if I don't."

And thus Mr. Ott went to work and succeeded in accomplishing the results
desired. Two weeks afterward Mr. Edison put him in charge of the shop.

Edison's life fairly teems with instances of unruffled patience in the
pursuit of experiments. When he feels thoroughly impressed with the
possibility of accomplishing a certain thing, he will settle down
composedly to investigate it to the end.

This is well illustrated in a story relating to his invention of the
type of storage battery bearing his name. Mr. W. S. Mallory, one of his
closest associates for many years, is the authority for the following:
"When Mr. Edison decided to shut down the ore-milling plant at Edison,
New Jersey, in which I had been associated with him, it became a
problem as to what he could profitably take up next, and we had several
discussions about it. He finally thought that a good storage battery
was a great requisite, and decided to try and devise a new type, for he
declared emphatically he would make no battery requiring sulphuric acid.
After a little thought he conceived the nickel-iron idea, and started to
work at once with characteristic energy. About 7 or 7.30 A.M. he would
go down to the laboratory and experiment, only stopping for a short time
at noon to eat a lunch sent down from the house. About 6 o'clock the
carriage would call to take him to dinner, from which he would return by
7.30 or 8 o'clock to resume work. The carriage came again at midnight
to take him home, but frequently had to wait until 2 or 3 o'clock, and
sometimes return without him, as he had decided to continue all night.

"This had been going on more than five months, seven days a week, when
I was called down to the laboratory to see him. I found him at a bench
about three feet wide and twelve to fifteen feet long, on which there
were hundreds of little test cells that had been made up by his corps
of chemists and experimenters. He was seated at this bench testing,
figuring, and planning. I then learned that he had thus made over
nine thousand experiments in trying to devise this new type of storage
battery, but had not produced a single t