of them spoke in the highest terms
of the inventor and the man.

The Menlo establishment was unique in the world. It was founded for the
sole purpose of applying the properties of matter to the production
of new inventions. For love of science or the hope of gain, men had
experimented before, and worked out their inventions in the laboratories
of colleges and manufactories. But Edison seems to have been the first
to organise a staff of trained assistants to hunt up useful facts in
books, old and modern, and discover fresh ones by experiment, in order
to develop his ideas or suggest new ones, together with skilled workmen
to embody them in the fittest manner; and all with the avowed object of
taking out patents, and introducing the novel apparatus as a commercial
speculation. He did not manufacture his machines for sale; he simply
created the models, and left their multiplication to other people. There
are different ways of looking at Nature:

'To some she is the goddess great;
To some the milch-cow of the field;
Their business is to calculate
The butter she will yield.'

The institution has proved a remarkable success. From it has emanated
a series of marvellous inventions which have carried the name of Edison
throughout the whole civilised world. Expense was disregarded in making
the laboratory as efficient as possible; the very best equipment was
provided, the ablest assistants employed, and the profit has been
immense. Edison is a millionaire; the royalties from his patents alone
are said to equal the salary of a Prime Minister.

Although Edison was the master spirit of the band, it must not be
forgotten that his assistants were sometimes co-inventors with himself.
No doubt he often supplied the germinal ideas, while his assistants only
carried them out. But occasionally the suggestion was nothing more than
this: 'I want something that will do so-and-so. I believe it will be
a good thing, and can be done.' The assistant was on his mettle,
and either failed or triumphed. The results of the experiments and
researches were all chronicled in a book, for the new facts, if not then
required, might become serviceable at a future time. If a rare material
was wanted, it was procured at any cost.

With such facilities, an invention is rapidly matured. Sometimes the
idea was conceived in the morning, and a working model was constructed
by the evening. One day, we are told, a discovery was made