"Results! Why man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several.....thousand things that won't work."
Thomas Edison
American inventor Thomas Edison (1847-1931) filed more than 1,000 patents during his lifetime. He fell into- the world of telegraphy after he saved a three-year- old boy from being struck by a train. To repay his good deed the child's father agreed to teach him railroad telegraphy. Edison quickly picked up the skill and went to work as a telegraph operator at Western Union. Although he was eventually fired from his job, Edison's interest in telegraphy was born.
At the time, one wire could only send one telegram in one direction at a time; consequently sending and receiving messages was a slow process. Edison perfected the existing system to one signal in one direction and one signal in the other, and he called this duplex telegraphy. He later made it possible to have two signals going down one wire in both directions, quadruplexing, and this was a fundamental concept for the development of the telephone in 1876.
With the help of mentor and fellow telegrapher, Franklin Leonard Pope, Edison devoted himself to inventing. He sold his patent rights for the quadruplex to a rival company, sparking a series of court battles that Western Union eventually won. However, the sale enabled Edison to set up his research laboratory at Menio Park and his telegraphy work proved an essential step in the communications revolution.
