HOW THOMAS ALVA ACQUIRED THE DEAFNESS AND HIS RESPONSE TO THE EPISODE
Unfortunately a sudden change came, fraught with disaster. The train, running one day at thirty miles an hour over a piece of poorly laid track, was thrown suddenly out of the perpendicular with a violent lurch, and, before Edison could catch it, a stick of phosphorus was jarred from its shelf,fell to the floor, and burst into flame. The car took fire, and the boy,in dismay, was still trying to quench the blaze when the conductor, a quick-tempered Scotchman, who acted also as baggage-master, hastened to
the scene with water and saved his car. On the arrival at Mount Clemensstation, its next stop, Edison and his entire outfit, laboratory,printing-plant, and all, were promptly ejected by the enraged conductor,and the train then moved off, leaving him on the platform, tearful and indignant in the midst of his beloved but ruined possessions. --------
It was through this incident that Edison acquired the deafness that
has persisted all through his life, a severe box on the ears from the scorched and angry conductor being the direct cause of the infirmity.Although this deafness would be regarded as a great affliction by most people, and has brought in its train other serious baubles, Mr. Edison has always regarded it philosophically, and said about it recently:
"This deafness has been of great advantage to me in various ways. When in a telegraph office, I could only hear the instrument directly on the table at which I sat, and unlike the other operators, I was not bothered by the other instruments. Again, in experimenting on the telephone, I had to improve the transmitter so I could hear it. This made the telephone commercial, as the magneto telephone receiver of Bell was too weak to be used as a transmitter commercially. It was the same with the phonograph. The great defect of that instrument was the rendering of the
overtones in music, and the hissing consonants in speech. I worked overone year, twenty hours a day, Sundays and all, to get the word 'specie' perfectly recorded and reproduced on the phonograph. When this was done I knew that everything else could be done which was a fact. Again, my nerves have been preserved intact. Broadway is as quiet to me as a country village is to a person with normal hearing."
