Young Edison, or Edison's cat

Today, I'm enjoying a very good book about the young Thomas Alva Edison when he was 10-15 years old. I just came across this fun anecdote that I can't resist sharing. It reminds me of the many threads we get here on PF asking about novel ways to generate electricity. From: [URL='https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/820']Edison His Life and Inventions[/URL] said: In Edison's boyish days … telegraphic supplies were hard to obtain. But he and his "chum" had a line between their homes, built of common stove-pipe wire. The insulators were bottles set on nails driven into trees and short poles. The magnet wire was wound with rags for insulation, and pieces of spring brass were used for keys. With an idea of securing current cheaply, Edison applied the little that he knew about static electricity, and actually experimented with cats, which he treated vigorously as frictional machines until the animals fled in dismay, and Edison had learned his first great lesson in the relative value of sources of electrical energy. The line was made to work, however … By the way, that linked book is free on Amazon or Project Gutenburg. p.s. I couldn't decide whether to make the title of this thread sound like Young Frankenstein or Schrödinger's cat. . If anyone else has anecdotes about Thomas Edison, feel free to reply. Be sure to link your source.,Last edited: Apr 4, 2018

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