Man of Light

More than 60 years ago a curiosity-consumed railroad newsboy, puttering with chemicals in a baggage car, set the car on fire. At the next station, Smith's Creek, he was thrown off the train by a fuming conductor. Last week the incident was re-enacted with variations. Again a dinky, funnel-stacked, wood-burner chuffed into Smith's Creek station, laboriously pulling its coaches. Out of one coach was helped a shag-browed, stooped old man. He eyed the station signboard, recalled his onetime precipitous arrival at the same platform, smiled ruefully. He was Inventor Thomas Alva Edison. Nearby a lean, keen-eyed man stood beaming. He it was who had staged this performance. From afar he had brought the properties--the locomotive, cars and station.* Into the deaf inventor's ear he shouted welcome./- He was Friend Henry Ford. This was only Stage-Setter Ford's prolog. Proudly he led Mr. Edison to a building nearby, the inventor's oldtime laboratory, every plank and gadget of which had been brought to Dearborn, Mich., from Menlo Park, N. J. Ruminantly chewing tobacco as he inspected, Edison scuffed the dirt floor with his toe. "Why, Henry's even got that damn New Jersey clay here," he marveled. There later was to be staged the feature performance--Inventor Edison working by oil lamp over his old bench, tinkering with his old tools, fabricating a replica of the first incandescent electric lamp, switching on the current, seeing the wires glow yellow, then shambling over to his old reed organ in the corner to play a few tunes. The tinkering was the climax of the celebration of "Light's Golden Jubilee." At a preceding jubilee dinner famed voices lauded the greatest Edison achievement. Owen D. Young was toastmaster. President Hoover spoke pleasantly, briefly. Mr. Ford made appropriate remarks. From a radio loudspeaker came the voice of Scientist Albert Einstein speaking from Berlin. Inventor Edison acknowledged the unheard compliments. Other famed guests at the Dearborn celebration: Airplane Inventor Wright, Ambassador Dawes, Steelman Schwab, Oilman Rockefeller Jr., Tireman Firestone, Cineman Hays, Secretary of War Good. Railmen Crowley (New York Central). Atterbury (Pennsylvania), Loree (Delaware & Hudson), Willard (Baltimore & Ohio). Worldwide were the refractions of the Light Jubilee and Hero Edison's glory. In European and South American countries were held illumination displays, banquets, public lectures, exhibitions.

*Smith's Creek station, relic of the days of the Grand Trunk Railroad, was brought from nearby Port Huron, Mich.

/-When they first married, Inventor Edison, then a telegrapher, taught his wife the Morse code. Now on her deaf husband's hand Mrs. Edison transmits unheard conversation by tapping dots and dashes.