In drawing some vitriol one night, he upset the carboy, and the acid
eating its way through the floor, played havoc with the furniture of a
luxurious bank in the flat below. He was discharged for this, but soon
obtained another engagement as a press operator in Cincinnati. He spent
his leisure in the Mechanics' Library, studying works on electricity and
general science. He also developed his ideas on the duplex system; and
if they were not carried out, they at least directed him to the
quadruplex system with which his name was afterwards associated.
These attempts to improve his time seem to have made him unpopular, for
after a short term in Cincinnati, he returned to Port Huron. A friend,
Mr. F. Adams, operator in the Boston office of the Western Union
Telegraph Company, recommended Edison to his manager, Mr. G. F.
Milliken, as a good man to work the New York wire, and the berth was
offered to Edison by telegraph. He accepted, and left at once for
Boston by the Grand Trunk Railway, but the train was snowed up for two
days near the bluffs of the St. Lawrence. The consequence might have
been serious had provisions not been found by a party of foragers.
Mr. Milliken was the first of Edison's masters, and perhaps his fellows,
who appreciated him.
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