Edison as I know him, by Henry Ford, in collaboration with Samuel Crowther.

EDISON As I KNOW HIM

He carries the same thought into his handwriting. In this each letter is separate and it is the result of experimenting to discover how he could
write clearly and quickly with the least effort.
"I developed this style," he said, "while taking
press reports. My wire was connected to the
'blind' side of a repeater at Cincinnati, so that if
I missed a word or sentence, or if the wire worked
badly, I could not break in and get the last words,
because the Cincinnati man had no instrument
by which he could hear me. I had to take what
came.
"When I got the job, the cable across the Ohio
River at Covington, connecting with the line to
Louisville, had a variable leak in it, which caused
the strength of the signaling current to make violent fluctuations. The clatter was bad, but I could
read it with fair ease. When, in addition to this
infernal leak, the wires north to Cleveland
worked badly, it required a large amount of imagination to get the sense of what was being sent.
"An imagination requires an appreciable time
for its exercise, and as the stuff was coming at
the rate of thirty-five to forty words a minute, it
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