4 Chapter 3 Tom and His Boys

Chapter 3 Tom and His "Boys" In 1869 Tom arrived in New York without a job. But Tom had no trouble finding one. He was already known and respected as a smart young man with exciting, original ideas. He was someone who could make things.

第三章汤姆和他的“孩子们”1869年，汤姆身无分文地来到纽约。 但是汤姆毫不费力地找到了一个。 他已经被认为是一个聪明的年轻人，有着令人兴奋的、原创的想法。 他是一个会制造东西的人。

Tom had no problem finding work. After a while, he and a fellow worker started their own business. Making and developing new machines—that's what they would do. The company's most successful machine was called the universal stock printer. All day long it sent the changing price of gold to businesses on Wall Street. Tom had developed the printer, and he sold the patent for it to Western Union for thirty thousand dollars.

汤姆找工作没有问题。 过了一段时间，他和一位同事开始了自己的生意。 制造和开发新机器——这就是他们要做的。 该公司最成功的机器被称为通用库存打印机。 一整天，它都在向华尔街的企业发送不断变化的黄金价格。 汤姆发明了打印机，他以3万美元的价格把专利卖给了西联汇款公司。

With this money and two investors, Tom started his own company in 1870. He found a large building in Newark, New Jersey, for his Newark Telegraph Works. He continued working on his inventions. But the company also manufactured, or made, machines to sell. Tom was always working to improve any kind of machine. And companies like Western Union came to him to make a machine they needed, or to fix problems with machines they already used. Working for Tom meant working long hours. He was at the office in Newark all the time. He knew everything that was happening. He kept detailed notes. He made sketches of his new ideas. He worked harder than anyone. Tom believed from his own experience that doing something

有了这笔钱和两位投资者，汤姆在1870年创办了自己的公司。 他在新泽西州的纽瓦克找到了一幢大楼，作为他的纽瓦克电报工作室。 他继续致力于他的发明。 但该公司也制造机器来销售。 汤姆总是致力于改进任何一种机器。 像西联汇款这样的公司来找他制造他们需要的机器，或者解决他们已经使用的机器的问题。 为汤姆工作意味着长时间工作。 他一直在纽瓦克的办公室。 他知道所发生的一切。 他做了详细的笔记。他把他的新想法画了草图。 他工作比任何人都努力。 汤姆从他自己的经验中相信做某事

yourself, like making a machine, was the best way to learn. One day a young woman named Mary Stilwell came to work at the company. She and Tom fell in love. She was sixteen. He was twenty-four. Three months later, they married on Christmas Day. But even on that day, Tom went to work for a few hours, and Mary quickly found out that Tom would spend much more time at work than at home.

你自己，就像制造一台机器，是最好的学习方式。 一天，一位名叫玛丽·史迪威的年轻女士来到这家公司工作。 她和汤姆相爱了。她16岁。 他当时24岁。三个月后，他们在圣诞节那天结婚了。 但即使在那天，汤姆也去工作了几个小时，玛丽很快发现汤姆在工作上的时间比在家的时间要长得多。

Over the years the Edisons had three children. First came Marion and Thomas Jr. Their father fondly called them Dot and Dash, after Morse code. Then came another son, William. Tom loved his family, but still he spent more time at work than at home. This was not so easy for Mary and the children. Often his wife was lonely and frustrated. Most inventors worked alone. Tom was different. He liked working with a team as long as

这些年来，爱迪生夫妇生了三个孩子。 首先是玛丽昂和小托马斯。 他们的父亲用摩尔斯电码亲切地叫他们Dot和Dash。 后来又生了一个儿子，威廉。 汤姆爱他的家庭，但他花在工作上的时间仍然比呆在家里的时间多。 这对玛丽和孩子们来说并不容易。 他的妻子常常感到孤独和沮丧。 大多数发明家都是独自工作的。 汤姆不一样。他喜欢和团队一起工作，只要

he was the boss. He hired the best men he could find. He needed draftsmen who could draw his ideas on paper, machinists who could make things from his sketches, and men who understood what he was trying to do and who could come up with improvements of their own. Tom called them "The Boys." They called him "The Old Man," even though he was only twenty-four years old and younger than many of them. A few of his "Boys" worked with Tom for twenty or thirty years. In these early years, Tom figured out a way to send four telegraph messages at once—two in one direction and two in the other. Someone else had already figured out how to send and receive two messages, but four meant twice the messages in less time. He called it the quadruplex.

他是老板。他雇佣了他能找到的最好的人。 他需要能把他的想法画在纸上的绘图员，能把他的草图变成实物的机械师，以及能理解他要做什么并能提出改进意见的人。 汤姆称他们为“男孩们”。 他们称他为“老人”，尽管他只有24岁，比他们中的许多人都年轻。 他的几个“手下”为汤姆工作了二三十年。 在最初的几年里，汤姆想出了一种同时发送四条电报信息的方法——两个向一个方向发送，两个向另一个方向发送。 其他人已经想出了如何发送和接收两条信息，但四条意味着在更短的时间内发送两倍的信息。 他称其为四重结构。