Dark Light by Linda Simon

“In April of 1862, news of the devastating Battle of Shiloh reached Detroit by telegraph, attracting huge crowds as soon as the casualty figures—some 60,000 killed and wounded—were posted on a chalkboard at the station. Edison had the idea that if such news were telegraphed ahead to smaller stations, the sale of newspapers would rise dramatically. He struck a deal with a Detroit telegrapher, who, in exchange for a few months’ subscription to some popular magazines, agreed to telegraph all the stations whatever news he received. Fifteen-year-old Tom then proceeded intrepidly to ask Wilbur Storey, managing editor of the Detroit Free Press, for a thousand papers on credit. perhaps because of Tom’s guileless audacity, Storey agreed. Tom and a friend lugged the papers to the train, folded them, and loaded them. At the first station, because the headlines already had been publicized by telegraph, Tom sold thirty-five papers instead of his usual two: ‘then I realized,’ he said later, ‘that the telegraph was a great invention.’ At the next stations, with even greater demand for papers, Tom decided he could raise the price from a nickel to ten cents, and then to twenty-five. He sold out his entire supply.”

-Linda Simon, 2004