“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
