Vote-Recorder
Edison was a 22- time-old telegraph driver when he entered his first patent for a machine he called the electrographic vote- archivist. He was one of several formulators at the time developing styles for legislative bodies, similar to the U.S. Congress, to record their votes in a further timely fashion than the time-recognized voice vote system.
In Edison’s vote-archivist, a voting device was connected to the clerk’s office. At the office, the names of the lawmakers were bedded in essence typed in two columns–” yes” and” no.” lawmakers would move a switch on the device to point to either” yes” or” no,” transferring an electric current to the device at the clerk’s office. After voting was completed, the clerk would place a chemically treated piece of paper on top of the essence type and run an essence comber over it. The current would beget the chemicals in the paper to dissolve on the side for which the vote should be recorded.” Yes” and” no” bus kept track of the vote summations and tabulated the results.
A friend of Edison’s, another telegraph driver named Dewitt Roberts, bought an interest in his machine for$ 100 and tried to vend it to Washington for no mileage. Congress wanted no part of any device that would increase the speed of voting– dwindling the time for filibusters and political wheeling and haggling– so youthful Edison’s vote-archivist was transferred to the political graveyard.
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