PREFACE
1. Monetary conversions in this book were calculated at MeasuringWorth.com, a website founded by Laurence H. Officer and Samuel H. Williamson, economics professors at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Because of inflation, data gaps, and other economic variables, accurately calculating monetary values over long periods of time is difficult. The conversions in this book estimate the relative modern value of significant Edison income, cost, and price figures.
CHAPTER 3
1. Surviving records in Edison’s papers allow us to track design changes in Edison’s inventions, but they often do not explain why he made those changes or why he abandoned an idea.
CHAPTER 5
1. The cause of Mary Edison’s death remains a mystery. The death certificate did not specify a cause, and the few surviving documents relating to her health offer conflicting information. In his 1959 biography, Matthew Josephson attributed the death to typhoid fever. Robert Conot, the first biographer to make full use of the Edison archives in West Orange, claimed she died of a vague “mind-affecting disease” (Conot, A Streak of Luck, 1979). Conot also noted that this was a source of shame within the Edison family and that Edison told daughter Marion that her mother died from typhoid. Biographer Neil Baldwin (Edison: Inventing the Century, 1995) wrote that Mary succumbed to “congestion of the brain,” a generic late-nineteenth-century medical term that covered a variety of ailments. This is based on a telegram an Edison associate sent on the day of Mary’s death. Paul Israel (Edison: A Life of Invention, 1998) accurately states that the cause is unknown. In volume seven of The Papers of Thomas A. Edison, Losses and Loyalties, April 1883–December 1884 (2011), the editors reference a New York World article published shortly after the funeral, which claimed that “Mary died of an accidental overdose of medicinal morphine.” The editors note that Mary suffered from unspecified uterine problems and that morphine was a common treatment, but there is no evidence to verify this explanation of Mary’s death.
CHAPTER 13
1. Mike Wallace, “Progress Talk: Museums of Science, Technology and Industry,” in Mickey Mouse History and Other Essays on American Memory (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 78.
2. Among the works in this genre are Blain McCormick, At Work with Thomas Edison: 10 Business Lessons from America’s Greatest Inventor (Irvine, CA: Entrepreneur Press, 2001); Michael J. Gelb and Sarah Miller Caldicott, Innovate Like Edison: The Five-Step System for Breakthrough Business Success (New York: Penguin, 2007); Alan Axelrod, Edison on Innovation: 102 Lessons in Creativity for Business and Beyond (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2008); and Sarah Miller Caldicott, Midnight Lunch: The 4 Phases of Team Collaboration Success from Thomas Edison’s Lab (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2013).
3. Carroll Pursell, The Machine in America: A Social History of Technology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 223.