1 W. Ogden Wheeler, The Ogden Family in America, Elizabethtown Branch (Newark, N.J., 1907), p. 343.
2 Affidavit and Petition of John Edison before the Royal Commission, Digby, Nova Scotia, Dec. 8, 1776; photostat from Public Records Office, London, in Edison Laboratory National Monument Archives. (The Edison Laboratory Archives will be referred to hereinafter under the abbreviation ELA.)
3 Minutes of the Council of Safety of New Jersey, July 2, 1777. John Edison is reported as having been transferred from the New Ark to the Morristown Jail, and as having been brought before the Council for military trial on Jan. 12, 1778.
4 A. W. Savary, “Connections of the Family of Edison the Inventor with Digby, Nova Scotia,” New England Historical and Genealogical Record, vol. XLVII, 1894, p. 199.
5 William A. Simonds, Edison, His Life, His Work, His Genius (Indianapolis, 1934), p. 32.
6 “Mr. Edison’s Notes for W. H. Meadowcroft” (MS.), Book II; ELA. These are autobiographical notes dictated by Edison in 1908 for use in the authorized biography by F. L. Dyer, T. C. Martin and W. H. Meadowcroft; they are more complete than published quotations from them, and they are unedited.
In this passage, Thomas A. Edison speaks of visiting his grandfather (Captain Samuel Edison, then actually eighty-five years old). But his authorized biographers mistakenly name the grandfather as “John” Edison, who, in 1852, had been dead nearly forty years. This error, by which a whole generation of Edisons was omitted, including the mettlesome grandfather, Captain Samuel Edison, who fought against the United States in 1812, has been widely repeated in numerous accounts of Edison’s life up to recent times — when a correct genealogical study of the Edison line in Canada was compiled by W. A. Simonds, in his Edison, His Life, His Work, His Genius (Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, 1934).
7 Simonds, op. cit., p. 35.
8 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York, 1899), vol. II, p. 46.
9 Ibid., p. 52.
10 James G. Crowther, Famous American Men of Science (New York, 1938), p. 309.
11 Dirk L. Struik, The Origins of American Science (2nd ed., New York, 1957), p. 37.
12 Joseph Rossman, The Psychology of the Inventor (Washington, 1929), p. 28.
13 F. L. Dyer, T. C. Martin and W. H. Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life and Inventions (New York, 1929), vol. I, pp. 18-19.
14 New York Herald Tribune, Edison obituary, Oct. 19, 1931.
15 C. F. Ballantine, “The True Story of Edison’s Childhood,” Michigan Historical Collection, vol. IV, 1926, pp. 168-92.
16 J. B. McClure, Thomas A. Edison and His Inventions (Chicago, 1879), p. 35.
17 Simonds, Edison, His Life, Work, Genius, p. 38.
18 Marion Edison Wheeler, “Edison’s Boyhood,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, May 15, 1955.
19 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, p. 9.
20 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 18.
21 William K. L. and Laura Dickson, The Life and Inventions of Thomas A. Edison (London, 1894), pp. 6-7.
22 Ballantine, op. cit., p. 180.
23 New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 19, 1931.
24 Thomas A. Edison, The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas A. Edison, ed. Dagobert D. Runes (New York, 1948), pp. 112-13.
25 G. B. Engles to T. A. Edison, Aug. 13, 1885; ELA.
26 McClure, op. cit., p. 35.
27 J. F. Talbot, in the Port Huron, Mich., Commercial (undated); ELA.
28 When he was about nineteen, he wrote letters without punctuation or sentences, such as the following (probably in 1866) from Memphis, Tennessee:
Dear Mother —
Started the Store several weeks I have growed considerably I dont look much like a Boy now — Hows all the folks did you receive a Box of Books from Memphis that he promised to send them — languages [sic].
Your son
Al
29 New York Herald Tribune, Oct. 19, 1931.
30 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, p. 8.
31 T. A. Edison, Introduction to the Collected Works of Thomas Paine (New York, 1925).
32 Dickson, op. cit., p. 36; citing the statements of Samuel Edison.
33 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, pp. 7-8.
34 Mrs. Marion Edison Oser to author, Oct. 15, 1956.
35 R. L. Thompson, Wiring a Continent (Princeton, N.J., 1952), p. 25.
36 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, p. 9.
37 Ibid., Book I, p. 6.
38 Dickson, op. cit., p. 5.
39 McClure, op. cit., p. 37.
40 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, pp. 4-5; Charles Edison to author.
41 New York World, Feb. 11, 1921 (interview with Edison).
42 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, pp. 14-15.
43 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 37.
44 Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther, Edison as I Knew Him (New York, 1930), p. 24.
45 In 1881, Alexander Stevenson wrote the inventor from Port Huron: “I often think laughingly of the long, and I must say pleasant times we had on the Grand Trunk Railway, thinking over the Printing Press and laboratory... and of how near we were of being blown up by the aforesaid laboratory.” (Edison Laboratory Collection, 1881 File.)
That Edison may have been cuffed about or pulled by the ears, by Stevenson or others, in view of the rough sort of life he led, is possible. This may, conceivably, have “finished it” for him. But medical opinion concerning the “snapping” he heard inside his head, sometimes placed in the autumn of 1859 or the early winter of 1860, attributes this to the breaking of ligaments connecting the external ear to the skull. That would not, of itself, have caused deafness, as the ligaments are not connected with the auditory canal leading to the middle ear. But if his middle ear were already punctured, perhaps as a result of the scarlatina that had kept him out of school a few years earlier, then a sharp blow might have caused congestion or heightened an existing infection in his middle ear.
46 Edison, Diary, p. 47.
47 The small printing press usually mentioned as having also been thrown out, was not acquired by Edison, as we know definitely, until 1862.
48 Ibid., p. 48.
49 Membership card of Edison in the Henry Ford Museum Library, Dearborn.
50 Edison, Diary, p. 45.
51 Andrew Ure, Arts, Manufactures, and Mines (London, 1856), vol. II, pp. 489-90.
52 G. P. Lathrop, “Talks with Edison,” Harper’s Magazine, February, 1890, p. 426.
53 Ibid., p. 424.
54 James Clancy, of Port Huron (undated letter); ELA.
55 The Weekly Herald, Feb. 3, 1862; copy in Henry Ford Museum Library.
56 McClure, Edison and His Inventions, p. 48.
57 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book I, p. 12.
58 Ibid., p. 23.
59 Walter P. Phillips, Sketches Old and New (Boston, 1897), p. 65.
60 Ibid., p. 66.
61 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book I, p. 20.
62 Ibid., p. 21.
63 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life and Inventions, vol. I, p. 92.
64 Dickson, Life and Inventions of Edison, p. 34.
65 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book I, p. 18.
66 Ibid., p. 22.
67 Jot Spencer to T. A. Edison, Apr. 6, 1878; ELA.
68 Simonds, Edison, His Life, Work, Genius, p. 59.
69 Lathrop, “Talks with Edison,” Harper’s Magazine, February, 1890, p. 423.
70 Ibid.
71 Simonds, op. cit., p. 60. A copy of George Tucker’s Thomas Jefferson, autographed by Edison, “Memphis, March 11, 1866,” fixes the time of the inventor’s stay in that city; the volume is in the possession of Mrs. Carrie Edison Morse, Detroit, Mich.
72 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 83.
73 Ibid., pp. 80, 92. A telegraph relay is essentially a receiving instrument containing an electromagnet sensitive to weak line currents. Its armature, in responding to electrical impulses, or signals, coming from a distance, acts as an intermediate transmitter key, alternately closing and opening a separate local circuit in which there is a sounder and powerful battery. As the relay was able to repeat loudly the original signals, it served to extend a telegraph circuit beyond the limits of its own battery power.
74 Dickson, op. cit., p. 33.
75 Lathrop, op. cit., p. 425.
76 McClure, op. cit., p. 51.
77 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book I, p. 20.
78 C. Temple, “Edison in Louisville,” Louisville Courier, Feb. 4, 1947.
79 Edison letter, headed “Memphis” (undated, but probably written in 1866); in Henry Ford Museum Library.
80 Simonds, op. cit., p. 63.
81 James Symington, of Port Huron, to Edison, May 18, 1877; ELA.
82 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book I, pp. 20-21.
83 Dickson, Life and Inventions of Edison, p. 40.
84 Ibid., p. 41.
85 Phillips, Sketches Old and New, p. 178.
86 Memorandum of G. P. Lowrey, in Henry Villard’s unpublished notes on Edison; Villard Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
87 Dickson, op. cit., pp. 49-50.
88 Journal of the Telegraph (Boston), June 14, 1868; also Dec. 12, 1868.
89 Phillips, op. cit., pp. 179-80.
90 The Telegrapher (New York), Jan. 30, 1869.
91 Jeremy Bentham’s maxims, cited in Sir James A. Salter, Modern Mechanization and Society (London, 1933), p. 22.
92 Lathrop, “Talks with Edison,” Harper’s Magazine, February, 1890, p. 426.
93 Francis Jehl, Reminiscences of Menlo Park (Dearborn, 1937), vol. I, p. 8.
94 Described in general terms, the duplexing of telegraphic messages through the Stearns apparatus was accomplished by varying the strength of the current, the main feature of this system being the use of the differential, or neutral, relay. Eventually, after several years, Edison was to add a new and wholly different method of duplexing. We shall return to his work in this field below, in Chapter 6, where he will be seen to have reached an advanced phase in the investigation of this problem.
95 Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company v. G. B. Prescott, T. A. Edison, Western Union, et al.; an appeal before the Secretary of the Interior, Mar. 20, 1875; with reply by Western Union Telegraph Co.
96 The Telegrapher (New York), Apr. 17, 1869.
97 J. B. McClure’s Edison and His Inventions (1879) was the first of several biographies giving wholly misleading accounts of how the “ragged” Edison suddenly appeared in the financial district of New York at the time of the Black Friday Panic, on September 24, 1869, and, miraculously enough, “saved” Wall Street!
98 Edison to J. Hanaford, June 10, 1869; ELA.
99 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book I, pp. 32-33.
100 Ibid., Book II, pp. 1-2.
101 Ibid., Book II, p. 4.
102 Ibid., Book I, p. 34.
103 Undated autograph letter of Edison, probably of May, 1870; Henry Ford Museum Library, Dearborn.
104 Phillips, Sketches Old and New, p. 185.
105 Although other records of transactions with Western Union are in evidence, none of this one has been found. From the contents of a (preliminary) letter-agreement in Lefferts’s hand, as if to be signed by Edison, dated October 19, 1870, it seems that the inventor was to receive $30,000, not $40,000, so that he may have remembered incorrectly; part of the consideration was his binding himself to reserve all future inventions in the form of stock tickers for the Gold & Stock company. (Edison to M. Lefferts, ms., October 19, 1870, Edison Laboratory Archives.)
106 McClure, Edison and His Inventions, p. 48.
107 Dickson, Life and Inventions of Edison, p. 67.
108 A Port Huron neighbor wrote to Edison May 18, 1878: “I remember when I used to come about your father’s house, when you were a boy, when your mother was well, before disease had destroyed her mind.” (Edison Laboratory Archives, 1878, “Personal.”)
109 Autograph letter of Edison in winter of 1871; Henry Ford Museum Library.
110 A. E. Harlow, Old Wires and New Waves (New York, 1936), pp. 333-34.
111 Dickson, op. cit., p. 68.
112 Mary C. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian (New York, 1934), p. 53.
113 Dickson, op. cit., p. 47.
114 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book I, p. 40.
115 Dickson, op. cit., pp. 88-89.
116 Edison’s Laboratory Notebooks, 1871, No. 1678; ELA.
117 Ibid., Feb. 2, 1872, No. 1776; ELA.
118 Jehl, Reminiscences, vol. I, p. 51.
119 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life and Inventions, vol. I, p. 146.
120 McClure, Edison and His Inventions, pp. 17-18.
121 Edison Laboratory Notebooks, Sept. 15, 1872; ELA.
122 Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Co. v. Prescott et al., Mar. 20, 1875.
123 Edison and Western Union, brochure published by the Western Union Telegraph Co. (New York, 1931).
124 Dickson, op. cit., p. 52.
125 Ibid., p. 88.
126 McClure, op. cit., p. 68.
127 New York Sun, Oct. 19, 1931.
128 McClure, op. cit., p. 68.
129 Edison, Diary, p. 54.
130 Marion Edison Oser, “Early Recollections” (voice-written), March, 1956.
131 Dickson, op. cit., p. 71.
132 Phillips, Sketches Old and New, p. 186.
133 Marion Edison Oser to author (interview), Oct. 15, 1956.
134 T. A. Edison to Samuel Edison, Jan. 29, 1877; Henry Ford Museum Library.
135 Edison Laboratory Notebooks, Feb. 14, 1872; ELA.
136 Three years later, Lord Kelvin, visiting America for the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876, first inspected a model of Edison’s automatic telegraph and gave it exhaustive tests. In his reports to the Exposition’s jury, he recommended Edison’s instrument for an award “as a very important step in land telegraphy. The electromagnetic shunt with soft iron core, invented by Mr. Edison, using Professor [Joseph] Henry’s discovery of electromagnetic induction in a single circuit to produce a momentary reversal of the live current when the battery is thrown off... is the electrical secret of the great speed he has achieved.” He also remarked on the originality of Edison’s solutions in handling other problems in automatic telegraphy, by means of his improved perforator, contact maker, and special chemical solution of ferrocyanide of iron.
137 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book I, p. 43.
138 J. D. Reid, The Telegraph in America (New York, 1877), pp. 588-89.
139 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, p. 13.
140 Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Co. v. G. B. Prescott, T. A. Edison, Western Union, et al., New York Superior Court, 1875; testimony of J. T. Murray, p. 51.
141 Jehl, Reminiscences, vol. I, p. 10; also U.S. Patent No. 180,857, “Autographic Printing,” executed Mar. 7, 1876.
142 Thompson, Wiring a Continent, pp. 446-47.
143 A. E. Harlow, Old Wires and New Waves, pp. 368-69.
144 Atlantic & Pacific v. Prescott; W. Orton’s testimony, pp. 107ff.
145 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, p. 12.
146 Atlantic & Pacific v. Prescott; Exhibit No. 11, for the defense.
147 Ibid., Exhibit No. 15, for the defense.
148 Dickson, Life and Inventions of Edison, p. 87.
149 Matthew Josephson, The Robber Barons (New York, 1934), pp. 83, 205.
150 Edison to G. P. Prescott, May 19, 1874; ELA.
151 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, p. 12.
152 Phillips, Sketches Old and New, p. 183.
153 Ibid., p. 185.
154 Atlantic & Pacific v. Prescott, p. 34.
155 Harlow, op. cit., p. 363.
156 Atlantic & Pacific v. Prescott; cross-examination of J. G. Reiff, pp. 45ff.
157 Jay Gould to T. A. Edison, Jan. 20, 1877; ELA.
158 Atlantic & Pacific v. Prescott; cross-examination of J. G. Reiff, pp. 47-48; brief of E. N. Dickerson for plaintiff, pp. 72-73.
159 Jehl, op. cit., vol. I, p. 68.
160 G. H. Sandison, “The Real Edison,” reminiscences of a former telegrapher of the A. & P. system, Columbian Magazine, vol. III, 1911.
161 In recalling the incidents of the “telegraph war” for his authorized biographers, F. L. Dyer, T. C. Martin, and W. H. Meadowcroft, authors of Edison, His Life and Inventions (1910, and 1929), Edison gave them an entirely misleading account of the affair; in that account the roles of the different actors were completely reversed. In reminiscences of events dating back forty years he indicated that the “respectable” Western Union people were “saved” from the unscrupulous Jay Gould by means of the invention of the chalk-drum relay. As we have noticed he was actually estranged from the Western Union management for almost a full year in 1874-1875 and derived his income principally from Gould and his subordinates.
Nevertheless the incorrect account of this affair has been widely repeated in almost all existing books on Edison, as in G. S. Bryan’s Edison, The Man and His Work, where it is remarked in conclusion: “The spectacle of unscrupulous force confounded by applied science is not displeasing” (p. 78).
In the 1880’s, when these incidents were still fresh in his mind, Edison told W. K. L. Dickson: “during the controversy between competitive telegraph companies one of the companies owned the Page patent,” which controlled the use of a magnet acting as a relay. The other company “was therefore compelled to purchase the ‘motograph’ patent from me.” He did not say then which of the companies it was. Evidently he did not care to admit at the time that it was the piratical Jay Gould whom he had rescued — Gould, who later swindled Edison. The narration of his transactions with Western Union and Jay Gould has been completely reconstituted here in accordance with the sworn testimony recorded in Atlantic & Pacific v. Prescott, Western Union, and Serrell, New York Superior Court, 1877.
162 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, pp. 13-14.
163 T. A. Edison to Samuel Edison, Nov. 8, 1877; Henry Ford Museum Library.
164 Atlantic & Pacific v. Prescott; Exhibit No. 12, for the defense, Dec. 10, 1874.
165 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, pp. 13-14.
166 Ibid., Book II, p. 14.
167 Petition of Western Union to the Secretary of the Interior, Mar. 20, 1875.
168 Telegraphic Journal (London), Sept. 1, 1874.
169 Theodore M. Edison to author.
170 U.S. Patent No. 480,567, “Duplex Telegraphs,” executed Aug. 19, 1874.
171 William Maver, Jr., in the Encyclopedia of the Telegraph (1884) elaborates: “For example... during the making of a simple dash of the Morse alphabet by the neutral relay at the home station, the distant pole-changer may reverse its battery several times; the home pole-changer may do likewise; and the home transmitter may increase and decrease the electromotive force of the home battery repeatedly. Simultaneously... and as a consequence of the foregoing actions, the home neutral relay itself may have its magnetism reversed several times, and the signal, that is the dash, will have been made partly by the home battery, partly by the mainline current, partly by the distant and home battery combined, partly by the ‘artificial line’ current, partly by the mainline static current, partly by the condenser static current; and yet, on a well-adjusted circuit, the dash will have been produced on the quadruplex sounder as clearly as any dash on an ordinary single-wire sounder.”
172 T. A. Edison to Jay Gould; draft of a letter of 1877; ELA.
173 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, pp. 18-19.
174 Edison Laboratory Notebooks, Dec. 11, 1875.
175 Ibid., Dec. 12, 1875 (entry on “Etheric Force”).
176 New York Herald, Dec. 2, 1875.
177 E. J. Houston, “Etheric Force of Edison,” Scientific American, vol. XXXIV (1876), Supplement No. 5.
178 Sir J. Ambrose Fleming, Fifty Years of Electricity (London, 1924).
179 G. M. Shaw, “Sketch of Edison,” Popular Science Monthly, August, 1878, pp. 489-90.
180 L. Stieringer, The Life and Inventions of Thomas Edison (Burgoyne, 1890), p. 37.
181 Edison to Frank Royce, “Menlo Park, June, 1876,” Henry Ford Museum Library.
182 Jehl, Reminiscences, vol. I, p. 226.
183 Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, p. 64.
184 Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, Cybernetics and Society (2d ed., revised, New York, 1954), p. 115.
185 R. C. McLaurin, “Edison’s Services to Science,” Science, June 14, 1915, p. 813.
186 Werner Sombart, Die Entstehung der Moderne Kapitalismus (Tübingen, 1924), vol. III, pp. 74ff.
187 Crowther, Famous American Men of Science, p. 363.
188 American Bell Telephone Company v. P. A. Dowd and American Speaking Telegraph Co.; U.S. Circuit Court, District of Massachusetts, 1878; Testimony of T. A. Edison; vol. III, pp. 105ff.
189 Marion Edison Oser to author, October 15, 1956.
190 Bell’s patent won priority by a hairs-breadth, though under peculiar circumstances that somewhat clouded his glory as an inventor. In the famous patent suit over the rival claims of Bell and Elisha Gray, it was alleged that the order of priority as between Gray’s caveat and Bell’s patent application may have been rearranged by a dishonest Patent Office employee.
191 In discussing inventions and the working of the patent laws, Mr. Justice Louis D. Brandeis remarked in 1912: “The great organizations are constantly unprogressive. They will not take on the big thing. Take the gas companies, they would not touch the electric light. Take the telegraph companies, the Western Union, they would not touch the telephone.” And neither telegraph nor telephone companies later cared for radio.
192 Dyer, Martin, and Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life, vol. I, p. 179.
193 Edison to Samuel Edison (undated) ; Henry Ford Museum Library.
194 Edison to P. A. Dowd, May 14, 1877; Henry Ford Museum Library.
195 Shaw, op. cit., p. 490.
196 Laboratory Notebooks, 1877; “Telephone.”
197 Shaw, op. cit., p. 490.
198 Edison to T. B. David (dated only “1878”); letter in possession of S. P. Grace, of Bell Laboratories, New York.
199 J. E. Kingsbury, “Edison’s Carbon Transmitter” (MS.); Library of Western Electric Co., New York.
200 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, vol. II (Appendix), p. 875.
201 Elisha Gray, who had sincerely believed in the priority of his own inventive work, withdrew his charges and signed an admission of Bell’s priority, receiving a consolation payment of $100,000. Testimony given in court had accused a U.S. Patent Office examiner of irregularity of conduct, through having possibly placed Bell’s application ahead of Gray’s caveat — though there was no indication that Bell had knowledge of such action, if it occurred. A sensitive man, Bell was made so unhappy by these events that the whole subject of the telephone became distasteful to him, and he did little inventive work thereafter.
202 Simonds, Edison, His Life, p. 118.
203 A. W. Robertson, Story of the Telephone in England (London, 1947), pp. 11-12.
204 In January 1878, on receiving the first news of Edison’s invention of the phonograph, Gouraud undertook to promote it in England and raised capital for its commercial exploitation. An account of this concurrent invention will be found in the following chapter.
205 Lathrop, “Talks with Edison,” Harper’s Magazine, February, 1890, p. 437.
206 Jehl, op. cit., vol. I, p. 175 (citing a letter of Samuel Insull).
207 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, p. 44. In its later form, in 1879, a chalk drum, mounted on an axis and covered by a band of paper soaked in a solution of caustic potash, was turned under a spring, the end of which was in contact. The spring was attached to the center of the diaphragm, so that when the drum was turned, friction between the spring and the paper deflected the diaphragm. The current from the line passed through the spring and paper to the cylinder, causing friction to be diminished. As the undulating telephonic current passed through the apparatus, the constant variation of the friction of the spring caused the deflection of the receiving diaphragm to vary in unison with variations of the electrical current, so that sounds were given out corresponding in pitch and quality with the sounds produced at the distant transmitting station. (U.S. Patent No. 221,957; executed March 24, 1879)
208 George Gouraud to Edison, January 15, 1879; ELA.
209 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, pp. 44ff.
210 Jehl, op. cit., vol. I, p. 278.
211 Samuel Insull’s Autobiography (unpublished), p. 20; quoted by permission of Samuel Insull, Jr.
212 George Bernard Shaw, The Irrational Knot (New York, 1905), Preface, ix-xi.
213 E. H. Johnson to Edison, December 2, 1879; ELA.
214 Edison to E. H. Johnson, December 7, 1879; ELA.
215 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, pp. 25-26.
216 Lathrop, op. cit., p. 437.
217 Lathrop, “Talks with Edison,” Harper’s Magazine, February, 1890, p. 427.
218 Ibid.
219 Jehl, Reminiscences, vol. I, p. 181.
220 Laboratory Notebooks, “Telegraphic Repeater,” 1877; ELA.
221 E. H. Johnson to Edison, July 17, 1877; ELA.
222 Lathrop, op. cit., p. 428.
223 Laboratory Notebooks, “Telephone,” July 18, 1877; ELA.
224 E. H. Johnson, article in Electrical World, February 22, 1890.
225 General Ben Butler to Edison, October 23, 1877; ELA.
226 Laboratory Notebooks, “Phonograph,” 1877; File A 54-13; also, “The Invention of the Phonograph” (MS.), by Norman R. Speiden, May 5, 1949 (a study of the order of events in the invention of the phonograph, based on Edison’s laboratory notes and sketches); copy in ELA.
227 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, p. 19.
228 Much confusion as to the date of this invention is reflected in all earlier accounts of it. A reproduction of a drawing by Edison of an alleged first model of his phonograph, with instructions written in his hand, saying: “Kruesi, Make this — Edison, Aug. 12. ‘77,” has often been wrongly cited as representing the date of invention and original model. However, this sketch is now known to have been drawn by the inventor some time after the event, from memory — and without date or any written instructions. This sketch, with its wrong date (“Aug. 12, ‘77”), does not furnish the mechanical information from which Kruesi could have made the first working model of the tin-foil phonograph. The recent discovery of Charles Batchelor’s diary for 1877 and 1878, which has been deposited by his daughter in the Edison Laboratory National Monument, establishes the exact date of the phonograph invention beyond all doubt as December 6, 1877.
229 Norman R. Speiden, op. cit.
230 Leslie’s Weekly, April 2, 1878.
231 R. C. McLaurin, “Edison’s Service to Science,” Science, June 4, 1915.
232 Leslie’s Weekly, April 2, 1878.
233 Scientific American, Supplement, December, 1878.
234 Nature (London), March 20, 1879.
235 McClure, Edison and His Inventions, p. 720.
236 New York Tribune, August 31, 1879.
237 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life and Inventions, vol. I, p. 211.
238 Scientific American, June 12, 1878.
239 W. H. Bishop, “A Night with Edison,” Scribner’s Magazine, August, 1878.
240 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book II, p. 20.
241 “An Afternoon with Edison,” New York Daily Graphic, April 2, 1878.
242 Bishop, op. cit.
243 Dickson, Life and Inventions of Edison, p. 101.
244 New York Daily Graphic, April 2, 1878.
245 Thomas A. Edison, “The Phonograph and Its Future,” North American Review, June, 1878.
246 Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph (Philadelphia, 1954), pp. 30-31.
247 Philadelphia Record, February 12, 1880.
248 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, Book I, pp. 1-3.
249 Ibid., p. 5.
250 Edison’s Memorandum, “Beginning of the Incandescent Lamp” (MS.), 1926; ELA.
251 Telegraphic Journal (London), June 1, 1878.
252 Letter of Benjamin Silliman, Jr., in St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 27, 1878.
253 New York Sun, September 10, 1878; and Electrical Engineering, February 1, 1893.
254 Edison’s Memorandum, “Beginning of the Incandescent Lamp,” 1926; ELA.
255 New York Sun, October 25, 1878.
256 Edison to Theodore Puskas (cablegram), September 22, 1878; ELA.
257 New York Tribune, September 28, 1878.
258 Laboratory Notebooks, No. 184, “Electricity vs. Gas,” 1878; ELA.
259 Harold C. Passer, The Electrical Manufacturers: 1875-1900 (Cambridge, 1953), p. 80.
260 Edison’s Memorandum, “Beginning of the Incandescent Lamp,” 1926; ELA.
261 J. W. Howell and Henry Schroeder, History of the Incandescent Lamp (Schenectady, 1927), p. 48.
262 Grosvenor P. Lowrey to H. M. Twombly, October 1, 1878; ELA.
263 New York Sun, September 16, 1878.
264 New York Tribune, September 28, 1878.
265 New York Sun, October 20, 1878.
266 Engineering (London), October 25, 1878.
267 F. R. Upton speech before Edison Pioneers, February 11, 1918; copy in ELA.
268 Edison to S. L. Griffin, November 14, 1878; ELA.
269 G. P. Lowrey to Edison, October 1, 1878; ELA.
270 Edison to G. P. Lowrey, October 2, 1878; ELA.
271 G. P. Lowrey to Edison, October 2, 1878; ELA.
272 The articles of incorporation on November 15, 1878, stated: “The objects for which the said company is formed are to own, manufacture, operate and license the use of various apparatus used in producing light, heat and power by electricity.” (Photostat in Edison Laboratory Archives.)
273 Edison to Theodore Puskas, November 18, 1878; ELA.
274 The Medicis of Florence subsidized engineers like Leonardo da Vinci, and later a scientist like Galileo, for the purpose of devising new military engines. In England and Europe, from the eighteenth century on, manufacturing capitalists sometimes helped inventors to devise or improve upon diverse machines. On the other hand Samuel F. B. Morse was unable to gain the support of American capitalists and was only enabled to develop his telegraph and demonstrate it effectively, in 1844, through the grant of $8,000 by Congress. The support of the Morgan-Vanderbilt syndicate of a research program for Edison’s laboratory — though small in scale — appears unique and marks a new stage in the relations of capital to technology.
275 H. Stafford Hatfield, The Inventor and His World (New York, 1933), p. 67.
276 New York Tribune, November 15, 1878; interview with Lowrey.
277 New York Commercial-Advertiser, November 25, 1878.
278 S. L. Griffin to G. P. Lowrey, November 1, 1878; ELA.
279 Jehl, Reminiscences, vol. I, pp. 256-57.
280 F. R. Upton, Memorandum, 1909 (MS.), pp. 2-3; ELA.
281 Howell and Schroeder, op. cit., pp. 53-54. The relationship between electromotive force, resistance, and current, discovered by the German physicist Georg Simon Ohm, goes as follows: The intensity of the electric current flowing in a conductor equals the electromotive force divided by the resistance. In electrical terms of today, it would read: The amperes in a circuit equal the voltage across it divided by the circuit’s resistance in ohms.
282 Engineering (London), February 1, 1879.
283 Ibid., October 25, 1878; article by Silvanus Thompson. Sir William H. Preece, reasoning in the same manner, said in the course of a lecture before the Royal Institution in London (February 15, 1879): “It is, however, easily shown... that in a circuit where the electromotive force is constant, and we insert additional lamps, then when these lamps are joined in one circuit, i.e., in series, the light varies inversely as the square of the number of the lamps in circuit, and that joined up in multiple arc, the light diminishes as the cube of the number inserted. Hence a subdivision of the electric light is an absolute ignis fatuus.”
284 T. C. Martin, Forty Years of Edison Service (New York, 1922), pp. 3-4.
285 Passer, op. cit., p. 83.
286 An example of his original deductions is seen in the Laboratory Notebooks for December, 1878:
If you have 100 lamps each of one-inch radiating surface and each of a resistance of one ohm, all connected in series, and to a battery which will keep them incandescent, then you can make 100 lamps of 100, 1,000, or 10,000 ohms resistance, arranging them (in multiple) so the combined resistance of the whole equals that of the 100 one-ohm lamps in series, and the result will be the same. But for general lighting the high-resistance lamp will be the best, not because it is more economical, but because it is impracticable to work in series, and all lamps given to customers must be in multiple arc. (Edison Laboratory Notebooks, Dec. 15, 1878, Subdivision, Edison Laboratory Archives.)
287 Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, p. 63; quoting an interview with John Ott.
288 Edison to T. Puskas, November 18, 1878; ELA.
289 A. W. Churchill, “Edison’s Early Work,” Scientific American Supp., April 1, 1905.
290 Edison Memorandum, “Beginning of the Incandescent Light,” p. 6; ELA.
291 Laboratory Notebooks, “Electric Light,” February 8, 1879; ELA.
292 Edison’s Memorandum of 1926, p. 6; ELA.
293 New York Herald, April 27, 1879.
294 G. P. Lowrey to Edison, April 14, 1879; ELA.
295 Edison to T. Puskas, June 3, 1879; ELA.
296 G. P. Lowrey to Edison, January 2, 1879; ELA.
297 Jehl, Reminiscences, vol. I, pp. 246-47.
298 F. Jehl, Memorandum to W. H. Meadowcroft, 1908, describing visit of the E.E.L.C. directors; ELA.
299 New York Times, Edison obituary, October 19, 1931.
300 New York Herald, April 27, 1879.
301 New York Tribune, January 2, 1880; New York Herald, January 3, 1880.
302 Edison, Diary, p. 43.
303 F. Jehl, Memorandum to W. H. Meadowcroft, 1908; ELA.
304 A. W. Churchill, Scientific American Supp., April 1, 1905.
305 Journal of Gaslighting (London), February 18, 1879.
306 New York Tribune, January 2, 1880.
307 F. R. Upton, speech before Edison Pioneers, February 11, 1918; copy in ELA.
308 Lathrop, “Talks with Edison,” Harper’s Magazine, February, 1890, p. 492.
309 Engineering News, December 25, 1880.
310 Scientific American, October 18, 1879.
311 Edison to T. Puskas, January 28, 1879; ELA.
312 Upton, op. cit.
313 F. Jehl, Memorandum to W. H. Meadowcroft, 1908; also Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life, vol. I, p. 292.
314 Jehl, Reminiscences, vol. I, pp. 295, 310.
315 Analyzing this old machine many years later, Edison’s chief engineer, C. L. Clarke, while doing homage to “Mary Ann,” recalls that the brush holders and rocker arms of the armature were “excessively crude”; that faults in armature construction still created fairly high resistance and resultant heat, which was prevented from escaping, so that current capacity was still greatly limited. Most of these faults of design were corrected during the two or three years of experimental trials that followed.
316 George Weston (letter), in Scientific American, November 1, 1879.
317 Laboratory Notebooks, December 23, 1879; Edison’s Memorandum, 1926, p. 7; ELA.
318 Laboratory Notebooks, “Electric Light,” No. 0731, October 21, 1879; ELA.
319 New York Herald, January 3, 1880.
320 E. M. Fox, quoted in “Edison’s Light” (special supplement), New York Herald, December 21, 1879.
321 Howell and Schroeder, History of the Incandescent Lamp, p. 55.
322 Ibid., p. 56.
323 J. G. Crowther, Famous American Men of Science, pp. 387-88.
324 Jehl, op. cit., vol. I, p. 304.
325 Laboratory Notebooks, “Electric Light,” No. 79,073, 1879; ELA.
326 Upton, op. cit.
327 Henry Ford, the friend of Edison’s old age, was most envious on hearing of the inventor’s “inspirational” methods with his workers, but try as he would, Ford could never create a similar worker interest in the very different and impersonal environment of his assembly-line factories.
328 M. A. Rosanoff, “Edison in His Laboratory,” Harper’s Magazine, September, 1932, p. 409.
329 New York Herald, December 31, 1879.
330 A. O. Tate, Edison’s Open Door (New York, 1938), pp. 108-9.
331 Jehl, Reminiscences, vol. II, p. 530.
332 C. L. Clarke, in “Edisonia,” Early History of the Edison Electric Light (New York, 1904), p. 86.
333 New York Herald, December 21, 1879.
334 Francis A. Jones, Life Story of Thomas A. Edison (New York, 1907), p. 106.
335 Laboratory Notebooks, “Electric Light,” No. 0731, p. 107; ELA.
336 “Edison’s Light” (supplement), New York Herald, December 21, 1879.
337 New York Tribune, January 2, 1880.
338 Professor Abbot P. Usher, in his History of Mechanical Invention (1954), analyzing the mental processes of so-called inventive genius, likens Edison’s return to experiment with carbon to James Watt’s sudden solution of the problem of Newcomen’s steam engine, during a Sunday afternoon walk when he improvised the condenser in his mind. Both were “acts of insight” resulting in an imaginative construction that answered the needs of a previously “unsatisfactory” condition, or problem, the formerly impractical incandescent light as well as the impractical steam engine.
A better clue to Edison’s particular process of thought, however, is afforded us by his impulsive, almost boastful, statement in a newspaper interview, given at a very early stage of his experiments: “Now that I have a machine to make the electricity [generator], I can experiment as much as I please. I think... there is where I can beat the other inventors, as I have so many facilities here for trying experiments.” (New York Tribune, September 28, 1878.) His experimental research was far more thoroughgoing than his competitors’, including even Swan. The decisive “flash of insight” may have been the decision to reduce his burner to a hairlike, filamentary cross section.
339 S. L. Griffin to W. A. Bailey, December 3, 1879; ELA.
340 G. P. Lowrey to Edison, November 13, 1879; ELA.
341 New York Herald, January 2, 1880.
342 New York Tribune, January 2, 1880.
343 T. C. Martin, Forty Years of Edison Service, pp. 21-22.
344 New York Tribune, January 18, 1880.
345 Laboratory Notebooks, 1878, No. 4184, “Electricity versus Gas”; ELA.
346 D. O. Woodbury, Beloved Scientist: Elihu Thomson (New York, 1944), pp. 108-9.
347 Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, pp. 86-87.
348 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life and Inventions, vol. II, Appendix, p. 914.
349 Under previous transmission methods, resistance in the conducting mains produced waste heat, progressively lowering the voltage available for lights at the distant end of an ordinary parallel circuit. By the feeder-and-main arrangement, “feeder” wires transmitted current from the dynamo to short sections of main placed at points of dense light distribution (as at a given city block). A drop in voltage, say from 120 to 110 V., took place only in the feeder wire, while voltage in the main conductor sections, for local distributing circuits, was maintained at nearly constant voltage (for the lamps). Thus great economies in the amount of copper conductor were achieved; while the formerly serious drop of voltage from lamp to lamp was reduced to no more than two or three out of 110 volts at the more distant outlets. (J. W. Howell and Henry Schroeder, History of the Incandescent Lamp, Philadelphia, 1941, pp. 70-72.) The feeder-and-main network cut down copper-wire cost per lamp by about 85 per cent, or from $200,000 to $30,000 for 8,640 lamps in an area of nine city blocks.
350 The three-wire system, which soon came to be used on all electric light circuits (U.S. Patent No. 274,290, applied for on Nov. 27, 1882), consists of two 110-volt dynamos connected in series to give a potential in the main circuit of 220 volts. Two wires are connected to the outside wires of the dynamos, while the third or “neutral” wire is connected to the connection between the two dynamos. Thus the “neutral” wire serves as the outgoing conductor of one dynamo and the return conductor of the other. Two standard 110-volt lamps may be used on each individual lamp circuit. If a lamp on one side of the system, let us say the positive, is extinguished, the third wire compensates by serving as positive for the excess lamp on the other, or negative, side of the circuit. The same holds true when a lamp is turned off on the negative side, since the third wire acts as negative for the lamp in excess on the positive side. And thus perfect balance is preserved no matter where lights are turned on or off. In representing the parallel circuit we have earlier used the analogue of the “ladder,” with its two “legs” as positive and negative conductors, and single lamps, operating independently, connected with the “rungs” between the “legs.” Now the reader need only imagine two lamps connected on each “rung,” which is bisected by a third “leg,” the neutral wire, running between those two lamps. Actual use of the three-wire system became far more elaborate in practice.
Edison’s first plans for a three-wire distributing system were worked out by rough calculations, with the help of his engineering aide, William S. Andrews. At almost the same time the British engineer and mathematician Dr. John Hopkinson worked out the same scheme, which he translated into precise formulas. Hopkinson, who was employed as a consultant by the Edison Electric Light Company, Ltd., of England, appears as joint patent owner (in England), with Edison, of the three-wire invention. This brilliant technician also redesigned and improved the Edison dynamo. (J. A. Fleming, Fifty Years of Electricity, p. 226.)
351 New York Times, October 19, 1931.
352 Edison’s Memorandum of 1926, p. 10; ELA.
353 Dickson, Life and Inventions of Edison, pp. 198ff.
354 New York Sun, May 2, 1889.
355 G. P. Lowrey to Mrs. G. P. Lowrey, April 20, 1880; copy in ELA.
356 Scientific American, May 22, 1880.
357 Ibid., August 21, 1880.
358 Jehl, Reminiscences, vol. II, p. 504.
359 G. P. Lowrey to Mrs. Lowrey, June 5, 1880; ELA.
360 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 459.
361 Frank Julian Sprague, “The Electric Railway,” Century Magazine, July, 1905.
362 H. C. Passer, The Electrical Manufacturers, pp. 218ff.
363 T. C. Martin, “Edison’s Pioneer Work in the Electric Railway,” Scientific American, November 18, 1911.
364 Electric World, August 4, 1884.
365 New York Mirror, December 21, 1878.
366 “Edisonia,” p. 33.
367 New York Herald, November 18, 1880; New York Star, December 22, 1880.
368 Jehl, op. cit., vol. I, p. 72.
369 Sarah Bernhardt, Memories of My Life (New York, 1907), pp. 393-96.
370 Marion Edison Oser to author. October 15, 1956.
371 New York Herald, December 22, 1880.
372 Ibid., January 2, 1880.
373 J. W. Hammond, Men and Volts (Philadelphia, 1941), pp. 44-45.
374 “Edisonia,” pp. 85, 166.
375 Edison Electric Light Co. v. U.S. Electric Lighting Co. (the Edison Filament Case) 1886-1891; testimony of T. A. Edison; U.S. Circuit Court of the Southern District of N.Y., vol. IV, pp. 2570ff.
376 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, op. cit., vol. II, p. 719.
377 “Edisonia,” pp. 149-51; A. A. Bright, The Electric Lamp Industry (New York, 1949), pp. 76-77.
378 Samuel Insull’s Autobiography (unpublished) 1934, p. 22; quoted with permission of Samuel Insull, Jr.
379 Nerney, op. cit., p. 109; statement of “two former colleagues.”
380 C. L. Clarke, “Menlo Park in 1880,” in Jehl, Reminiscences of Menlo Park, vol. II, p. 862.
381 New York Tribune, December 23, 1880.
382 Ibid., February 14, 1881.
383 Samuel Insull’s Autobiography (unpublished), 1934, p. 260.
384 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life, vol. I, p. 370.
385 Edison to T. Puskas, November 13, 1878; ELA.
386 Jehl, Reminiscences, vol. II, pp. 749-50.
387 Samuel Insull’s Autobiography, p. 22.
388 Samuel Insull, Address, 1902; copy in ELA.
389 Samuel Insull’s Autobiography, p. 25.
390 New York Tribune, August 4, 1881.
391 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, 1908, Book II, p. 14.
392 Martin, Forty Years of Edison Service, p. 36.
393 Memorandum on “Conduits,” 1887; ELA.
394 Walter Edison Kruesi, “A Memoir of John Kruesi” (MS.); Henry Ford Museum Library.
395 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, op. cit., vol. I, p. 393.
396 Walter Edison Kruesi, op. cit.
397 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, 1908, Book II, p. 40; ELA.
398 Charles Batchelor to Edison (cablegram), October 25, 1881; ELA.
399 E. H. Johnson to Edison, January 19, 1882; ELA.
400 London Standard, January 20, 1882.
401 Edison was much impressed by this young British scientist (who died early in life, in 1898); he purchased rights to several of Hopkinson’s electrical patents, including his three-wire circuit developed in England simultaneously with Edison’s in America.
402 Edison Electric Light Company Bulletin No. 3, August 28, 1882; ELA.
403 Edison to Theodore Waterhouse, July 24, 1883; ELA.
404 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, 1908, Book II, p. 38; ELA.
405 H. L. Satterlee, J. Pierpont Morgan (New York, 1939), p. 156.
406 Edison Electric Light Company Bulletin No. 1, July 5, 1882; ELA.
407 Martin, Forty Years of Edison Service, pp. 56-57.
408 “Edisonia,” p. 47.
409 Boston Herald, January 28, 1883.
410 Edison Electric Light Co. v. U.S. Electric Lighting Co., 1890; testimony of Thomas A. Edison.
411 Edison Electric Light Company Bulletin No. 14, October 14, 1882; ELA.
412 S. B. Eaton to Edison, September 18, 1882; ELA.
413 Martin, Forty Years of Edison Service, pp. 65-66.
414 Crowther, Famous American Men of Science, p. 305.
415 New York Sun, September 4, 1882.
416 McClure, Edison and His Inventions, pp. 1-2.
417 The declared policy of the Edison Electric Light Company directors, according to the annual report for 1882, was to hold patents and draw royalties therefrom, but not to go into the actual business of lighting. A year later, the directors still held that they must “go slow” in this new field, “until its practicability, economy and profitableness had been fully established.” (E. E. L. Co. Bulletin, October 31, 1883.)
418 Electrical World, August 3, 1883.
419 Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, p. 105.
420 Samuel Insull’s Autobiography (unpublished), pp. 39-40.
421 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life and Inventions, vol. I, p. 429.
422 Louisville Courier, August 3, 1883.
423 Martin, Forty Years of Edison Service, p. 63.
424 New York World, October 10, 1883; Edison Electric Light Company Bulletin No. 21, October 31, 1883.
425 Jehl, Reminiscences, vol. II, p. 504.
426 W. C. White, “Electrons and the Edison Effect,” General Electric Review, October, 1943.
427 Edison to Clayton Sharp, Journal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, January, 1922, vol. XLI, pp. 68-78.
428 Laboratory Notebooks, 1883 (“Edison Effect”); ELA.
429 W. C. White, op. cit.
430 Edison to Clayton Sharp, loc. cit.
431 E. J. Houston, “Notes on Phenomena in Incandescent Lamps,” Transactions of American Institute of Electrical Engineers, vol. I, No. 1, 1884.
432 Admiral H. G. Bowen, The Edison Effect (Edison Foundation, W. Orange, N.J., 1950), quoting letter of W. D. Coolidge, p. 52.
433 At almost the same time the twenty-three-year-old amateur of physical science, Guglielmo Marconi, appeared with his first crude wireless telegraph.
434 Electrical World, August 3, 1883.
435 MS. of letter by Edison, December 1884, on “Edison Effect”; ELA.
436 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 577-78.
437 Ibid., vol. II, p. 576.
438 The ship-to-shore, or ship-to-ship, inductive telegraph device is included in the same patent as the railway train telegraph, No. 465,971. Edison could not have sold it to a spiritualist, for it is recorded that he sold it to Marconi’s radio company in 1904.
439 Ibid., vol. II, p. 578.
440 At about the same time, in 1903, Marconi’s company decided to buy the patent rights to Edison’s 1885 space telegraph and aerial masts, lest they fall into the hands of adverse interests. Indeed such a group approached Edison with the same purpose; but suspecting that they were only bent on making trouble, he stipulated that his patent be sold only to Marconi. Edison expressed a deep admiration for Marconi, who had shown the courage to carry out his grand design in the face of the greatest difficulties. Marconi, for his part, acknowledged that he had “derived encouragement from Edison’s interest in my work.” (Telegram, G. Marconi to T. A. Edison, Apr. 18, 1912, Edison Laboratory Archives.)
441 A. O. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, p. 126.
442 In his memoirs, Fifty Years of Electricity, published in 1922, J. Ambrose Fleming gives all too little credit to his former employer for his path-breaking experiments. He tells us that “Edison in 1883 noticed the phenomenon known as ‘The Edison Effect’; but he could not explain it; nor did he use it in any way.” Neither did Fleming, who also dropped the Edison Effect, until Hertz’s experiments years later roused him from his slumbers. Reading this sentence forty years after the event, the aged Edison bridled with wrath and wrote in the margin of Fleming’s book, “Fleming’s statement untrue and he knows it is untrue.” For, in fact, Edison had patented his two-element vacuum bulb both in America and England as a device for indicating voltages.
443 H. G. Bowen, op. cit., pp. 7, 57.
444 Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, p. 235; citing “Edison’s Golden Book.”
445 Jehl, Reminiscences, vol. II, p. 506.
446 David T. Marshall, Recollections of Edison (New York, 1931), p. 56.
447 Marion Edison Oser, “Early Recollections” (voice-written), March, 1956, p. 2; ELA.
448 Dickson, Life and Inventions of Edison, p. 88.
449 Marion Edison Oser to author, October 15, 1956.
450 Marshall, op. cit., p. 58.
451 A. O. Tate, op. cit., p. 84.
452 Jehl, Reminiscences, vol. II, p. 511.
453 Edison, Diary, p. 7; MS. in ELA.
454 Edison to Samuel Insull, January 5, 1884; ELA.
455 Marion Edison Oser, “Early Recollections,” p. 6.
456 H. C. Passer, The Electrical Manufacturers, p. 85.
457 Satterlee, Pierpont Morgan, pp. 207ff.
458 Ibid., p. 212.
459 Electrical World, November 1, 1884.
460 Satterlee, op. cit., p. 217.
461 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, 1908, vol. II, p. 35; ELA.
462 Edison to Insull (“St. Augustine, Fla.”), undated; probably January, 1884; ELA.
463 New York Tribune, October 26, 1884.
464 Edison Electric Light Company Bulletin No. 20, October 31, 1883, p. 45.
465 Edison to S. B. Eaton, November 13, 1882; ELA.
466 Edison, Diary, July 13, 1885; (MS.) in ELA.
467 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life, vol. I, p. 436.
468 Edison to Eugene Crowell, November 13, 1882; ELA.
469 Calvin B. Goddard (Secretary of E.E.L.C.) to Edison, May 28, 1883; ELA.
470 J. G. Chapman of St. Louis to S. Insull, October 25, 1884; ELA.
471 G. Barker to Edison, October 26, 1884; ELA.
472 S. Insull to A. O. Tate, October 27, 1884; ELA.
473 Ibid.
474 Electrical World, May 30, 1885.
475 In response to inquiries by R. G. Dun & Co., the credit-rating institution, Edison wrote in 1883 that his lamp company was not incorporated and had only $35,000 invested in it thus far, adding, “Don’t think we owe $1,000. Hope nobody will ever give us credit.” His share of its ownership amounted to about 80 per cent.
476 J. W. Hammond, Men and Volts, pp. 60-61.
477 Marion Edison Oser to author, October 15, 1956.
478 Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, pp. 136-37.
479 Edison, Diary, p. 16.
480 Edison to S. Insull (telegram), June 5, 1885; ELA.
481 Akron (O.) Times, March 4, 1886.
482 Florence Fritz, Bamboo and Sailing Ships (Ft. Myers, Fla., 1949), pp. 7-8.
483 Edison, Diary, July 18, 1885, p. 22.
484 Ibid., p. 8.
485 Marshall, Recollections of Edison, p. 66.
486 Edison, Diary, p. 54.
487 Edison to Lewis Miller, September 30, 1884; autograph letter in possession of Charles Edison.
488 Edison to Messrs. Hulsenkamp and Cranford of Ft. Myers, October 18, 1885; ELA.
489 Simonds, Edison, His Life, Work, Genius, p. 244.
490 W. A. Crofutt, in New York Mail and Express, October 8, 1887.
491 Emil Ludwig, “Edison,” Neue Rundschau (Berlin), January, 1932, pp. 63ff.
492 A. O. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, p. 140.
493 T. C. Martin, “A Day with Edison,” Electrical World, August 25, 1888.
494 Electrical Engineering, August 12, 1890.
495 New York World, November 6, 1921.
496 Laboratory Notebooks, 1886; ELA.
497 New York Mail and Express, October 8, 1887.
498 A. O. Tate, Memorandum to Edison, May 25, 1887 (“Phonograph”); ELA.
499 Edison to G. Gouraud, August 1, 1887 (cablegram); ELA.
500 New York Globe-Democrat, January 19, 1889.
501 R. Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph, p. 41.
502 Edison was certainly the original discoverer of the phonographic art. Tainter, said to have been the more active inventor of the Bell-Tainter partnership, showed fine technical insight and introduced important refinements in the original Edison apparatus, without departing from its basic principles. His best contribution, in the opinion of modern students, was the flexible pickup, which Edison imitated. Edison, in turn, added more refinements, so that by 1888 it was hard to tell where one inventor began and where the others left off. The phonograph, by then, became an affair of engineering and technology, and remained so until the introduction of electronic devices in the 1920s marked another “break-through.”
503 New York Post, October 18, 1887; E. T. Gilliland to Edison, May 19, 1888; ELA.
504 A. O. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, p. 157.
505 Laboratory Notebooks, 1888-1896 (passim); notes of Edison undated.
506 Emil Ludwig, “Edison,” Neue Rundschau (Berlin), p. 67.
507 A. O. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, p. 164.
508 One of the inventor’s younger sons, Charles Edison, called attention to his father’s dislike of paid newspaper advertising as superfluous in his case. The inventor was probably unconscious of his own desire for publicity, and no doubt thought of himself as a man of retiring disposition. When his British agent, Gouraud, undertook to advertise the 1888 phonograph in flamboyant style, Edison sent him a memorandum, protesting, “I don’t propose to be Barnumized,” and requested that he [Gouraud] “talk phonography and not Edison.” (Memorandum, March 2, 1888, Edison Laboratory Archives.)
509 Dickson, Life and Inventions of Edison, pp. 132-33.
510 Transcript of record by Sir Arthur Sullivan, dated October 31, 1888; ELA.
511 U. H. Painter to E. H. Johnson, February 12, 1888; ELA.
512 Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, p. 138.
513 Copy of Edison’s affidavit, September 21, 1888; ELA.
514 Jesse Lippincott’s affidavit. September 21, 1888; ELA. New York Herald, January 18, 1889.
515 Jesse Lippincott’s affidavit, September 21, 1888.
516 New York Tribune, May 18, 1889.
517 Edison to E. T. Gilliland (cablegram), September 11, 1888; ELA.
518 New York World, May 13, 1889.
519 Proceedings, N.A. Phonograph Dealers’ Association, 1891, pp. 21-22; ELA.
520 Edison to Jesse Lippincott, September 21, 1888; ELA.
521 A. O. Tate, Memorandum to Edison, September 30, 1893; ELA.
522 New York Times, April 21, 1889.
523 New York Tribune, August 19, 1889.
524 Marion Edison Oser to author, October 15, 1956.
525 Edison’s Notes for Meadowcroft, 1908, Book II, p. 39.
526 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life and Inventions, vol. II, p. 742.
527 A. O. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, p. 237.
528 R. Vallery-Radot, Vie de Pasteur (Paris, 1900), pp. 152-53.
529 Dickson, op. cit., pp. 233-34.
530 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life and Inventions, vol. I, p. 357.
531 Ibid., vol. I, pp. 381-82.
532 S. B. Eaton to Edison, August 22, 1889; ELA.
533 Edison to Henry Villard, February 8, 1890; Villard Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University. The Villard Papers are quoted by permission of Houghton Library.
534 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, op. cit., vol. II, p. 665.
535 D. O. Woodbury, Beloved Scientist: Elihu Thomson, p. 157.
536 Ibid., p. 156.
537 A Warning, pamphlet of E.E.L.C., 1887; ELA.
538 T. A. Edison, “Dangers of Electric Lighting,” North American Review, November, 1889.
539 Edison, Memorandum to E. H. Johnson, 1886, on Siemens and Halske’s Report on “Z.B.D.” (a-c) system; ELA.
540 The Edison d-c generator employed the mechanism of the commutator to convert alternating current into unidirectional current, i.e. “direct current.” It functioned best at a low constant voltage, of 110 to 220; otherwise the commutator attached to the dynamo armature heated up badly. Thus the transmission radius was restricted to a mile or two, unless very large copper conductors were to be used — at fearful cost — which made long-distance transmission impracticable.
The “alternator,” or a-c generator, eliminated the commutator and generated current of high voltage which could be transmitted very cheaply over long distances. Then, a transformer, consisting of two unconnected coils wound about an iron core, one coil having many turns of wire and the other fewer turns, came into play, to “step down” the high voltage a-c, at points of distribution and domestic use, from 500 or 5,000 volts to 100 or 50 volts. (The transformer was also often used, in the reverse sense to “step up” the voltage of the alternator to enable economical transmission over still longer distances.)
As Kenneth M. Swezey, a modern writer on electrical engineering, has aptly written, “the Edison d-c stations had to remain small and practically in a customer’s backyard. Alternating currents however, could be generated in large bulk and transmitted many miles.” (Electrical Engineering, September, 1956, p. 787.)
541 Dickson, Life and Inventions of Edison, p. 330.
542 Francis G. Leupp, George Westinghouse (New York, 1918), pp. 133, 145ff.
543 T. A. Edison, “Dangers of Electric Lighting,” North American Review, November, 1889.
544 New York Times, August 7, 1890.
545 Edison to Edward Dean Adams, February 2, 1889; Villard Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
546 F. J. Sprague to E. H. Johnson, September 13, 1886; Sprague Papers, Engineering Societies Library, New York.
547 In 1908, Edison met William Stanley’s son George, who was visiting at Glenmont as a friend of Charles Edison. “Oh, by the way,” the inventor said to young Stanley, “tell your father I was wrong.”
548 H. C. Passer, The Electrical Manufacturers, p. 174.
549 “In science each of us knows that what he has accomplished will be antiquated in ten, twenty, fifty years. That is the fate to which science is subjected; it is the very meaning of scientific work...” (Max Weber, “The Destiny of the Scientist,” in Essays in Sociology, Oxford, 1946.)
550 Edison to H. Villard, February 2, 1889; Villard Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
551 “The Edison General Electric,” notes by Henry Villard, New York Post, December 31, 1888; Villard Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
552 S. Insull, Memorandum on E.G.E., August 18, 1888; ELA.
553 S. Insull’s Autobiography, 1934 (unpublished), pp. 50-51.
554 Ibid.
555 New York Times, December 16, 1891.
556 New York Post, December 31, 1888.
557 C. H. Coster to S. B. Eaton, April 19, 1889; ELA.
558 H. Villard to Edison, February 13, 1891; Villard Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
559 Edison to H. Villard, February 8, 1890; Villard Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
560 T. A. Edison, “My Forty Years of Litigation,” Literary Digest, September 13 1913.
561 Edison to A. O. Tate, July 2, 1888; ELA.
562 Consolidated Electric v. McKeesport Electric Co., the “Westinghouse-Edison Case”; U.S. Circuit Court, Pittsburgh, Pa., October 5, 1889; opinion of Justice Bradley.
563 The decision of Justice Bradley, and later of Justice William Wallace, paralleled very closely the finding of a high English court in a suit against interests owning the European lamp patents of Joseph Swan. The whole case turned upon the invention of Edison’s attentuated “filament.” Had there been no other difference in the lamps, this would have been sufficient; for, as the English judge remarked, the very word “filament” had been unknown before this.
564 Edison Electric Light v. U.S. Electric Co., Circuit Court of the Southern District of N.Y., IV, 2571-73; Hearings, June 19, 1890.
565 Edison to H. Villard, February 24, 1890 and April 1, 1889; Villard Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
566 J. W. Hammond, Men and Volts, p. 191.
567 Edison to S. Insull, March 4, 1891; ELA.
568 Edison to H. Villard, February 8, 1890; Villard Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
569 A. O. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, p. 278.
570 New York Times, December 16, 1891.
571 A. A. Bright, The Electric Lamp Industry, p. 93.
572 H. S. Fraser, “Thomas Edison,” unpublished MS.; ELA.
573 D. O. Woodbury, op. cit., p. 204.
574 New York Times, December 16, 1891, and February 21, 1892.
575 New York World, February 20, 1892.
576 A. O. Tate, op. cit., p. 261.
577 New York World, February 20, 1892. Because of the notoriety attending Samuel Insull’s spectacular rise and fall in the 1920s, it has been hinted by some writers that he may have deceived Edison; but there is no evidence of this; and the consolidation resulted in no benefit to him, since he was forced out of his high post in the Edison organization.
In memoirs written in 1934, shortly before his death, Samuel Insull declares that Edison “insisted on dropping the name of Edison when General Electric was formed.” Insull favored the consolidation with Thomson-Houston as being the best solution financially; but Edison was unhappy over it, knowing that he would have no voice in the company’s councils in the future. (Samuel Insull’s Autobiography, manuscript, quoted by permission of Samuel Insull, Jr.) The Edison family tradition — though the inventor spoke little of the General Electric affair — holds to the view that he deeply resented the removal of his name. (Charles Edison to Author.)
578 A. O. Tate, op. cit., p. 278.
579 Tom A. Robins, Sr., “Friends in a Lifetime,” 1944 (MS.); in possession of Hewitt-Robins Company, Darien, Conn.
580 Theodore Waters, “Edison’s Revolution in Iron Mining,” McClure’s Magazine, November, 1897, pp. 77-89.
581 Ibid., p. 81.
582 In a paper written by Edison in collaboration with the mining engineer, John Birkinbine, and read before the American Institute of Engineering in 1889, the separating apparatus was described as a “unipolar, non-contact electric separator,” having no moving parts, and being therefore quite different from other separating devices of that time. It consisted mainly of a hopper at the top, an array of magnets beneath the hopper, and divided bins placed below, which were arranged to catch the separated concentrates and tailings in different compartments.
583 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life, vol. II, p. 475.
584 Edison to H. M. Livor, January 21, 1890; ELA.
585 M. A. Rosanoff, in Harper’s Magazine, September, 1932.
586 Edison’s Giant Rolls were made of chilled iron plate, with knobbed faces to expedite the crushing of rock; they used momentum largely instead of steam power and it was claimed showed a friction loss of only 16 per cent.
587 T. A. Robins, Sr., op. cit., p. 8.
588 H. Ford and S. G. Crowther, Edison As I Knew Him, p. 28.
589 Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian (quoting interview with Dan Smith), p. 149.
590 Edison to A. O. Tate, April 19, 1893; ELA.
591 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, op. cit., vol. II, p. 495.
592 “Anonymous” to Edison, March 16, 1898; ELA.
593 Letter of “A Visitor to Edison, N.J.” in 1897 and 1899, December 13, 1899; ELA.
594 Nerney, op. cit., p. 155.
595 New York Journal, January 14, 1898.
596 Edison to Mrs. Mina Edison, December 1, 1898; in possession of Mrs. Madeleine Edison Sloane.
597 According to a geologist’s estimate of these operations at Ogdensburg, made for New Jersey authorities, 75,206 tons of magnetite rock were quarried in the early part of 1899 to produce 10,000 tons of briquettes of low-grade ore. (William S. Bayley, Geological Survey of New Jersey, Trenton, 1910.)
598 R. C. Beck, in Newark Star-Ledger, September 4, 1955; interviews at Ogdensburg.
599 Simonds, Edison, His Life, His Work, His Genius, p. 290.
600 New York Sun, February 27, 1903.
601 Edison’s notes: “Progress,” 1890; ELA.
602 M. Pupin to Edison, March 28, 1896; ELA.
603 G. S. Bryan, Edison, the Man and His Work, p. 258.
604 W. K. L. Dickson, History of the Kinetoscope and Kinetograph, brochure (1895); in ELA.
605 Dickson, “Edison’s Invention of the Kineto-Phonograph,” Century Magazine, June, 1894.
606 Edison to E. B. Seeley, October 17, 1888; ELA.
607 Dickson, in Century Magazine, June, 1894.
608 Edison’s Caveat No. 4, November 2, 1889; Kinetograph; ELA.
609 Dr. Henry Morton, testifying as a scientific consultant in the suit of Edison against Mutascope Company (1900), was asked if it were not true that the inventor had merely taken advantage of new photographic materials becoming available to him. Mr. Morton’s reply was: “No. When Edison began his experimenting there was no material available; it was his demands that helped create such material.”
610 G. S. Bryan, op. cit., p. 188.
611 Terry Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights; A History of the Motion Picture (New York, 1926, 2 vol.), vol. I, p. 78.
612 Dickson, in Century Magazine, June, 1894.
613 New York Sun, June 3, 1891; Harper’s Weekly, June 13, 1891.
614 T. Ramsaye, op. cit., vol. I, p. 76. Some thirty years later, Edison told Terry Ramsaye, who, in 1924, was compiling his two-volume history of the motion picture: “The reason of this is because the more patents I took abroad the more I lost.” (Manuscript notes of Edison attached to Ramsaye’s proofs, in the Baker Library Collection, Harvard University.)
615 Note by Edison in a copy of E. Muybridge’s “Zoepraxography,” probably late in 1893; ELA.
616 Simonds, Edison, His Life, Work, Genius, p. 265.
617 T. Ramsaye, op. cit., vol. I, p. 109.
618 T. A. Edison, “The Motion Picture,” Century Magazine, June, 1894.
619 T. Ramsaye, op. cit., vol. II, p. 119.
620 New York Sun, April 22, 1895.
621 Edison v. Mutascope and Biograph Cos., U.S. District Court, Southern District of N.Y.; Edison’s testimony; January 29, 1900.
An article published by Dickson many years later indicated that he had retained possession of some drawings and manuscript notes of Edison’s dating from the motion picture research work of 1888-1895. (Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, Dec., 1933, vol. xxi, no. 6.)
Dickson seems to have been unable to help the Latham concern find the right principle for their projection machine. After a while he left their service and worked as technical director for another group making peep-hole kinetoscopes like Edison’s, but with slight mechanical variations. When suit for patent infringement was brought in 1897 against his company, the Mutascope & Biograph, Dickson placed his stock in that corporation in escrow and left for England, evidently unwilling to testify against his former chief. (His own published statements of earlier date could have been used against him.) His behavior, though highly ambivalent, seems not to have been knowingly faithless. In later years he and Edison were reconciled; when Dickson was in reduced circumstances he even obtained some small loans or gifts of money from Edison, who in reality was quite fond of him.
622 N. C. Raff to W. E. Gilmore, January 13, 1896; and N. C. Raff to G. Armat, March 5, 1896. In Edison v. Mutascope and Biograph Cos.
623 Many years afterward, in 1921, Edison evidently tried to make amends to Thomas Armat by writing him a letter saying that in reviewing the early history of the motion picture (in the course of a statement to a newspaper) he had given credit to Armat as the inventor of the “first practical projection machine.” While he had had a machine of his own, he said, he dropped it when Armat turned up with a better one. (N.Y. Times, June 9, 1921.)
624 New York Journal, April 4, 1896; New York Times, April 24, 1896.
625 T. A. Edison Industries Annual Report, February 29, 1912; in files of T. A. Edison, Inc., West Orange, N.J.
626 Edison to H. Villard, December 10, 1898; Villard Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
627 French Strother, “Edison,” World’s Work, June, 1906.
628 M. A. Rosanoff, “Edison in His Laboratory,” Harper’s Magazine, September, 1932.
629 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life and Inventions, vol. II, p. 554.
630 W. E. Ayrton, in the Times (London) Engineering Supplement, July 22, 1908.
631 Laboratory Notebooks, “Storage Battery,” 1901; ELA.
632 A. E. Kennelly, “The New Edison Storage Battery,” Journal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, May 21, 1901.
633 New York World (interview), February 15, 1903.
634 Emil Ludwig, “Edison,” Neue Rundschau, January, 1932.
635 M. A. Rosanoff, op. cit., p. 410.
636 Ibid., p. 411.
637 Maurice Holland, “Edison’s Organization Method,” pamphlet, National Research Council (New York, April, 1927).
638 M. A. Rosanoff, op. cit., p. 414.
639 Ray Stannard Baker, “Edison’s Latest Marvel,” Windsor Magazine, November, 1902.
640 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, op. cit., vol. II, p. 563.
641 Tom A. Robins, Sr., “Friends in A Lifetime,” p. 7.
642 New York World, February 15, 1903.
643 H. E. Parshall to Edison, May 16, 1905; ELA.
644 Edison to L. C. Weir, February 27, 1905; ELA.
645 Edison to L. C. Weir, February 15, 1909; ELA.
646 Edison’s empirical methods in chemical research have often been assailed by theoretical scientists, the term “Edisonian” being applied to them as one of opprobrium. His associates, however, defended them at the time as the best possible strategy in this little-known field. For example, after Edison, at later stages of the battery investigation, determined upon the form of the positive element, it became necessary to ascertain what definite proportions and what quality of nickel hydrates and nickel flake would furnish the best results. He would try two materials in different proportions, running from nine parts hydrate to one part flake; eight parts hydrate to two of flake, and so on down. These were carefully tested through a long series of charges and discharges; from the tabulated results of hundreds of tests, he selected three that were most promising. After having determined the proportions most desirable, he then needed to find the best quality possible. Now there are several hundred variations in the quality of nickel flake, and about a thousand ways of making the nickel hydrate; hence an enormous amount of detail was involved before sufficient information could be obtained.
647 Edison to L. C. Weir, July 7, 1905; ELA.
648 New York Tribune, January 25, 1905.
649 M. A. Rosanoff, op. cit., p. 416.
650 Ibid., p. 408.
651 Martha Coman and H. Weir, “She Married the Most Difficult Husband in the World,” Collier’s Weekly, July 18, 1925.
652 M. A. Rosanoff, op. cit., p. 409.
653 Letter of Dr. F. T. Bonner of Arthur D. Little Institute to author.
654 Edison to L. C. Weir, June 6, 1909; ELA.
655 Edison to S. Insull, October 22, 1910; ELA.
656 Technical World, February, 1915.
657 George Iles, Inventors at Work (New York, 1906), p. 433.
658 Dyer, Martin and Meadowcroft, op. cit., vol. II, p. 523.
659 M. A. Rosanoff, op. cit., p. 405.
660 New York World, February 18, 1913.
661 Edison to Henry Ford, October 29, 1912; Ford Museum Library.
662 Charles Edison to author.
663 T. A. Edison, Inc. showed claims for fire loss in 1914 at $919,788.00.
664 New York Times, December 10, 1914.
665 Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York, 1938), p. 224.
666 W. Kaempfert, “Edison” (obituary article), New York Times, October 19, 1931.
667 The Independent, May 1, 1913.
668 New York Times, December 14, 1922.
669 T. C. Martin, op. cit., p. 41.
670 New York World, February 13, 1922.
671 Similarly, Henry Ford made of work and duty the cardinal tenets of his religion. A man could never leave his business, but must “think of it by day and dream of it by night,” Ford wrote. “Work is the salvation of the race. The Lord is working and will clear the land of those who do not go ahead!”
672 New York Times, February 12, 1914; December 6, 1921.
673 Current Literature, December, 1910.
674 Cardinal Gibbons, “Edison on Immortality,” Columbian Magazine, January, 1911.
675 M. C. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, p. 252.
676 Edison to Mina Edison, December 1, 1908; letter in possession of Madeleine Edison Sloane.
677 H. R. Fraser, “Edison,” 1954 (unpublished), p. 374; copy in ELA.
678 B. C. Forbes, “Edison Working to Communicate with the Next World,” American Magazine, October, 1920.
679 M. A. Rosanoff, “Edison in His Laboratory,” Harper’s Magazine, September, 1932, p. 411.
680 Harper’s Weekly, November 4, 1911.
681 New York Times, May 9, 13, 14, 16, 1921.
682 Letter of Mina Edison to Madeleine Edison Sloane, September 28, 1917.
683 T. A. Edison, Jr., suffering from chronic illness, committed suicide in 1936, five years after his father’s death, at the age of sixty. W. L. Edison, in 1932, began a suit to have his father’s will (by which he was left very little money) set aside, but a composition was affected. He died in 1941. Neither of the elder sons had children.
684 New York Times, June 12, 1923.
685 M. C. Nerney, op. cit., p. 234.
686 New York Times, October 25, 1914.
687 Allan Nevins and F. E. Hill, Ford: Expansion and Challenge (New York, 1957), vol. II, p. 41.
688 New York Times, May 22, 1915.
689 New York Times, May 30, 1915.
690 Edison to Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, July 15, 1915.
691 San Francisco Chronicle, October 22, 1915.
692 T. A. Robins, Sr., “Friends in a Lifetime,” pp. 18-19.
693 Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Era (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1944), pp. 464-65.
694 R. A. Millikan, “Edison’s Contribution,” Science, January 15, 1932.
695 T. A. Robins, Sr., to author, October 10, 1957.
696 Edison to T. A. Robins, Sr., February 4, 1919; ELA.
697 Edison had a number of imbroglios with the Navy “brass” — as did also Baekeland, Hudson Maxim, and other scientists on the Navy Consulting Board. The country’s most famous chemical engineer, Baekeland, declared at a meeting of the Navy Consulting Board that the typical Annapolis and West Point graduates who headed military bureaus “trembled with fear that something new might go wrong” and thus their own careers might be jeopardized. Edison was convinced at the time that no progress in military research would be possible if the admirals ran the proposed Naval Research Laboratory. As he wrote Daniels shortly after the war ended: “I do not believe there is more than one creative mind produced at Annapolis in three years... If Naval officers are to control it the result will be zero... When you are no longer Secretary I want to tell you a lot of things about the Navy that you are unaware of.” (To Josephus Daniels, November 7, 1919, Edison Laboratory Archives.)
698 Note to W. Meadowcroft (for Henry Ford), August 17, 1917; Henry Ford Museum Library.
699 New York Times, December 13, 1921.
700 Mina Edison to Madeleine Edison Sloane, August 28, 1917.
701 New York World, February 13, 1923.
702 New York Times, February 8, 1920.
703 In an unpublished memoir dated 1953, deposited with the Columbia University Oral History Project, Charles Edison has stated that he tried earnestly to introduce improved labor relations at Thomas A. Edison, Inc., despite the opposition of his father. When he had first come to work in 1914 and was assigned to the storage battery plant at Silver Lake, New Jersey, Charles found conditions and hours of work extremely depressing — though no worse than in the average chemical factory of those times. The men labored up to twelve hours a day and seemed to him sodden with fatigue. The street opposite the Edison Storage Battery Company’s shops was lined with cheap gin mills, where the workers would drink themselves into forgetfulness.
A raging dispute with his father over labor policy and the mass dismissals of 1920 caused the only serious strain that ever arose between them, he states, though this soon passed, for Charles fairly worshiped the Old Man.
704 Oral Record of Memoir of Charles Voorhees, p. 137; Ford Motor Company Archives. Also E. G. Liebold, Oral Record of Memoir, p. 1506; Ford Motor Co.
705 M. C. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, p. 241.
706 New York Times, January 9 and January 10, 1914.
707 Keith Sward, The Legend of Henry Ford (New York, 1948), pp. 112-13.
708 Correspondence of T. A. Edison, Inc., and Ford Motor Co., July 31, 1914; Ford Motor Co. Archives.
709 E. G. Liebold, Oral Record of Memoir, p. 1558; Ford Motor Co. Archives.
710 New York Times, February 13, 1914.
711 W. A. Simonds, Edison, His Life, Work, Genius, p. 302.
712 John Burroughs to Harvey Firestone, December 11, 1916; Ford Motor Co. Archives.
713 Ibid.
714 Edison’s note for the bird fountain at “Fairlane,” 1916; copy in Henry Ford Museum Library.
715 Our Vacation Days of 1918 (Akron, 1926).
716 Edison to Edward N. Hurley, January 12, 1918; Henry Ford Museum Library.
717 New York Times, February 16, 1923.
718 Nevins and Hill, Ford: Expansion and Challenge, p. 316ff.
719 Edison to E. G. Liebold, December 22, 1920; Ford Motor Co. Archives.
720 Edison to Jacob H. Schiff, November 13, 1914; Ford Motor Co. Archives.
721 New York Times, April 1, 1914.
722 New York Times, October 17 and 18, 1922.
723 New York Times, June 22, 1922.
724 Theodore M. Edison to author.
725 R. Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph, p. 249.
726 Charles Edison thus assumed chief managerial control of the family business, from 1927 on. During the economic crisis of 1933, Charles, who then showed some leanings to liberal politics and public life, served in President Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration and later was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy, succeeding Claude Swanson as Secretary of the Navy for a short interval. In 1940 Charles Edison was elected, under the Democratic Party’s banner, as Governor of New Jersey, serving for one term of three years. After he returned to private business, T. A. Edison, Inc., under his management made a strong recovery, during the prosperous World War II and postwar eras.
In May, 1931, Theodore, of whom it was said that he preferred science to business, resigned from all the offices and directorships he held in various Edison companies, in order to devote all his time to research and experiment in his own laboratory. He also formed an engineering consulting firm of his own some years later. Meanwhile, he remained, by his father’s will, owner of a large interest in the Edison company’s stock. After his mother’s passing, in 1947, Theodore Edison made an outright gift of $1,260,000 in stock and cash (as then valued), which constituted half of his total inheritance, to 2,700 employees of the Thomas A. Edison Industries. By virtue of a trust fund established by him at the time, each employee was provided with a share of Edison stock for every year of service in excess of two, up to a maximum of sixteen shares. This social welfare fund created by Theodore Edison helped somewhat to right the balance of things and give partial recognition to the role of the workers in the Edison Industries, as distinguished from that of the great individualist who founded them.
727 New York Times, February 12, 1928 (interview with W. H. Meadowcroft).
728 Edison to E. G. Liebold, December 16, 1927; Ford Motor Co. Archives.
729 M. C. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, pp. 237-38.
730 Bailly Millard, in Technical World Magazine, October, 1914.
731 Nerney, op. cit., p. 242.
732 Bailly Millard, loc. cit.
733 M. C. Nerney, op. cit., p. 242.
734 Charles Edison to author; also Edward L. Bernays to author.
735 E. G. Liebold, op. cit., pp. 693ff.
736 New York World, October 21, 1929.
737 E. G. Liebold, op. cit., pp. 693ff.
738 New York Times, October 19, 1931.
739 Shaw Desmond, “Edison’s Views,” Strand Magazine (London), August, 1922.
740 L. W. McChesney, “A Light is Extinguished,” pamphlet, privately printed (West Orange, 1932).