NOTES

 

The main archive of Edison documents at Thomas Edison National Historical Park (TENHP) in West Orange, New Jersey, comprises some five million pages. Although much of that gigantic collection remains unexplored by scholars, a Rutgers University project, The Papers of Thomas A. Edison, is in the process of editing and publishing the records that relate most closely to Edison and his work. Most of these are housed at TENHP, but the Papers project also includes documents from a wide variety of other repositories. Core material from whatever source is being issued in three related yet dissimilar forms: a multivolume book edition of selected and annotated documents; a larger digital edition accessible online; and a very large microfilm edition available in research libraries. At the time this biography was written, the book edition totaled eight volumes out of a planned fifteen and covered the period 1847–87, roughly half of Edison’s eighty-three-year lifespan. (A ninth volume, Competing Interests: January 1888–December 1889, is scheduled for publication in 2020.) The digital edition extends the coverage of TENHP documents to 1898. The microfilm edition, structurally similar, extends it to 1919, but this extension is not digitized. The period 1920–31 is still unselected.

Consequently, much of this biography was researched among original documents held at Thomas Edison National Historical Park. But advantage has been taken of the digital edition’s supplementary scans (unrestricted as to time period) of virtually all other collections of Edisonia in the United States.

It will be seen from the above-described complexity that referring directly to specific editions of The Papers of Thomas A. Edison, let alone to outside repositories embraced by the project, would complicate citations to the point of algebra. For that reason, references in the endnotes relate to the online index to The Papers of Thomas A. Edison at http://edison.rutgers.edu/, abbreviated henceforth as PTAE. This index is forbiddingly sophisticated but once mastered directs scholars to the exact document sought, often in downloadable image form.

An exception to the general citation of PTAE as the gateway to The Papers of Thomas A. Edison is when the book edition offers scholarly editorial commentary unavailable elsewhere. In such instances, it will be simply cited as Papers, with volume and page number.

The abbreviation TENHP refers to original documents in the archive at West Orange. Other source abbreviations are given in the Select Bibliography.

One major collection of Edison papers will remain closed until 2025. The author is grateful to Edison’s great-grandson, Dr. David Edward Edison Sloane, for privileged access to it, and for permission to publish certain quotations. A minor but historically important collection of love letters from Edison to his wife, Mina, has for years been withheld without explanation by the board of the Charles Edison Fund of Newark, New Jersey.

Thomas Edison is identified as TE in the notes, and Mina Miller Edison as MME. Other family members retain their full names.

PROLOGUE (1931)

1. Key West Citizen, 11 Feb. 1931; Albion, Florida Life of Edison, 169–70; New Castle (PA) News, 11, 12 Oct. 1931.

2. TE to Dr. C. Ward Crompton, 21 Dec. 1921, and to George W. Barton, 10 Jan. 1923, TENHP; Hammer, “Edison and His Inventions”; TE to Josephus Daniels, quoted in New York Sun, 11 Oct. 1914; MME to Theodore Edison, 23 Mar. 1925, PTAE. Asked by a Yale hygienist in 1930 about his tobacco habit, TE responded, “Chew constantly + 2 to 3 cigars a day,” and said he had developed his taste for plug at age ten. TE to Irving Fisher, 12 Oct. 1930, TENHP.

3. John Coakley Oral History, 36, Biographical Collection, TENHP; Israel, Edison, 10; Dr. Frederick M. Allen to TE, 28 June 1931, TENHP; Pittsburgh Press, 19 Oct. 1931. In a letter dated 9 Jan. 1931, TE calibrated his milk intake at 375 cubic centimeters, rather less than a pint, every two hours. Just when he adopted this all-milk diet is uncertain. He told his correspondent he had been on it “for over 8 years,” whereas his personal physician stated in a posthumous report that TE had given up on solid food “three years ago.” Bishop William F. Anderson noticed on 23 June 1929 that TE ate nothing at dinner, saying that “he had already dined” on milk. In the fall of 1930 TE reported that he took “only milk and orange juice: 6 times a day.” On 1 Dec. 1930 he told a former employee, “I live on milk now.” On 5 February 1931, the famed Battle Creek surgeon/dietitian John Harvey Kellogg was unable to persuade him to break this liquid diet. Three months later TE was living, or rather dying, on milk alone. TE to Clifton S. Wady, 9 Jan. 1931, TENHP; William F. Anderson, “A Sunday in the Home of Mr. Thomas A. Edison,” ts., ca. 1931, PTAE; TE to Irving Fisher, 12 Oct. 1930, TENHP; Marshall, Recollections of Edison, 100; San Antonio Express, 19 Oct. 1931.

4. Fort Myers News-Press, 11 June 1931.

5. Piqua (OH) Daily Call, 19 Oct. 1931; Joseph Lewis, “A Visit With Thomas Alva Edison,” in Atheism and Other Addresses (New York, 1938).

6. Albion, Florida Life of Thomas Edison, 174.

7. Narney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 16; Paul Kasakove, “Reminiscences of My Association with Thomas Alva Edison,” 8–9, TENHP; Pittsburgh Press, 2 Aug. 1931.

8. TE’s courtship of personal publicity throughout his career had as much to do with his iconic stature as with the things he invented. Three critical studies of TE the self-promoter are Wyn Wachhorst, Thomas Alva Edison: An American Myth (Cambridge, MA, 1981); Gordon Hendricks, The Edison Motion Picture Myth (1961), in Hendricks, Origins of American Film; and David Nye, The Invented Self: An Anti-Biography from the Documents of Thomas A. Edison (Odense, Denmark, 1983). While necessarily corrective, these books advance myths of their own.

9. TE in 1925, quoted in Dagobert Runes, ed., The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison (New York, 1948) 50.

10. TE notebook N-88-01-03.2, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 409.

11. TE Patent 1,908,830, approved 16 May 1933.

12. Israel, Edison, 461; MME to Theodore Edison, 12 July 1931, PTAE; Pittsburgh Press, 3 Aug. 1931.

13. Israel, Edison, 461; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 21, 107–8; Chicago Tribune, 22 Oct. 1931.

14. Chicago Tribune, 22 Oct. 1931; Albion, Florida Life of Edison, 176–77; Jefferson City (MO) Tribune, 21 Oct. 1931.

15. William Edison to TE, 18 Feb. 1931, TENHP.

16. Madeleine Edison Sloane to MME, 28 May 1928, TENHP. The last of TE’s grandsons, Michael Edison Sloane, was born on 8 Jan. 1931.

17. This selection is partial. For a full listing, see “Edison Companies” in the Thomas A. Edison Papers website, Edison.rutgers.edu.

18. For TE’s merchandising of his own name, see Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, 163–64 and passim.

19. Medical bulletins, 2 Aug.–18 Oct. 1931, TENHP; Oakland Tribune, 19 Oct. 1931; Newton, Uncommon Friends, 6.

20. Albion, Florida Life of Edison, 176; Associated Press releases, 4 and 8 Oct. 1931; Chester (PA) Times, 9 Oct. 1931.

21. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 146; William Pretzer, “Edison’s Last Breath,” Technology and Culture 45 (2004).

22. L. W. McChesney, “A Light Is Extinguished,” privately printed booklet (approved by Mina and Charles Edison), 4–6, TENHP; Oakland Tribune, 20 Oct. 1931. The following account of the ceremonies attending TE’s death is based on the official schedule of events, ts., 18 Oct. 1931, Funeral File, TENHP; Charles Edison to Henry Ford, telephone transcript, 19 Oct. 1931, HFM; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 296–305; and Associated Press, United Press, and International News Service reports in syndicated newspapers, 18–22 Oct. 1931 (henceforth AP, UP, and INS).

23. Quoted in Galveston (TX) Daily News, 20 Oct. 1931.

24. The original aphorism can be found in Helen Zimmern, ed., Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Discourses (London, 1887), 194.

25. Pittsburgh Press, 19 Oct. 1931.

26. Einstein and Ford quoted in AP report, 19 Oct. 1931; Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Herbert Hoover (1931), 3.362.

27. TE quoted by Lucile Erskine in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10 Mar. 1912.

PART ONE · BOTANY (1920–1929)

1. TE to William Ores, 24 Jan. 1921, TENHP; TE marginalia in his copy of Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone, 13–14, TENHP. These notes appear to have been made ca. 1911.

2. In 1862 Kelvin, then Sir William Thomson, defined the second law of thermodynamics as: “Although mechanical energy is indestructible, there is a universal tendency to its dissipation, which produces…diffusion of heat, cessation of motion, and exhaustion of potential energy through the material universe. The result of this would be a state of universal rest and death.” Quoted in Gleick, Information, 271.

3. McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 214. Confirmation of Einstein’s theory by observations of bent starlight during a solar eclipse had been announced by the Royal Society on 9 November 1919.

4. TE’s copy of Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, ed. Robert Lawson (New York 1920), 4, TENHP. De Bothezat was an aeronautical scientist in the employ of the U.S. government and an expert on fluid dynamics. His paper, which he sent to TE in typescript (TE General file, 1920, TENHP), appears to be an early draft of a lecture on relativity that he later delivered before the Indiana Association of MIT. Technology Review 24 (1922).

5. F. A. Christie, e.g., on John Wesley Powell’s Truth and Error, or the Science of Intellection in Unity, 9 Mar. 1899; “Edison’s Views on Life and Death,” Scientific American, 30 Oct. 1920; TE quoted in “Edison Working on How to Communicate with the Next World,” American Magazine, Oct. 1920. TE’s “units of life” or “entities” perpetuating certain evolutionary characteristics seems to have derived from Darwin’s theory of primitive cells built up of “gemmules” that subsequently transubtantiated into organs with specific functions. TE marginal notes on pp. 355–69 of his copy of Darwin’s The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (New York, 1899), TENHP. In another such note, TE wrote, “Entities explain everything” over a discussion of the genetic patterns latent in a fertilized egg. T. Brailsford Robertson, The Chemical Basis of Growth and Senescence (Philadelphia, 1923), 197, TENHP. In his copy of Sherwood Eddy’s New Challenges to Faith (New York, 1926), p. 4, TE defined intelligent behavior as the result of “previous stimuli stored in the organ of memory.” For an analysis of TE’s deterministic theory of “director” particles, see Anthony Enns, “From Poe to Edison,” in Martin Willis and Catherine Wynne, eds., Victorian Literary Mesmerism (New York, 2006), 65ff.

6. Richard Outcault interview, GE Monogram, Nov. 1928.

7. New York World, 17 Nov. 1889; Papers, 8.206; Marion Edison Öser, “The Wizard of Menlo Park, by His Daughter,” Mar. 1956, TENHP; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 773; The American Magazine, 78.5 (Nov. 1914).

8. For the reorganization of Thomas A. Edison, Inc., in 1915, see Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 62 ff.

9. Charles Edison, Flotsam and Jetsam (privately printed, New York 1967), introduction; “Charles Edison: From Bohemia to the Boardroom” in Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 104. See also “Ex-Jersey Governor Was Once a ‘Village’ Poet,” New York Times, 27 Sept. 1967.

10. Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 107–8; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 79; “Business Activities of Mark Jones,” memo, ca. 1925, 8, TENHP.

11. Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 107–8; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 79–80; Charles Edison to MME, 6 Jan. 1930, TENHP.

12. Charles Edison to MME, 18 Mar. 1920, TENHP.

13. MME to Theodore Edison, 23 Mar. 1920, PTAE.

14. Ibid.; Jeffrey, “ ‘Commodore’ Edison,” 33–34.

15. TE interviewed by Edward Marshall, National Labor Digest, July 1919; U.S. Senate, 66th Cong., 2nd sess., Awarding of Medals in the Naval Service: Hearing Before a Subcommittee on Naval Affairs (Washington, DC, 1920), 546; Josephson, Edison, 454; William H. Meadowcroft to Frank Baker, 21 Aug. 1920, TENHP; TE superscript on Henry Lanahan to TE, 3 May 1920, Legal File, TENHP.

16. MME to Theodore Edison, 23 Mar. 1920 and 9 May 1929, PTAE; Lynn Given interview, 20 Mar. 1990, TENHP; TE to George M. Wise, Bombay, ca. July 1920, and TE superscript on J. K. Small to TE, 6 Oct. 1920, TENHP; TE to J. F. Menge, 24 May 1920, TENHP.

17. The following account is taken from an unidentified newsclip, TE General File 1920, TENHP.

18. Ibid.

19. Grant, Forgotten Depression, loc. 1425, 1995; Sullivan, Our Times, 165.

20. Sullivan, Our Times, 176ff.; New York Times, 17 Sept. 2003; Grant, Forgotten Depression, loc. 1370; McDonald, Insull, 209.

21. Israel, Edison, 454–55; MME to Theodore Edison, 16 Oct. 1920, PTAE.

22. MME to TE, n.d., ca. Oct. 1920, EFW. The executives fired by TE were John Constable, Frank Fagan, Stephen Mambert, and William Maxwell.

23. MME to Theodore Edison, 18 Oct. 1920, PTAE. TE was still berating his son at the beginning of a family visit in November. “If Papa keeps at Charles as he did at dinner tonight I would not ask him to stay for such a week of torture—Charles is too sensitive and finely put together to stand it.” MME to Theodore Edison, 1 Nov. 1921, PTAE.

24. MME to Theodore Edison, 5 Nov. 1921, PTAE; Grant, Forgotten Depression, loc. 1390.

25. TE to C. S. Williams, 5 Jan. 1921, TENHP; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 196; TE to Sherwood Moore, 5 Jan. 1921, TENHP; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 109–13, 126; Israel, Edison, 455; TE pocket notebook 20-08-04, TENHP. In one, seemingly arbitrary case, TE fired a young college-educated employee, the friend of his electrochemical assistant Paul B. Kasakove. “He’s lost the lustre in his eye. You mark my words, he’s going to be a very sick man.” Kasakove scoffed at this opinion, but several months later the dismissed youth suffered a manic collapse. Kasakove, “Reminiscences,” TENHP.

26. Marion Edison Öser to TE, 23 Apr. 1920, TENHP.

27. TE superscript on A. Holt to TE, 5 Mar. 1920, “Family” folder, TENHP; MME to Theodore Edison, 6 Apr. 1920, PTAE; Jeffrey, “Tom and Beatrice.”

28. R. W. Kellow to William Edison, 9 Jan. 1920, and William Edison’s reply, same date, “Family” folder, TENHP.

29. TE memo, 3 Jan. 1920, and TE superscript on William Edison to R. W. Kellow, 9 Jan. 1920, “Family” folder, TENHP.

30. Miller Reese Hutchison Diary, 1 Jan. 1921, TENHP.

31. TE superscript on Roland Collins to TE, 29 Dec. 1920, TENHP; MME to Theodore Edison, 6, 7, and 12 Jan. 1921, PTAE.

32. Sward, Legend of Henry Ford, 114.

33. Charles Edison, Flotsam and Jetsam, quoted in Venable, Out of the Shadow, 57.

34. Venable, Out of the Shadow, 81; unidentified newsclip, datelined New York, 7 May 1921, TENHP.

35. Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (hereafter TAE Inc.) had made a record profit of $2.9 million in 1919. In 1920, this figure fell to $820,000; in 1921, the company lost $1.3 million. The effect of the depression was particularly evident in sales of Edison disk phonographs, which plummeted from 141,907 units to 34,326 in the same period. Millard, Edison and Business, 292, 294; Grant, Forgotten Depression, loc. 5796, 2948, 2982; Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 210.

36. Grant, Forgotten Depression, loc. 2790; TE quoted by Charles Edison in Venable, Out of the Shadow, 81. For TE’s convenient deafness, see, e.g., his interview in New York Sun, 27 Aug. 1884.

37. Charles Edison to TE, 12 Sept. 1921, TENHP; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 81.

38. One new intellectual venture for TE at this time was a Bryanesque monetary plan, extensively researched, for a replacement of the gold standard by a commodity-based currency. Although it was not taken seriously by contemporary economists, his Proposed Amendment to the Federal Reserve Banking System (West Orange, NJ, 1922) has recently been praised as imaginative and anti-inflationary by David L. Hammes in Harvesting Gold: Thomas Edison’s Experiment to Re-Invest American Money (Silver City, NM, 2012). See also “Says Edison Beat Bryan Money Plan,” New York Times, 24 Nov. 1922; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 197–212; and Israel, Edison, 446, 527.

39. TE pocket notebook 20-10-15, TENHP. This recording, played on a “William and Mary”-style Edison console, may be heard at https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=ewe-bnrx1kA.

40. TE pocket notebook 23-12-23, TENHP; TE superscript on an article ms. by Francis A. Grant of Musical America, ca. Dec. 1920, TENHP; TE memos to Sherwood Moore, 1920–21, TENHP; Kasakove, “Reminiscences,” 145; TE pocket notebook 20-08-000; TE patent 1,492,023; Theodore Edison Oral History 1, 118–19, TENHP.

41. Meadowcroft, Boys’ Life of Edison, 241; MME to Theodore Edison, 8 Apr. 1921, PTAE.

42. Warren G. Harding Inaugural, 4 Mar. 1921, American Presidency Project, http://presidency.ucsb.edu.

43. New York Times, 5 Aug. 1921; unidentified newsclip, datelined 7 May 1921, TENHP; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 81.

44. Israel, Edison, 455; New York Times, 6 May 1921. See also Dennis, “Edison Questionnaire.”

45. T. C. Martin,“Edison a Student at Seventy-Four,” World’s News, 18 June 1921; “Edison Answers Some of His Critics,” New York Times, 23 Oct. 1921; Newton, Uncommon Friends, 7. According to his publicity assistant, John Coakley, TE’s papers of choice were the Times and staunchly Republican New York Herald Tribune. John Coakley Oral History, 36, TENHP.

46. Oliver Lodge folder, Biographical File, TENHP; Sherwood Eddy, New Passages to Faith (New York, 1926), 119, copy in TENHP; TE to Myron Herrick, 28 June 1921, TENHP; TE interviewed in Detroit News, 26 Oct. 1921; Electrical Review and Western Electrician, 10 Nov. 1914.

47. New York Evening Mail, 10 May 1921; New York Tribune 11, 12 May 1921.

48. New York Globe, 12 May 1921; New York Times, 13 May 1921; Lancaster (PA) Intelligencer, quoted in Dennis, “Edison Questionnaire.”

49. New York Tribune, 12 May 1921; Boston Globe, 15 May 1921; Thomas Edison National Historic Park, “150 Questions” list, Nps.gov; Dennis, “Edison Questionnaire.”

50. New York Times, 18 May 1921; Einstein folder. Biographical Collection, TENHP. In a 1924 letter, recently discovered, Einstein wrote his sister, “Scientifically I haven’t achieved much recently—the brain gradually goes off with age.” Guardian, 14 Mar. 2018.

51. H. Winfield Secor, “An Interview with Nicola Tesla,” Science and Invention, Feb. 1922; Edwin R. Chamberlain to TE, 17 May 1921, TENHP.

52. TE superscript on Edwin R. Chamberlain to TE, 17 May 1921, TENHP; Dennis, “Edison Questionnaire.” See also “What Do You Know? The Edison Questionnaire,” Scientific American, Nov. 1921; TE quoted in “Mr Edison’s Brain Meter,” Literary Digest, 28 May 1921.

53. G. W. Plusch to TE, 12 May 1921, TENHP; “Mr Edison’s Brain Meter,” Literary Digest, 28 May 1921; Washington Times, 23 May 1921; Arizona Republic, 22 May 1921; “Diogenes Looking for a Man that Can Answer a Few Simple Questions,” https:lccn.loc.gov/​2016678705; Boston Globe, 15 May 1921.

54. TE superscript on H. C. Stratton, 11 May 1921, TENHP; TE quoted in Newark Evening News, 14 May 1921. For a comprehensive survey of reaction to what the San Francisco Examiner called “Thos. Edison’s Mental Teasers,” see Dennis, “Edison Questionnaire.” See also “The Edison Questionnaire—Its Aim, Its Results, and Its Collateral Significance,” Scientific America 125 (Nov. 1921).

55. Dennis, “Edison Questionnaire”; Literary Digest, 28 May 1921. TE issued two more, equally forbidding questionnaires that summer. See Chicago Tribune, 12 May and 30 July 1921.

56. MME to Theodore Edison, 6 July 1921, PTAE.

57. Leland Crabbe, “The International Gold Standard and U.S. Monetary Policy from World War I to the New Deal,” Federal Reserve Bulletin, June 1989; Olean (NY) Evening Herald, 12 July 1921; John W. Dean, Warren G. Harding (New York, 2004), loc. 1653. Harding was successful in retarding passage of the Bonus Bill in 1921 and successful again in vetoing it the following year.

58. MME to Theodore Edison, 18 July 1921, PTAE. Harding was also a regular visitor to Chautauqua, Mina’s family resort. But according to a UP report, this was to be TE’s “first meeting” with the president. Minneapolis Tribune, 25 July 1921.

59. Lief, Harvey Firestone, 208; Akron Times, 23 July 1921. Except where otherwise noted, this account of the TE/Harding weekend is derived from Harvey S. Firestone with Samuel Crowther, Men and Rubber: The Story of Business (New York, 1926), 228ff., plus eyewitness reports in the July 1921 Clippings File, TENHP. (Harding brought a large press party with him to the campsite.) See also MME to Theodore Edison, 23 July 1921, PTAE, and photographs in the Library of Congress Prints and Photography Division online catalogue, Nos. LC-H27, A3138-3151 and F81-15260.

60. Firestone, Men and Rubber, 230.

61. Canton (OH) Daily News, 24 July 1921.

62. Quoted in Lief, Harvey Firestone, 209.

63. Francis Champ Chambrun, “Famous Travelers: Edison, Ford, Firestone,” dnr.maryland.gov. Harding’s visit with the Vagabonds received enormous publicity, due to the presence of fifteen White House reporters, photographers, and movie cameramen. Although Mina cannot have been gratified by headlines such as “EDISON SLEEPS AS BISHOP PREACHES,” many reports noted the president’s fascination with TE. Clippings Folder, July 1921, TENHP.

64. Grant, Forgotten Depression, chap. 18, passim. TE memo, ca. 31 Dec. 1921, pocket notebook 20-08-00, TENHP; Israel, Edison, 409, 521; Edisonian 5, no. 1 (Winter 2009); New York Times, 5 Aug. 1921; MME to Theodore Edison, 20 Nov. 1921, PTAE.

65. Charles Edison to TE, 21 Oct. 1921, TENHP.

66. MME to Theodore Edison, 19 Feb. 1921, PTAE.

67. Charles confirmed this in later life. “If father hadn’t stepped in, we would have been completely broke.” Venable, Out of the Shadow, 81. A report on the cost of operating Edison Industries at this time put the total at slightly over $1 million per annum, of which $298,832 went to labor and help. Meanwhile there was only $28,000 worth of work in progress. John V. Miller to TE, 30 June 1922, TENHP.

68. H. F. Miller to TE, 31 Dec. 1921, TENHP; Beatrice Edison to MME, 22 June 1922, TENHP; TE to Dr. Gaunt, n.d., 1922, TENHP; John V. Miller to TE, 23 Jan. 1922, TENHP.

69. Sources differ as to the precise extent of TE’s 1920–21 purge. The figure given here is that of Charles Edison, who calculated a reduction from 10,000 to 3,000 by 28 Feb. 1922 (Israel, Edison, 455.) As early as 5 Aug. 1921, The New York Times reported it as 8,000 to just over 1,000. A typescript, “Business Activities of Mark Jones,” ca. 1925 (TENHP), gives it as 11,000 to 11,500.

70. TE interviewed in Detroit News, 26 Oct. 1921.

71. Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York, 1999), 37, 693.

72. “Radio Currents,” Radio Broadcast 1, no. 1 (May 1922).

73. Millard, America on Record, 137–38; TE superscript on L. R. Garretson to TE, 1 Feb. 1922, TENHP.

74. Memo, ca. early 1920s, William Benney folder, Biographical Collection, TENHP.

75. MME to Theodore Edison, 9 Feb. 1922, PTAE.

76. MME to Theodore Edison, 10 May 1922, PTAE.

77. TE to William J. Curtis, 7 May 1920, TENHP.

78. Millard, America on Record, 132; DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 112; TE Patents 1,369,272 and 1,411,425; Harold Anderson Oral History, 7–8, COL; Wile and Dethlefson, Edison Artists, 148–50.

79. TE superscript on William D. Johnstone, Jr., to TE, 15 July 1922, TENHP. TE’s pocket notebooks, 1920–23, concentrate mainly on recording improvements.

80. Rubber Age, 25 Oct. 1922; Western Canner and Packer, May 1922; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 53–54, 34, 47; Lief, Harvey Firestone, 239. Rubber Age, 25 Oct. 1922, “conservatively” estimated current U.S. rubber consumption at 270,000 tons, “eighty percent of which will go into tubes and tires.” World production was put at 330,000 tons.

81. Rubber Age, 25 Oct. and 10 Nov. 1922; Kendrick A. Clements, The Life of Herbert Hoover: Imperfect Visionary, 1918–1928 (New York, 2010), x; Silvano A. Wueschner, “Herbert Hoover, Great Britain, and the Rubber Crisis, 1923–1926” (Ebhsoc.org, 2000); Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 55–57.

82. New York Times, 23 July 1922.

83. Harvey S. Firestone to TE, 9 Jan. 1923, TENHP; Harvey S. Firestone and Samuel Crowther, Rubber: Its History and Development (Akron, OH, 1922); TE to Firestone, 16 Jan. 1923, TENHP.

84. “I was astounded at the knowledge of rubber that he had on hand….He told me more than I knew and more than I think our chemists knew.” Firestone, Men and Rubber, 226–27.

85. TE Patent 60,646; see Part Seven; Papers, 2.651, 2.670, and 3.71; “An Hour with Edison,” Scientific American, 13 July 1878.

86. TE to Firestone, 16 Jan. 1923, TENHP. TE went through the book (preserved in TENHP) in less than a week and added none of his usual marginalia. There was one world map that might have cautioned him, showing that rubber plants flourished nowhere outside the tropics, except for a thin strip of natural guayule in north-central Mexico.

87. TE wrote to ask the British chemist S. J. Peachey’s advice when conducting these experiments. Peachey was delighted to cooperate with “the greatest inventor of the age.” TE pocket notebook 22-09-30 and 22-12-22; Peachey to TE, 19 Sept. 1921, TENHP; Joseph P. Burke, “Chlorinated Rubber,” ts. memo, 24 July 1922, found on the reopening of TE’s desk on 23 Aug. 2016, TENHP; Francis S. Schimerka to TE, 24 Nov. 1922, TENHP.

88. Loren G. Polhamus, Plants Collected and Tested by Thomas A. Edison as Possible Sources of Domestic Rubber (USDA Agricultural Research Service, ARS 34–74, July 1967), 7, 190; Harvey M. Hall and Frances L. Long, Rubber Content of American Plants (Washington, DC, 1921), 60.

89. TE pocket notebook 22-09-30, TENHP (the preceding entry is dated 22 Dec. 1922); Stephen S. Anderson, “The Story of Edison’s Goldenrod Rubber: Constructed from the Records of the Original Researchers” (1952), TENHP.

90. According to Karl Ehricke, “we finally got the [sound quality] grading up to almost perfect, 98 percent.” Karl Ehricke Oral History 1 (1973) 13, TENHP.

91. Quoted in Bryan, Edison: The Man, 102.

92. Except where otherwise indicated, the information in this section derives from “Thomas Edison’s Attic,” a radio documentary by Gerald Fabris, sound archivist at TENHP, 31 May 2005, https://wfmu.org/​playlists/​shows/​15231; and Jack Stanley, “The Edison 125-foot Horn,” a two-part YouTube presentation, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=yjPzfTAuZN0 and https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=2Q4vDBA_38I. Both sources feature contributions from Theodore Edison and Ernest L. Stevens, TE’s music director in the 1920s. See also Ernest L. Stevens Oral History (1973), COL.

93. TE quoted in Fabris, “Thomas Edison’s Attic.” See also Stevens Oral History, 9–12, COL.

94. https://www.nps.gov/​edis/​learn/​photosmultimedia/​upload/​EDIS-SRP-0198-09.mp3.

95. Quoted in Stanley, “Edison 125-foot Horn.” “Father didn’t understand mathematics at all.” Theodore Edison Oral History 2, 26.

96. Theodore Edison to MME, 25 Mar. 1923, PTAE.

97. MME to Theodore Edison, 4 and 15 Apr. 1923, PTAE.

98. MME to Theodore Edison, 1 May 1923, PTAE.

99. TE pocket notebook 20-08-00, TENHP; MME to Theodore Edison, 1 May 1923, PTAE; TE to Ernest G. Liebold, 16 July 1923, TENHP; New York Times, 12 June 1923. For a sample Edisonian “negro joke,” see Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 244.

100. Theodore Edison to TE, 16 June 1923, TENHP.

101. Ibid.

102. MME to Grace M. Hitchcock, n.d., ca. May 1923, PTAE.

103. Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 220, 223; Millard, America on Record, 142.

104. At the Edison Association Convention in White Sulphur Springs, 12 Oct. 1922, a representative of the Radio Corporation of America duplicated some of the sparking experiments in Edison’s 1875 notebooks, connecting them to a detector-amplifier wireless set and Western Electric loudspeaker. “The signals came through with most gratifying clearness.” Edwin W. Hammer to TE, 17 Oct. 1922, TENHP.

105. See Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 223–24.

106. TE to Walter H. Miller, 14 Jan. 1926, TENHP (“I do not want to touch this scheme at present….They cannot record without distortion”); Victor Record Sales Statistics (1901–1941), mainspringpress.com; Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 223–24; TE to Harvey Firestone, 19 Dec. 1923, TENHP.

107. J. V. Miller memorandum, “Laboratory of Thomas A. Edison: Work in Progress,” 30 Sept. 1923, TENHP.

108. TE pocket notebook 22-12-22, TENHP.

109. Henry Watts, Dictionary of Chemistry and the Allied Branches of the Other Sciences (London, 1883); Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 277. Volumes 1 through 6 of TE’s copy of Watts (TENHP) are all annotated for “plant extraction” information.

110. TE to Henry Ford, 16 Sept. 1923. The correct per-acre rubber yield using TE’s figures would have been 661.39 pounds. He gave no reason for adjusting it upward.

111. Lief, Harvey Firestone, 234; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 77; TE to Henry Ford, 16 Sept. 1923.

112. MME to Theodore Edison, 5 Aug. 1923; Norwalk (OH) Reflector-Herald, 13 Aug. 1923. TE’s personal Lincoln, a dark green convertible, was a gift from Ford for this trip and is preserved at HFM.

113. TE quoted in Henry Fairfield Osborn letter to New York Times, 9 Oct. 1931 (“Osborn, you are always in the past in billions of years….I am always thinking of the future”); TE in T.P.’s Weekly, 29 Nov. 1907.

114. TE used the phrase “the beautiful hills of Milan” in a letter to his elder sister Marion Edison Page, a longtime resident of the town. She turned it into what was locally regarded as a poem. See “The Birthplace of Edison Dreams of Her Fallen Greatness,” Firelands Pioneer 13 (1900), 716. The following account of TE’s visit to Milan is based on reports in Norwalk (OH) Reflector-Herald, 13 Aug. 1923; Sandusky (OH) Register, 12 Aug. 1923; and Sandusky Star-Journal, 13 Aug. 1923, Image AL00737, ohiohistory.org.

115. Dialogue from Sandusky (OH) Register, 12 Aug. 1923.

116. White, Milan Township and Village, 16–19.

117. DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 229; Sandusky (OH) Star-Journal, 13 Aug. 1923. On TE’s insistence, the house was electrified the following winter. Norwalk (OH) Reflector-Herald, 3 Feb. 1924.

118. Sandusky (OH) Register, 12 Aug. 1923.

119. Ibid.

120. Harvey S. Firestone, Jr., reminiscence on the death of TE, 19 Oct. 1931, HFM. See note 5 (“units of life”) above.

121. Anderson, “Sunday in the Home,” PTAE.

122. TE, introduction to William Van der Weyde, ed., The Life and Works of Thomas Paine (New Rochelle, NY, 1925).

123. Ibid.

124. Albion, Quotable Edison, 108. Albion’s volume is notable, in an unreliable field, for its documentation of original sources—in this case, a TE interview with Edward Marshall in Forum, Nov. 1927, entitled “Has Man an Immortal Soul?”

125. TE, introduction to Weyde, Life and Works of Thomas Paine.

126. TE quoted by John F. O’Hagan, undated clip in 1931 scrapbook, “Edison’s Philosophy of Life,” TENHP. TE marked a passage in Darwin’s Variation of Animals and Plants, 230, noting that the Dutch florist Peter Voorhelm had no difficulty distinguishing among twelve hundred varieties of the hyacinth.

127. “Marginalia Project of Books in the Thomas Edison Historical Park Library,” ts., TENHP. See also Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 283–84.

128. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 15. See, e.g., TE’s marginalia in his copy of Darwin’s Variations of Animals and Plants, 356, 358; TE pocket notebooks, 1924–25 passim, TENHP. See also “Some Ideas Sent by Mr. Edison…to Captain Coulter, U.S.A.,” ca. 22 June 1922, TENHP.

129. TE to Henry Ford, 15 Sept. 1923, TENHP.

130. Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 275; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 75.

131. MME to Theodore Edison, 2 July and 12 June 1924, PTAE; Ann Osterhout to MME, 11 Nov. 1924, PTAE; Theodore Edison to Ann Osterhout, 30 Oct. 1924, PTAE. Ann’s given name was Anna, but she shortened it shortly after becoming Theodore’s fiancée.

132. Winthrop J. Van Leuven Osterhout (1871–1964) was “probably the leading man in the country on plant physiology.” Theodore Edison to MME, 14 Mar. 1924, PTAE.

133. MME to Theodore Edison, 26 May 1924, PTAE; A. E. Johnson and Karl Ehricke Oral Histories, 29 Mar. 1971, 26, TENHP. After marrying Theodore, Ann was “at the laboratory almost every day,” engaged on colloidal lead research. Ann Edison to MME, 23 Feb. 1926, PTAE. The substance was then believed to be a promising cure for cancer. Wilhelm Stenström and Melvin Reinhard, “Some Experiences with the Production of Colloidal Lead,” Journal of Biological Chemistry 69 (Aug. 1926).

134. Marion Edison Öser to TE, 24 Sept. 1924 and 6 June 1923, PTAE.

135. Marion Edison Öser to MME, 11 Feb. 1925, PTAE.

136. MME to Theodore Edison, 23 Mar. 1925, PTAE.

137. MME to Theodore Edison, 1 Jan. 1924, PTAE.

138. MME to Theodore Edison, 13 Mar. 1925 and 1 Jan. 1924, PTAE. Mina told another reporter around this time that TE was “the most even man I ever saw. He is happy in his home….But he does not want to be bothered. Nor does he enter into what is going on around him.” Norwalk (OH) Reflector-Herald, 11 Feb. 1927.

139. “The Most Difficult Man in America,” Collier’s Magazine, 18 July 1925.

140. TE Last Will and Testament, 1 Feb. 1926, TENHP. The will was slightly amended on 30 July 1931, with a codicil redefining the terms by which Theodore and Charles inherited the troubled assets of the Edison Cement Company. TE’s disposition of his assets (estimated at $12 million in 1931) favored his two sons by Mina, to the anger of Madeleine, mother of his only grandchildren, while reinforcing the feelings of Marion, Tom, and William that they rated low in his esteem. A predictable intrafamily legal squabble ensued. The current (2018) value of TE’s estate would be about $198 million.

141. Charles Edison to MME, 27 Mar. 1927, PTAE (“Our 1926 balance sheet…is the best one we ever had, with a ratio of current assets of 11 to 1 & in a very liquid condition”); Newton, Uncommon Friends, 7. In effect, TE and Charles swapped titles, TE now becoming chairman of the board of his eponymous company (on 2 Aug. 1926).

142. For the origin of professorial prejudice against TE in 1880, see McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 201–4. Ian Wills, “Edison, Science and Artefacts,” PhilSci Archive 2007, dates it even earlier, to 1875. http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/​3541/.

143. Raymond C. Cochrane, The National Academy of Sciences: The First 100 Years, 1863–1963 (Washington, DC, 1978), 284.

144. Notwithstanding his often tongue-in-cheek condemnation of scientists, TE in 1924 compiled a list of those he most admired in history. They were, in order, Faraday, Tyndall, Ampère, Galileo, Newton, Whitney, da Vinci, Becquerel, Bertholet, Darwin, Pasteur, Humboldt, Helmholtz, and Siemens. He included, then deleted, Volta, Ohm, Morse, and Bell, and he made no mention of Hertz or Einstein. TE to Edsel Ford, ca. 26 May 1924, TENHP.

145. TE quoted in Israel, Edison, 307; P. B. McDonald to TE, 12 Oct. 1923; TE memorandum, mid-Oct. 1923, TENHP.

146. Michael I. Pupin to P. B. McDonald, 6 Nov. 1923, TENHP.

147. TE to P. B. McDonald, 30 Nov. 1923, TENHP. Electrical World never published its proposed article on TE the scientist, and after TE’s death Norman Speiden, director of the Edison archives in West Orange, discouraged publication of the McDonald/Edison/Pupin correspondence for fear of “an unsavory argument regarding priority.” In 1937, however, Speiden presented the letters, plus a selection of TE’s scientific papers, to Harvey Cushing for inclusion in a proposed library of the history of science. “There can be no doubt of their importance,” Cushing replied. “I shall treasure them most highly.” Cushing to Speiden, 27 Mar. 1937, TENHP.

148. Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 221–28; TE introduction to George E. Tewksbury, A Complete Manual of the Edison Phonograph (Newark, NJ, 1897), 14.

149. MME to Theodore Edison, 4 May and 29 June 1924, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 457. The most detailed account of TAE Inc.’s long and disastrous attempt to enter the radio business is given in Theodore Edison Oral History 1, 60–76, TENHP.

150. Josephson, Edison, 471.

151. American imports of foreign crude rose to 413,338 long tons in 1926, while 77,300 long tons of fresh rubber were registered as “afloat” in December alone. Both figures broke records. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Record Book of Business Statistics, 1927 (Washington, DC, 1927–29), 48–50.

152. Secretary, Edison Pioneers, to Robert Treat Hotel, 9 Feb. 1927, TENHP; Edison Monthly, Mar. 1927.

153. “Edison, Deified but Lonely,” Sandusky (OH) Star-Journal, 11 Feb. 1927.

154. Edison Pioneers 10th Annual Luncheon seating list, 11 Feb. 1927, TENHP. Ford at this time was reportedly the richest man in the world, eclipsing John D. Rockefeller. Gerald Leinwand, 1927: High Tide of the Twenties (New York 2001), 35.

155. Portsmouth (OH) Daily Times, 14 Feb. 1924; Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin, with the collaboration of William Meadowcroft, Edison, His Life and Inventions, rev. ed. (New York, 1929), 813.

156. TE to Henry Ford, 15 Feb. 1927, TENHP.

157. Albion, Florida Life of Edison, 116; Newton, Uncommon Friends, 10.

158. MME to Theodore Edison, 16 May 1920 and 23 July 1921, PTAE. TE’s onetime personal secretary Alfred O. Tate remarked that what really drew TE to Ford “was the sheer bulk of the man’s fortune.” Sward, Legend of Henry Ford, 115.

159. The International Jew (Dearborn, MI, 1920), 141 ff.; Dearborn Independent, 6 Aug. 1921; TE superscript on Harry A. Harrison to TE, 14 June 1921, TENHP. TE’s attitude to Jews was common among many middle-class Christian businessmen during his lifetime. In his view, more casual than bitter, Jews dominated the music, banking, and media industries, and were always after a bargain. Though unquestionably biased by modern standards, he had none of the paranoidal xenophobia displayed by, say, Henry Adams or Henry Ford. His fullest statement on the subject was made to Isaac Markens, author of The Hebrews in America, on 15 Nov. 1911: “The Jews are certainly a remarkable people, as strange to me [in] their isolation from all the rest of mankind, as those mysterious people called gypsies—While there are some ‘terrible examples’ in mercantile pursuits, the moment they get into art, music, & science & literature the jew [sic] is fine….The trouble with him is that he has been persecuted for centuries by ignorant malignant bigots & forced into his present characteristics and he has acquired a 6th sense which gives him an almost unerring judgement in trade affairs—Having this natural advantage & got himself disliked by many as I saw in Europe, I believe that in America where he is free that in time he will cease to be so alarmist & not carry to such extremes his natural advantages. I write you this as I can see from the tone of your book that you are trying to uphold the honor of the Jewish race.” Edison Personal folder, 1911, TENHP.

160. New York Times, 27 Feb. 1927; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 78, 80–81; Marion (OH) Star and Xenia (OH) Evening Gazette, 28 Feb. 1927; 1927 Clippings File, TENHP.

161. Xenia (OH) Evening Gazette, 28 Feb. 1927; Albion, Florida Life of Edison, 122; Fort Myers Press, 2 Sept. 1927; TE, “Notes on Rubber Plants and Their Care,” June 1927 notebook, TENHP.

162. Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 81; TE pocket notebook 27-05-26, TENHP.

163. Gano Dunn, attendee at the 1927 NAS annual meeting, in News of the Edison Pioneers, no. 2 (1946). TE’s nominator was unidentified.

164. MME to Chautauqua Bird and Tree Club, summer 1928, PTAE; New York American, 12 June 1927; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 81–82. See also Lisa Vargues, “In Search of Thomas Edison’s Botanical Treasures,” New York Botanical Garden, 30 Dec. 2013, http://blogs.nybg.org/​science-talk/​2013.

165. Josephson, Edison, 470; Israel, Edison, 457; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 82–84, 87, 262; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 291, 287; TE quoted in MME to Theodore Edison, 21 Aug. 1927, PTAE.

166. MME to Theodore Edison, 21 Aug. 1927, PTAE.

167. Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 81. For an evocation of the acrid conflict at the laboratory between TE’s “Old Guard” staff and younger executives unable to prevail against them, see Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 248–50.

168. Marion Edison Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park”; Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 298; Popular Science, Dec. 1927.

169. Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 286, 291; “Edison Hunting for Rubber in Weeds,” Literary Digest, 22 Nov. 1927.

170. TE Patent 1,740,079, granted 17 Dec. 1929.

171. Ibid.

172. Ibid.

173. Ibid.

174. Venable, Out of the Shadow, 82.

175. MME to Theodore Edison, 13 Jan. 1928, PTAE.

176. Fort Myers Press, 13 Jan. 1928; Jerome Osborn reminiscences, Biographical Collection, TENHP; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 21, 92–93.

177. MME to Theodore Edison, 2 Mar. 1928, PTAE; Newton, Uncommon Friends, 10–11; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 1134–35. Ford’s purchase of Menlo Park was announced in New York Times on 16 Feb. 1928.

178. In Oct. 1922, at the New York Electrical and Industrial Exposition, the Pioneers displayed a “Museum of Edisonia” curated by Frank Wardlaw and Francis Jehl. It featured, along with Hammer’s bulb collection, one of the “Jumbo” dynamos from the Pearl Street project, TE’s first electric locomotive, and an “original phonograph with its tinfoil records.” Edison Monthly, Nov. 1922.

179. TE quoted in Hagerstown (MD) Globe, 2 June 1928.

180. Emil Ludwig, “Edison: The Greatest American of the Century,” American Magazine, Dec. 1931.

181. TE on 12 June 1928, quoted in L. M. Roberston, “ ‘Inspirations’: The Plant Studies of Thomas Alva Edison,” ts., TENHP; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 101.

182. Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 101; MME to Theodore Edison, 6 June 1928, PTAE.

183. MME to Theodore Edison, 26 Mar. 1928, PTAE; Thomas Jeffrey, Edison family historian, to author, 19 Mar. 2017 (”Carolyn’s birth year advanced forward with each decennial census, so that by 1930 she was exactly the same age as Charles”); Ann Edison to MME, 26 Mar. 1927, PTAE; Emil Ludwig 1928 notebook, 20 Feb. (transcribed from German shorthand by Gordon Ludwig), Schweizerisches Literaturarchiv, Bern, Switzerland.

184. MME to Theodore Edison, 26 Mar. 1928, PTAE; Thomas Jeffrey, Edison family historian, to author, 19 Mar. 2017 (”Carolyn’s birth year advanced forward with each decennial census, so that by 1930 she was exactly the same age as Charles”); Ann Edison to MME, 26 Mar. 1927, PTAE.

185. TE quoted in Superior (WI) Telegram, 9 July 1923. The author has, with permission, copied the last thirteen words of this sentence from Jerrard Tickell’s Odette (London, 1949).

186. During this stay in Fort Myers, TE personally collected 553 specimens and tested a total of 1,756 wild plants for latex. None satisfied him. Anderson, “Story of Edison’s Goldenrod Rubber, 10–11, TENHP.

187. Fort Myers Press, 13 June 1928; Josephson, Edison, 475. On TE the autocratic employer, see, e.g., Frank L. Dyer Diary. 9 and 13 Nov. 1906, TENHP; Hammer, “Edison and His Inventions,” II; Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 294; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 10–13; Israel, Edison, 454–55.

188. Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 86; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 283; William Meadowcroft to Everett Holt, 18 July 1927, TENHP.

189. Millard, Edison and Business, 310–11; Jeffrey, “Tom and Beatrice,” 6; “Conference re Edison Museum,” 20 Aug. 1928, TENHP.

190. Ibid. Ford ultimately spent $30 million on the Edison Institute/Greenfield Village complex, including $3 million on Edison artifacts alone. Douglas Brinkley, Wheels for the World: Henry Ford, His Company, and a Century of Progress, 1903–2003 (New York, 2003), 377.

191. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 240.

192. TE’s copy of Adolf Heil’s The Manufacture of Rubber Goods (1923) is heavily marked up on pages to do with “the inferiority and inclination to tackiness of certain rubbers,” TENHP.

193. New York Times, 23 Sept. 1928; Israel, Edison, 376–77; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 337.

194. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Chicago Tribune, and Louisville (KY) Courier-Journal, 21 Oct. 1928.

195. MME to Theodore Edison, 5 Nov. 1928, PTAE.

196. A medical examination of TE by Dr. Frank Sladen, physician-in-chief of the Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, showed him to be “unusually alert and active mentally,” but troubled by acute spasmodic cramps, possibly related to an ulcer or diabetes. Sladen to MME, 14 Aug. 1928, HFM. He sent a complete report to TE the same day.

197. Nerney, born ca. 1880, was a professional librarian and editor who achieved some fame in 1915 when, working as secretary of the NAACP, she chastised the leadership for not reacting strongly enough to the racism of D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, 6 Dec. 1915, NAACP Papers, Library of Congress. Her archival work at TAE Inc. lasted two years. At first Charles Edison intended it to be the basis of an official life of his father, but evidently he found her insufficiently worshipful. After leaving the company’s employ, she published her charming if dated Edison, Modern Olympian.

198. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 17–18; Ernest L. Stevens Oral History, 15 (“He knew every cuss word in the English language”).

199. Bryan, Edison: The Man, 272; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 228–229, 237; Walter S. Mallory, “Edison Could Take it,” ts. memoir, ca. 1931, TENHP; New York World, 6 May 1894; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 780; Newton, Uncommon Friends, 9.

200. Vanderbilt, TE, Chemist, 297.

201. Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 95.

202. Laboratory notebook 29-02-01, TENHP; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 94.

203. Samuel Crowther, “Thomas Edison: A Great National Asset,” Saturday Evening Post, 5 December 1929.

204. The Book of Job, 28:12; Mary C. Nerney Notebook N-28-11-01, 14 Jan. 1929, TENHP.

205. MME to Theodore Edison, 1 Mar. 1929, PTAE; Hubert S. Howe quoted in Lowell (MA) Sun, 16 Oct. 1931: “Edison suffered from diabetes for forty years [and] never took insulin.” When TE’s laboratory desk was reopened on 23 Aug. 2016, the author found a pair of unused Luer syringes nestling in a pigeonhole.

206. TE, “Best in My Index,” reproduced in Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 96–98; TE pocket notebook 29-01-25 and rubber notebook 29-02-01, TENHP. Mina was amused by TE’s new habit of talking in botanical Latin. “Our common speech has no place with him. When I think that three years ago he did not know a rose from a turnip, I am astounded. Of course it has to have the promise of rubber in it or he is not interested but when it comes to weeds—he is an authority.” To Theodore Edison. 15 May 1930, PTAE.

207. Los Angeles Times, 12 Feb. 1929. TE’s dyspeptic remark aroused widespread criticism. See, e.g., Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 12 Feb. 1929.

208. Los Angeles Times, 12 Feb. 1929.

209. Ibid.; Electrical World, 16 Feb. 1929.

210. Laboratory notebooks 29-02-00 (“Solidago”) and 29-02-01, TENHP.

211. Ibid.; Anderson, “Story of Edison’s Goldenrod,” 15, TENHP.

212. Fritz, Bamboo and Sailing Ships, 35.

213. Anderson, “Story of Edison’s Goldenrod,” 17–18, TENHP; TE pocket notebook, ca. 1929, TENHP.

214. Ibid. See also TE rubber notebook, 29-02-01, TENHP. During the previous month, TE had succeeded in vulcanizing the rubber of an unidentified plant. “He is as happy and proud of it as a king,” MME wrote. “It is the softest sheet rubber I ever felt…the first rubber ever produced from weeds.” MME to Theodore Edison, 15 Apr. 1929, PTAE.

215. MME to Theodore Edison, 25 Apr. 1929, PTAE; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 283; Fritz, Bamboo and Sailing Ships, 28.

216. MME to Theodore Edison, 6 June 1929, TENHP.

217. Allan Sutton, Edison Blue Amberol Cylinders (Denver, 2009), xiv; Charles Edison to MME, 22 Feb. 1929, PTAE. For a discussion of the innovative but overdelicate Edison microgroove LP, see Wile and Dethlefson, Edison Artists, 122Bff.

218. MME to Theodore Edison, 6 June 1929, TENHP.

219. Ben H. Tongue, “Some Information on the Edison Company’s Two-Year-Run in the Radio Business,” http://www.bentongue.com/​edison/​edison.html; MME to Theodore Edison, ca. mid-Dec. 1929, PTAE; Charles Sumner Williams, Jr., to TE, “12.2.29,” TENHP. Charles’s venture into the radio business, involving the purchase of the Splitdorf Radio Company on 14 Jan. 1929, was a disaster. See below, note 253.

220. Williams to TE, “12.2.29,” TENHP. The four drafts, one in Charles’s hand, one in Williams’s, and two typed, were retained by Mina, who recorded the reactions of Theodore and Ann Edison. Copies supplied to the author by Thomas E. Jeffrey, who notes the possibility that the letter was never seen by TE.

221. Ibid.

222. Dr. Frank Sladen to Frank Campsall, 25 Aug. 1929, HFM; Campsall to Sladen, 26 and 28 Aug. 1929, HFM. TE was still ailing weeks after the Jubilee, “not yet able to put in his usual long hours in the laboratory.” Mary Nerney to Charles S. Palmer, 15 Nov. 1929, TENHP.

223. Unless otherwise indicated, the following account of TE’s attendance at Light’s Golden Jubilee is based on reports in the Detroit Free Press and Chicago Tribune, 20–22 Oct 1929, and “Miss Nichols Describes Dearborn Light Jubilee,” Manitou Springs (CO) Journal, 14 Nov 1929. Marian Nichols was a member of the Edison family party. Extra visual details come from photographs of the event in HFM and TENHP.

224. Harrisburg (PA) Evening News, 19 Oct. 1931.

225. Theodore Edison Oral History, 35–36, TENHP; Detroit Free Press, 21 Oct. 1929.

226. Ibid.; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 1141.

227. Detroit Free Press, 21 Oct. 1929.

228. Ibid.

229. Ibid.; Chicago Tribune, 20 Oct. 1929; Garet Garrett, “The World Henry Ford Made,” unpublished article, Ford biographical file, TENHP; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 340–41.

230. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 342.

231. Chicago Tribune, 20 Oct. 1929; Detroit Free Press, 21 Oct. 1929.

232. Chicago Tribune, 20 Oct. 1929; Golden Jubilee box, 1929, TENHP; Battle Creek (MI) Enquirer, 21 Oct. 1929; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 22 Oct. 1929.

233. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 304; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 1139.

234. Chicago Tribune, 22 Oct. 1929.

235. Detroit Free Press, 22 Oct. 1929.

236. The following dialogue is taken from the soundtrack of a film record of the evacuation ceremony, uploaded by the Henry Ford Museum at https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=ARqyM9nvWuw. Note: the video is wrongly described as having been filmed after the banquet that evening.

237. See Larry Tye, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and the Birth of Public Relations (New York, 2002), 63–68. While acknowledging Bernays’s work in staging the Golden Jubilee, Tye emphasizes the more important promotional role played by Henry Ford.

238. Audio quotations from “Edison Golden Jubilee Radio Broadcast,” aircheck fragment, 21 Oct. 1929, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=tFCX4OybnlY.

239. Minneapolis Star, 22 Oct. 1929.

240. Detroit Free Press, 22 Oct. 1929.

241. Chicago Tribune, 22 Oct. 1929.

242. Philadelphia Inquirer and Cincinnati Inquirer, 22 Oct. 1929.

243. Madame Curie was shocked by how “very old” TE looked, and by the effort it cost him to speak. Marie Curie et ses filles: Lettres (Paris, 2011), 317.

244. The following transcript of TE’s speech at the Jubilee dinner is taken from a pallophotophone recording resurrected by the Museum of Science in Schenectady, New York, and kindly provided to the author by Chris Hunter. Most of it can be heard online at https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=G4SbydoXWLg.

245. “Miss Nichols Describes Dearborn Light Jubilee,” Manitou Springs (CO) Journal, 14 Nov. 1929.

246. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Los Angeles Times, and Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 Oct. 1929.

247. Battle Creek Enquirer, 22 Oct. 1929.

248. Wilmington (DE) News Journal, 22 Oct. 1929.

249. Plainfield (NJ) Courier-News, 24 Oct. 1929; Josephson, Edison, 481. For a poignant eyewitness description of TE’s return to his desk in the West Orange laboratory, see Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 292.

250. Arthur Walsh circular to the trade, 29 Oct. 1929, facsimile in Wile and Dethlefson, Edison Artists, 171. Sales of Edison disk phonographs had declined from 141,907 in 1921 to 15,320 in 1928, respectively. During the same period, Edison disk records sales fell from 7,721,080 to 495,500. Phonograph folder, 1929 General File, TENHP.

251. Los Angeles Times, 12 Feb. 1929. See MacDonald, Insull, 244ff.

252. Sutton, Edison Blue Amberol Cylinders, xiv; Israel, Edison, 456.

253. Charles’s “suicide” threat at this time (see above) may have been aggravated by TE’s criticism of his “extravagance” in building himself a magnificent house, just as the stock market was collapsing, and along with it TAE Inc.’s radio venture. MME to Theodore Edison, “Dec. 1929,” PTAE. In a telling anecdote, Ernest L. Stevens recalled TE’s ritual arrival at the laboratory on winter mornings, huddled in his open-sided electric car, followed half an hour later by “Charlie Edison in a big fat limousine…all dolled up in a fur coat and all.” Stevens Oral History, 43, COL.

254. TE, Dec. 1929, quoted in Millard, Edison and Business, 322; Polhamus, Plants Collected, 34–37.

255. Time, 16 Dec. 1929. By now TE had identified 13,344 plants representing 2,222 species. TE remained in Fort Myers from 5 Dec. 1929 until 11 June, 1930, concentrating on goldenrod development and giving crucial support to the passage of the Plant Patent Act of 23 May, which for the first time in history recognized plant breeders as inventors. Glenn E. Bugos, “Plants As Intellectual Property: American Practice, Law, and Policy in World Context,” Caltech Working Paper 144, May/Oct. 1991. TE continued with rubber research for the rest of the year in West Orange, keeping in fair health and good spirits. By the fall of 1930 he was extracting over 8 percent of rubber from a four-foot goldenrod, while at Fort Myers, the EBRC produced a variety of Solidago leavenworthii that grew more than twelve feet tall and gave 12.5 percent leaf rubber on a dry weight basis. TE pocket notebook 30-07-03; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 295. In October, Charles and Theodore Edison accepted the failure of their $2 million attempt to create a viable Edison radio division, blaming it on the deepening depression and insuperable competition. Charles abandoned it on 31 Dec. 1930. In later life he gratefully noted that TE never said “I told you so.” Charles Edison to TE, 16 Oct. 1930, TENHP; Theodore Edison Oral History 1, 60–76, TENHP; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 83.

PART TWO · DEFENSE (1910–1919)

1. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 705, 671–81. For a detailed description of Edison Industries in 1910, including an analysis of its organizational problems, see Millard, Edison and Business, 186ff. The following paragraphs are based on these two sources.

2. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 184; Paul S. Lavery interview, 1963, Biographical File, TENHP.

3. By 1910, TE’s “business was in the front rank of the larger organizations formed in the era of consolidation in American industry.” Millard, Edison and Business, 189.

4. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 126.

5. Ibid., 128; Josephson, Edison, 89.

6. Ralph H. Beach to Francis Jehl, 20 Dec. 1937, HFM.

7. Edward Pleydell-Bouverie, MP, quoted in Papers, 6.391.

8. Josephson, Edison, 401–3; Tate, Edison’s Open Door.

9. Francis Jehl to Walter H. Johnson, 16 May 1921; TE to William Meadowcroft, ca. 15. Dec. 1921, TENHP. Jehl got into acute financial difficulties as an émigré electrical engineer in Budapest during World War I. “He appears very selfish,” TE remarked when Jehl appealed for assistance in returning home. “After abandoning his country for 30 years he wants her aid.”

10. Millard, Edison and Business, 202–3, 190–91.

11. Charles D. Lanier, “Thomas Alva Edison, Greatest of Inventors,” Review of Reviews 8 (July 1893).

12. Miller Reese Hutchison, “My Ten Years with Edison,” a collection of dated diary extracts, TENHP (not to be confused with Hutchison’s diary proper, cited as Hutchison Diary); Millard, Edison and Business, 218; Robert Traynor, “The Road to the First Electric Portable Hearing Aid…[sic] and Beyond” (2015), Hearinghealthmatters.org.

13. According to Hutchison, TE successfully tested his Acousticon hearing aid in 1901 but declined to wear it and asked that the test to be kept secret “because his deafness was his chief asset.” See, e.g., Hutchison Diary, entries for 28 May 1909, 5 and 8 July 1910; Hutchison Diary extracts for “My Ten Years,” TENHP (hereafter Hutchison Extracts). For a detailed account of Hutchison’s courtship of TE, see Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 76–78.

14. Hutchison Extracts 1907–1931, passim, TENHP; “Early American Automobiles,” http://www.earlyamericanautomobiles.com/​massautos.htm.

15. Miller Reese Hutchison, “Transcontinental Address to Thomas A. Edison” (1915), audio file, www.gutenberg.org.

16. From a list of jokes found in TE’s desk by National Park Service staff ca. 1980s, superscribed: “WM [Meadowcroft]—Show this to the Old Man, let him have a good laugh over it, and then destroy it.”

17. Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 192ff.; Scientific American, 13 July 1889; Engineer, 18 Dec. 1891; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 587–88; Lawrence Goldstone, Going Deep: John Philip Holland and the Invention of the Attack Submarine (New York, 2017), loc. 5021–68.

18. Goldstone, Going Deep, loc. 2696, 2402.

19. Miller Reese Hutchison, The Submarine Boat Type of Edison Storage Battery (Orange, NJ, 1915), 3; “Hutchison Electrical Tachometer,” Railway Master Mechanic, February 1910.

20. Hutchison, Submarine Boat Type, 3.

21. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” TENHP; Hutchison, Submarine Boat Type, 3–4.

22. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 17 July 1910, TENHP.

23. “[Difficulties] appear to give him a high form of intellectual pleasure.” Meadowcroft, Boys’ Life of Edison, 235.

24. Hutchison to TE, 23 Sept. 1911, TENHP.

25. Ibid.

26. TE to Emil Rathenau, 25 May 1911, TENHP.

27. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 24–26 Aug. 1910, TENHP.

28. Ibid.; New York Times, 27 Aug. 1910.

29. Edmund Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (New York 2010), 153–57.

30. New York Times, 2 Oct. 1910. The following dialogue is quoted entirely from this interview.

31. For a Kantian analysis of the debate between faith and reason in the context of scientific materialism around this time, see William Barrett, Death of the Soul: From Descartes to the Computer (New York, 1986), 56–58 and passim.

32. TE anticipated the findings of modern neuroscientists that purportedly “random” selections are in fact deliberate choices made by the brain, often hundreds of milliseconds before it persuades itself to the contrary. See P. Haggard, “Human Volition: Towards a Neuroscience of Will,” National Review of Neuroscience 9, no. 12 (December 2008).

33. In the course of this long interview, TE also discussed vagaries of memory in the Broca’s fold of the brain, Hertzian waves, Brownian motion, and the revelations of the ultra-microscope. “We may, eventually, be enabled to see the inner structure of matter”; Edward Marshall, “ ‘No Immortality of the Soul’ Says Thomas A. Edison,” New York Times, 2 Oct. 1910. The article may be seen in facsimile at http://query.nytimes.com/​mem/​archive-free/​pdf?res=9903EEDC1F39E333A25751C0A9669D946196D6CF&mcubz=1.

34. New York Times, 13 Oct. 1910. See also “Edison’s Views on Immortality Criticized,” Current Literature, Dec. 1910.

35. New York Times, 9 Oct. 1910.

36. Ibid., 17 and 4 Oct. 1910.

37. New York Times Book Review, 31 Dec. 1910.

38. MME to Charles Edison, 6 Mar. 1911, TENHP, CEF.

39. John Sloane to Madeleine Edison, 7 July 1911, DSP; Charles Edison to MME, 28 Aug. [1910], CEF.

40. Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 10 Aug. 1910, DSP; Madeleine Edison superscript on letter to her from William H. Allen, 17 Apr. 1912, DSP.

41. John Sloane to Madeleine Edison, ca. 6 Mar. 1914, DSP.

42. Miller Reese Hutchison to Frank Dyer, 13 Jan. 1911, TENHP; Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 21 Dec. 1910, TENHP.

43. Boston Herald, 13 Apr. 1915; Hutchison to TE, 10 Jan. 1911, TENHP.

44. TE to Leonid Mundingo, 19 Apr. 1911, TENHP (“I am very deaf myself and consider it a great advantage as the modern world is so noisy.”); Hutchison to John Monnot, 1 Sept. 1911, TENHP.

45. Hutchison to TE, 10 Jan. 1911, TENHP; American Year Book 1911, 372; Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 27 Jan. 1911, TENHP; TE to Carlo Pfister, 27 Jan. 1911, TENHP. The German newspaper Staats-Zeitung published slightly variant numbers on 1 Aug. 1911, indicating a European (with Russia) total of 169 boats—nineteen more than Hutchison had estimated in January.

46. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entries for 27 Jan. and 9 Feb. 1911, TENHP. The Italian and Brazilian embassies also responded.

47. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 9 Feb. 1911, TENHP.

48. Ibid., entry for 21 Jan. 1911: Hutchison to Nixon & Mannock Ltd., 25 Mar. 1911, and to Richard L. Dyer, 13 Jan. 1911, TENHP.

49. Israel, Edison, 426; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 61.

50. By 1910 the drain on National Phonograph had reached $100,000 a month. Millard, Edison and Business, 196.

51. Ibid., 197, 195, 212. Engineers aware of TE’s prejudice against disks had to develop an Edison prototype in secret before he was persuaded to take it over himself. Frank Dyer to TE, 9 Nov. 1912, TENHP.

52. Israel, Edison, 428; Millard, Edison and Business, 197, 203–5.

53. The treasurer of TAE Inc. calculated that its constituent companies were worth $10,329,036 at the time of absorption. TE’s personal share of that total was $379,097. Ernest Berggreen to R. G. Dun, 24 Feb. 1911, TENHP. See also Millard, Edison and Business, 197–99; Israel, Edison, 427–28; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 61–62.

54. MME to Charles Edison, 26 Feb. and 2 Mar. 1911, TENHP.

55. Ibid., 7 Oct. 1910, CEF.

56. Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 143, 110; Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 166–67; MME AP interview, 10 Jan. 1947, TENHP.

57. Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 82–83; TE quoted in Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 40; TE Patent 1,110,428.

58. TE Patents 1,002,505 and 1,119,142.

59. A rival phenolic product, Bakelite, appeared at the same time and involved both Edison and Aylsworth in a prolonged patent infringement suit that the General Bakelite Company eventually lost. See Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 240–45.

60. MME to Charles Edison, 7 Oct. 1910 and 6 Mar. 1911, CEF.

61. Georgianne Ensign Kent, Vartanoosh: My Grandmother’s Story (New York, 2006), 105–16.

62. Ibid., 105.

63. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 26 Aug. 1910, TENHP; New York Times, 27 Aug. 1910. For the complexity of the synchronization problem in the production of early sound movies, see Geduld, Birth of the Talkies, 43ff.

64. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entries for 13 Mar. and 22 Apr. 1911, TENHP; Hutchison Extracts 23 Jan., 6 and 19 Mar., 4 and 26 May 1911, TENHP.

65. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entries for 28 July, 1 Apr., and 1 May 1911, TENHP.

66. Items 958–994, “Edison’s Patents, 1910931,” http://edison.rutgers.edu/​patente6.htm; “T. A. Edison’s Color Pictures,” Nickelodeon, 1910; TE to Johann S. Bergmann, 28 June 1911, TENHP.

67. TE Patent 1,016,875; Hutchison Extracts, 21 July 1911, TENHP.

68. Sandusky (OH) Star-Journal, 3 Aug. 1911; 1911 Clippings File, TENHP.

69. MME to Charles Edison, Oct. 1912 (“that horrible tobacco smoke that you are compelled to breathe all the time”), TENHP; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 13. Charles soon acquired the nickname “Smoke.” Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 98.

70. Years later the diplomat Myron Herrick, a fellow passenger on the Mauretania, reminded TE “how, in your innocence, you did not know that your fame had grown and that all the European world was at your feet.” Herrick to TE, 28 June 1921, TENHP.

71. Leon Edel, ed., Henry James Letters, vol. 4, 1895–1916 (Cambridge, MA, 1984), 579; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 12; TE quoted in People, 27 Aug. 1911. Peggy James was a Bryn Mawr classmate of Madeleine Edison.

72. Manchester Guardian and Times, 9 Aug. 1911; “Mr. Edison’s Impressions of Europe,” ts., 1911, TENHP; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 14.

73. Unidentified newsclip, London, 10 Aug. 1911, TENHP.

74. New York World, 10 Aug. 1911. TE was presented with a copy of the Parliament Bill signed by Asquith, Lloyd George, and other senior government members.

75. Huntington (IN) Herald, 10 Aug. 1911.

76. Hutchison to John Monnot, 8 June 1911, TENHP. Except where otherwise indicated, the following account of TE’s European tour is based on the letters of Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, Aug.–Sept. 1911, DSP.

77. 1911 Clippings File, TENHP; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 21 Aug. 1911, DSP.

78. New York World, 28 and 31 Aug., 1911; New York Times, 3 Sept. 1911; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 21 and 29 Aug. and 2 Sept. 1911, DSP; Charles Edison’s detailed account of this incident in Venable, Out of the Shadow, 16–17.

79. MME to Charles Edison, 15 Sept. 1911, TENHP; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 15 Sept. 1911, DSP.

80. Francis Jehl to William J. Hammer, 8 Oct. and 1 Nov. 1911, TENHP.

81. Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 4 Sept. 1911, DSP; “Edison in Hungary and Moravia,” Electrical World, 7 Oct. 1911.

82. Madeleine to John Sloane, 4 Sept. 1911, DSP.

83. “Inventor Edison’s Daughter,” Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, 28 Nov. 1894; Francis Jehl to William J. Hammer, 8 Mar. 1912, TENHP (“The old man don’t seem to assist her a bit in a pecuniary sense”); Josephson, Edison, 301.

84. Quoted in Schenectady (NY) Gazette, 27 Nov. 1931.

85. Theodore Edison Oral History 1, 17–18, TENHP; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 19 Sept. 1911, DSP.

86. Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 19 Sept. 1911, DSP. Charles returned home before the rest of the family to attend the fall semester at MIT.

87. Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 23 Aug. 1911, DSP.

88. Marion Edison Öser to TE, ca. 24 Feb. 1912, TENHP; Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 7 Oct. 1911, TENHP.

89. MME to Charles Edison, 6 Mar. 1911, TENHP; Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8 Oct. 1911.

90. New Bedford (MA) Mercury, 31 Aug. 1911; “Mr. Edison’s Impressions of Europe,” 1911, TENHP; Ogden (UT) Standard, 26 Sept. 1911; St. Paul (MN) Dispatch, 29 Sept. 1911.

91. Syracuse (NY) Herald, 1 Oct. 1911; Sigmund Bergmann to TE, 5 and 17 Oct. 1911, TENHP. The article, translated for TE to read, informed him that he was “more inventive than smart.” TE’s reply to Bergmann has not survived.

92. New Bedford (MA) Mercury, 31 Aug. 1911; “Edison’s Impressions of European Industries,” Scientific American, 18 Nov. 1911.

93. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8 Oct. 1911; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 2 Aug. 1911, DSP; Pittsburgh Telegraph, 19 Aug. 1911; Detroit News, 20 Aug. 1911.

94. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8 Oct. 1911; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 2 Aug. 1911, DSP; Pittsburgh Telegraph, 19 Aug. 1911; Detroit News, 20 Aug. 1911.

95. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 7 Oct. 1911, TENHP; Seattle Star and Washington Times, 18 Oct. 1911. The most detailed account of TE’s reaction (“What’s the use talking about it until I get it?”) is in St. Louis Post-Dispatch,19 Oct. 1911.

96. Israel, Edison, 468. TE received only three votes of support from the NAS. At about the same time and for a more anatomical reason, Marie Curie was rejected for membership of the Institute of France.

97. The Merchant of Venice, IV.1; Edison Monthly, June 1911; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 742.

98. MME to Charles Edison, 27 Oct. 1911, TENHP; Israel, Edison, 429.

99. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 11 Nov. 1911, TENHP; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 76–77.

100. Hutchison to TE, entries for 12 Dec. and 2 Nov. 1911, TENHP. According to Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York, 1989), 203, this perception in 1911 may have been slightly exaggerated. Kennedy rates the U.S. Navy as third in the world on the eve of World War I.

101. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 2 Nov. 1911, TENHP; New York Sun, Washington Post, and New York Times, 3 Nov. 1911.

102. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entries for 26 and 27 Nov. 1911, TENHP; Cincinnati Enquirer and Marion (OH) Star, 28 Nov. 1911; Sandusky (OH) Star-Journal and Houston Post, 7 Dec. 1911.

103. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 31 Dec. 1911. TENHP.

104. Ibid., entry for 9 Jan. 1912; Henry Ford, Edison as I Know Him (New York, 1930), 13. The adjective nouveau is MME’s (to Theodore Edison, 16 May 1920, PTAE). Ford’s snapshots are preserved in HFM and can be viewed online. The best analysis of the Edison-Ford relationship is in Sward, Legend of Henry Ford, 110–15.

105. W. J. Bee to Henry Ford, 6 Apr. 1911, and Bee to W. C. Anderson (Ford’s companion on the plant tour), same date, TENHP. Despite an assertion by Matthew Josephson that Ford called upon TE “unannounced” in 1909 (Edison, 456), it is clear from these letters that the two men had not met since their initial encounter in 1896.

106. The loan was at 5 percent and understood to be repayable in storage battery sales to Ford. Contract between Ford and TE, 29 Nov. 1912. Original copy plus draft termination agreement, July 1925, R. W. Kellow File, TENHP.

107. TE to Henry Ford, 29 Oct. 1912, HFM.

108. Hutchison Extracts, 14 Feb. 1912, TENHP. See also Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 82.

109. MME to Charles Edison, 9 Feb. 1912, PTAE. By now, Hutchison was earning 20 percent on all battery contracts.

110. Hutchison to Charles Edison, 15 Apr. 1912. This letter, one of several similar in TENHP, totals six and a half closely typed pages.

111. The most detailed account of the sessions of the Insomnia Squad is Jeffrey, “When the Cat Is Away.” See also O. Simmons, “Edison and His Insomnia Squad,” Munsey’s Magazine, Sept. 1916; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 5–60.

112. Jeffrey, “When the Cat Is Away,” 11; Edison Phonograph Monthly, Feb. 1914.

113. TE to Edward H. Johnson, 30 Oct. 1912, TENHP; Carl Wilson to Peter Weber, 9 July and 5 Sept. 1912, TENHP.

114. Carl Wilson to Peter Weber, 5 Sept. 1912, TENHP.

115. The original of this photograph, preserved at TENHP, has conflicting dates of 11 Sept. and 18 Oct. 1912 inscribed on the back. Thomas Jeffrey believes the latter date (added in the 1960s by a Park Service archivist) to be correct, on the assumption that the supper was a celebration of five weeks’ successful work. If so, TE and his team look anything but triumphant. The author credits the earlier date, which Norman R. Speiden, the first curator of the Edison Papers, took from an old print “sent down from Glenmont by Mrs. Edison.” Jeffrey also doubts the photo was taken at night. However, the sharpness of the shadows, and the increasing radiance of the light emanating from somewhere beyond TE’s left elbow, suggest it was indeed artificially lit.

116. Jeffrey, “When the Cat Is Away,” 17.

117. TE Patent 1,197,723. See L. I. Schiff, “Motion of a Gyroscope According to Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 46, no. 6 (1960); TE Patent 1,234,451. The lateness of TE’s record-improvement blitz caused a postponement of the introduction of his disk phonograph system. In January 1913 Edison Phonograph Monthly ran a cover picture of TE auditing a record and defensively reported that he had undertaken “a long, hard grind” toward perfection. “But those who have heard the sample records…agree that it has been more than worth while.”

118. The following quotations are taken from Will Irwin, “Why Edison Is a Progressive,” Californian Outlook, 12 Oct. 1912. The interview, conducted on 17 September, was widely reprinted and made use of in Progressive Party literature. TE declined to speak at meetings in support of Roosevelt, but he contributed three times to his campaign fund. Because of the Republican/Progressive split, Woodrow Wilson was elected. Roosevelt easily defeated Taft in the final vote.

119. See Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 117–19.

120. TE quoted in Irwin, “Why Edison Is a Progressive”; MME to Charles Edison, 19 Jan. 1913, (“Women will become as shrewd and wordly as the men. Everybody following his & her career and home forgotten entirely”), PTAE.

121. The following interview quotations are taken from Lucile Erskine, “Women Will Not Be Men’s Equals for 3000 Years,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10 Mar. 1912.

122. TE to Edward H. Johnson, 30 Oct. 1912, TENHP.

123. Frank Dyer to TE, 9 Nov. 1912, TENHP.

124. Ibid.

125. Announcement typescript, 18 Nov. 1912, TENHP. See also Israel, Edison, 433–34.

126. Hutchison Extracts, entry for 1 Jan. 1913, TENHP.

127. Hutchison to Charles Edison, 10 Jan. 1913, TENHP.

128. Except where otherwise indicated, the following summary of the early history of sound pictures is based on Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 178–79, 438–39, and Geduld, Birth of the Talkies, 31–39.

129. See Bowser, Transformation of Cinema, 73.

130. TE patent 1,286,259, filed 6 Mar. 1913. The basic U.S. patent of the Kinetophone was number 1,054,203, “Combination Phonograph and Moving Picture Apparatus,” held by TE’s employee Daniel Higham. A perfectly preserved Kinetophone system is on exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn (Image ID: THF 36593).

131. TE superscript on George Harrold to TE, 10 Mar. 1913, TENHP. The cylinder operated a toothed wheel that, acting as an electrode, repeatedly opened and closed a telegraph-like circuit to the synchronizer. An electromagnetic governor on that device transferred the pulsations to the projector. Buffalo News, 23 Feb. 1913.

132. There is a detailed description of the Kinetophone projection process (which TE kept secret for fear of patent infringement) in Hutchison to Charles Edison, 13 Feb. 1913, TENHP.

133. “Lecture,” footage restored by the Library of Congress from TE’s introductory talking picture The Edison Kinetophone (1913).

134. Dunkirk (NY) Evening Observer, 4 Jan. 1913; New York Sun, 4 Jan. 1913.

135. Dunkirk (NY) Evening Observer, 4 Jan. 1913.

136. New York Times and Paterson (NJ) Guardian, 4 Jan. 1913; Salt Lake City News, 16 Jan. 1913; Canonsburg (PA) Daily Notes, 7 Jan. 1913. For an account of another Kinetophone preview that month, held by TE at the Orange Country Club, see Isaac Marcosson, “The Coming of the Talking Picture,” Munsey’s Magazine 48 (Mar. 1913).

137. “Movies Are ‘Talkies’ Too,” New York World, 4 Jan. 1913; “Edison Says ‘Talkies’ Will Replace Movies,” syndicated feature in multiple newspapers, 8–9 Jan. 1913. William Edison bid $15,000 on behalf of some “businessmen of high standing” for restaurant rights at talkie venues in New York. “This is no bull con but a straight out and out proposition,” he wrote his father. TE informed him that all rights had been disposed of already. William Edison to TE, 16 Jan. and ca. 27 Feb. 1913, TENHP.

138. P. J. Brady quoted in New York Times and New York World, 4 Feb. 1913; eyewitness account of Ralph H. Beach to Francis Jehl, 20 Dec. 1937, HFM (“[Edison] needed the money, but did not take it”); Hutchison to Charles Edison, 13 Feb. 1913, TENHP; C. H. Wilson to Charles Wetzel, 25 Jan. 1913, TENHP; Hutchison to TE, 16 Jan. 1913, TENHP.

139. In 1921 TE told an interviewer he had been “all on fire to spread this means of education broadcast over our land.” New York Herald, 15 May 1921.

140. Israel, Edison, 420–21; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 82ff.

141. Hutchison Extracts, entry for 24 Jan. 1913, TENHP; MME to Charles Edison, 14 Jan. 1913, PTAE; Hutchison to Charles Edison, 13 Feb. 1913, TENHP.

142. MME to Charles Edison, 26 Jan. 1913, PTAE. According to P. J. Brady, the lawyer who represented Dos Passos, the deal included “large royalties” and would ultimately have been worth “several millions” to TE. New York World, 4 Feb. 1913.

143. Newark (NJ) Call, 8 Feb. 1913.

144. Hutchison Diary, entry for 17 Feb. 1913, TENHP; New York World, New York Evening Telegraph, and New York American, 18 Feb. 1913. The World reported that the ovation lasted ten minutes. Hutchison, who stayed behind at the Colonial after TE left, timed it at fifteen. “They say it is the greatest hit they have ever had in their theater.” Hutchison to TE, 17 Feb. 1913, TENHP.

145. New York Times, 18 Feb. 1913. The Library of Congress restoration of this film gives an approximate idea of how Edison talkie technology worked at its best. Although the program is cornball by modern standards, it includes a beautiful performance of “Silver Threads Among the Gold” by the tenor George W. Ballard. There is an unavoidable lapse in synchronism at the end, when “God Save the King” plays in audio while the minstrels mouth the words of “The Star Spangled Banner” in video. This is because the soundtrack derives from an alternative take, filmed for British release.

146. “Instructions for Installing and Operating the Edison Kinetophone Telephone System,” ts., 17 Mar. 1913, TENHP.

147. Hutchison to Charles Edison, 13 Feb. 1913, TENHP.

148. Ibid. A diagram of this complex headset-handset apparatus, complete with buzzers, buttons, “horn transmitter,” and multicolored line wires, is preserved in TENHP (Motion Picture folder, 19 Feb. 1913).

149. New York Evening Telegraph, 18 Feb. 1913; New York Tribune, 13 Jan. 1913.

150. Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 Feb. 1913; Ottawa (KS) Evening Herald, 26 Sept. 1913; Philadelphia Item, 23 Feb. 1913; World Magazine, 16 Feb. 1913; Comanche Chief, 19 Sept. 1913; New York Evening Telegraph, 18 Feb. 1913; Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, 31 Dec. 1913.

151. TE Patent 1,286,259.

152. New York Times, 4 Jan. 1913; New York Evening Sun, 18 Feb. 1913. See also “Edison Gets War Scenes for Talking Pictures,” New York Telegram, 21 Jan. 1913.

153. New York Tribune and Washington Post, 28 Nov. 1911. TE also planned to make a talking picture of the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson on 4 Mar. 1913. A week later he was reported as confirming that he had shot parts of Wilson’s speech (whether live or in a Kinetophone studio was not clear) and would be exhibiting the film in due course. There is no record of him doing so. Boston Globe, 24 Feb. 1913; Pittsburgh Post-Dispatch, 10 Mar. 1913.

154. TE quoted in The New York Times, 12 May 1912; Hutchison to W. H. Ives, 18 Feb. 1913, TENHP. See also “Discovery Communications Realizes Edison’s Vision,” http://edison.rutgers.edu/​connect.htm#5. TE’s educational movies project was a natural sequel to a series of semidocumentary, reformist shorts put out by his studio between 1910 and 1913. They covered such subjects as slumlords, tuberculosis, and child labor. Bowser, Transformation of Cinema, 45. Hutchison told Ives that TE wanted to “personally direct” scientific and industrial tutorials that would be detailed enough to amount to “self contained textbooks.” For the brief rise and consumer-assisted fall of educational/moral movies before World War I, see Bowser, Transformation of Cinema, 37ff.

155. Winthrop D. Lane in “Edison Versus Euclid,” Survey, 6 Sept. 1913; TE to L. H. Putney, 24 Dec. 12, 1912, 1913 Motion Picture File, TENHP.

156. L. H. Putney to TE, 29 Jan. 1913, TENHP (quoting $80 per projector plus $1.50 a day for film rentals); W. H. Ives to TE, 22 Jan. 1913, TENHP. The films in the sample program were not listed, but probably included some of an entomological series TE had prepared as a test run. Scenario subjects included “The House Fly,” “The Various Ways in Which Insects Build,” “The Apple Tree Tent Caterpillar,” and “Microscopic Plant Life.” Hutchison to TE, 11 Mar. 1913, TENHP.

157. L. H. Putney to TE, 29 Jan. 1913, TENHP.

158. Frederick J. Smith, “Looking into the Future with Thomas A. Edison” New York Dramatic Mirror, 9 July 1913.

159. “Edison Versus Euclid,” Survey, 6 Sept. 1913.

160. Ibid.

161. Ibid.; TE memo to Harry F. Miller, ca. 5 May 1913, TENHP. The loan (modern equivalent, $1.3 million) was repayable in four months and secured by $63,000 in Edison Phonograph Works stock. Hutchison Extracts, entry for 6 May 1913, TENHP. Hutchison seems to have expected 6 percent, but a docket in TENHP indicates that the interest was reduced by one point.

162. Minutes of Kinetoscope and Kinetophone Committee eighth meeting, 8 May 1913, TENHP; Smith, “Looking into the Future with Edison”; TE Patent 1,138,360, “Method of Presenting the Illusion of Scenes in Colors,” 16 June 1913; Hutchison Extracts, entry for 24 Aug. 1913, TENHP.

163. TE to Geo. F. Morrison, 18 Aug. 1913, TENHP; Elbert Hubbard, Selected Writings of Elbert Hubbard (New York, 1922), 106; MME to Charles Edison, 14 Jan. 1913, PTAE.

164. Hubbard, Selected Writings, 107; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 2 Sept. 1913, DSP; MME to Charles Edison, 10 Sept. 1913, PTAE.

165. MME to Charles Edison, 10 Sept. 1913, PTAE.

166. John H. Greusel, Thomas Edison: The Man, His Work, and His Mind (Los Angeles, 1913), 69–70, 12.

167. Diamond Disc retail advertisement, 1913. New York Sun, 23 Dec. 1913. Although demonstration models of the disk phonograph had been playing sample records in selected showrooms for more than a year, the Edison Diamond Disc Phonograph and the Diamond Discs themselves were not officially marketed until Dec. 1913. Edison Phonograph Monthly, Oct. 1913; New York Times, 17 Dec. 1913.

168. Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 132; TE superscript on Thomas Wardell to TE, 26 Mar. 1913, TENHP.

169. Edison Phonograph Monthly, Oct. 1913; Phonograph folders, passim, TE General Files, TENHP.

170. Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 166–67. “Blue Amberols…when played with an Edison Diamond Reproducer…outperformed any other medium of reproduced music then available. The ears in Edison’s recording studios were attuned with extraordinary sensitivity to the elements of good sound reproduction.” See also Millard, Edison and Business, 212.

171. Frank J. Essig to TE, ca. Dec. 1912, TENHP; S. Willard Cutting to TE, 25 Feb. 1913, TENHP.

172. Allan L. Benson, “Edison’s Dream of New Music,” Cosmopolitan 54, no. 5 (May 1913): 797–800.

173. Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 282; TE interview in Etude magazine, Apr. 1917. TE cited his favorite operatic composers as “Bellini, Rossini, Donizetti, and Verdi.”

174. TE interview in Etude; Benson, “Edison’s Dream of New Music”; TE quoted in Current Literature 54, no. 4 (Apr. 1913).

175. See, e.g., Thomas Wardell to TE, 26 Mar. 1913, TENHP.

176. TE draft of a stock letter to the phonograph trade, 17 June 1913, TENHP.

177. Samuel Gardner Oral History, 3–4, TENHP.

178. Theodore Edison Oral History, 58–59, TENHP. “His ear curve was such—we had measurements on that—that he lost his upper register almost entirely, so he lost the diction that depends on the hissing consonants very much for being able to understand things.”

179. Samuel Gardner Oral History, 6, TENHP.

180. Ibid.

181. Ibid.; Gardner interviewed in Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, 49.

182. Benson, “Edison’s Dream of New Music.”

183. Ibid.; Madeleine Edison Sloane Oral History, 12, COL. In 1920 TE wrote to the mother of a deaf daughter, “If she rests the upper teeth on the edge of the piano frame she can probably hear the piano.” TE superscript on Victor Robb to TE, 29 Mar. 1920, TENHP. Ludwig van Beethoven used a similar technique to hear high frequencies, biting into sticks that he pressed against the keyboard in order to send sound vibrations directly into his brain. Krystian Zimerman, BBC-3 interview, 21 Apr. 2013.

184. Benson, “Edison’s Dream of New Music.”

185. When TE studied Hermann Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone, he made exhaustive marginalia on the pages devoted to piano sound. Most listeners, he wrote, “don’t hear the Thump being intent on the music. I hear all these thumps ½ an octave lower than middle C & hear only the thump sound of last 14 keys it is as loud as a xylophone & yet normal Ears only hear the Musical vibrations and not the Thump. I cannot hear a musical sound above a certain pitch hence the Thump sounds are noise of vibrations of low pitch.” TE’s copy, 503, TENHP.

186. Benson, “Edison’s Dream of New Music”; Meadowcroft, Boys’ Life of Edison, 247; Meadowcroft to M. Kline, 29 Dec. 1920, TENHP; Ernest L. Stevens Oral History, 21, COL.

187. TE interview in Etude, 1 Apr. 1917; TE in Musician, May 1916; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 130.

188. Stevens Oral History, 17, COL. See also Ernest L. Stevens folder, Biographical Collection, TENHP. TE eventually sanctioned the release of eight Diamond Disc recordings by Rachmaninoff, and paid him a “special fee” of $147. Although the pianist went on to become a star of RCA/Victor’s classical list, he had a special fondness for his early Edison acoustic recordings, and kept a framed copy of the Liszt disk. Edison Records studio logbook, 1919, TENHP. See also Max Harrison, Rachmaninoff: Life, Works, Recordings (New York, 2002), 224–25.

189. Harvith and Harvith, Edison, Musicians, 44.

190. Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 146–49; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 25–44.

191. CE to MME, 1 Oct. 1913, PTAE; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 25–44; Hutchison Extracts, entry for 1 Feb. 1914, TENHP.

192. TE quoted in Detroit News, 26 Oct. 1921; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 76.

193. Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 23 Feb. 1914, DSP; Fort Myers Press, 23 Feb. 1914; New York Times, 12 Feb. 1914.

194. Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 27 Feb. and 1 Mar. 1914, DSP.

195. Josephson, Edison, 457; Sward, Legend of Henry Ford, 50–58.

196. Josephson, Edison, 457; TE to Edward N. Hurley, 1 Jan. 1918, HFM.

197. TE to H. E. Heitman, quoted in Fort Myers Press, 25 Mar. 1914; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 22 Mar. 1914, DSP.

198. Charles Edison to Hutchison, 23 Mar. 1914, TENHP; John Burroughs quoted in Fort Myers Press, 9 Apr. 1914; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 25 Mar. 1914, DSP.

199. Fort Myers Press, 28 Mar. 1914; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 30 Mar. 1914, DSP; TE to Hutchison, 14 Jan. 1914, TENHP.

200. Slogan emblazoned an Edison lobby display triptych, photograph image 23.500/14, TENHP; TE quoted in “Talking Singing Whistling Movies,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 23 Feb. 1913.

201. Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 29 Mar. and 8 Apr. 1914, DSP; MME to Madeleine Edison, ca. 17 June 1914, DSP.

202. Erskine, “Women Will Not Be Men’s Equals”; INS Special, 8 Oct. 1911, Clippings File, TENHP.

203. New York World, 1 Oct. 1911.

204. TE marginalia in his copy of Allan H. Powles’s translation of Bernhardi (New York, 1914), 18 and 34, TENHP. For a fuller statement of his views on the outbreak of the war, which he blamed on a nervous “overreadiness” of Germany’s part, see Edward Marshall, “Edison’s Plan for Preparedness,” New York Times, 30 May 1915.

205. “Edison in Wartime,” American Magazine, Nov. 1914; Diarmuid Jeffreys, Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug (New York, 2005), loc. 1612.

206. “Edison in Wartime,” American Magazine, Nov. 1914.

207. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 229.

208. Except where otherwise indicated, the following paragraphs are based on the chapter, “Organic Chemicals and Naval Research,” in Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 234–58.

209. TE quoted in Edison Diamond Points, Feb. 1917; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 250–55; Thomas H. Norton, “A Census of the Artificial Dyestuffs Used in the United States,” Chemical Engineer and Manufacturer 24, no. 5 (Nov. 1916); Edison Diamond Points, Feb. 1917. See also De Graaf, Edison and Innovation, 194–96.

210. New York Times, 25 Oct. 1914. In the summer of 1915, the U.S. Secret Service investigated a briefcase mistakenly left on a Manhattan-bound train and found evidence of a $100,000 contract to buy and resell Edison phenol to German-American firms by means of a fraudulent “Chemical Exchange Association.” The funds involved came from an espionage account at the German embassy. Edison was embarrassed when the New York World broke the story, although he had already committed the rest of his phenol surplus to the U.S. military. Jeffreys, Aspirin, loc. 1843–54; U.S. Navy Bureau of Supplies order 23233, 15 Apr. 1915, TENHP.

211. Goldstone, Going Deep, loc. 92; House Naval Affairs Committee, Hearings on Estimates Submitted by Secretary of the Navy, 1914 (Washington, DC, 1914), 634; Jeffrey, “ ‘Commodore’ Edison,” 13–14.

212. Jeffrey, “ ‘Commodore’ Edison,” 15–16.

213. Patrick Coffey, American Arsenal: A Century of Waging War (New York, 2014), 17; Craig, Josephus Daniels, passim.

214. Josephus Daniels, 10 Oct. 1914, Internet Archive audio dub, https://archive.org/​details/​EDIS-SRP-0191-06.

215. Washington Times, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and New York Sun, 11 Oct. 1914.

216. Hutchison, Submarine Boat Type, 5; Washington Times, 11 Oct. 1914.

217. Ibid.

218. Except where otherwise indicated, the following paragraphs are based on “Report of the Committee on Edison Fire,” Journal of the American Concrete Institute 11 (Apr. 1915).

219. New York Sun, 10 Dec. 1914; Josephson, Edison, 430.

220. New York Sun and Plainfield (NJ) Courier-News,10 Dec. 1914.

221. “Report of the Committee on Edison Fire,” 587.

222. Exchange quoted in James Carson, “Anecdotes of my Association with Thomas A. Edison,” ts., 1936, TENHP.

223. Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 63; Charles Edison in Venable, Out of the Shadow, 76.

224. Hearings of the Secretary of the Navy Before the House Naval Committee (Washington, DC, 1914), 632.

225. DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 195; “Report of the Committee on Edison Fire,” 647.

226. Hutchison to Alfred DuPont, 1 Feb. 1915, TENHP; illustrations in “Report of the Committee on Edison Fire,” 609, 616, 618.

227. Israel, Edison, 432–33; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 75; Josephson, Edison, 431; New York Times, 10 Dec. 1914; Josephson, Edison, 431.

228. For a detailed account of the reorganization of Thomas A. Edison, Inc., after the fire of 1914, see Millard, Edison and Business, chap. 11. See also “The Empire of Stephen Babcock Mambert” in Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 62–67.

229. Edward Marshall, “Edison’s Plan for Preparedness,” New York Times, 30 May 1915; “New Edison-LaFrance Searchlight,” Safety Engineering 33, no. 5 (May 1917); Popular Science Monthly 92, no. 2 (Feb. 1918); TE interviewed in Film Daily, 4 Mar. 1927.

230. Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 80, 88; TE to Josephus Daniels, 11 Feb. 1915, quoted in Jeffrey, “ ‘Commodore’ Edison,” 18. See ibid., 18ff. for Hutchison’s massive publicity blitz in behalf of the S-type battery.

231. Marshall, “Edison’s Plan for Preparedness.”

232. Ibid.

233. Daniels to TE, 7 July 1915 (combined draft), http://edison.rutgers.edu/​7JulyLetter.pdf. For a full account of the composition of this letter, begun on 31 May, see Jeffrey, “ ‘Commodore’ Edison,” 4–9.

234. Daniels to TE, 7 July 1915, original copy, TENHP.

235. Hutchison to Daniels, 12 Sept. 1935, TENHP. See Jeffrey, “ ‘Commodore’ Edison,” 5–6, for the complicated story of the letter’s authorship.

236. Scott, Naval Consulting Board, 12–13.

237. Israel, Edison, 447–48; Jeffrey, “ ‘Commodore’ Edison,” 10.

238. Israel, Edison, 448; Jeffrey, “ ‘Commodore’ Edison,” 10; American Review of Reviews, Sept. 1915.

239. Photograph copy in TENHP; Hutchison to Daniels, 28 Aug. 1915, TENHP (“Dr. B. and Mr. E. are not very congenial”); Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 238–89; TE to Frank J. Sprague, 26 May 1878, New York Public Library; T. C. Martin, “Frank Julian Sprague,” Scientific American, 21 Oct. 1911; William D. Middleton and William D. Middleton III, Frank Julian Sprague: Electrical Inventor and Engineer (Bloomington, IN, 2009), loc. 434, 2614, and passim; Frank J. Sprague to Leo Baekeland, 16 Dec. 1915, FSP.

240. Washington Post, 7 Oct. 1915.

241. Ibid.

242. Washington Evening Star, 7 Oct. 1915.

243. The following account is taken from Naval Consulting Board Minutes, 7 Oct. 1915, TENHP.

244. “Remarks of the Secretary of the Navy,” Naval Consulting Board Minutes, 7 Oct. 1915, 6–8.

245. New York Times, 16 Oct. 1915.

246. Ibid.

247. Ibid.

248. Copy in TENHP; Jeffrey, “ ‘Commodore’ Edison,” 13.

249. New York Times, 7 Apr. 1915; Hutchison to TE, ca. 18 Jan. 1916, and to H. B. Brougham, 20 Jan. 1916, TENHP. “The navies of the world,” TE announced after the F-4 disaster, “…must expect catastrophes so long as they continue to use sulphuric acid in those vessels.” New York Times, 27 Mar. 1915.

250. TE to Leo Baekeland, 16 Oct. 2015, TENHP.

251. San Francisco Chronicle, 21 Oct. 1915.

252. Ibid.

253. William J. Hammer to Hutchison, 18 Oct. 1915, TENHP.

254. San Francisco Chronicle, 21 Oct. 1915; Hutchison, Edison Day script, ts., 16 Oct. 1915, TENHP. The speech can be heard at https://www.nps.gov/​edis/​learn/​photosmultimedia/​upload/​EDIS-SRP-0206-01.mp3.

255. Hutchison, Edison Day script; San Francisco Chronicle, 21 Oct. 1915.

256. Los Angeles Times, 22 Oct. 1915.

257. See Luther Burbank, The Training of the Human Plant (New York, 1907).

258. Firestone, Men and Rubber, 190–91. A letter from Firestone to TE, 27 Apr. 1915, TENHP, indicates that the two men were hitherto strangers, although they had business relations, and MME’s family had known the Firestones in Akron and Chautauqua for many years. Firestone came to the Pacific-Panama Exhibition specifically to “honor” Edison, and join him in a trip to a trade show in San Diego later that month. San Francisco Chronicle, 21 Oct. 1915; Los Angeles Times, 30 Oct. 1915.

259. TE to E. G. Liebold, 16 Dec. 1927, HFM.

260. Los Angeles Times, 28 Oct. 1915; District Court E.D. (PA), United States v. Motion Pictures Patents Co., 1. Oct. 1915, Federal Reporter 225, 811.

261. Israel, Edison, 454; Bowser, Transformation of Cinema, 224.

262. New York Times, 7 Nov. 1915.

263. Los Angeles Times, 30 Oct. 1915; undated Denver newsclip describing TE on 4 Nov. 1915, Edison 1931 scrapbook, PTAE; TE interviewed in Los Angeles Times, 29 Oct. 1915.

264. TE to Leo Baekland, 17 Nov. 1915, FSP; “Hydrogen Given off by Edison Storage Battery,” USN Bureau of Steam Engineering memo, 15 Oct. 1915; Hutchison to Daniels, 16 Dec. 1915; both in legal department records, TENHP.

265. Naval Consulting Board Minutes, 27 Dec. 1915, 18, TENHP.

266. Ibid., 9 Feb. 1916, 98, TENHP.

267. Hutchison Extracts, entry for 31 Dec. 1915, TENHP.

268. Robert M. Lloyd to Admiral Nathaniel Usher, 26 Jan. 1916, TENHP.

269. New York Sun, 16 Jan. 1916.

270. “Record of Proceedings of a Court of Inquiry…into an accident which occurred on board the U. S. submarine at the navy yard, New York, on January 15, 1916,” ts., Edison Storage Battery Company Litigation File, 11–17, TENHP, hereafter “Record of Proceedings.” There is an annotated plan of the explosion in box 10 of this file.

271. New York Times, 16 Jan. 1916; Wall Street Journal, 21 Jan. 1916; Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 16 Jan. 1916.

272. New York Times, 16 Jan. 1916; Hutchison to TE, Jan. 1916, TENHP; New York Evening World, 19 Jan. 1916.

273. New York Times, 17 Jan. 1916.

274. New York Sun, 17 Jan. 1916.

275. New York Times, 19 Jan. 1916; “Record of Proceedings,” 75–76, 469, 471–72; Hutchison to Adm. R. Griffin, 14 Jan. 1916, TENHP. This long letter, written the day before the disaster, makes plain Hutchison’s nervousness about the inadequacy of E-2’s current battery ventilation.

276. “Record of Proceedings,” 106–7; New York Evening World and Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 20 Jan. 1916.

277. Ibid.; E. A. Logan, “Chemistry of Primary Galvanic Cells and General Discussion of Storage Cells,” Proceedings of the US Naval Institute 41 (Sept.–Oct. 1916); Jeffrey, “ ‘Commodore’ Edison,” 33. Hutchison told Daniels that a detective in his employ observed “frequent consultations” during the course of the trial between a member of the court and representatives of Edison’s principal competitor, the Electric Storage Battery Company.

278. “Record of Proceedings,” 439; New York Times, 11 Feb. 1916.

279. Ibid., 257.

280. Ibid., 258.

281. Ibid., 282.

282. New York Sun and New York Times, 25 Feb. 1916. The exchange was stricken from the record.

283. TE to unnamed recipients, 23 Feb. 1916, TENHP.

284. Hutchison to Adm. R. Griffin, 14 Jan. 1916, TENHP.

285. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 15 Feb. 1916; Daniels to Admiral George Burd, 7 Mar. 1916, TENHP; New York Times, 17 Jan. 1916.

286. TE to William Meadowcroft, ca. 7 Feb. 1916, TENHP.

287. New York Times, 16 Mar. 1916; Washington Times, 15 Mar. 1916.

288. Hearings Before the Committee on Naval Affairs…On Estimates Submitted by the Secretary of the Navy, 1916 (Washington, DC, 1916), 3.3344. Hereafter Hearings, 1916.

289. Hearings, 1916, 3.3354.

290. Mansfield (OH) News-Journal, 15 Mar. 1916; Hearings, 1916, 3.3351.

291. Washington Post, 16 Mar. 1916; Hearings, 1916, 3.3355.

292. Hearings, 1916, 3.3355.

293. Washington Times, 15 Mar. 1916.

294. “His happiness over that little grandson is very great.” MME to Madeleine Edison Sloane, 26 Mar. 1916, DSP. Madeleine’s news coincided less agreeably with another of Beatrice Edison’s avowed pregnancies. Her confinement was “expected” around the end of June, but thereafter she and Tom remained childless. Beatrice Edison to MME, 19 June 1916, PTAE; Madeleine Edison Sloane to MME, ca. late Aug. 1916, DSP.

295. TE to Guy Emerson of the Roosevelt Non-Partisan League, 10 May 1916, FSP; New York Times, 13 May 1916; Theodore Roosevelt to TE, 13 May 1916, in The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt (Cambridge, MA, 1958), 8.1041–42.

296. Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 456–57.

297. Thomas Robins, “Friends in a Lifetime,” ts. memoir, 1944, 18, TENHP; MME to Theodore Edison, 9 Apr. 1916, PTAE; DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 145; TE to Benjamin Tillman, ca. June 1916, TENHP.

298. Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 91–92.

299. New York Times, 4 Sept. 1916; Minutes of the Naval Consulting Board, 19 Sept. 1916, TENHP. TE remarked of Hughes, “His capacity for hindsight, as we learn from his speeches, is highly developed, but as to his foresight, we are not equally well informed.”

300. Navy Bill, 1916, copy in TENHP.

301. Naval Consulting Board to Josephus Daniels, 20 July 1916; Daniels to Lemuel Padgett, 21 July 1916, TENHP.

302. Minutes of the Naval Consulting Board, 19 Sept. 1916, TENHP; Naval Consulting Board to Daniels, 20 July 1916; Daniels to Lemuel Padgett, 21 July 1916, TENHP.

303. Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Era, vol. 1, Years of Peace, 1910-1917 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1944), 464.

304. Ibid., 465–66; Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 472.

305. TE Patents 1,297,294, 1,300,708, and 1,300,709; TE Ship Equipment Notes, 20 Oct. 1916, TENHP.

306. TE to Committee on Sites, 4 Oct. 1916, TENHP.

307. Leo Baekeland to Thomas Robins, 13 Oct. 1916, TENHP; TE superscript on Leo Baekeland to Thomas Robins, 13 Oct. 1916, TENHP. TE had earlier prospected Fort Wadsworth and Governors Island in New York Bay and even prospected the Hudson Valley. “On account of the ice, I did not go beyond Tarrytown.” TE to Committee on Sites, 4 Oct. 1916, TENHP.

308. “Proposed Report of Committee on Sites,” 7 Dec. 1916, TENHP.

309. TE superscript on Hudson Maxim to TE, 10 Dec. 1916.

310. Frank Sprague to TE, 13 Dec. 1916; TE to Daniels, 15 Dec. 1916, ms. draft, both TENHP.

311. Elmer Sperry to TE, 19 Dec. 1916, TENHP.

312. Jeffrey, “ ‘Commodore’ Edison,” 28; Hutchison to Louis Howe, 23 Dec. 1916, TENHP.

313. Daniels to TE, 20 Dec. 1916, CHC.

314. TE to Daniels, 22 Dec. 1916, TENHP.

315. TE superscript on Hudson Maxim to TE, 27 Jan. 1917, CHC; Bridgewater (NJ) Courier-News and Oakland Tribune, 4 Jan. 1917; Hutchison Extracts, entry for 31 Dec. 1916, TENHP.

316. Maxim to TE, 6 Feb. 1917, CHC.

317. Rodney Carlisle, “The Attacks on US Shipping that Precipitated American Entry into World War 1,” 46, www.cnrs.org; Daniels to TE, 3 Feb. 1917, CHC.

318. TE to Daniels, 10 Feb. 1917, CHC; Joseph Fagan, Eagle Rock Reservation (Charleston, SC, 2002), 67ff.

319. TE to Dr. Robert Reese, 6 Feb. 1917, CHC.

320. TE memo to self, 14 Feb. 1917, CHC; TE to Daniels, 17 Mar. 1917, CHC; TE to Sir Eric Geddes, n.d., quoted in William Meadowcroft memo, 23 Jan. 1918, TENHP; Scott, Naval Consulting Board, 185, 177, 175.

321. TE to Newton D. Baker, 6 Apr. 1917, CHC; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 27.

322. Karl T. Compton, “Edison’s Laboratory in Wartime,” Science 75 (1933); Scott, Naval Consulting Board, 183.

323. Compton, “Edison’s Laboratory,” 75.

324. Ibid.; TE to Daniels, 30 Apr. 1917, CHC.

325. Scott, Naval Consulting Board, 162.

326. TE to Daniels, 30 Apr. 1917, CHC.

327. War career summary in TE pocket notebook, 27 Jan. 1920, TENHP.

328. TE to Daniels, 28 Mar., 16, 17, and 26 Feb., 14 May, and 9 and 26 July 1917, CHC.

329. TE to Daniels, 6 Mar. 1917, CHC. When one series of experiments became costly, Daniels had to encourage Edison to “go ahead and spend as much money as will be necessary” to complete them. Hutchison to TE, 11 May 1917, TENHP.

330. William Meadowcroft to H. Gernsback, 16 Feb. 1917, TENHP; TE to Daniels, 23 July 1917, CHC; TE superscript in Lucius Beers to TE, 21 Aug. 1917, CHC; Hutchison to TE, 16 Aug. 1917, TENHP.

331. Hutchison to TE, ca. 10 Aug. 1917, TENHP.

332. MME to Madeleine Edison Sloane, 24 Sept. 1917, DSP; Charles B. Harford to Meadowcroft, 13 Mar. 1918, TENHP.

333. Hutchison to TE, 16 Aug. 1917, TENHP; MME to Madeleine Edison Sloane, 3 September 1917, DSP; John Sloane to Madeleine Edison Sloane, 27 Aug. 1917, DSP; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 3 and 119; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 64–65.

334. William L. Saunders to TE, 17 and 18 Aug. 1917, CHC; Woodrow Wilson to William L. Saunders, 24 Aug. 1917, CHC; TE quoted by Daniels in News of the Edison Pioneers, no. 1 (1946).

335. MME to Theodore Edison, 27 Aug. 1917, PTAE.

336. MME to Madeleine Edison Sloane, 24 Sept. 1917, DSP; Charles B. Hanford to William Meadowcroft, 13 Mar. 1918, CHC.

337. TE to Gen. William Crozier, 20 Aug. 1917, TENHP; Newton D. Baker to TE, 22 Aug. 1917, TENHP; TE to Daniels, 19 July 1917, CHC; Theodore Edison to TE, 15 Nov. 1917, TENHP; “Report on Trench Wheel—Experiments,” 9 Dec. 1918, TENHP. Theodore also boasted that the wheel would make an excellent dispenser of poison gas. “Report on Trench Wheel.” His long illustrated letter explaining this device to his father shows that he was a born inventor. Theodore Edison to TE, 15 Nov. 1817, TENHP.

338. MME to Madeleine Edison Sloane, 24 Sept. 1917, DSP; MME to Theodore Edison, 22 Sept. 1917, PTAE.

339. See, e.g., TE to William L. Saunders, 1 Sept. 1917, TENHP, and Special Board on Naval Ordnance report on TE’s turbine-headed shell, 23 Feb. 1917, CHC; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 28.

340. Meadowcroft to Reginald Fessenden, 8 Dec. 1917, TENHP; and to Madeleine Edison Sloane, 17 Dec. 19, 17 Oct. 1917, DSP; Daniels to TE, 13 Oct. 1917, CHC; House Resolution no. 4961, copy in TENHP. For a detailed account of Charles Edison’s campaign to oust Hutchison from Thomas A. Edison, Inc., see Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 93–97.

341. Scott, Naval Consulting Board, 166.

342. Thomas Robins, “Friends in a Lifetime,” ts. memoir, 1944, 13, TENHP. TE’s copy of the Admiralty British Isles sea chart for 1913, with soundings marked, is preserved at TENHP.

343. TE to Eric Geddes, 21 Nov. 1917, in Scott, Naval Consulting Board, 167–70.

344. TE to Daniels, 21 Nov. 1917, CHC; Madeleine Edison Sloane Oral History, 22, COL.

345. MME to Theodore Edison, 21 Jan. 1918, PTAE.

346. Frank J. Sprague to TE, 30 Jan. 1918, FSP.

347. Ibid.

348. William Meadowcroft quoted in Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 29.

349. TE quoted in Israel, Edison, 450.

350. MME to Charles Edison, ca. 3 Feb. 1918, and to Theodore Edison, 4 Feb. 1918, PTAE.

351. Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 30; MME to Theodore Edison, 13 May 1918, PTAE.

352. Charles Edison to Madeleine Edison Sloane, 2 Apr. 1918, DSP. There is much discussion of Carolyn Hawkins Edison in the closed papers of the Sloane family, DSP. She was considerably senior to her husband. See Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 119–20.

353. Venable, Out of the Shadow, 66; Charles Edison to Madeleine Edison Sloane, 5 Apr. 1918, DSP.

354. Venable, Out of the Shadow, 67.

355. Madeleine Edison Sloane to John Sloane, 7 Aug. 1918, DSP.

356. Joseph F. McCoy Reminiscences, Biographical Collection, TENHP, 31–32.

357. Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 97. Hutchison prospered briefly, then became a victim of the postwar depression. By the end of 1925 he was down to his last $275. He lived on until 1944, clinging to his title of “Doctor,” and never ceasing to bask in the memory of having once moved among with the great. “I spent the happiest days of my life with Edison. I knew him as did no other man.” Hutchison Extracts, entry for 31 Dec. 1925 and passim, TENHP; Journal of the Patent Office Society 19, no. 3 (1937); “Edison’s Right Hand,” Kappa Alpha Journal, Fall 1998; “The Rise and Fall of Miller Reese Hutchison,” in Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 76–97.

358. Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 28; TE to Daniels, 30 July 1918, JDP; Madeleine Edison Sloane to John Sloane, 7 Aug. 1918, DSP.

359. John Burroughs, “A Strenuous Holiday,” in The Works of John Burroughs (Cambridge, MA, 1921), 22.119–20. For detailed accounts of the trip, see ibid., 109–26, and Firestone, Men and Rubber, 202ff.

360. Hutchison to C. English, 4 Dec. 1918, TENHP; Jeffrey, “ ‘Commodore’ Edison,” 33–34.

361. Daniels to TE, 6 Nov. 1918, TENHP; TE to Daniels, 14 Nov. 1918, TENHP.

362. William Edison to MME, 25 Nov. 1918, PTAE.

363. TE to Franklin D. Roosevelt, 21 May 1918, TENHP; Franklin D. Roosevelt to TE, 10 Sept. 1918, TENHP.

364. TE to Franklin D. Roosevelt (draft), 10 Sept. 1918, TENHP; Daniels to TE, 6 Nov. 1919, TENHP; TE in New York World, 13 Feb. 1923. Many years later Thomas Robins wrote, “Some of his marginal comments on naval letters which I sent him were of such hair-curling nature that I did not care to take the risk of keeping them in the files of the Naval Consulting Board which were sent to Washington after the war.” Robins, “Friends of a Lifetime,” 17, PTAE.

365. New York Times, 14 Oct. 1919; Hutchison press release, ca. Oct. 1919, TENHP.

PART THREE · CHEMISTRY (1900–1909)

1. William Gilmore to W. S. Logue, 6 Feb. 1900, TENHP; William Edison to TE, 6 Feb, 1900, and ca. Sept. 1899, PTAE.

2. Blanche Travers Edison (1879–1946). TE superscript on C. E. Baker to TE, 2 May 1900, TENHP.

3. Charles Edison to MME, ca. May 1913, PTAE.

4. TE Diary, entries for 15 and 17 July 1885, PTAE; Glenmont curator Beth Miller to L. DeGraaf, 11 Jan. 1918.

5. Marie Louise Toobey Edison (1880–1906). Chautauquan 20 (Apr.–Sept. 1899).

6. Baltimore Sun, 18 Feb. 1899; William Edison to TE, ca. Sept. 1899, TENHP.

7. William Edison to MME, 8 July 1900, TENHP; New York Evening World, 10 Feb. 1900.

8. Boston Globe, 3 July 1899; Carl Leibinger to TE, 9 May 1900, TENHP.

9. A. A. Friedenstein to TE, 8 May 1900, TENHP.

10. New York Sun, 3 Feb. 1903; advertisement by “The Edison Electric Belt Company” in Des Moines Register, 29 July 1900; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 512; TE Patent 759,356. L. Barton Case advised Edison on 14 May that Tom regretted signing a partnership agreement with Friedenstein, and had no desire to proceed with him. TENHP.

11. Miller Reese Hutchison, The Edison Storage Battery: A Series of Non-Technical Letters (Orange, NJ, 1912), 8; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 116–17; Walter S. Mallory reminiscences, Biographical Collection, TENHP.

12. Hutchison, Edison Storage Battery, 10–11.

13. TE pocket notebook 10-00-00.2, TENHP. See also “How the Edison Battery Started,” Grid, Jan. 1920, copy in TENHP.

14. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 928; https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/​ohim/​summary95/​mv200.pdf. In 1900 New York City’s horses dropped twelve hundred metric tons of manure a day.

15. TE pocket notebook, TENHP; Hutchison, Edison Storage Battery, 10; “How the Edison Battery Started”; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 235ff. Gleick, Information, notes how frequently the word imponderable was used by writers on electricity in the nineteenth century (127).

16. TE quoted in Hutchison, Edison Storage Battery, 8. See, e.g., “Storage Battery Problems,” 30 Mar. 1900: “Nothing but the lead sulphuric acid cell is at all practicable [for automobile traction], and this has been examined physically, chemically, electrically, and mechanically by a great number of leading physicists, chemists, electricians, and engineers.”

17. Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 25 Aug. 1901; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 203.

18. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 555; TE interviewed in Grid,, Jan. 1920.

19. Meadowcroft, Boys’ Life of Edison, 86; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 206. The title of Albert Einstein’s first relativity essay, published in 1905, directly addressed the paradox of mass-energy equivalence: “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend upon Its Energy Content?” Annalen der Physik, 21 Nov. 1905.

20. Israel, Edison, 297; TE interviewed in Grid, Jan. 1920; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 206–7; Walter Holland, “The Edison Storage Battery,” Electrical World 55, no. 17 (28 Apr. 1910).

21. William Edison to MME, 8 July 1900, PTAE.

22. William Edison to Walter Mallory, 4 Sept. 1900, PTAE.

23. Ibid.

24. TE to Blanche Edison, n.d., ca. Oct. 1900, TENHP.

25. TE Patents 684,204 and 692,507; Ralph D. Pray, “Edison’s Folly,” www.mining-engineer.com.

26. TE to T. Cushing Daniel, 14 Dec. 1901, TENHP.

27. TE Patent 684,204; Israel, Edison, 412–13;Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 206–7.

28. Israel, Edison, 412–13; Kevin Desmond, Innovators in Battery Technology: Profiles of 93 Influential Electrochemists (Jefferson, NC, 2016), 115; M. V. Schoop, “The Jungner Nickel-Iron Accumulator,” Scientific American Supplement 17 Sept. 1904; TE Patent 670,024 (amplified 12 May 1901, amended 21 Aug. 1902), certified copy in TENHP.

29. Elektrochemische Zeitschrift 7 (Aug. 1900) cited by George S. Maynard, List of References on Storage Batteries, 1900–1915 (New York Public Library guide), 4; TE Journal Subscription List, TENHP.

30. The following description is taken from the text of TE Patent 871,214.

31. Josephson, Edison, 408; TE Patent 871,214.

32. TE Patent 871,214.

33. TE Patents 684,204, and 871,214; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 207; Israel, Edison, 413. The current price of cadmium was $1.20 per pound, as opposed to four cents a pound for lead.

34. William Edison to TE, 24 Nov. 1900, TENHP.

35. Israel, Edison, 390.

36. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 508; Walter Mallory quoted in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 512–13. See also 921–25.

37. See Israel, Edison, 414, for details of this incorporation.

38. Louis E. Bomeisler to TE, 18 Feb. 1901, TENHP.

39. TE superscript on ibid.

40. TE superscript on C. C. Hickock to TE, 22 Feb. 1901, TENHP.

41. D. Van Nostrand & Co. to TE, 5 and 12 Dec. 1900, TENHP; TE to George Iles, 21 Feb. 1901, TENHP.

42. Albion, Florida Life of Edison, 42–53; Smoot, Edisons of Fort Myers, 52–56.

43. Smoot, Edisons of Fort Myers, 59; Albion, Florida Life of Edison, 54–55.

44. St. Louis Republican, 14 Apr. 1900. See also The Edisonian, Vol. 11 at http://edison.rutgers.edu/​newsletter11.htm#7 for an essay on the relationship of TE and Tesla.

45. Ralph H. Beach to Francis Jehl, 20 Dec. 1937, HFM; Marc Raboy, Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World (New York, 2016), 155–56.

46. A. Frederick Collins in Western Electrician, 24 Aug. 1901.

47. Except where otherwise indicated, this section is based on Arthur E. Kennelly, “The New Edison Storage Battery,” Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 18 (1901), 219ff., and TE Patent 701,804.

48. Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 232.

49. Walter Mallory to William Shelmerdine, 1 May 1901, TENHP. The date of TE’s decision to drastically modify the New Village plant is left vague (“its installation was nearing completion”) in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 518. But the sequence of letters covering the period of construction, filed as the Walter Mallory Papers in TENHP, show that the modification could only have occurred at this juncture. See TE to Harlan Page, below, and also Cement and Engineering News, June 1901.

50. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 518–19; TE to Harlan Page, 6 May 1901, TENHP. The typed copy of this letter mistakenly adds a zero to each production figure.

51. TE to Harlan Page, 6 May 1901, TENHP.

52. Walter Mallory quoted in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 512–14.

53. W. N. Stewart to TE, 5 July 1901, TENHP.

54. TE to W. N. Stewart, 15 July 1901, TENHP.

55. For a complete list of Edison’s 147 battery patents, see Edison.rutgers.edu/​battpats.htm.

56. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 176–77; Howard W. Hayes to William Gilmore, 15 July 1901, TENHP.

57. MME to Madeleine Edison, 17 and 18 Aug. 1901, DSP. MME soon returned home from Sudbury, then immediately returned home, leaving TE there in the male company of her brother John V. Miller and two mining associates. A long letter from TE to MME, ca. 25 Aug., TENHP describes their subsequent camping and prospecting adventures. What Happened on Twenty-third Street was shot on 23 Aug. 1901.

58. For some documents covering TE’s stay in Sudbury, see “Thomas Edison,” Sudburymuseum.ca.

59. TE to MME, “Sunday,” ca. 25 Aug. 1901, TENHP; Edison: Invention of the Movies, DVD 1. The name of the turn-of-the-century Marilyn Monroe was Florence Georgie.

60. “Thomas Edison,” Sudburymuseum.ca; Israel, Edison, 524; G. A. Aufrecht to TE, 15 Nov. 1901; W. E. Davenport to Edison attorney Howard Hayes, 12 Sept. 1901, TENHP. TE’s attempts to sink a workable shaft at Falconbridge in 1902 and 1903 were defeated by layers of quicksand. He eventually abandoned the mine. “Thomas Edison,” Sudburymuseum.com.

61. Edison: Invention of the Movies, DVD 1.

62. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 184–90; Israel, Edison, 425, 405; “Wonders of New Edison Battery,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 25 Aug. 1901.

63. Thomas Armat to TE, 15 Nov. 1901, TENHP. For Armat’s aggressive defense of his own patents at this time, see Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 333.

64. Thomas Armat to TE, 15 Nov. 1901, TENHP.

65. Ibid.

66. TE superscript on ibid; TE to T. Cushing Daniel, 29 Nov. 1901, TENHP; Daniel to TE (with TE superscript reply), 13 Dec. 1901, TENHP.

67. This account of the Marconi dinner derives from Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers 19 (Jan.–July 1902), 93–121.

68. MME to Mary V. Miller, 16 Jan. 1902, EFW.

69. William Edison to MME, 28 Jan. 1902, PTAE.

70. Ibid.

71. “Edison’s Sons Under Arrest,” New York Evening World, 11 Mar. 1902. See also Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun, same date.

72. New York Evening World, 11 Mar. 1902.

73. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 196; Israel, Edison, 400–1; Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 80ff.; MME to Mary A. Miller, 20 Apr. 1902, EFW.

74. Israel, Edison, 415; MME to Mary V. Miller, 25 May 1902, EFW; Millard, Edison and Business, 189; Charles Edison reminiscing in Venable, Out of the Shadow, 6–12.

75. MME to Mary V. Miller, 25 May 1902, EFW; Madeleine Edison Sloane Oral History, 16, COL.

76. TE superscripts on L. C. Weir of Adams Express Co. to TE, 11 and 22 Apr. 1902, TENHP; Israel, Edison, 415.

77. TE, “The Storage Battery and the Motor Car,” North American Review 174 (July 1902).

78. Ibid.

79. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 213.

80. Ibid., 233. Eileen Bowser uses the phrase temporal overlaps in her commentary on the film in Edison: Invention of the Movies, DVD 1. The following account of the action is the author’s own. See Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 325–29, for a professional analysis.

81. Edison: Invention of the Movies, DVD 1. For a full discussion of the myth arising out of this documentary, see “Did Edison Really Execute Topsy the Elephant?,” The Edisonian, Vol. 11, at http://edison.rutgers.edu/​newsletter11htm#7.

82. Joseph McCoy to Howard Hayes, 19 Dec. 1902, TENHP.

83. Memorandum of agreement, 19 Mar. 1899; McCoy to Hayes, 19 Dec. 1902, both TENHP.

84. McCoy to Hayes, 19 Dec. 1902, TENHP.

85. Thomas Edison, Jr., to TE, 20 Dec. 1902, TENHP.

86. TE to MME, 9 Feb. 1898, PTAE; Hayes to Randolph, 8 Jan. 1903, TENHP.

87. Thomas Edison, Jr., to TE, 29 Dec. 1902, TENHP.

88. Ibid.

89. Ibid.

90. Wilmington (DE) Evening Journal, 21 Jan. 1903. The background to this precautionary suit is confused. When Joseph McCoy first alerted Edison’s legal department to the deal between Tom and Stilwell in December 1902, he specifically cited their formation of a phonograph company in competition to Edison’s own. By the time the suit was filed in January 1903, most of McCoy’s allegations were applied instead to the Thomas A. Edison, Jr., Chemical Company.

91. “Edison Contra Jungner,” Nya Dagligt Allehanda, 3 Jan. 1903, reprinted in Horseless Age, 28 Jan. 1903.

92. Frank Dyer to Brandon Bros., 13 May 1904, TENHP.

93. “Two Years’ Rest for Edison,” New York Sun, 15 Feb. 1903.

94. Smoot, Edisons of Fort Myers, 64, 60, 61; MME to Madeleine Edison, 22 Feb. 1903, DSP.

95. New York Times, 3 Mar. 1903; Philadelphia Inquirer and Allentown (PA) Leader, 16 Mar. 1903; Scranton (PA) Republican and Buffalo Enquirer, 3 Mar. 1903.

96. MME to Madeleine Edison, 4 Mar. 1903, DSP; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 618 (photograph); Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 242.

97. Israel, Edison, 391; René Rondeau, Lost to History: Thomas A. Edison, Jr. (2010), Edisontinfoil.com.; Thomas A. Edison, Jr., to TE, 21 July 1903, TENHP; TE superscript on Thomas Edison, Jr., to TE, 21 July 1903, TENHP.

98. William Edison to TE, 12 July 1903, TENHP; H. F. Miller memorandum, 17 July 1903, department records, TENHP. The loan eventually totaled $2,544 and was strictly divided into monthly notes payable.

99. William Edison to TE, 12 July 1903, TENHP.

100. “The Situation Regarding the Edison Storage Battery,” Electrical Review 43 (8 Aug. 1903).

101. Ibid.

102. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 562–63; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 213.

103. Frank Dyer to Brandon Bros., 7 Dec. 1903, legal department records, TENHP.

104. One of Dyer’s first assignments was to transfer the old Edison-Gilliland “grasshopper” wireless patent to Guglielmo Marconi. Edison insisted on this cashless deal, despite a preemptive offer from the Postal Telegraph & Cable Company. “Marconi is responsible for making a success of wireless telegraphy,” he said. “I would be the last man to put obstacles in his way.”

105. Motography 6, no. 1 (July 1911); TE to Frank Dyer, 10 Nov. 1903, TENHP; Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 238–39.

106. This paragraph is based on a survey of Dyer’s densely detailed diary for 1906, preserved at TENHP.

107. Edison: Invention of the Movies, DVD 1.

108. DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 136.

109. Thomas Edison, Jr., to John Randolph, 17 Dec. 1903, and TE to William Edison, 13 Oct. 1903, both TENHP.

110. William Edison to TE, 17 Oct. 1903; Samuel Scoggins to TE, 27 Dec. 1903; Blanche Edison to TE, 12 Dec. 1903; all TENHP.

111. John Randolph superscript on Blanche Edison to TE, 12 Dec. 1903; William Edison to TE, 16 Dec. 1903, both TENHP.

112. Charles Stilwell to John Randolph, 18 Dec. 1903, TENHP.

113. Frank Dyer to Brandon Bros., 13 Mar. 1904, TENHP.

114. TE to Theodore Roosevelt (draft), 10 Dec. 1903, TENHP.

115. Theodore Roosevelt to Frederick I. Allen, 11 Dec. 1903, TENHP.

116. Dr. L. Sell to TE, 10 Jan. 1904, TENHP.

117. Legal File, 4 Feb. 1904, TENHP; William Edison to John Randolph, 12 Feb. 1904, TENHP; Israel, Edison, 416; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 212–13; Israel, Edison, 416.

118. Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 212–19; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 560; Josephson, Edison, 414.

119. Electrical Review 44, no. 8 (20 Feb. 1904). The following account is taken from Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 262–66. Jones misdates the visit by one month, saying it occurred in June rather than on Saturday 14 May.

120. Washington Evening Star and Buffalo Morning Express, 15 June 1904; Indianapolis News, 16 June 1904.

121. Washington Evening Star, 15 June 1904.

122. Tom was cooperating with Post Office investigators prosecuting directors of the Thomas A. Edison, Jr. Chemical Company for mail fraud. Jeffrey, “Tom and Beatrice,” 3; Gilbert King, “Clarence Dally—The Man Who Gave Thomas Edison X-Ray Vision,” Smithsonian.com, 14 Mar. 2012.

123. Carolyn T. de la Pera, Body Electric: How Strange Machines Built the Modern Era (New York, 2005), 175. Pierre Curie asked Hammer, in return, for a sample of the tungstate of calcium that Edison was using in some private lighting experiments. “Is it prepared in some special way, and can I find it in commerce?” William J. Hammer to TE, 10 Nov. 1903, TENHP.

124. Israel, Edison, 422; William Hammer to TE, 10, 20 Nov. 1903, TENHP; Elizabeth Chapin (biographer of TE’s gastroenterologist Max Einhorn) to Norman Speiden, ca. 1942, Edison folder, Biographical Collection, TENHP; TE quoted in New York World, 3 Aug. 1903 (see ibid. for a detailed account of TE’s work with Dally). William S. Andrews, another of the men who worked with Edison on X-rays, died of lingering radiation burns in 1929. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 684.

125. Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 212; Israel, Edison, 415–17; Frank Dyer to Dr. L. Sell, 28 Nov. 1905, PTAE; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 180; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 566.

126. New York Times, 24 Jan. 1905; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 180. A recording of TE telling the quoted story in 1906 is available from Michigan State University’s Vincent Voice Library at http://archive.lib.msu.edu/​VVL/​dbnumbers/​DB500.mp3.

127. Akron Beacon Journal, 25 Jan. 1905; Frank Dyer to Dr. L. Sell, 28 Nov. 1905, TENHP; TE Patent 252,932.

128. TE/Aylesworth Patent 976,791.

129. Frank Dyer to Meffert and Sell, 28 Nov. 1903.

130. Thomas E. Jeffrey, “Beatrice Heyzer Edison and the Heyzer Family,” unpublished research note, 2018; Jeffrey, “Tom and Beatrice,” 3. According to Jeffrey, historian of the Edison family, the weight of reliable evidence indicates that Beatrice was born Matilda R. Heyzer in New York in 1874. In later life she would identify herself as Beatrice La Montagne Edison, the Kentucky-born daughter of Charles La Montagne-Hazeur, M.D. Beatrice Edison, “Brief Biography,” 30 Sept. 1929, TENHP.

131. Jeffrey, “Beatrice Heyzer Edison.” See also New York Times, 11 Jan. 1906.

132. C. Wilmot Townsend to John Randolph, 23 Sept. 1903, TENHP.

133. A. E. R. Laning to John Randolph, 27 Sept. 1905, TENHP.

134. Thomas Edison, Jr., to TE, 22 Nov. 1905, TENHP.

135. Ibid.

136. Ibid.

137. John Randolph to “Burton Willard,” 11 Dec. 1905, TENHP; TE superscript on Thomas Edison, Jr., to TE, 22 Nov. 1905, TENHP.

138. William Edison to TE, 16 Dec. 1905, TENHP.

139. Ibid.

140. Frank Dyer Diary, entry for 2 Jan. 1906, TENHP.

141. Ibid., entries for 30 Nov. and 25 July 1906, TENHP. Only the 1906 volume of Dyer’s diary appears to have survived.

142. Ibid., entry for 5 Jan. 1906, TENHP.

143. Ibid., entry for 8 Feb. 1906, TENHP; Boston Post, 23 Feb. 1906. Press reports gave the cause of death as an unidentified, two-day “illness.” Jeffrey declines to accuse anyone of foul play but notes that Beatrice “allegedly once tried to poison her own sister—the allegations coming from the sister herself.” Jeffrey, “Tom and Beatrice,” 5.

144. New York Times, 22 Feb. 1906; A. G. Cottell, Undertaker and Embalmer, to TE, 20 Feb. 1906, TENHP (“The family appreciates your generosity”); Frank Dyer Diary, entry for 21 Feb. 1906.

145. TE memo to John Randolph, n.d., ca. mid–Nov. 1905, TENHP; Frank Dyer Diary, entries for 19 Feb. and 9 July 1906, TENHP. The wedding was held in Trenton and attended only by members of the Heyzer family. Tom signed the register with his real name, while Beatrice did so as “Miss Beatrice Matilda Heyzer.” This did not fool reporters, who identified her as “Mrs. Thomas Montgomery.” Upon returning to Burlington, the newlyweds once again became “Burton and Beatrice Willard.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 11 July 1906; Jeffrey, “Beatrice Heyzer Edison.”

146. Frank Dyer Diary, entries for 12 and 9 Oct. 1906, TENHP; Benjamin M. Dugger, Mushroom Farming (New York, 1920), passim.

147. Frank Dyer Diary, entry for 9 Oct. 1906, TENHP.

148. Ibid., entry for 4 Sept, 1906, TENHP; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 329–30; TE superscript on A. S. Cushman to TE, ca. 29 Oct. 1906, TENHP.

149. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 516–17; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 187; TE quoted in Washington Evening Star, 21 Feb. 1906.

150. Bryan, Edison: The Man, 254–55; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 937–42; “The Building Materials of the Future,” Insurance Engineering 1, no. 3 (June 1901).

151. “Building Materials of the Future.”

152. “Edison Plans a Revolution in Building Houses,” New Castle (PA) Herald, 10 Aug. 1906; TE quoted in Price (UT) News-Advocate, 27 Dec. 1906. See especially Brian Charlton, “Cement City: Thomas Edison’s Experiment with Worker’s Housing in Donora,” Western Pennsylvania History, Fall 2013.

153. “Edison Plans Revolution in Building Houses.”

154. Papers, 1.652, 642–43. The device referred to was the Edison Universal Stock Printer, U.S. Patent 126,532.

155. Papers, 1.638, 2.784; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 377 and 433ff.; Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 450–51; Josephson, Edison, 401–2; “Frank L. Dyer,” Electrical World, Nov. 1910; De Graaf, Edison and Innovation, 139. See especially Robert J. Anderson, “The Motion Picture Patents Company,” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1983.

156. The phrase sweet savor of wax, along with other details in this sentence, comes from Leroy Hughbanks’s memoir, The Story of the Phonograph, 34–35.

157. MTE Patent 713,209 (11 Nov. 1902); De Graaf, Edison, 106; Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 84–85; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 129; Millard, Edison and Business, 194–95; MME to Theodore Edison, 13 May 1909, PTAE.

158. Oakland Tribune, 26 June 1909. See, e.g., Holland, “The Edison Storage Battery”; C. W. Bennett and H. N. Gilbert, “Some Tests of the Edison Storage Battery,” Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering 11 (1913).

159. Hutchison, Edison Storage Battery, 20–22.

160. Israel, Edison, 419; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 935 (magnified illustration) and 931; Hutchison, Edison Storage Battery, 16.

161. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 926–36; TE in Oakland Tribune, 26 June 1909; Fred H. Colvin, “The Mechanics of the Edison Battery,” American Machinist, 10 Aug. 1911; Hutchison, Edison Storage Battery, 17–19.

162. TE to Robert Bachman, quoted in Hutchison, Edison Storage Battery, 24; TE in Oakland Tribune, 26 June 1909.

163. Israel, Edison, 420–21.

164. TE quoted in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 608; Elizabeth Wadsworth to TE, 16 May 1905, TENHP.

165. Thomas Edison, Jr., to Mary V. Miller, 15 Mar. 1910, EFW.

166. William Edison to Harry Miller, 3 Ang. 1911, TENHP; Frank Dyer to William Edison, 4 May 1909, TENHP.

167. “Thomas A. Edison,” Fra: A Journal of Affirmation 5, no. 1 (Apr. 1910). In 1912 TE became a self-proclaimed “believer in the utilization of Tidal powers” after seeing the Maine inventor Thomas A. McDonald’s “Tidal Power Wheel.” He said however that such a technology was feasible only in areas where there was a very high demand for energy. TE superscript on Harry C. Webber to TE, 27 Jan. 1912, TENHP.

PART FOUR · MAGNETISM (1890–1899)

1. Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 73; New York Evening World and New York Tribune, 2 Jan. 1890; Israel, Edison, 334–35, citing Henry Villard to TE, 2 Feb. 1890. See also McDonald, Insull, 39ff.

2. Josephson, Edison, 341.

3. TE to Henry Villard, 8 Feb. 1890, PTAE.

4. Ibid.

5. Henry Villard to TE, 13 Feb. 1890, PTAE.

6. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 247–48; Thomas V. Leidy and Donald R Shelton, “Titan in Berks: Edison’s Experiments in Iron Concentration,” Historical Review of Berks County (Fall 1958); Israel, Edison, 347–48; Buffalo Evening News, 20 Jan. 1890; Elizabeth Earl to MME, 10 Mar. 1890, PTAE.

7. Elizabeth Earl to MME, 10 Mar. 1890, PTAE; Marion Edison Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park, passim, TENHP.

8. Elizabeth Earl to MME, 10 Mar. 1890. “The abscess on her back [inflicted] permanent injury to the spine, and when they lanced it…she bled so profusely they feared for her life.” Hemorrhagic smallpox is almost always fatal.

9. Michele Albion, “Mina Miller Edison Pregnancies and Miscarriages,” unpublished research note, 28 Feb. 2007 (additional research by Thomas E Jeffrey, Author’s Collection; Albion memo; Statement of St. Paul’s School, 1891, TENHP. The fee for two boarders at St. Paul’s that year was $1,200 per annum, or $34,200 in 2018 dollars.

10. Sarah Brigham to MME, 7 Apr. 1890, PTAE.

11. TE quoted in Meadowcroft, Boys’ Life of Edison.

12. Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 138; Israel, Edison, 342.

13. See TE’s rationale for the mining and concentration of Eastern iron ore, untitled ms. essay, ca. Oct. 1894, PTAE, henceforth TE Rationale.

14. TE quoted in Atlanta Constitution, 25 Feb. 1890; TE Rationale, 2; TE in Engineering and Mining Journal, 52 (26 Dec.1891); TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 478–79; Theodore Waters, “Edison’s Revolution in Iron Mining,” McClure’s Magazine, Nov. 1897. The Ogden mine was the largest of three Edison sought to develop in 1887–90. The other two, at Humboldt, Michigan, and Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania, were unsuccessful. Israel, Edison, 344–48.

15. Israel, Edison, 345–47; Carlson, “Edison in the Mountains,” 43. The New Jersey & Pennsylvania Concentrating Works had been formed in December 1888 to develop TE’s preliminary mine in Bechtelsville.

16. Charles Batchelor Diary, entry for 24 Mar. 1890, PTAE; Wall Street Journal, 31 Mar. 1890; New York World, 1 Apr. 1890; Chicago Tribune and Philadelphia Times, 8 Apr. 1890; McDonald, Insull, 48; Israel, Edison, 334; Dyer and Martin, 53.

17. Parker, Natural Philosophy, 18.

18. Iron Age 46 (27 Nov. 1890).

19. Edison made this comparative remark when being quizzed on his lack of religious belief. New York Times, 2 Oct. 1910.

20. TE in Telegrapher, 8 Aug. 1868 and 16 Oct. 1869; TE, “On a Magnetic Bridge or Balance for Measuring Magnetic Conductivity,” Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 36 (Aug. 1887); William J. Hammer in Electrical World, 21 Sept. 1889; John Birkinbine and Thomas Edison, “The Concentration of Iron-Ore,” Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers 17 (Feb. 1889).

21. Hounshell, “Edison and the Pure Science Ideal.” For an account of TE’s explorations of electromagnetic science, see Israel, Edison, 30–61.

22. TE Patent 228,329, executed 3 Apr. 1880, issued 1 June 1880.

23. Birkinbine and Edison, “Concentration of Iron-Ore”; TE Patent 430,280, issued 17 June 1890. At this early stage of Edison’s development of the movie camera, he used the names “Kinetoscope” and “Kinetograph” indiscriminately. They later took on more precise meaning. See, e.g., TE Patent 589,168.

24. “Edison Has an Idea,” Minneapolis Times, 17 Apr. 1890; Paul C. Spehr, “Unaltered to Date: Developing 35mm. Film,” in John Fullerton and Astrid Soderburgh Widding, Moving Images: From Edison to the Webcam (Bloomington, IN, 2000), loc. 378ff.

25. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 288; TE and W. K. L. Dickson Patent 434,588, issued 19 Aug. 1890.

26. Carlson, “Edison in the Mountains,” 42.

27. Hornellsville (NY) Weekly Tribune, 21 Mar. 1890; Marion Edison to MME, Mar. 1890, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 384; Marion Edison to TE, 28 Dec. 1890, PTAE (“Do please add a line or two to one of Mina’s letters I should like so much to hear from you”), and to MME, ca. Aug. 1890, PTAE.

28. Marion Edison to MME, ca. Aug. 1890, PTAE.

29. Engineering News, Oct. 1980; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 119–20, 144; Engineering and Mining Journal, 10 Oct. 1891.

30. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 191; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 145.

31. Tate to Samuel Insull, 10 July 1890, PTAE; Lathrop, “Talks with Edison”; Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1890, PTAE.

32. Lathrop to Tate, 30 June 1890, PTAE.

33. Finding aid, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop Papers, Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne Archive, Hawthorne, NY.

34. TE to Lathrop, ca. early Oct. 1890, PTAE.

35. Lathrop to TE, 13 Oct. 1890 and 10 Aug. 1891; TE to Lathrop, ca. early Oct. 1890; all PTAE.

36. Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1891, and TE to Lathrop, ca. early Oct. 1890, both PTAE.

37. Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1891, PTAE.

38. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 283; Dickson and Dickson, History of Kinetograph, 8–12; TE caveat, 8 Oct. 1888, TENHP; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 30–31; Minneapolis Times, 17 April 1890.

39. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 210. A reshoot, Monkeyshines No. 2, already showed improvement in camera technique. See https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=9jSbExx-960.

40. Dickson, “Brief History”; John Belton, Widescreen Cinema (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 18. For an exhaustive account of film R&D at the Edison laboratory in 1889–90, see Spehr, “Unaltered to Date.”

41. Dickson, “Brief History.”

42. The complex chronology of the invention of cinema, involving simultaneous experiments and claims of precedence in France, Britain, and the United States, is a subject of continuing, unresolved debate by scholars in all three countries. Edison’s relations with Étienne-Jules Marey and his pioneer work on the Kinetoscope in 1888 and 1889 will be discussed in Part Five.

43. Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle, 1 Jan. 1891, quoting New York Sun; Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1891, PTAE; Buffalo Enquirer, 27 May 1891; Hartford Courant, 10 June 1891.

44. Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1891, 17 Mar. and 15 Apr. 1892; Tate to Lathrop, 15 Apr. 1891; Lathrop to MME, 24 June 1891, all PTAE.

45. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 190. On 11 Apr. 1883, Edward H. Johnson specifically recommended Sprague to TE, as “of all men the very one to take charge of your Railway Experiments.” TE did hire him, but assigned him to install small-town lighting systems at the very time he was forming his own Edison-Field Electric Railway Company. Papers, 7.61–65, 67.

46. Buffalo Commercial, 16 Jan. 1890.

47. Rowsome, Birth of Electric Traction, loc. 1420, 1461ff.

48. Frank J. Sprague to Edison General Electric Co. and Henry Villard, 2 Dec. 1890, PTAE. See also Rowsome, Birth of Electric Traction, loc. 1547ff.

49. See, eg., Sprague in The New York Times, 23 Sept. 1928, and Harriet Sprague, Frank J. Sprague and the Edison Myth (New York, 1947), passim.

50. Harry Livor to TE, 4 Mar. 1891, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 335; New York Evening World, 5 Feb. 1891; Wall Street Journal, 7 Feb. 1891. See also McDonald, Insull, 39ff.

51. Donald R. Baker and A. F. Buddington, Geology and Magnetite Deposits of the Franklin Quadrangle and Part of the Hamburg Quadrangle, New Jersey, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 638 (Washington, DC, 1970), 38, 49, 52; TE Rationale, 5–6, PTAE; TE in Engineering and Mining Journal, 10 Oct. 1891.

52. “Report of Mr. Edison on Mill and Property at Ogden,” NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 16 July 1890, PTAE; Engineering and Mining Journal, 10 Oct. 1891; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 36–37.

53. Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 72.

54. Ibid., 34; Walter Mallory deposition in Edison v. Allis Chalmers, 640; Israel, Edison, 349; Scranton Republican, 9 Apr. 1891; Charles Batchelor Diary, entry for 8 Mar. 1891, PTAE.

55. TE to Henry Livor, 10 June 1891, and Livor to TE, 14 Apr. 1890, PTAE.

56. Israel, Edison, 350; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 33.

57. Carlson, “Edison in the Mountains,” 48–49; Henry Livor to TE, 11 June 1891; Bethlehem Iron to W. S. Perry, 15 June 1891; Perry to Bethlehem Iron, 24 July 1891, all PTAE.

58. Israel, Edison, 350; TE in Buffalo Morning Express, 8 Nov. 1891; 47 F. 454 (SDNY, 1891), 1891 U.S. App. Lexis 1151; “Locomotion in Water Studies by Photography,” Scientific American Supplement, 10 Jan. 1891. Edison was familiar with Marey’s pioneering work and could not fail to recognize its superiority to his own. He was at least dimly aware of that of William Friese-Greene. The British inventor wrote to him on 18 Mar. 1890 to say he was sending by separate post “a paper with description of Machine Camera for taking 10 a second.” There is no trace of this paper in TENHP, but receipt of the letter was acknowledged. Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 1.178; William Friese-Greene to TE, 18 Mar. 1890, PTAE.

59. Reading (PA) Times, 14 May 1891. See also Chicago Tribune, 13 May 1891.

60. Ibid.

61. Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 May 1891.

62. New York Tribune, 27 May 1891. Richard Dyer was the brother and partner of Frank Dyer, future president of Thomas A. Edison, Inc.

63. Ibid.; Allerhand, Illustrated History, 226ff.; Electrical Review, 15 Oct. 1892; New York Evening World, 26 May 1891.

64. Ibid. The New York Sun, 28 May 1891 is the source of a doubtful story that TE first demonstrated the Kinetograph to a group of women touring his laboratory a few days previously. It is true that Mina Edison hosted a lunch at Glenmont on 20 May for some 200 members of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and that she invited them to visit the plant afterward. However, Edison was in Chicago that day. Jane C. Croly’s densely detailed account of the event (which gives a good idea of the elegance of Mina’s entertainments) makes no mention of a movie show. Jane C. Croly, The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America (New York, 1898), 110. See also Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 504.

65. New York Sun, 28 May 1891; Lathrop to TE, 29 May, 1891.

66. New York Sun, 28 May 1891.

67. Ibid.

68. Ibid.

69. TE Patent 493,426; Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 71; New York Sun, 28 May 1891.

70. New York Sun, 28 May 1891.

71. “Edison’s Kinetograph,” Harper’s Weekly 35 (13 June 1891).

72. Ibid.

73. Henry Hart interviewed in New York Morning Journal, 26 July 1891.

74. Ibid.

75. Phonogram, TE’s house magazine, predicted that with all other lighting companies included as liable in the infringement decision, Edison General Electric was due as much as $50 million in back damages, and $2 million a year in future royalties. Phonogram 2, no. 10 (Oct. 1892).

76. TE quoted in Asheville Citizen-News, 11 Nov. 1891.

77. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 661; TE U.S. Patents 589,168 and 493,426; TE quoted in Asheville Citizen-News, 11 Nov, 1891. TE made no attempt to patent the Kinetograph overseas, probably because he quailed at the cost and difficulty of claiming precedence over the rival inventions of Marey, Le Prince, Friese-Greene, and others. But he thereby lost millions and enabled such French competitors as Lumière and Pathé to make substantial inroads into the U.S. market. For a discussion of TE’s decisions to patent, or not patent, various aspects of his motion picture devices, see Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, chap. 18. For an online study of the even more momentous lamp case, see Ron D. Katznelson and John Howells, “Inventing Around Edison’s Lamp Patent: The Role of Patents in Stimulating Downstream Development and Competition,” www.law.northwestern.edu. The authors argue that it was a victory for all parties, particularly the American consumer. For a general analysis of TE’s patenting policy, see Israel, Edison, 316–19.

78. New York Morning Journal, 26 July 1891.

79. Ibid.

80. Ibid. Poe’s protagonist is named “Ellison.”

81. Tate to Lathrop, 27 Aug. 1891, and Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1891, PTAE.

82. Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1891, PTAE.

83. Lathrop to Tate, 29 Aug. 1891, PTAE; Galveston Daily News, 13 Dec. 1896; Greg Daugherty, “Thomas Edison’s Forgotten Science Fiction Novel,” Smithsonian, 3 Jan. 2018. For an extensive discussion of TE’s relationships with science fiction writers, see Israel, Edison, 363–69.

84. TE to Edward Marshall, Seattle Times, 25 Jan. 1920.

85. TE quoted in New York Sun, 28 May 1891. TE later proposed that a “scientifically-kept watch for interstellar signaling should be established in Michigan, where enormous masses of ore might be expected particularly to attract magnetic signals from space if any should be sent.” TE to Marshall, Seattle Times, 25 Jan. 1920.

86. Carlson, “Edison in the Mountains,” 50; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 23, 145; Israel, Edison, 350.

87. Engineering and Mining Journal, 10 Oct. 1891.

88. Thomas Robins, “Friends in a Lifetime,” ts. memoir, 1944, 3–4, Biographical Collection, TENHP.

89. Ibid., 4; Thomas Robins, “Notes on Conveyor Belts and Their Use,” Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers 26 (Apr. 1896).

90. Robins, “Friends In a Lifetime,” 5; Frederic V. Hetzel, Belt Conveyors and Belt Elevators (New York, 1922), 10–11.

91. Minutes, Board Meetings of the NJ&PCW, 31 Aug. 1891, 20 Feb. 1892, PTAE.

92. TE in New York Sun, 21 Feb. 1892; McDonald, Insull, 45–50; Hammond, Men and Volts, 173, 194; Josephson, Edison, 363–64; Jean Strouse, Morgan: American Financier (New York, 1999), 313.

93. Charles Batchelor Diary, entry for 6 Feb. 1892, PTAE; Josephson, Edison, 364; New York Times, 6 Feb. 1892.

94. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 52, no. 5 (11 Mar. 1892); Annie S. Maunder and E. Walter Maunder, The Heavens and Their Story (Boston, 1908), 182; New York Evening World, 8 Feb. 1892; New York Times, 9 Feb. 1892.

95. Sherburne B. Eaton to TE, 8 Feb. 1892, PTAE (“I suppose Insull will be back in the morning with some interesting news from Boston”); New York Sun, 15 Feb. 1892. For TE’s ongoing electromagnetic research at this time, see Israel, Edison, 306-11.

96. New York Evening World, 8 Feb. 1892; New York Times, 9 Feb. 1892.

97. New York Sun, 15 Feb. 1892. See the “photographic registers” of the solar storm at its peak on 13 Feb. 1892 in Maunder and Maunder, Heavens and Their Story, 182.

98. New York Sun, 15 Feb. 1892.

99. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 261; “Conference re Edison Museum,” ts., 20 Aug. 1928, TENHP.

100. New York Tribune, 20 Feb. 1892. Some newspapers reported that Edison had attended a pre-merger conference with Villard and Insull. When the latter complained about Coffin’s coup in reversing what had been planned as an Edison General Electric acquisition, Villard allegedly snapped, “It never would have happened except for your mismanagement.” New York Tribune, New York World, and Middletown (NY) Times-Press, 20 Feb. 1892.

101. New York Times, 21 Feb. 1892. See also McDonald, Insull, 51. Insull, in his unpublished memoirs, confirmed that he and Edison resumed friendly relations, but the “spell had been broken” between them and was never restored. Israel, Edison, 336–37.

102. McDonald, Insull, 51. See, e.g., Hammer Reminiscences, Biographical Collection, TENHP. “What he did to Edison and his interests…would fill a book….Considerable of it was crooked.” For a more charitable view of Insull in 1892, see Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 265.

103. McDonald, Insull, 52, 339 and passim; Sterling (IL) Daily Gazette, 25 June 1892; Charles Batchelor Diary, entries for 29 and 24 June 1892, PTAE.

104. Israel, Edison, 336; Strouse, Morgan, 314.

105. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 278. Kennelly later became a professor of electrical engineering at Harvard.

106. Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 146–47, 41–42; DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 152, 156; Israel, Edison, 352.

107. Clipping quoted in Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 320; Israel, Edison, 352.

108. Dan Jones interview, Nov. 1928, Mary C. Nerney Notebook, TENHP.

109. Ibid.; TE to MME, n.d. “Thursday,” PTAE. TE’s letters to his wife during the 1890s often bear no date other than an occasional named weekday. The author’s speculative dating of some of these letters sometimes differs from that of the editors of PTAE (bracketed below).

110. TE to MME, n.d. “Tuesday,” ca. 1894 [1890s]; n.d. [1895]; 9 and 12 Aug. 1895; n.d. [1896]; all PTAE.

111. TE to MME, two letters [1896], PTAE.

112. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 268; Phonogram 2, no. 10 (Oct. 1892); Dickson, “Brief History”; Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 1.140–42; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 388.

113. Dickson and Dickson, History of Kinetograph, 19; Indianapolis News, 15 Mar. 1894; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 214, 265–67; Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 2.26; Dickson, “Brief History.” Dickson’s explanatory sketch of the Black Maria is reproduced in Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 266.

114. Israel, Edison, 384–85. Carlos Levison’s courtship of Marion Edison is a frequent subject of discussion in her correspondence in PTAE.

115. Town Topics clip, ca. Jan. 1893, preserved by Madeleine Edison, DSP. (“I have an idea that a disgruntled companion or chaperone for Marion was responsible for this.”)

116. Jana F. Brown, “Sons of the Phonograph,” Horae Scholasticae, Winter 2009; Israel, Edison, 385; Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 266; Marion Edison to John Randolph, 18 Jan. 1893, and Randolph to Marion Edison, 31 Jan. 1893, PTAE; TE to MME, “Thursday,” ca. Mar. 1893 [1895], PTAE.

117. TE to MME, “Thursday,” ca. Mar. 1893 [1895], PTAE.

118. “Mr. Dickson is seriously ill.” Theodore Lehmann to Alexander Elliott, Jr., 3 Feb. 1893, PTAE.

119. J. V. Miller to Elliott Joslin, 3 Aug. 1931, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 461; loan certificates in H. F. Miller Legal File, 12 and 19 June 1893, PTAE; TE to Charles Kintner, 20 June 1893, quoted in Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 1.97; TE Patents 513,097, 567,187, 602,064, 605,475, and 607,588.

120. Allerhand, Illustrated History, 297–98. Although TE remained on the board of GE for a few years, he took no part in the affairs of the company.

121. John Randolph to Marion Edison Öser, 19 Nov. 1894, PTAE. The reconstruction of Ogden required another capitalization increase to $1.5 million, almost half of which came out of TE’s own pocket. Israel, Edison, 352, 354.

122. TE to Tate, 19 Apr. 1893, quoted in Josephson, Edison, 374.

123. J. V. Miller to Elliott Joslin, 3 Aug. 1931, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 461; loan certificates in H. F. Miller Legal File, 12 and 19 June 1893, PTAE; Review of Reviews, July 1893; TE to Charles Kintner, 20 June 1893, quoted in Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 1.97. In mid-1893 Bradstreet gave TE an astonishing credit rating of $3 million. He ascribed it to property. “It did not come from my inventions.” TE in Review of Reviews, July 1893. The modern equivalent would be $86.4 million.

124. TE Patents 513,097, 567,187, 602,064, 605,475, and 607,588.

125. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 296; Scientific American, 20 May 1893; TE inscription in a copy of Muybridge’s Descriptive Zoopraxigraphy (1893), quoted by Josephson, Edison, 392. When Dr. Hopkins asked if the Kinetograph was going to be exhibited at the world’s fair in its full with-sound form, TE replied, “No, didn’t have time to perfect.” Superscript on George Hopkins to TE, 25 Apr. 1893, PTAE. For an account of this public relations disaster, see Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 297–99.

126. Scientific American, 20 May 1893.

127. Ibid. See also Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 34–36 and Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 296–97.

128. TE Rationale, 16–16A; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 107; Mallory deposition, 645; Waters, “Edison’s Revolution”; Emil Herter deposition in Edison v. Allis Chalmers, 546.

129. Herter deposition, 129, 575, 554; TE Rationale, 16B; but see “Edison’s Revolution in Iron Mining,” McClure’s Magazine, Nov. 1897.

130. Mallory deposition, 642–43, 646; Herter deposition, 555, 567, 548–49; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 108–10.

131. Herter deposition, 546; Mallory deposition, 655.

132. See Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 254–57, for the development of the peephole player.

133. See http://www.ifbbpro.com/​news/​the-first-bodybuilding-movies; Atlanta Constitution, 9 Mar. 1894. See also Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 39–40.

134. https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=HWM2ixqua3Y.

135. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 286–87; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 307; Millard, Edison and Business, 54; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 44.

136. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 286–87.

137. Ibid., 286.

138. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 40–44; Poughkeepsie Eagle-News, 11 Aug. 1884; “Annabelle,” Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema, http://www.victorian-cinema.net/​annabelle; Joshua Yumibe, Moving Color: Early Film, Mass Culture, Modernism (New Brunswick, NJ, 2012), loc. 713ff.; http://earlysilentfilm.blogspot.co.uk/​2013/​08/​peerless-annabelle-symphony-in-yellow.html, which contains the best biographical details.

139. Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 2.60ff.; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 45. See W. K. L Dickson, “Edison’s Invention of the Kineto-Phonograph,” Century Magazine, June 1884.

140. The fact that Edison’s statement was published in Century Magazine as an introduction to an article about the Kinetoscope by W. L. K. and Antonia Dickson, as well as their identical use of it later in The Life and Inventions of Thomas Alva Edison (1894) and History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, and Kineto-Phonograph (1895), suggests that he may have simply copied out a promotional text that they drafted for him. See Part Five and Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 250 and passim, for further discussions of Dickson’s compulsive revisionism.

141. Millard, America on Record, 42–44; Israel, Edison, 297; Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 35.

142. Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 26, 35; New York Times, 10 May 1894.

143. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 293.

144. Ibid., 294.

145. New York World, 1 Apr. 1895; Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 39; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 310.

146. Israel, Edison, 355; Charles Batchelor Diary, entries for 15 Apr. 1892 et seq., PTAE; Waters, “Edison’s Revolution”; Iron Age, 28 Oct. 1897.

147. Mallory deposition in Edison v. Allis Chalmers, 677.

148. Josephson, Edison, 374.

149. Madeleine Edison Oral History, TENHP. “Thomas is back again and it is good to have him near me.” MME to Lewis and Mary Miller, 8 July 1894, EFW.

150. Marion Edison to TE, 24 July 1894.

151. Lewis Miller to Mary V. Miller from Glenmont, ca. mid-Mar. 1894. See also Theodore Miller to Mary V. Miller, 18 Mar. 1894: “Isn’t it funny about Marion going to Europe [so suddenly]. It is probably just as well…she seems to treat Mina very shabbily.” EFW.

152. Oscar Öser to TE, 23 July 1894, PTAE; Louise Juechzer to TE, 23 July 1894, PTAE; Marion Edison Öser to TE, 10 Apr. 1896, PTAE.

153. TE to Editor, Cassier’s Magazine, 14 Nov. 1894, PTAE.

154. Dickson and Dickson, Life and Inventions, 362; “An Authentic Life of Edison,” New York Times, 11 Nov. 1894. See also Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 395–96.

155. Frank Dyer to Francise Kehl, 29 Aug. 1936, TENHP.

156. TE to William Pilling, 12 Oct. 1894, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 355, 352; TE Patents 465,251 and 485,840 (“Method of Bricking Fine Iron Ores”); Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 120; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 159; Iron Age, 28 Oct. 1897.

157. NJ&P Concentrating Works Letterbook, 21 Feb. and 20 Mar. 1895, PTAE; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 149; “Nobody had any hopes at all that they would ever be perfected.” Herter deposition in Edison v. Allis Chalmers, 558.

158. Century Magazine, June 1884; TE to Norman C. Raff, 5 February 1895, PTAE.

159. Dickson and Dickson, History of Kinetograph, 19–20, 54, 14.

160. TE to Norman C. Raff., 5 Feb. 1895, PTAE.

161. New York Times and Rochester (NY) Democrat Chronicle, 14 Mar. 1895; New York Press, 14 Mar. 1895.

162. New York Times, 14 Mar. 1895.

163. New York Evening Sun, 15 Mar. 1895.

164. See, e.g., Buffalo Evening News, 14 Mar. 1895; Papers, 6.821.

165. See, e.g., New York Journal, 22 May 1896.

166. Carlson, Tesla, 239–41; TE quoted in Philadelphia Press, 24 July 1896 (“To my mind it solves one of the most important questions associated with electrical development”); Baltimore Herald, 27 May 1896.

167. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 46, and Emergence of Cinema, 84–86; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 358. For a detailed account of the films made in the Black Maria in 1894, see Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 47–51 and Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, chap. 22.

168. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 105; Dickson and Dickson, Life and Inventions, 311.

169. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 91, 94; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 356–58, 360–64.

170. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 366, 311–12, 283–85, 304; Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 92–93, 47.

171. The author is grateful to Paul Spehr for this perception. Man Who Made Movies, 366.

172. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 371–72.

173. Ibid., 352–56; TE to Frederick P. Fish, 1 Nov. 1895, PTAE; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 282–85; Dickson, “Brief History.” “It’s too depressing, heartbreaking to go unrecognized in the art, yet it was my work which was as commercialized by me, adopted in every detail by the whole million making world—ah me.” Dickson in 1932, quoted in Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 282–83.

174. See Le Prince’s Roundhay Garden Scene, at https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=nR2r__ZgO5g. There is a detailed account of his disparation in Jean-Jacques Aulas and Jacques Pfend, “Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, inventeur at artiste, précurseur du cinéma,” Journals.openedition.com (2000). See also Richard Howells, “Louis Le Prince: The Body of Evidence,” Screen 47, no. 2 (July 2006), and The First Film, a 2013 documentary by David Nicholas Wilkinson, at https://vimeo.com/​ondemand/​thefirstfilm/​181293064.

175. Dickson and Dickson, Life and Inventions, 309; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 55–56; De Graaf, Edison and Innovation, 133ff.

176. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 91.

177. TE Rationale, 23A, 27A, 30A, 23A–24A, PTAE.

178. TE quoted in Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 120; Waters, “Edison’s Revolution.” See, e.g., illustration in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Jan. 1894, 409.

179. Dan Smith interviewed by Mary Nerney, Nov. 1928, TENHP.

180. TE to MME, 9 Aug. 1895, PTAE.

181. Ibid., 11 and 18 Aug. 1895, PTAE.

182. Ibid., 21 Aug. 1895, PTAE.

183. Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 84. For a table of the various wages and salaries TE paid at Ogden, see 85–91.

184. Walter Mallory to James C. Parrish, 9 Sept. 1895, and TE to MME, 23 Aug. 1895, both PTAE.

185. TE to MME, 23 Aug. 1895, and Mallory to James C. Parrish, 9 Sept. 1895, PTAE.

186. Mallory, “Edison Could Take It,” 3.

187. Mallory deposition, 648; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 501; TE to MME, 18 Aug. 1895, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 337.

188. “Special cable despatch,” 6 Jan. 1896, to New York Sun, 7 Jan. 1896.

189. Andrew Robinson, “Radiation’s Risks and Cures,” The Lancet, 16 Mar. 2016.

190. “Ten hours after [the] cable despatch…I started experimenting.” TE superscript on William Bowen to TE, 7 Apr. 1898, PTAE; TE to Arthur Kennelly, 27 Jan. 1896, quoted in Israel, Edison, 309.

191. James Barry to TE, 4 Feb. 1896, and William Randolph Hearst to TE, 5 Feb. 1896, PTAE; David Shepherd, “Thomas Edison’s Attempts at Radiography of the Brain (1896),” Mayo Institute Proceedings 49 (Jan. 1974); Edward P. Thompson, Roentgen Rays and Phenomena of the Anode and Cathode (New York, 1896), 117; TE quoted in New York Times, 11 Feb. 1896.

192. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 115–66; Israel, Edison, 301–2.

193. Roland Burke Hennessy, “Edison and the Röntgen Light,” Metropolitan Magazine (UK) 3, no. 3 (Mar. 1896).

194. Ibid.

195. Electrical Review, 18 Mar. 1896. TE published another information-sharing article, “Influence of Temperature on X-Ray Effects,” in Electrical Engineer on 22 Apr. 1896. He also contributed to “Photographing the Unseen: A Symposium of the Roentgen Rays,” Century Magazine 52 (May 1896).

196. Electrical Review, 18 Mar. 1896; Carlson, Tesla, 224; TE to Nikola Tesla, 13 Mar. 1896, PTAE. For summaries of the X-ray research respectively accomplished by TE and Tesla in 1896, see Thompson, Roentgen Rays, chaps. 10 and 11.

197. Until at least 1893, Tesla reportedly “had the strongest admiration” for TE. T. Commerford Martin, The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla (1893; New York, 1995), 4; quoted in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 5 Mar. 1896.

198. New York Morning Journal, 22 May 1896; TE quoted in Electrical Review, 2 May 1896; TE Patent 865,367, “Fluorescent Electric Lamp.”

199. TE to Sir John Pender, 13 Mar. 1896, PTAE; TE in New York Herald, 28 Mar. 1896; TE in Electrical Engineer, 1 Apr. 1896; TE to MME [1896], PTAE; Israel, Edison, 310. It would have been risky for Edison to patent the fluoroscope, since three other scientists had developed similar devices earlier in the year. However, as Adam Allerhand notes, “Edison’s [fluoroscope] ultimately prevailed. Edison did the most thorough research, promoted his device, and marketed it.” C. C. Trowbridge, “The Use of the Fluoroscopic Screen in Connection with Röntgen Rays,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 11, no. 3 (30 Mar. 1898); Allerhand, Illustrated History, 462.

200. Michael Pupin to TE, 28 Mar. 1896, PTAE.

201. TE superscript on ibid.

202. New York Tribune and New York Sun, 27 Apr. 1896.

203. TE to Charles W. Price, 29 May 1896, PTAE. Regarding Tesla’s current lamp, TE remarked, “He gets his results from the inductive coil and the Geissler tube. It is of a ghastly color. You cannot get a pleasant mellow yellow light without low temperature waves as well as light.” New York Morning Journal, 26 July 1896.

204. “Claims of Moore, Tesla, and Edison,” Western Electrician, 6 June 1896. See, e.g., New York Morning Journal, 22 May 1896; New York Times, 22 Mar. 1896.

205. Israel, Edison, 301–2, 374.

206. Quoted in Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 63, 85, 82. A selection of early Edison movies collected by the Library of Congress can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/​playlist?list=PLD28424FAA9414F49.

207. Blackton took a bow at the end of this ninety-five-second short, and went on to become a major movie producer and the father of film animation.

208. Image THF96100, HFM. TE’s meticulous account of this convention in a letter to Mina (16 Aug. 1896, PTAE) corrects some of the memory slips in Ford’s own several accounts, recorded many years later. While TE does not mention Ford, his letter makes plain that their meeting must have occurred between 11:30 P.M. and 12:30 A.M. that night. See also Western Electrician, 22 Aug. 1896.

209. Henry Ford interview, “When did I first see Mr. Edison?”, 1928, TENHP; Henry Ford, “My Life and Work,” McClure’s Magazine 54 (Oct. 1922).

210. Leigh Dorrington, “The First Automobile Races in America,” Prewar.com.

211. TE to MME, 16 Aug. 1896, PTAE.

212. Ibid.; TE to MME, ca. 1896, “Tuesday” [1890s], PTAE.

213. Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 167; American Iron and Steel Association, Statistics of the American and Foreign Iron Trades for 1896 (Philadelphia, 1897), 32; Harrisburg Daily Independent, 26 Dec. 1896; Wilkes-Barre Times, 6 Jan. 1897.

214. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 42–43; DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 106; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 122–23; Buffalo News, 30 Aug. 1896; Louisville Courier-Journal, 24 Nov. 1896.

215. Louisville Courier-Journal, 24 Nov. 1896; Nikola Tesla folder, Biographical Collection, 1896, TENHP; New York Morning Journal, 22 May 1896; “Tesla on the Roentgen Streams,” Electrical Review, 2 Dec. 1896.

216. Carlson, Tesla, 224; TE in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 6. Oct. 1912. By late November 1896, many other patients and scientists, notably Elihu Thompson, had begun to suffer radiation damage. See New York Morning Journal, 29 Nov. 1986, and New York Press, 30 Nov. 1896.

217. Francis L. Chrisman, notes from an unpublished interview with TE, ca. Nov. 1896, Articles File, PTAE.

218. Ibid. See also Percy Brown, “Clarence Madison Dally (1806–1904),” American Journal of Radiology 165 (Jan. 1995).

219. Leonard Peckitt Reminiscences, Biographical Collection, TENHP.

220. Ibid.

221. Ibid.

222. Ibid.

223. Ibid.

224. Leonard Peckitt to TE, 22 Jan. 1897, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 359.

225. Peckitt to TE, 22 Jan. 1897, PTAE; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 93; Dan Smith interviewed by Mary Nerney, Nov. 1928, TENHP.

226. Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 95–96; Herter deposition, 546–59ff.; Iron Age, 28 Oct. 1897; Harrisburg Daily Independent, 28 Dec. 1896; Waters, “Edison’s Revolution.”

227. Mallory to Stuart Coats, 29 Jan. 1897, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 358.

228. Harrisburg Daily Independent, 28 Dec. 1896. This text of this article was widely syndicated. The price did reach $2.10 in June 1897 and increased by only five cents over the next fiscal year. American Iron and Steel Association, Statistics of the American and Foreign Iron Trades for 1896 (Philadelphia, 1897), 26.

229. Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers 27 (1897), 457–58.

230. Israel, Edison, 356, 360.

231. TE/Thomas Edison, Jr., release memorandum, 23 Feb. 1897, Legal File, TENHP; Thomas Edison, Jr., to TE, 14 Jan. 1897, PTAE.

232. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 4 Jan. and 19 May, 1897, PTAE.

233. Ibid., 6 Aug. 1897, PTAE.

234. TE Patent 675,057; Meadowcroft, Boys’ Life of Edison, 223; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 151–52; TE quoted in Israel, Edison, 360.

235. The following account of the operation of the Ogden plant is based on articles in Iron Age, 28 Oct. 1897; McClure’s Magazine, Nov. 1897; and Scientific American, 22 Jan. 1898.

236. Iron Age, 28 Oct. 1897.

237. McClure’s Magazine, Nov. 1897; Engineering and Mining Journal, 10 Oct. 1891; Israel, Edison, 403.

238. Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 110; TE to E. Hubbell Hotchkiss, 25 Jan. 1899, TENHP. TE had also borrowed $9,000 from Tom’s estate on 18 Jan. 1897, when he was still his son’s guardian. A month later, on 23 Feb., he released the estate to Tom, at which time it was worth $17,309.91 ($533,145 in modern money). It is not clear from surviving documents whether the 30 Sept. 1987 loan was a reworking of the earlier debt, which was not paid off until Apr. 1905. TE/Thomas Edison, Jr., bond, 25 Apr. 1898, Legal File, TENHP.

239. Thomas Edison, Jr., to William Edison, 16 Dec. 1898, PTAE; Bond and mortgage memorandum, 18 Jan. 1897, Legal File, TENHP.

240. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 27 Nov. 1897, PTAE.

241. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 4 Nov. 1897, PTAE.

242. On 1 Oct. 1897 Tom ordered 200,000 bulbs of the type “now known as X-Ray lamps” from the Shelby Electric Company of Ohio. Memorandum in PTAE. In New York Sunday Herald, 5 Dec. 1897, Tom mentions showing a sample bulb to TE, who declined to comment on it.

243. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 4 Nov. 1897, PTAE; U.S. Trademark 34,806 (15 Dec. 1897); Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, 161; New York Sunday World, 5 Dec. 1897. The New York Sunday Herald simultaneously published a similar story under the headline “EDISON JR., WIZARD.”

244. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 12 Nov. 1897, PTAE.

245. NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 12 Jan. 1898, PTAE; TE to MME, 9 Feb. 1898, PTAE.

246. NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 12 Jan. 1898, PTAE. Walter Cutting had succeeded his brother Robert L. Cutting, Jr., as a more cautious backer of the NJ&PCW.

247. Mallory in NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 12 Jan. 1898, PTAE. Later in the meeting, Mallory confirmed that Edison would lend the NJ&PCW $51,500 ($1.6 million in 2018 dollars) over the next six months. Walter Mallory in NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 12 January, 1898, PTAE.

248. Mallory to Ira Miller, 29 Jan. 1898; New York World, 2 Jan. 1898; Omaha Bee, 22 Jan. 1898; Trenton Evening Times, 5 Feb. 1898; New Mexico Mining and Minerals Division, “Real de Dolores Mine Safeguard Project,” Emnrd.state.nm.us; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 583–84. The records of the Dolores mine are in the Document File Series—Mining (1899–1901), TENHP. See also Ralph E. Pray, “Edison’s Folly,” http://www.mine-engineer.com/​mining/​edison.htm.

249. NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 12 Jan. 1898, PTAE; Mallory in NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 12 Jan. 1898, PTAE; Mallory quoted in “Edison’s Revolution in Iron Mining,” McClure’s Magazine, Nov. 1897.

250. TE to MME, 9 Feb. 1898, PTAE.

251. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 3 Feb. 1898, DSP (“I may never come back to you all alive—but you have not lost much—for I know I have not been the son to you as I should have.”); TE to MME, 9 Feb. 1898, PTAE.

252. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 19 Aug. 1898, DSP; Mary V. Miller to TE and MME, 23 Jan. 1898, DSP.

253. Theodore Miller to Lewis Miller, 15 April 1898, EFW; George E. Vincent, ed., Theodore W. Miller, Rough Rider (Akron, OH, 1899), 64; William Edison to MME, ca. 12 Mar. 1898, DSP; Thomas Edison, Jr., to John Randolph, 19 Apr. 1898, PTAE; agreement between Thomas Edison, Jr., and Charles F. Stilwell, 19 Mar. 1898, PTAE.

254. Vincent, Theodore Miller, 74; William Edison to MME, ca. early June 1898, DSP.

255. “It was only as one might stand in their [giant rolls] vicinity and hear the thunderous roar accompanying the smashing and rending of the massive rocks as they disappeared from view that the mind was overwhelmed with a sense of the magnificent proportions of this operation.” Dyer and Martin, Edison, 484.

256. Ibid., 587–88.

257. Israel, Edison, 360; Iron Trade Review, 62.1142; Carlson, “Edison in the Mountains,” 42.

258. Michael Peterson, “Thomas Edison, Failure,” Invention and Technology 6, no. 3 (Winter 1991); Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 149; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 76; Wayne T. McCabe, Sussex County (Charleston, SC, 2003), 44.

259. TE quoted in William A. Simonds, Edison: His Life, His Work, His Genius (London, 1935), 270; Dan Smith interviewed by Mary Nerney, Nov. 1928, TENHP, 8.

260. Vincent, Theodore Miller, 135–42; Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders (1899; New York 2003).

261. William Edison to TE, ca. late Sept. 1898, DSP; Thomas Edison, Jr., to Edward Redington, 27 Aug. 1898, PTAE, and to MME, 10 and 19 Oct. 1898, DSP. William remained in the army through 25 Jan. 1899.

262. Mallory to Pilling and Crane, 7 Dec. 1898, PTAE; Iron Age, 5 Jan. 1899; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 72, 154.

263. TE to MME, 2, 5 and n.d. Dec. 1898, PTAE.

264. Mallory to Pilling and Crane, 7 Dec. 1898, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 361.

265. William Edison to Thomas Edison, Jr., ca. 15 Dec. 1898, PTAE.

266. Thomas Edison, Jr., to TE, 17 Dec. 1898, PTAE.

267. Thomas Edison, Jr., to William Edison, 16 Dec. 1898, PTAE.

268. Mallory deposition in Edison v. Allis Chalmers, 648; Josephson, Edison, 377; DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 164–65.

269. Israel, Edison, 403–4.

270. Cleveland Press, 21 Feb. 1898; Boston Post, 18 Feb. 1898; Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle, 18 Feb. 1898.

271. William S. Bayley, Iron Mines and Mining in New Jersey (Trenton, NJ, 1910), 15.

272. Mallory to Josiah Reiff, 10 Apr. 1899, and to Stuart Coats, 11 May 1899, TENHP.

273. Israel, Edison, 399; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 508ff.

274. Israel, Edison, 404; Iron Age, 15 June 1899; Israel, Edison, 410–11; Mallory interview, 1908, William Meadowcroft Collection, TENHP; Desmond, Innovators, loc. 1410; Israel, Edison, 400.

275. Boston Globe, 3 July 1899; William Edison to TE, nd, ca. Oct. 1899, PTAE.

276. Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 154, 291ff.; Dan Smith interviewed by Mary Nerney, Nov. 1928, TENHP; NJ&PCW Board Meeting Minutes, 10 Jan. 1900, TENHP; Mallory to Pilling & Crane, 18 Sept. 1897, PTAE.

277. Josephson, Edison, 377–78.

278. Robins, “Friends in a Lifetime,” 6–7.

279. Mallory, “Edison Could Take It,” 2. This conversation may have occurred a year earlier, but the weight of evidence indicates December 1899. See Dyer and Martin, Edison, 502–3, for a similar council of war leading to the organization of the Edison Portland Cement Company in June 1899.

280. Mallory, “Edison Could Take It,” 1.

281. The plant did reopen for a few months in 1900, but failed to satisfy Bethlehem Iron’s low-phosphorus requirement and was forced to dispose of its remaining briquettes below cost. It closed finally for dismantlement on 10 December. Carlson, “Edison in the Mountains”; Mallory to H. S. Gay, 27 Sept. 1900; Mallory to Pilling and Crane, 8, 12, 15, 22 Oct. 1900, PTAE; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 154–55.

282. TE quoted in John Coakley Oral History, TENHP, 14. Edison may have exaggerated his estimated $3 million loss, although Bernard Carlson endorses it. An authoritative contemporary statement of what the Ogden project cost was made by Walter Mallory in 1910. He said that up till 10 December 1900, his boss contributed, in cash, $2,174,000 “out of a total expenditure of about two and a half million dollars.” The modern equivalent of what Edison lost would be $66.9 million. Carlson, “Edison in the Mountains”; Walter Mallory testimony in Edison V. Allis Chalmers, 648.

PART FIVE · LIGHT (1880–1889)

1. TE quoted in Engineering World, Nov. 1922.

2. Walter P. Phillips, Sketches Old and New (Boston, 1897), 189. Phillips misremembers this conversation as occurring in 1876, but his context makes clear it took place four years later.

3. “Menlo Park Lighted,” Philadelphia Public Ledger, 27 Dec. 1879; New York Herald, 1 Jan. 1880.

4. George W. Soren to Francis Upton, 29 Dec. 1879, PTAE; McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 190; Papers, 5.644. See also Gall, “Edison: Managing Menlo Park,” for a discussion of TE’s problem of reconciling his open laboratory policy with intellectual property theft.

5. Harper’s Weekly, 3 Feb. 1880. Thornall Avenue was the old post road to Philadelphia, later the Lincoln Highway.

6. Except where otherwise indicated, documentary details in the following account of TE’s “open house” at Menlo Park in the early days of 1880 come from newspaper clippings in the Charles Batchelor Scrapbooks, PTAE, and others quoted in Papers, 5.539–42.

7. New York Sun and Philadelphia Times, 27 Dec. 1879; Times (London), 29 Dec. 1879.

8. New York Herald, 30 Dec. 1879 and 1 Jan. 1880; Times, 29 Dec. 1879; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 362; Strouse, Morgan, 181; Philadelphia Ledger, 28 Dec. 1879.

9. TE first used the word filament, hitherto applied to thread, to describe his incandescent lamp element in a draft lighting caveat, ca. 25 Feb. 1880, in Papers, 5.652. He made it public when executing his Patent 525,888 on 10 Mar. 1880 (“the filament of my electric lamp”). It appeared even earlier, when the Philadelphia Ledger, in an article about TE at Menlo Park datelined 27 Dec. 1879, referred to the “carbon filament” of his successful lightbulb. The Oxford English Dictionary and the Online Etymological Dictionary still cite 1881 as the year of first such usage, by the British physicist Sylvanus P. Thompson.

10. Hammer, “Edison and His Inventions,” v; Martin, Forty Years of Edison Service, 21–22; Papers, 5.1025–26.

11. New York Sun, 12 Feb. 1880.

12. “Edison’s Light,” New York Herald, 28 Dec. 1879; New York Herald, 1 Jan. 1880; Chicago Tribune, 4 Jan. 1880. See also Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, passim. Friedel observes that the crowds attaching themselves to Edison at this time represented “a new relationship between advanced technology and the common man. Edison’s electric light was as mystifying and awe-inspiring as any invention of the age….The wizardry of scientific technology was now a source, not of distrust, but rather, of hope. This attitude toward the powers of science and technology was one of the nineteenth century’s most important legacies, and no single instance exemplifies it better than the enthusiasm with which the crowds ushered in the new decade at Menlo Park” (89–90).

13. Quoted in Bristol Mercury, 15 Jan. 1880 [original dateline Philadelphia, 30 Dec. 1879].

14. Menlo Park farmer, quoted in Philadelphia Times, 2 Jan. 1880; New York Herald, 1 Jan. 1880; Hammer Reminscences, TENHP; Philadelphia Public Ledger, 7 Jan. 1880. See the photograph in Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 670.

15. New York Herald, 2 Jan. 1880; Taylor, Mr. Edison’s Lawyer, 46.

16. Times, 30 December 1879.

17. Nature, 1 Jan. 1880. See also Joseph Swan, “The Sub-Division of the Electric Light,” Journal of the Society of Telegraphic Engineering 9 (1880) and Allerhand, Illustrated History, 128–32.

18. Quoted in ibid., 131.

19. Bowers, Lengthening the Day, 84; Scientific American, 27 Nov. 1880; quoted in Allerhand, Illustrated History, 131; Journal of Gas Lighting, 20 Jan. 1880.

20. Bowers, Lengthening the Day, 70.

21. Reports of Patents, Design, and Trademark Cases Decided by Courts of Law in the United Kingdom (London, Apr. 1887), IV.4, 83.

22. Saturday Review, 10 Jan. 1880; Nature, 12 Feb. 1880.

23. Papers, 5.727.

24. Le Temps, 8 Jan. 1880 (author’s translation).

25. Henry Morton letter in Sanitary Engineer, 1 Jan. 1880; Morton interviewed in New York Times, 28 Dec. 1879. See also, e.g., the criticism of “a well-known electrician” of Cleveland, Ohio (probably Charles F. Brush), in “Lighting a Great City,” New York Times, 7 Feb. 1880.

26. New York Times, 28 Dec. 1879; New York Sun, 27 Dec. 1879.

27. See Ron D. Katznelson and John Howells, “Inventing Around Edison’s Lamp Patent: The Role of Patents in Stimulating Downstream Development and Competition,” www.law.northwestern.edu.

28. TE Patent 369,280.

29. Ibid., figs. 3 and 4.

30. Ibid.

31. Francis R. Upton, “Edison’s Electric Light,” Scribner’s Monthly, Feb. 1880.

32. TE Patent 369,280.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid.; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 389; McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 206ff.

35. TE Patent 369,280.

36. TE Patents 227,226 and 369,280.

37. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 94. See Papers, 5.692, for the “fundamental change” in Menlo Park operations from research to manufacturing during the course of 1880.

38. Papers, 5.542; New York Sun, 12 Jan. 1880. For an eloquent description of Menlo Park at night in the summer of 1882, see York (PA) Daily, 15 July 1882.

39. The best guide to TE’s inventive progress is the list of his patents by execution date compiled by the Edison Papers project. It is available online at http://edison.rutgers.edu/​patente1.htm et seq.

40. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 118. “There is no record of such a large corps of trained men and so complete an establishment devoted to scientific research. Menlo Park is one of the wonders of this wonderful age.” Boston Globe, 2 May 1880.

41. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 359, 262–63, 858–59, 866; Hammer Reminiscences, TENHP; Marshall, Recollections of Edison, 31–32. See also Bernard S. Finn, “Working at Menlo Park,” in Pretzer, Working at Inventing, 32–47.

42. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 637; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 693, 241.

43. Papers, 5.545; Charles T. Hughes reminiscence, 19 June 1907, TENHP. See also “The Menlo Park Mystique” in Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 118–20. On 2 May 1880 the Boston Globe commented, “There is no record of such a large corps of trained men and so complete an establishment devoted to scientific research.”

44. See Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 131–34, on this “most critical lamp production problem.”

45. Papers, 5.624–26, 752, 636; TE Patent 248,418.

46. W. C. White, “Electrons and the Edison Effect,” General Electric Review, Oct. 1943. Edison used the phrase “molecular bombardment.” Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 618.

47. Papers, 5.753, 627–30; TE Patent 307,031; William H. Preece, “On a Peculiar Behaviour of Glow-Lamps when raised to High Incandescence,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 38 (London, 1885); Harold G. Bowen, The Edison Effect (West Orange, NJ, 1951); Sungook Hong, Wireless: From Marconi’s Black Box to the Audion (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 121–22.

48. Papers, 5.546, 677; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 111–20; McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 201–2.

49. Papers, 5.671–73 and 713–14; “On the Efficiency of Edison’s Light,” American Journal of Science, Apr. 1880; McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 203.

50. Grosvenor Lowrey to Kate Armor, 20 Feb. 1880, quoted in Taylor, Mr. Edison’s Lawyer, 50.

51. Scientific American, 22 May 1880; Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 133. See also Allerhand, Illustrated History, 177–81. TE was not required to provide lights for navigation, that function being performed by the much more powerful arc lamps of Hiram Maxim.

52. A fourth dynamo excited the functional three. Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 129, 131; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 116–17; TE Patent 227,226; Papers, 5.598–99.

53. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 372.

54. Papers, 5.600, 694; New York Herald clipping, “April 29, 1880,” Charles Batchelor Scrapbook 1878–1881, PTAE; Ray E. Kidd, “Lighting the Steamship Columbia with Edison’s First Commercial Light Plant,” General Electric release, June 1936; De Borchgrave and Cullen, Villard, 310.

55. Marshall, Recollections of Edison, 17; Israel, Edison, 198.

56. Marshall, Recollections of Edison, 18; Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 124.

57. New York Times, 9 Aug. 1880; Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 121–22; drawings in TE Patent 475,591. For an extended discussion of TE’s 1880 electric railway, see Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 576–86; Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 122; Scientific American, 5 June 1880; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 452; Papers, 5.231–34, 1020–21. Edison’s application for a U.S. patent for his electric railway was found to be in interference with that of Werner von Siemens, and disallowed. He wrote a detailed description of the system when applying successfully for a British patent in September 1880. See Papers, 5.846–53.

58. Papers, 5.739. The phrase odor of armature was used by T. Commerford Martin in “Edison’s Pioneer Electric Railway Work,” Scientific American, 18 Nov. 1911.

59. Lowrey to Kate Armour, 5 June 1880, quoted in Taylor, Mr. Edison’s Lawyer, 53. See also Dyer and Martin, Edison, 463.

60. Papers, 5.738, 735; New York Herald, 10 Aug. 1880. For an extended account of TE’s railway work in the 1880s, see Dyer and Martin, Edison, 454–72.

61. Papers, 5.738; Taylor, Mr. Edison’s Lawyer, 27 and passim.

62. Jocelyn P. Kennedy and Robert C. Koolikian, “Grosvenor Porter Lowrey,” ts., Biographical Collection, TENHP.

63. Boston Globe, 2 May 1880.

64. Boston Globe, 2 May 1880. William S. Pretzer remarks on the “mystical” quasi-religious nature of the Menlo Park fraternity in Pretzer, Working at Inventing, 18.

65. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 95–97; Papers, 5.790, 764; New York Herald, 10 Aug. 1880; McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 204; Allerhand, Illustrated History, 136, 135; Israel, Edison, 196.

66. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 107–8; Papers, 5.563; Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 97; Israel, Edison, 196.

67. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 128–30; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 620; Papers, 5.1050; Hammer Reminiscences, TENHP; Hammer, “Edison and His Inventions,” vi. In Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” there is a photograph of this historic bulb, which TE gave to Hammer as a souvenir (106).

68. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 674; Papers, 7.725.

69. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 164–65; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 348–49 McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 218. Upton went so far as to deduce a general law of distribution: “The cost [of conductors] increases as the square of the distance from the central station.” Papers, 5.573.

70. TE Patent 264,642; Hughes, Networks of Power, 21; TE Patent 239,147; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 386.

71. Josephson, Edison, 23.

72. TE Patent 264,642; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 343; Manchester Guardian, 6 Sept. 1882.

73. Papers, 5.764, 783–84, 840–41, 843; Charles L. Clarke, “Menlo Park in 1880,” TENHP; Marshall, Recollections of Edison, 30; W. S. Andrews, “A Short History of the First Underground System Used for Edison Lamps,” ts., 1907, 1–3, TENHP; Papers, 5.764; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 723ff.

74. Andrews, “Short History,” 3.

75. Charles Mott laboratory diary, entry for 3 Nov. 1880, PTAE; Andrews, “Short History,” 3. TE’s grand gesture nearly became an embarrassment. There was a surge back to the Democracy after midnight, and Garfield won by only 1,898 votes.

76. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 151; Papers, 5.908–9, 898–90. For a detailed account of lamp production in this period, see Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 786–816.

77. Papers, 5.889–90.

78. Papers, 5.739; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 134–46. William Hammer notes that power was delivered to the factory via a three-quarter-mile overhead cable, “[giving] to the world the first demonstration of how current could be distributed successfully.” Hammer, “Edison and His Inventions,” vi.

79. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 134; Pretzer, Working at Inventing, 44; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 406–7.

80. Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 149; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 805. The last eight words of this sentence are taken from Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 134.

81. Papers, 5.882, 825–26; Charles Mott laboratory diary, 4 and 6 Aug. 1880, PTAE.

82. See Dyer and Martin, Edison, chap. 13, “A World-hunt for Filament Material.”

83. Papers, 5.891.

84. Allerhand, Illustrated History, 226; Cincinnati Enquirer, 13 Nov. 1880; Papers, 5.922. According to Francis Jehl, Maxim’s visit took place a few weeks before Ludwig Boehm left Menlo Park to work for him. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 612.

85. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 707; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 160; “Has Edison Been Outdone?” New York Sun, 17 Nov. 1880.

86. Papers, 5.915, 923; New York Evening Post, 22 Nov. 1880.

87. Allerhand, Illustrated History, 172. But see TE to Morton in Papers, 5.906: “I certainly have believed that you have not treated me exactly right for reasons which I cannot fathom.”

88. Pretzer, Working at Inventing, 119. For the early relations of TE and Barker, see Hounshell, “Edison and the Pure Science Ideal.”

89. Papers, 5.922.

90. Stathis Arapostathis and Graeme Gooday, Patently Contestable: Electrical Technologies and Inventor Identities on Trial in Britain (Cambridge, MA, 2013, 182; Joseph Swan, “The Sub-Division of the Electric Light,” Journal of the Society of Telegraphic Engineers 9 (1880), 346, 342, 362.

91. Alexander Muirhead to TE, 13 Jan. 1881, PTAE.

92. Papers, 5.920–21.

93. Papers, 5.941, 921.

94. Papers, 5.943–44; Hounshell, “Edison and the Pure Science Ideal.”

95. Papers, 5.761–62, 778; Hounshell, “Edison and the Pure Science Ideal”; Israel, Edison, 464.

96. Papers, 5.944.

97. Papers, 5.889–91; Edison Electric Light Company vs. United States Electric Lighting Company—On Letters Patent 223,898 (1890). See Allerhand, Illustrated History, 225–27 and 125–28.

98. Papers, 5.894; “Thomas Edison in Kansai,” Kansai Culture (Japan), 10 Apr. 2018; Hammer, “Edison and His Inventions,” vi; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 376.

99. Papers, 5.903–44.

100. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 157.

101. Papers, 5.959; Strouse, Morgan, 232. Except where otherwise indicated, the following account is based on Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 154; Francis Jehl, “Thomas A. Edison – Menlo Park,” ts. memoir, June 1908, TENHP; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 779–84; New York Times, 21 Dec. 1880, a detailed report from which the quotations are taken. Additional material from New York World, 21 Dec. 1880, and Chicago Tribune, 24 Dec. 1880.

102. New York Times, 21 Dec. 1880; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 172; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 385.

103. New York Times, 21 Dec. 1880; Charles Mott laboratory diary, 20 Dec. 1880; Jehl, “Thomas A. Edison,” 88. “Here breathed a little community of kindred spirits, all in young manhood, enthusiastic about their work, expectant of great results; moreover, often loudly explosive in word, emphatic in joke and vigorous in action.” Charles Clarke quoted in Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 858.

104. Chicago Tribune, 1 Jan. 1881. The eclipse, “two new moons” in December, and TE’s “melancholy,” were all noted by Charles Mott in his laboratory diary, 31 Dec. 1880, PTAE.

105. Chicago Tribune, 1 Jan. 1881.

106. Arapostathis and Gooday, Patently Contestable, 177; Mary and Kenneth Swan, Joseph William Swan: Inventor and Scientist (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK, 1929), 58–60.

107. Chicago Tribune, 1 Jan. 1881.

108. Strouse, Morgan, 232; Charles Mott laboratory diary, 6 Jan. 1881; New York Sun, 7 Jan. 1881. Amos J. Cummings of the Sun accompanied the financial party.

109. Hammer Reminiscences, TENHP.

110. Strouse, Morgan, 232.

111. New York Sun quoting an unnamed EELC director, 7 Jan. 1881; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 174–75.

112. Charles L. Clarke, “Economy Test of the Edison Electric Light at Menlo Park, 1881,” in Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 166. TE wanted to publish the results of the test at once, but when Henry Villard reminded him that knowledge was—especially in this case—power, he allowed it to remain secret until 1904.

113. Ibid., 169.

114. Ibid., 173, 177. See also Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 144–45; TE quoted in Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 85.

115. Strouse, Morgan, 230; Papers, 5.973.TE’s temporary fashion consciousness was noted by Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 506.

116. This portrait of Mary Edison at Menlo Park is based on Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park,” and Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 507–14. See also Israel, Edison, 230–31. “She was a very nice woman, bright and vivacious, beautiful in appearance and character…very much devoted to [Edison.]” Statement by Charles T. Hughes, 19 June 1907, Meadowcroft Collection, TENHP.

117. In the 1880s “midtown” Manhattan centered on fashionable Union Square. Papers, 6.2; Israel, Edison, 230–31; TE to Naomi Chipman, 18 June 1881, PTAE.

118. New York Herald clipping, 21 Jan. 1881, in Charles Batchelor Scrapbook (1878–1881), PTAE.

119. Charles Batchelor Scrapbook, 1881, 1573, PTAE; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 328.

120. Papers, 5.968.

121. Clarke in Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 862.

122. Ibid.

123. Papers, 5.969; Suncalc.net.

124. Papers, 5.730ff.; Scientific American, 22 Jan. 1881; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 714.

125. William H. Preece, “Electric Lighting at the Paris Exhibition,” Journal of the Society of Arts, 16 Dec. 1881; Papers, 5.818–19.

126. The following account is taken from the recollections of Charles Clarke in a speech to the New York Illuminating Engineering Society, 14 Nov. 1907, transcript in William Meadowcroft Collection, TENHP; also Clarke in Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 860, and TE quoted in Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 116. Slightly different RPM figures are given by other witnesses in Papers, 5.991.

127. Charles Clarke in Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 860. Wagner applied the term Erdenton to the deep E-flat that resounds at the beginning of his Ring cycle.

128. Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 35; TE quoted in Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 116. This test dynamo was never used, but served as a model for TE’s famous “Jumbo” generator, developed in the summer of 1881.

129. McDonald, Insull, 10, 17–18. Stockton Griffin, TE’s previous secretary, had either resigned or been fired in February. Papers, 5.970.

130. “Mr. Insull’s Notes, Feb. 09,” ts., in Meadowcroft Collection, 5, 3, TENHP; McDonald, Insull, 14–17, 20–21; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 329–30.

131. McDonald, Insull, 21. At the beginning of the year TE’s bank balance had stood at $64,825. TE Private Ledger 1880–81, TENHP; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 331. The modern equivalent would be $1.6 million.

132. McDonald, Insull, 18, 22, 13; Papers, 5.968, 990, 996–97.

133. Charles Clarke to Francis Jehl, 29 Dec. 1932, TENHP.

134. McDonald, Insull, 26; Israel, Edison, 210–11, 324; Eaton portrait in Findagrave.com.

135. “Mr Insull’s Notes,” 20; Papers, 6.659, 5.xxv; Samuel Insull to John Kingsbury, 1 May 1881, PTAE. See also Papers, 6.42–45.

136. Israel, Edison, 212; list in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 355.

137. Quoted in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 719.

138. Papers, 5.996, 988.

139. McDonald, Insull, 22.

140. Papers, 5.993–94; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 162, 174, 172.

141. Papers, 6.31, 1023, 1029; DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 55. At the time, the new location of the Edison Lamp Company was referred to as Harrison, New Jersey. Francis Upton urged transferring lamp production there because the locality offered “plenty of boys and girls at low wages.” Papers, 5.967.

142. Edison Monthly, Aug. 1922; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 394; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 177.

143. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 177; construction drawing, 15 Mar. 1882 in Papers, 6.429; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 402, 400; Samuel Insull in Papers, 6.34.

144. Papers, 6.84.

145. Papers, 6.85, 84.

146. There are six references to Antoine in The Hunchback of Notre Dame; the wharf rats appear in the grotesque procession of the Fool’s Pope. Quasimodo, whom Grolio calls “an unholy demon” at birth and wishes to “send back to Hell,” carries a massive wart on his chest.

147. Papers, 5.103–11, 6.84–85; 7.737–38; Notebook N306103 (Spring 1881), 103–11, TENHP.

148. Papers, 7.632; Chris N. Alam and H. Merskey, “Neuralgia: The History of a Meaning,” Pain Research Management (1996), 1:3.

149. Taylor, Mr. Edison’s Lawyer, 50.

150. TE ms. reproduced in Kate Armour Reed, A Woman’s Touch: Kate Reed and Canada’s Grand Hotels (Canada, 2016), 35; Taylor, Mr. Edison’s Lawyer, 51. See also MME warning her son Theodore not to fall in love and marry too soon: “[Your father] made such a terrible mistake that he is fearful of you.” 26 May 1924, PTAE.

151. Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park.” “Everything Connected with Mrs. Edison Was Ornate in the Extreme.” Marshall, Recollections of Edison, 28.

152. Papers, 6.100.

153. Papers, 6.103.

154. Charles Clarke in Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 37.

155. Ibid.; Papers, 6.100, 103.

156. Papers, 6.100, 105–6, 168, 88, 103, 110; Charles Clarke in “Edisonia,” 37; TE Laboratory Notebook N-81-04-06, 126–49, TENHP.

157. TE notebook entry, 15 July 1881, Papers, 6.104; Charles Clarke in “Edisonia,” 39; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 973. At 350 RPM, the machine produced an electromotive force of 110V, attainable only at 1,000 RPM on traditional Graemme dynamos.

158. Papers, 6.169; Charles Clarke in “Edisonia,” 50.

159. Papers, 6.170–71; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 179; Bowers, Lengthening the Day, 87.

160. Papers, 6.168, 225. Mary, accompanied by her daughter, had been visiting with TE’s brother William Pitt Edison in Port Huron, Michigan. She was described as “very ill” in mid-August and “seriously ill” on 2 September. Port Huron Times Herald, 29 July and 14 Aug. 1881; Minneapolis Star Tribune, 2 Sept. 1881. She was again, or still, ill in early Oct. 1881.

161. TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 326–27, and Papers, 6.813; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 973.

162. Papers, 6.175; TE to Charles Batchelor, 14 Sept. 1881, PTAE; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 180; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 327.

163. Cincinnati Enquirer, 28 Aug. 1881; New York Times, 5 Sept. 1881; Manchester (UK) Courier, 6 Sept. 1881; Menlo Park Scrapbooks, vol. 51A, passim, PTAE; London Standard, 24 Sept. 188; Preece, “Electric Lighting at the Paris Exhibition.” The story that the liner that brought the dynamo to France had just unloaded an elephant destined for Barnum and Bailey’s circus is apocryphal.

164. L’Évènement, 24 Sept. 1881; Bright, Electric Lamp Industry, 55; Le Figaro, 29 Oct. 1881; Journal des Débats, 22 Oct. 1881.

165. Papers, 6.96; Expériences faites á l’Exposition International d’Électricité par Mm. Allard…(Paris, 1883), 108. See also Robert Fox, “Thomas Edison’s Parisian Campaign: Incandescent Lighting and the Face of Technology Transfer,” Annals of Science 53 (1996).

166. Lowrey to TE, 22 Oct. 1881, Letterbook Series, PTAE.

167. Ibid.

168. New York Times, 5 Oct. 1881.

169. Ibid.

170. Papers, 6.90.

171. New York Edison Company, Thirty Years of New York, 151; Atlanta Constitution, 2 Oct. 1881. The arc lamps were hooked up to a small generator in Pearl Street; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 163–64; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 408–9. For a detailed discussion of Kruesi’s insulation techniques, see Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 79–83.

172. New York Edison Company, Thirty Years of New York, 35; TE quoted in Papers, 6.815.

173. Edouard Reményi to TE, 19 Aug. 1881, PTAE. The thirty-document series of letters between these two men tells one of the more moving personal stories in the Edison Papers. It is available online at http://edison.rutgers.edu/​NamesSearch/​NamesSearch.php.

174. Reményi to TE, 25 Apr. 1883, PTAE; Papers, 6.816; Hammer Reminiscences, TENHP. In 1898 Edison served as a pallbearer at Reményi’s funeral in New York.

175. Papers, 6.252–53, 263; Israel, Edison, 204; Papers, 6.253.

176. Insull to superintendent, Pennsylvania Railroad Jersey City, 17 Dec. 1881, PTAE.

177. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 641. “Its simplicity and accuracy when correctly handled were so great that it remained in use for a number of years; then it was replaced by improved mechanical types.” Bright, Electric Lamp Industry, 69.

178. Israel, Edison, 495, 981–82, 208. TE had already won 170 U.S. patents before the 1880s.

179. Preece, “Electric Lighting at the Paris Exhibition.” The post-lecture comments included in this transcript are indicative of the gathering respect in Britain for TE’s lighting innovations.

180. Ibid.

181. Daily News (UK), 8 Apr. 1882.

182. Papers, 6.468; Otto Moses in Papers, 6.363. Smithsonian Image 2003-35552, William J. Hammer Collection.

183. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 183; Papers, 6.314, 334, 350.

184. Cincinnati Enquirer, 1 Jan. 1882; Papers, 6.701; Bowers, Lengthening the Day, 91; Papers, 6.260.

185. Papers, 6.348.

186. Papers, 6.348, 313, 417; New York dispatch to Topeka Daily Capital, 4 Mar. 1882; Insull to E. H. Johnson, Papers, 6.431. There are a number of references to TE’s “recuperative” vacation in Florida in U.S. newspapers during the month.

187. Scientific American, 22 July 1882.

188. Papers, 6.446.

189. New York Times, 9 Mar. 1882.

190. Israel, Edison, 167–68.

191. Papers, 6.425ff.; New York Edison Company, Thirty Years of New York, 29; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 185.

192. TE Patent 460,122. See Edisonian 7 (Rutgers, NJ, 2012), online at http://edison.rutgers.edu/​newsletter7.html#2; Papers, 6.446–47. The first “village” to install this system was Roselle, New Jersey, on 19 Jan. 1883. Israel, Edison, 219.

193. Bright, Electric Lamp Industry, 68–69; Papers, 6.582, 794–95. Edison delayed executing his patent on this invention until 27 Nov. 1882, allowing John Hopkinson to file a similar application in Britain well before that date. Papers, 6, 582, 794–95. The Edison system was awarded priority in the United States on 20 Mar. 1883 (U.S. Patent 274,290), but by then Hopkinson already had his British patent.

194. TE to T. C. Martin, June 1909, quoted in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 342–43. See Papers, 6.609–11, for more details of the Wilber affair.

195. Papers, 6.447.

196. Scientific American, 22 July 1882. As of late August, TE had initiated three isolated lighting plants in England and three in Germany, as well as others in France, Holland, Italy, Hungary, Cuba, and Chile. Edison Electric Light Co., Thirteenth Bulletin, 28 Aug. 1882.

197. New York Tribune, 5 Sept. 1889; Scientific American, 26 Aug. 1882; Papers, 6.428.

198. Scientific American, 26 Aug. 1882.

199. Ibid.

200. Janesville (WI) Daily Gazette, 5 Sept. 1882.

201. New York Sun, 5 Sept. 1882. There is some ambiguity in the newspaper accounts covering the system activation, The New York Times reporting that the lights came on two hours after the dynamos. But that was still two hours before dark. Edison Electric Light Co., Fourteenth Bulletin, 14 Oct. 1882, states specifically, “The plant was started and the district lighted up at 3 P.M.” Whatever the time, TE wrote in old age that starting up the system was “the most thrilling event of my life.” TE to F. D. Hopley, 11 Apr. 1921, HFM.

202. “Edison’s Electric Light,” New York Times, 5 Sept. 1882; see also New York Herald, New York World, and New York Tribune, same date.

203. New York Times, 5 Sept. 1882.

204. Ibid. and New York Sun, 5 Sept. 1882. Francis Jehl, writing more than fifty years later in Menlo Park Reminiscences, 1065, had TE lighting up his system in the offices of Drexel, Morgan, but most contemporary accounts put him in the Pearl Street station. See, however, Papers, 6.539.

205. New York Sun and New York Tribune, 5 Sept. 1882.

206. The New York Herald actually had its own (isolated) Edison light system. For the pleased reaction of one group of night reporters, see New York Edison Company, Thirty Years of New York, 26–27.

207. See, e.g., the London Standard and Daily News, 6 Sept. 1882; Boston Globe, 6 Sept. 1882.

208. New York Edison Company, Thirty Years of New York, 44. The date of the following incident is uncertain, except that it occurred on a Sunday, probably 10 September. See Papers, 6.670 and 676–77.

209. Papers, 814–15 (TE dictating in June 1909).

210. Clarke in Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 49; New York Edison Company, Thirty Years of New York, 30; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 404. See also Hughes, Networks of Power, 43.

211. Papers, 6.815.

212. Edison Electric Light Co., Fifteenth Bulletin, 20 Dec. 1882. See also Scientific American, 30 Dec. 1882; Clarke in “Edisonia,” 47, 49; Papers, 6.671, 815, 676–77; Scientific American, 30 Dec. 1882; New York Edison Company, Thirty Years of New York, 46.

213. Stephen Garmey, Gramercy Park: An Illustrated History of a New York Neighborhood (New York, 1984), 74; Israel, Edison, 201; Papers, 6.675.

214. Papers, 6.199, 680, 683. The phrase “the most fashionable quarter of the city” is TE’s, Papers, 7.724.

215. Papers, 6.675.

216. Papers, 7.745, 724. The diary must have been left behind by Morse’s widow, a prior renter. Garmey, Gramercy Park, 154.

217. Papers, 5.909–10; Tate, Edison Open Door, 35. TE’s total debt to Mrs. Seyfert was actually around $7,000 ($181,300 in today’s money) comprising interest and another note later dropped from her suit. The case grew to rival Jarndyce v. Jarndyce in complexity but is ably summarized in Papers, 7.603-4 and 8.328–29.

218. Edison Electric Light Co., Sixteenth Bulletin, 2 Feb. 1883; Times, 5 Jan. 1883.

219. Edison Electric Light Co., Sixteenth Bulletin, 2 Feb. 1883; Papers, 6.668.

220. Edison Electric Light Co., Sixteenth Bulletin, 2 Feb. 1883; Insull in Papers, 6.669.

221. Edward Johnson looked over the system at Morgan’s request and said, “If it was my own, I would throw the whole damned thing into the street.” “That’s just what Mrs. Morgan says,” the financier replied. However, he was too aware of the moneymaking potential of domestic incandescent light to jettison either the system or his own investment in it. Strouse, Morgan, 233–34; Papers, 6.750–51.

222. Edison Electric Light Co., Sixteenth Bulletin, 2 Feb. 1883; North British Daily Mail, 4 Dec. 1882.

223. Papers, 6.736.

224. Papers, 7.727.

225. Snow Removal File (1922), TENHP; Papers, 6.802, 23ff., 824–25; TE Patent 228,329 (described at length by TE in New York Evening Post, 24 May 1881; Chicago Tribune, 24 June 1881. TE did not personally discover the Quogue deposit, as some sources suggest. His only recorded visit to the site took place with Insull in early June 1881. Papers, 6.76.

226. Edison Ore-Milling Co. Minutes, 2 June and 28 Oct. 1881, 17 Jan. 1882, PTAE; Sherburne Eaton in Papers, 6.765–70; Engineering and Mining Journal 52 (1891). TE won a contract to supply two hundred tons of beach magnetite ore to the Poughkeepsie Iron & Steel Co., but that concern got into difficulties and canceled its order. TE closed down his Rhode Island operation in December 1882. See Eaton in Papers, 6.765–70.

227. Papers, 6.756, 793, 754, 773.

228. Papers, 6.772–73; Samuel Johnson to Lord Chesterfield, 7 Feb. 1755, quoted in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, chap. 13.

229. Edouard Reményi to TE, 25 Apr. 1883, PTAE.

230. Papers, 7.73, 6.809; Israel, Edison, 218, 221.

231. Papers, 6.793–94.

232. Israel, Edison, 218–19; Edward Johnson to TE, Papers, 7.129–34; Bowers, Lengthening the Day, 105.

233. Papers, 7.609–10, 75; Israel, Edison, 221.

234. Israel, Edison, 223–24; Papers, 6.798.

235. Papers, 7.74, 6.809; DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 67.

236. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 29 July 1883.

237. Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park.”

238. Papers, 7.217–18.

239. William Pitt Edison to TE, 12 Aug. 1883, PTAE.

240. “TE” to William Pitt Edison, 14 Aug. 1883, PTAE. This letter’s salutation, “Friend Pitt,” and sign-off, “With kind regards,” suggest it was written by Insull.

241. Reprinted in Science, 2.29 (24 Aug. 1883).

242. Ibid. If any individual other than TE was impugned in Rowland’s address, it was the publicity-seeking physicist George Barker of the University of Pennsylvania. See Hounshell, “Edison and the Pure Science Ideal.”

243. Bowers, “Edison and Early Electric Engineering in Britain,” in Graham Hollister-Short and Frank James, eds., History of Technology, vol. 13 (New York, 1991).

244. Israel, Edison, 217; Papers, 7.190–91.

245. TE to Theodore Waterhouse, 24 July 1883, Papers, 7.191.

246. Ibid.

247. Chicago Tribune, 19 June, 1883; TE, “Instructions and Directions, Central Stations,” 1883, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 225, 224; A. Stuart to Samuel Insull, 28 May 1884, PTAE. See also TE’s detailed description of his canvassing method in Papers, 7.203–8.

248. Papers, 7.76; Israel, Edison, 225. See, e.g., TE’s struggle to get fully paid for the village system he installed in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, in July 1883. Ibid., 201–3.

249. James Pryor to Samuel Insull, 6 Sept. 1883; TE superscript on Pryor to Insull, 6 Sept. 1883; Pryor to TE, 19 Sept. 1883; TE to Pryor, 20 Sept. 1883; all PTAE.

250. Pryor to TE, 24 Sept. 1883, PTAE; Papers, 7.268. The Gramercy Park house cost TE $400 a month, whereas his hotel suite, with incidental expenses, cost $200 a week. Pryor-Edison Lease, 23 Sept. 1882, PTAE; Papers, 7.309.

251. Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park.”

252. McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 252; Bright, Electric Lamp Industry, 71.

253. Dickson to TE, 23 May 1883, PTAE. In old age Dickson claimed that TE hired him, but his work application in March 1883 was acted on by Insull, and his billet-doux to TE in May made clear that he had not yet been noticed by the Old Man. TE probably took an interest in him after W. S. Andrews, the chief engineer at the Machine Works, praised his skill at the end of the year. Dickson to Insull, and Raymond Sayer to TE, both 28 Mar. 1883, PTAE; Dickson to TE, 23 May 1883, PTAE; Papers, 7.101–2; Andrews to TE, 16 Dec. 1883, PTAE.

254. TE Patent 307,031, executed 15 Nov. 1883, issued 21 Oct. 1884.

255. Dickson to TE, 23 Jan. 1924, TENHP.

256. Papers, 7.369; U.S. Patent 307,031.

257. Papers, 7.102.

258. Papers, 7.369; TE interviewed in New York Sun, 27 Aug. 1884.

259. Papers, 7.370, 482, 481.

260. DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 67; McDonald, Insull, 31; Israel, Edison, 228. “If you want money wire me.” Insull to TE, 22 Feb. 1884, Papers, 7.434. See also Mary Edison to Insull, 27 Feb. 1884, Papers, 443.

261. Insull to A. O. Tate, 27 Oct. 1884, PTAE; McDonald, Insull, 31–32.

262. S. B. Eaton to Insull, 18 Feb. 1884, PTAE.

263. Papers, 7.436, 454.

264. Ibid.

265. TE pocket notebook 84-02-85, 2, TENHP. The editors of the Edison Papers identify this sketch as “a telephone and resonator in a Wheatstone bridge arrangement.” Papers, 7.434.

266. Insull to TE, 22 Feb. 1884, Papers, 7.433.

267. Papers, 7.480.

268. “Edison’s Electric Shark Hunt,” Nebraska Daily State Journal, 4 April 1884.

269. Ibid. The Vedder Museum, maintained by the St. Augustine Historical Society, was a local attraction for many years. It burned down in 1914. “The Vedder Museum,” n.d., http://lostparks.com/​vedder.html.

270. Papers, 7.346, 480–81.

271. Papers, 7.480; De Borchgrave and Cullen, Villard.

272. TE to Eaton, 24 Apr. 1884, PTAE.

273. Rowsome, Birth of Electric Traction, loc. 661, 692.

274. Papers, 7.482–83; TE to Eaton, 24 Apr. and 9 May 1884, PTAE.

275. Papers, 7.494. Nicholas Stilwell suffered from dementia, and Mary had been keeping him in her house under nursing care.

276. Papers, 8.328.

277. Papers, 7.518–19, 536–57; Mary Edison to Middlesex County Sheriff, 15 May 1884, PTAE.

278. Papers, 7.561; James W. Pryor House Inventory, 1882, PTAE; Mary Edison to Insull, 30 Apr. 1884, PTAE; Olive Harper, “In the Wizard’s Home: How Thomas A. Edison’s Residence Is Fitted Up,” New York World, 1 June 1884. The article was reprinted or excerpted in several major newspapers. See also Papers, 7.562–70.

279. Washington Post, 26 November 1878.

280. Harper, “In the Wizard’s Home.”

281. Papers, 7.632; Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park.”

282. Mary Edison described her children in Harper, “In the Wizard’s Home.”

283. Papers, 7.483, 575.

284. Carlson, Tesla, 69–70; Papers, 6.821. See also Jehl, “Thomas A. Edison,” 90. (“He used to order every dish twice”). According to T. C. Martin, writing in the February 1894 issue of Century Magazine, Edison also boggled at Tesla’s appetite and asked if he was a cannibal.

285. Carlson, Tesla, 68–70. Tesla began to work for TE on 8 June 1884. He was paid $100 a month, a high wage by TE’s standards, and the equivalent of $2,690 in 2018. Salary List, Edison Machine Works, PTAE.

286. TE Edison Medal acceptance speech, 18 May 1917, Electrical Review and Western Electrician 70 (26 May 1917).

287. Mary Edison to Andrew Disbrow, 13 May 1884, PTAE; Papers, 7.632.

288. Papers, 8.328.

289. TE to Eaton, 22 July 1884, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 234–35.

290. Papers, 7.620–21.

291. Ibid., 7.622; Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park,” 5.

292. Alice Stilwell Holzer to William A. Symonds, 2 July 1932, HFM. In old age, Marion Edison Öser said the same thing, very likely repeating what she had been told as a child. Israel, Edison, 233.

293. William R. Gowers, A Manual of Diseases of the Nervous System (London, 1893), 2.375–76. See also the editorial discussion of Mary Edison’s death in Papers, 7.620–24. It includes the pertinent information that in late 1883 the Edison household ordered “two one-half ounce bottles of sulphate of morphia, a form suitable for hypodermic injection.”

294. New York World Supplement, 17 Aug. 1884; Papers, 7.630–35.

295. The full article is reprinted with commentary in Papers, 7.630–35. It states that TE tried for two hours after his wife’s death to revive her with shocks from an electric “cabinet.” Electrotherapy in overdose cases was not unknown in the nineteenth century, but later that year TE said he did not believe in it. Papers, 7.633.

296. TE quoted in New York Sun, 27 Aug. 1884; Mary Edison Holzer to Francis Jehl, 27 Apr. 1935, TENHP.

297. Insull to Harriet Clarke, 17 Sept. 1884, PTAE.

298. Papers, 7.590, 573; San Francisco Examiner, 21 Sept. 1884; Smithsonian Institution, SI neg. 85-8773. The column’s 2,100 bulbs represented one day’s output of the Edison Lamp Works.

299. TE in Buffalo Courier, 8 Sept. 1884.

300. Edison and Gilliland v. Phelps, Testimony on Behalf of Edison (2 June 1886), 3; Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities”; Papers, 7.658.

301. Edison and Gilliland, 3; TE Patent 438,304. TE executed eight more sonic-communication patents before the end of 1884.

302. Israel, Edison, 227–29, 322, 228; Papers, 7.685–88, 7.687–98; Lowrey to TE, 19 Oct. 1884, PTAE; McDonald, Insull, 32ff.; De Graaf, Edison and Innovation, 67; Insull to Tate, 27 Oct. 1884. In 1909 TE boasted to his biographer T. C. Martin, “I am the only man that ever beat Drexel & Morgan Company over an election of directors and officers.” Papers, 7.731.

303. U.S. Patent 422,577, filed 1 Dec. 1884. The idea of inductive signaling from moving trains was not original to TE or Gilliland. It appears to have been first proposed by A. C. Brown of the Eastern Telegraph Co., in 1881, and more fully articulated by the British inventor Willoughby Smith in his paper, “Voltaic-Electric Induction,” read before the Institution of Electrical Engineers on 8 Nov. 1883. Fahie, History of Wireless Telegraphy, 100–111.

304. Edison and Gilliland, 5; Papers, 7.681, MME interviewed by Milton Marmor of AP, 10 Jan. 1947, TENHP.

305. TE to Richard Dyer from Adrian, ca. 22 Feb. 1885. Papers, 8.38–40.

306. Papers, 7.48–49, 8.22; Fritz, Bamboo and Sailing Ships, 5.

307. Fritz, Bamboo and Sailing Ships, 5.

308. Papers, 8.64–65. The price was later reduced to $2,750.

309. Papers, 8.64, 179–80.

310. Israel, Edison, 237–38.

311. Papers, 8.163–64; MME/Marmor interview, TENHP; TE quoted in Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 273. The date of this first encounter between TE and MME is not known, but it likely occurred early in 1885, when MME was in school and TE was often visiting Boston. Some sources suggest that they met, improbably, in New Orleans at the beginning of March. However, they both recalled meeting in the Gilliland apartment, and each mentioned the musical incident. Marion Edison Öser stated that they already knew each other when they met again at the beach house that summer. “Wizard of Menlo Park.” See also Papers, 8.163–65.

312. MME interview, 10 Jan. 1947, TENHP.

313. Israel, Edison, 244; Ellwood Hendrick, Lewis Miller: A Biographical Essay (New York, 1925); Papers, 8.246–47. On 25 Feb. 1886 the New York Sun estimated Miller’s fortune at $2.5 million, or $68.7 million in today’s money.

314. Israel, Edison, 244; Hendrick, Lewis Miller; Papers, 8.246–47.

315. “We all set around the table to write up our diaries.” TE Diary, entry for 15 July 1885, PTAE. This seven-day journal—the only personal diary TE ever kept—can be read in its calligraphed entirety online at edison.rutgers.edu/​NamesSearch/​SingleDoc.php?Docid=MA001. It has also been published in Runes, Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison, and in Papers, 8.162ff.

316. Ibid., entries for 14 and 15 July 1885.

317. Ibid., entries for 17 and 19 July 1885.

318. Ibid., entry for 21 July 1885.

319. Ibid.

320. Ibid., entry for 12 July 1885.

321. Ibid., entries for 12 and 15 July 1885; Papers, 8.189; TE Diary, entry for 20 July 1885.

322. TE Diary, entries for 12–21 July 1885, passim. See also the editorial annotations in Papers, 8.170–89.

323. TE Diary, entry for 17 July 1885.

324. Israel, Edison, 246–47.

325. MME interview, 10 Jan. 1947, TENHP; Papers, 8.217. Louise Igou married Robert A. Miller in 1887.

326. MME interview, 10 Jan. 1947, TENHP.

327. AP clipping, 2 Feb. 1947, PTAE.

328. Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park,” 10. See also Israel, Edison, 233, 253.

329. TE to Lewis Miller, 30 Sept. 1885, PTAE.

330. Edward Johnson to Uriah Painter, 12 Oct. 1885, PTAE.

331. The female members of the Miller family were more doubtful about TE than the patriarch. Israel, Edison, 248.

332. TE Diary, entry for 19 July 1885, PTAE; “The Most Difficult Husband in America,” Collier’s Magazine, 18 July 1925. See Papers, 8.256–58 for TE’s current plans for the development of his Florida estate.

333. Kristin Herron, The House at Glenmont: Edison National Historic Site (West Orange, NJ, 1998). See New York Tribune, 19 July 1884, for details of the Pedder case.

334. Glenmont was valued at $400,200 at the time Pedder’s creditor, Arnold, Constable & Co., took it over in part payment of his debt. New York Tribune, 19 July 1884.

335. Papers, 8.315; Hughes, Networks of Power, 45; Bright, Electric Lamp Industry, 71, 75.

336. Papers, 8.328–29, 261, 257–58, 319; TE to William Mawer, 9 Feb. 1886, PTAE; Fort Myers Press, 9 Nov. 1885 and 13 Feb. 1886; Philadelphia Inquirer, 3 Feb. 1886.

337. Papers, 8.348, 344; Charles Batchelor Diary, entries for 20 and 23 Feb. 1886, PTAE; New York Sun, 21 Feb. 1886.

338. “Under the Wish-Bone,” Akron Daily Beacon, 25 Feb. 1886; Philadelphia Inquirer, 25 Feb. 1886; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 273–74. Despite the attendance at the ceremony of TE’s eldest associates, Edward Johnson and Charles Batchelor, TE chose Lt. Frank Toppan, USN, a friend of Ezra Gilliland’s, to be his best man. Papers, 8.339–40.

339. Atlanta Constitution, 27 Feb. 1886; Papers, 8.423–24, 429.

340. MME to Mary V. Miller, 28 Feb. 1886, PTAE; Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church (Cincinnati, 1854).

341. MME to Mary V. Miller, 28 Feb. 1886, PTAE.

342. TE executed only thirty-one patents in the eighteen months following Mary Edison’s death, compared to 164 in the equivalent period preceding.

343. Papers, 8.348, 427; TE Florida Notebook, entry for 16 Apr. 1886, 178, PTAE.

344. Author’s count of devices or experimental innovations, in TE’s Florida notebooks, that are not merely whimsical.

345. Papers, 8.483–87, 493–95, 105–11, 375, 475; George P. Lathrop, “An Interview with the Wizard of Menlo Park,” New York Union and Advertiser, 22 May 1885.

346. This observation was first made by the editors of the Edison Papers. Papers, 8.105.

347. Fort Myers Press, 20 Feb. 1886; MME to Mary V. Miller, 28 Feb. 1886, PTAE.

348. This marital problem, and MME’s general unhappiness on honeymoon, may be clearly deduced from Lewis Miller’s letter to her of 26 Apr. 1887. See Papers, 8.695–97.

349. TE memorandum to Eli Thompson, ca. Apr. 1886, Papers, 8.517–24.

350. Papers, 8.362, 377.

351. TE quoted in Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 277.

352. Hammer, “Edison and His Inventions,” ii.

353. TE quoted in Chautauqua Assembly Magazine, Oct. 1886; Papers, 8.549–50; McDonald, Insull, 38. For a short discussion of TE’s attitude to labor, see Israel, Edison, 444.

354. See Israel, Edison, 238–39, 241–42; TE Patent 333,291 (“Way-Station Quadruplex Telegraph”) issued 29 Dec. 1885, and 422,072, issued 25 Feb. 1890.

355. Israel, Edison, 243.

356. Ibid., 243, 255; Chicago Tribune, 14 Aug. 1886; Papers, 8.527; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 274.

357. Quoted in Israel, Edison, 267.

358. “Mina Miller Edison Pregnancies and Miscarriages/Stillbirths,” unpublished research note by Michele Albion, 28 Feb. 2007, with additional research by Thomas E. Jeffrey, author’s collection; Papers, 8.682–84.

359. U.S. Patent 352,105; Allerhand, Illustrated History, 273–78.

360. For an analysis of the internet myth that TE “stole” technology from Tesla, see The Edisonian, vol. 11 at http://edison.rutgers.edu/​newsletter11.htm#7.

361. Frank Sprague to Edward H. Johnson, 13 Sept. 1886, quoted in Papers, 8.621; Israel, Edison, 324–25. See also Papers, 8.625.

362. The actual purchase was made by Francis Upton, who took advantage of its availability in Paris on 25 Nov. 1886. Papers, 8.655–56.

363. Allerhand, Illustrated History, 279–83; Papers, 8.637–38.

364. Papers,7.729, 8.672, and 667.

365. Papers, 8.675–76; New York Sun, 15 Feb. 1887; Fort Myers Press, 14 Apr. 1887.

366. Papers, 8.696.

367. Lewis Miller to MME, 26 Apr. 1887, Papers, 8.695.

368. Jane Miller to MME, 19 May 1887, TENHP.

369. Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 20.

370. See Papers, 8.714; Israel, Edison, 281. TE was not afraid of an infringement suit regarding wax incision, since he had experimented with it himself in the 1870s.

371. Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 23; Israel, Edison, 281.

372. TE quoted in Israel, Edison, 281.

373. TE to George Gouraud, 21 July 1887, Papers, 8.768. Gouraud was taken aback by TE’s ferocity on this subject. Gouraud to TE, 6 Aug. 1887, PTAE. For a detailed account of the contention between the parties, see Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities.”

374. Israel, Edison, 282, 280; Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities,” 13; TE superscript, 2 Dec. 1887, on Uriah Painter to TE, 30 Nov. 1887, PTAE; Gardiner Hubbard to Edward Johnson, 13 Oct. 1887, PTAE.

375. TE to James Hood Wright, ca. Aug. 1887, PTAE.

376. Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities,” 13.

377. Edward Johnson superscript on Uriah Painter to Johnson, 12 Feb. 1888, PTAE.

378. TE to Edward Johnson, 12 Feb. 1888, PTAE.

379. Scientific American, 31 Dec. 1887.

380. Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities,” 16; Israel, Edison, 282.

381. National Park Service map of 1888 plant, TENHP; Arthur Kennelly interview, Biographical Collection, TENHP; National Park Service, Edison Laboratory, 1.13–15; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 44–45.

382. National Park Service, Edison Laboratory, 17, 19; TE in Evansville Courier, 27 Aug. 1928: DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 85.

383. Israel, Edison, 271; Harry F. Miller Reminiscences, Biographical Collection, TENHP.

384. Israel, Edison, 292; Spehr, Man Who Made the Movies, 76–77. TE planned to experiment with high-speed photography in his new laboratory as early as Nov. 1887, three months before meeting Muybridge (79).

385. Israel, Edison, 292–93; Spehr, Man Who Made the Movies, 76–77.

386. Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities,” 21; Israel, Edison, 289.

387. Ibid., 286.

388. Insull to Alfred Tate, 23 May 1888, PTAE.

389. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 153–55.

390. Israel, Edison, 293; Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities,” 24–25.

391. Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities,” 25.

392. Madeleine Edison was born on 31 May 1888.

393. Quoted in Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 132.

394. TE to Ezra Gilliland, 11 Sept. 1888, quoted in Israel, Edison, 289.

395. Gilliland to TE, 13 Sept. 1888, PTAE; Albion, Florida Life of Edison, 43–44.

396. TE Caveat 110, 8 Oct. 1888, PTAE. Facsimile reproduction in DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, xviii.

397. Richard Howells, “Louis Le Prince: The Body of Evidence,” Screen 47, no. 2 (July 2006). See especially The First Film, a 2013 documentary by David Nicholas Wilkinson, available at https://vimeo.com/​ondemand/​thefirstfilm/​181293064.

398. TE to Dyer and Seely, 8 Oct. 1888, PTAE. For a detailed account of the development of the Kinetograph by TE and Dickson, see Spehr, The Man Who Made the Movies, 82 ff.

399. TE quoted by Lucile Erskine in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10 Mar. 1912.

400. For accounts of the “War of the Currents,” critical of Edison’s and the Light Company’s cynical misuse of the electrocution issue to attack Westinghouse, see Richard Moran, Executioner’s Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair (New York, 2002); Mark Essig, Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Life and Death (New York, 2003); Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World (New York, 2004).

401. Israel, Edison, 329; Charles Batchelor account in Cassier’s Magazine 5, Nov. 1893; Allerhand, Illustrated History, 284 ff.

402. New York Times, 13 Dec. 1889.

403. Moran, Executioner’s Current, chapter 4.

404. Essig, Edison and the Electric Chair, 196–97; TE quoted in Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 124; Moran, Executioner’s Current, loc. 2071.

405. TE’s moral opposition prevented the Light Company and its successor, Edison General Electric, from entering the AC market until the spring of 1890. Israel, Edison, 332–33.

406. New York Times, 6, 13, and 18 Dec. 1889.

407. Moran, Executioner’s Current, loc. 2147; New York Times, 6 Dec. 1888.

408. See A Warning from the Edison Electric Light Co. (privately printed, 1888) and McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 328–30, for Johnson’s early involvement in the AC/DC rivalry.

409. Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 1.29–30.

410. Leroy Hughbanks, Talking Wax: The Story of The Phonograph (New York, 1945), chap. 3.

411. De Graaf, Edison, 80; Stephan Puille, “Prince Bismarck and Count Moltke Before the Recording Horn: The Edison Phonograph in Europe, 1889–1890,” translated by Patrick Feaster, 1912, PTAE. The Goethe quotation is from Faust, Part One. Some of these unique cylinders, including Mark Twain’s, melted away in the Edison Works fire of December 1914. One that survived was recorded by TE himself. It was vocally addressed to James G. Blaine, the 1888 Republican presidential candidate, and took him on an imaginary tour of the world. Schenectady Gazette, 28 January 1996.

412. Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 147; Julius Block Edison cylinder recording, ca. 14 Oct. 1889, Marston.records.com.; Julius Block, “Edison Album” 1889, New York Public Library Digital Collections.

413. Israel, Edison, 370; Lewis Miller to Mary V. Miller, ca. mid-Apr. 1889, EFW. Hammer’s 7-part retrospective series on TE’s inventions was serialized in Electrical World between 31 Aug. and 12 Oct. 1889.

414. Alan Walker, Hans von Bülow: A Life and Times (NY 2010), 409; New Brunswick Home News, 2 Mar. 1888; New York Times, 21 Apr. 1888; Israel, Edison, 321–23. Villard had previously and successfully combined all Edison’s European lighting companies (321).

415. Israel, Edison, 322; Josephson, Edison, 353; TE to Henry Villard, 1 Apr. 1889, quoted in Israel, Edison, 324.

416. Ibid.

417. The word apotheosis was used to describe TE’s stay in Paris by Figaro on 30 Aug. 1889. Except where otherwise indicated, the following account is based on daily accounts in Le Figaro, 12 Aug.–12 Sept. 1889, with additional details from Annegret Fauser, Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair (New York, 2005); Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 233–44 and Israel, Edison, 370–71. TE’s own account is in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 747–50.

418. Francis Upton Scrapbook, 22 Aug. 1889, PTAE, Boston Globe, 8 Sept. 1889.

419. Le Figaro, 28 Aug. 1889; New Albany Evening Tribune, 10 Sept. 1889; Étienne-Jules Marey, La Chronophotographie (Paris, 1829), 26; Marta Braun, Picturing Time: The Work of Étienne-Jules Marey, 1830–1904 (Chicago, 1995), 189–90.

420. William J. Hammer, “Edison’s Display at the Paris Exposition,” trilingual booklet in Beinecke Library, Yale University; Israel, Edison, 371; K. G. Beauchamp, Exhibiting Electricity (London, 1997), 182–84; TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 747ff.; New York World, 16 Sept. 188.

421. Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, L’Éve-Future (Paris, 1886). The complex story of Villiers’s twelve-year obsession with TE, culminating in book publication of his seminal science fiction novel, is well told in Gaby Wood, Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life (New York 2002); A. W. Raitt, The Life of Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (New York, 1981); Carol de Dobray-Rifelj, “La Machine Humaine: Villiers’ Éve-Future and the Problem of Personal Identity,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 20 (Spring 1992); and Ritch Calvin, “The French Dick: Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Philip K. Dick, and the Android,” Extrapolation, 22 June 2007 (www.thefreelibrary.com). TE seems to have remained unaware of the novel until the dying Villiers sent him a copy just before his arrival in Paris. In 1910 he contributed $25 toward the erection of a statue in Villiers’s memory.

422. Le Figaro, 3 Sept. 1889, translated by the author.

423. TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 750–53; Scientific American, 21 Sept. 1889; Israel, Edison, 371; Le Figaro, 12 Aug. 1889.

424. Puille, “Prince Bismarck”; Israel, Edison, 371–72; Tageblatt der 62. Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte in Heidelberg vom 18–23 Sept. (Heidelberg, 1890); 141; New York Herald, 21 Sept. 1889; Le Figaro, 12 Aug. 1889.

425. See TE to Henry Villard, 8 Feb. 1890, PTAE: “I would now ask you not to oppose my gradual retirement from the lighting business, which will enable me to enter fresh and more congenial fields of work.”

426. This fantasy of TE’s was ventured, shortly after his return to the United States, on the writer George Parsons Lathrop, and published in “Talks with Edison.” TE might possibly have been channeling two passages by Tennyson: “And the soul of the rose went into my blood,” from Maud, and “I am a part of all that I have met,” from Ulysses.

PART SIX · SOUND (1870–1879)

1. Papers, 1.151–56; Israel, Edison, 52.

2. Papers, 1.146, 151.

3. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 53–54 [misdated as 1869]. John Ott was the elder brother of Frederick Ott, who also worked for TE. He suffered a crippling stroke in 1895, but TE continued to employ and support him for life. His crutches and wheelchair were displayed near TE’s coffin. Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 53.

4. William Ford, Industrial Interests of Newark, N.J. (New York 1874), 231; Israel, Edison, 52–55; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 53.

5. TE Patent 128,608; Papers, 1.147, 151–54. This instrument, which substituted a single print wheel for Calahan’s two, never went into production.

6. Israel, Edison, 52.

7. Papers, 1.161–70. The Edison-Pope gold printer remained in common use throughout the 1880s.

8. Papers, 1.172–73.

9. TE to Sam and Nancy Edison, 9 May 1870, HFM.

10. The “Family” folders in TENHP offer abundant evidence of the pecuniary consequences of worldly success.

11. J. J. Anger to TE, 28 Oct. 1929, TENHP.

12. Israel, Edison, 54–55.

13. Papers, 1.196–207.

14. Papers, 1.182; Prescott, Electricity and Telegraph, 688–89.

15. Prescott, Electricity and Telegraph, 725; TE Patent 114,656; Papers, 1.173–75. TE also briefly experimented with automatic telegraphy in Boston in May 1868; Israel, Edison, 60ff.; Papers, 1.242–43; Papers, 1.246.

16. This document (Papers, 1.208–9) is apparently the source of the tallest of TE’s autobiographical tales, first published in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 132–33—that he asked Lefferts to name a price for his universal stock ticker, hoping for $3,000 to $5,000, and was flabbergasted to be given a check for $40,000, or $796,000 in today’s money. The story may be a mélange of memories, and is impossible to substantiate from the available records. However, Lefferts’s draft did result in a contract with TE on 26 May 1871, conditionally worth much more than $40,000. See Papers, 1.283–87.

17. TE to his parents, 30 Oct. 1870, HFM.

18. Walter L. Welch, Charles Batchelor (Syracuse, NY, 1972), passim. Welch accurately describes Batchelor as “the balance wheel of an organization of which Edison was the mainspring” (5).

19. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 506.

20. Israel, Edison, 61; Papers, 1.218–19, 222–23.

21. Papers, 1.218, 220.

22. Daniel Craig to TE, 12 Jan. 1871, Papers, 1.235.

23. Israel, Edison, 62; Papers, 1.232.

24. New York Times, 23 Apr. 1878; The Independent, 25 Apr. 1878.

25. Papers, 1.237; William Orton to Anson Stager, 20 and 24 Jan. 1871, quoted in Israel, Edison, 54.

26. Papers, 1.270.

27. TE quoted in New York Herald Tribune, 19 Oct. 1931.

28. Papers, 1.277–78, 226.

29. David Hochfelder, The Telegraph in America, 1832–1920 (Baltimore, MD, 2012), 109; Papers, 283–92.

30. Ibid., 1.283–94.

31. Papers, 1.225–26. The purchase deal benefited Pope and Ashley at 510 Gold & Stock shares each, as opposed to only 180 for TE. Israel, Edison, 54–55; Papers, 1.226.

32. Mary Edison interview in New York World, 1 June 1884, quoted in Papers, 1.563–64.

33. Mary Edison interview, Papers, 1.564.

34. Dated personal documents are scanty for this period of TE’s life. The author infers his chronology from the reminiscences of Mary Edison, cited above, and Edward Johnson, cited below. Mary says she was “going home from school” when she took shelter in the factory, which suggests June at the latest. If she was speaking precisely in saying she was “fifteen and a half years old” at the time, the encounter could have been as early as April, but her memory of a five-month courtship ties in better with the later date. It implies a proposal from TE in November, followed by their confirmed marriage on 25 December. Johnson’s memories of TE being almost penniless when they first met suggests a rough coincidence with the latter’s begging letter to Harrington on 22 July. Finally, Mary’s denial that she ever worked for TE in a “factory” does not conflict with evidence that she was employed in a short-lived news reporting business he established that fall. See Papers, 7.566–67.

35. Papers, 1.295–96. TE gives a breezy account of his business method (“which certainly was new”) in ibid., 1.644.

36. TE to George Harrington, fragment, 22 July 1871, PTAE.

37. Papers, 1.308–9, 644.

38. Papers, 1.346; TE Patents 123,984 and 121,601; Edison, 69, 67.

39. Papers, 1.264–65. The Automatic Telegraph Company building stood at 66 Broadway.

40. Edward Johnson to T. C. Martin, 21 Nov. 1908, TENHP. He remembered this first spell of association with TE as lasting about three months.

41. Johnson quoted in Executive Intelligence Review, 9 Feb. 1896; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 148.

42. Johnson quoted in Electrical World, undated clipping, ca. Mar. 1899, 1899 General File, TENHP.

43. Electrical World, undated clipping, ca. Mar. 1899, 1899 General File, TENHP.

44. Papers, 7.564.

45. Ibid.

46. Israel, Edison, 74–75; Papers, 1.346. Until the publication of volume 7 of the The Papers of Thomas A. Edison, which contained Mary Edison’s own account of her wedding, a nineteenth-century legend that TE returned to laboratory after the ceremony and forgot to come home that night was widely accepted by Edison biographers. That story is now discredited. It is true, though, that he went back to work briefly, with Mary’s permission, to deal with a problem to do with his stock-ticker delivery. See Papers, 7.560–62.

47. Description based on early photographs of Mary Stilwell Edison. Nicholas Stilwell’s occupation was probably the reason Edison included, in his last notebook entry before the wedding, a double-tooth design to prevent band saws from running out of line. Papers, 1.376.

48. Newark Daily Advertiser, 5 Jan. 1872; Papers, 1.385, 7.635; TE quoted in Israel, Edison, 75.

49. Ibid.

50. Papers, 1.377, 429, 430.

51. Papers, 1.429–31.

52. Papers, 1.496, 645. See, e.g., S. A. Woods Co. to Edison and Murray, Papers, 1.499.

53. Israel, Edison, 77; Papers, 1.493, 496–97.

54. Ibid.

55. Facsimile in Papers, 1.437.

56. Papers, 1.506–7.

57. See, e.g., Papers, 1.508–12; William Orton testimony, Atlantic & Pacific Telephone Company v. George B. Prescott [et al.], vol. 71, 117–18, 125; Josephson, Edison, 109.

58. Orton testimony, 129–32; Israel, Edison, 79. TE’s specific mandate was to develop duplex or diplex designs that would amplify but not conflict with the Stearns patent, which Western Union owned. Israel, Edison, 79; Orton testimony, 118ff. Orton and TE made their agreement verbally—a mistake on the former’s part that later involved them both in tormented lawsuit over quadruplex rights. Litigation Series, Quadruplex Case, vols. 70ff., PTAE.

59. Phillips, Sketches Old and New, 183.

60. Ibid.

61. “Affidavit of Thomas A. Edison in Regard to his Inventions of Duplex and Quadruplex Telegraphy,” 27 Apr. 1875, reprinted in Papers, 2.810; TE, “Testimony of invention” to Lemuel Serrell, 15 Feb. 1873, Quadruplex Case, 71.2, PTAE. See also Papers, 1.527, 529.

62. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 148–49; Israel, Edison, 83; Papers, 1.591.

63. Ibid. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 149.

64. Israel, Edison, 83; TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 150.

65. TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 150.

66. Francis B. Keene, U.S. consul in Geneva, quoted in David Lindsay, Madness in the Making: The Triumphant Rise and Untimely Fall of America’s Show Inventors (1997; New York, 2005), 229. See also Leah Burt, “George Edward Gouraud,” ts., Biographical Collection, TENHP.

67. TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 151.

68. Ibid., 150.

69. Papers, 1.501–2; TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 152.

70. TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 151; Israel, Edison, 87.

71. TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 152; London Echo, 22 Aug. 1889.

72. Joseph Murray to TE, 12 June 1873.

73. Orton quoted in Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (Baltimore, MD, 1986), 198; Israel, Edison, 99; Papers, 2.235.

74. Israel, Edison, 93–95; Papers, 2.3 ff.

75. TE in Golden Book, Apr. 1931, quoted in Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 232. The rest of this paragraph is closely based on Israel, Edison, 87–95.

76. TE quoted in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 158; Papers, 2.239. The article erroneously listed George Prescott of Western Union as co-inventor of the quadruplex. There were legal repercussions. See Israel, Edison, 98.

77. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 156; TE quoted in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 156. For another indication of the quadruplex’s complexity, see Papers, 2.314.

78. Prescott, Electricity and Telegraph, 843–44. “In essence,” Paul Israel writes, “Edison used a cascade of electromagnets to bridge over the time during which the reversed current regenerated the magnetic field in the main relay magnet.” Israel, Edison, 98. See also TE Patent 207,724, executed on 14 Dec. 1874.

79. Quoted in Israel, Edison, 99.

80. TE Patent 158,787, filed 13 Aug. 1874; TE in Scientific American, 5 Sept. 1874; TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 183. TE discovered the motograph principle on 10 Apr. 1874. Papers, 2.178–79.

81. TE Patent 158,787.

82. Papers, 2.178; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 69; Scientific American, 5 Sept. 1874 (italics added). TE’s letter to the magazine on this date is reprinted in its entirety in Papers, 2.282–83.

83. Papers, 2.315–20, 281–82, 301; TE in Operator, 25 Nov. 1874.

84. George Barker to TE, 3 Nov. 1874, PTAE; “Edison and The Telegrapher,” Papers, 2.305–7. Ashley’s attacks on TE continued through May 1875.

85. Papers, 2.331, 369. The editors speculate that TE might have been musing invective to get back at James Ashley.

86. Papers, 2.360.

87. Papers, 2.364, 813, 361. This was the note that later became the property of Lucy Seyfert, and the cause of TE’s protracted legal squabble with her, described in Part Five.

88. Papers, 2.813, 801, 366, 341, 365; Israel, Edison, 102; William Orton to Joseph Stearns, 2 Dec. 1874. TE did, however, file four precautionary caveats on 4 Dec. 1874. See Papers, 2.347–60.

89. Papers, 2.364, 813, 801.

90. TE reminiscence, Papers, 2.780. The date of this visit is uncertain, but it probably occurred on or just before 30 Dec. 1874, the day Gould concluded his acquisition of the Automatic Company.

91. Phillips, Sketches Old and New, 186; Klein, Life of Gould, 216, 197–200; Israel, Edison, 102.

92. TE reminiscence, Papers, 2.780.

93. Papers, 2.788. The details of the transaction were more complex than TE chose to remember. See Papers, 2.378–79.

94. Israel, Edison, 102; Papers, 2.801.

95. Papers, 2.405, 407. Orton died on 22 April 1878, aged fifty-one.

96. Papers, 2.375, 382. There is a facsimile of Mary’s elaborate invitation card in Papers, 2.418.

97. Papers, 2.463. Harrington, ailing, sold TE’s automatic patents to Gould in Apr. 1875 and moved to England, leaving his partners much distressed. The territorial and patent wars between Western Union and A&P were resolved in a merger of both companies in 1877. Israel, Edison, 104.

98. Papers, 2.488; Israel, Edison, 104–5.

99. Papers, 2.493–94, 2.495, 500–502.

100. Papers, 2.502.

101. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 10ff., 99; Papers, 2.561–62, 582; TE “Autographic Press” draft caveat in Papers, 586ff.; Israel, Edison, 106. DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, notes the electric pen’s ancestry of today’s tattoo needle (16–17).

102. Charles to Tom Batchelor, 1 Sept. 1875, PTAE.

103. U.S. Patent 141,777; TE testimony in Speaking Telephone Interferences, 1.5, Litigation Series, PTAE, hereafter Telephone Interferences. A year later Elisha Gray adopted the same principle in his “musical telegraph.” It was the feature that distinguished his telephone design from (and above) Bell’s, when they both filed for patents on 14 Feb. 1876. See Seth Shulman, The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell‘s Secret (New York, 2009), for the possibly criminal consequences of this coincidence.

104. Papers, 2.581; TE caveat “Acoustic Telegraphy,” 22 Nov. 1875, Papers, 2.645.

105. Papers, 2.647; “Edison’s Discovery of a Supposed New Force,” Operator, Jan. 1876. TE sketched some of these scintillations, even recording their colors and “scents.” Papers, 2.689.

106. Papers, 2.494, 648.

107. Israel, Edison, 112; Arthur Kennelly interview, 19 May 1936, Biographical File, TENHP.

108. Addresses of William J. Hammer and Arthur Kennelly, Minutes of the 38th Meeting of the Association of Edison Illuminating Cos. (Oct. 1922), 397. See also the comments of Oliver Lodge in Francis Jehl, “Edison’s Contributions to Wireless,” Edison Monthly, Dec. 28, and Arthur Kennelly interview, 19 May 1936, Biographical File, TENHP. The latter described TE’s dark box as “the first piece of wireless apparatus in the world.” TE’s etheric force experiments in November and December 1875 are detailed in Papers, 2.646–702.

109. Israel, Edison, 130, states that TE studied Hermann von Helmholtz’s seminal On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music around this time. He cites as evidence TE’s copious marginalia in a copy of the July, 1875, English translation preserved as a family relic in ENHP. Contemporary references in the marginalia, however (to “Marconi the Receiver,” e.g.,) indicate that they were written in the 1890s, and possibly not until TE’s “Insomnia Squad” experiments in 1912. Patrick Feaster notes that as late as the spring of 1877, TE had little knowledge of Helmholtzian acoustic theory. “Speech Acoustics and the Keyboard Telephone: Rethinking Edison’s Discovery of the Phonograph Principle,” ARSC Journal 38.1 (2007), 16–17.

110. See Gall, “Edison: Managing Menlo Park”; quote in DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 22; Israel, Edison, 130.

111. Papers, 2.524, 526, 720, 723; TE Patent 141,777; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 176.

112. Papers, 2.629.

113. Israel, Edison, 123. There is a reproduction of the invitation to this party (calligraphed with an electric pen) in Papers, 2.769.

114. Gall, “Edison: Managing Menlo Park”; Josephson, Edison, 96.

115. Papers, 3.3.

116. Samuel Edison fathered three children by Mary Sharlow, whom he never married. “Edison, Miller, and Affiliated Families” in Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 163.

117. George P. Lathrop, “Edison’s Father,” unidentified newspaper article, 20 Jan. 1894, TENHP.

118. Israel, Edison, 123; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 31.

119. “A Visit to Edison,” Philadelphia Weekly Times, 29 Apr. 1878; Josiah Reiff testified to TE’s need for ambient silence in Telephone Interferences, 1.274–78. Bell’s historic “Mr. Watson” telephone call had been made on 10 Mar. 1876.

120. See, e.g., TE Patent 198,087, “Telephonic Telegraph.”

121. U.S. Centennial Commission, List of Awards Made to the American Exhibitors, International Exhibition 1876 (Philadelphia, 1876), 79, 113; Israel, Edison, 125. Thomson was equally impressed with TE’s American automatic telegraph, which could send more than one thousand words a minute, ten times the speed “attained by the best of the other systems hitherto in use in America or any other part of the world.” Papers, 3.55.

122. Shulman, Telephone Gambit, 189–90; Edward Johnson to T. C. Martin, 21 Nov. 1908, TENHP.

123. Bucks County (PA) Gazette, 1 June 1876; TE to Frederick Royce, 29 May 1876, PTAE. There are no records in PTAE of TE attending the centennial, but the collection is sparse in its coverage of the early Menlo Park period.

124. Papers, 3.27–53, 46.

125. Israel, Edison, 131, 127; Papers, 3.64, 82–83; Israel, Edison, 131.

126. Papers, 3.229, 344, 172–73, 120, 359, 168, 312, 254–55; TE quoted 255.

127. Papers, 1.659 (“It was this instrument which gave me the idea for the phonograph”) and 3.250. Edison meant it to improve on the already impressive performance of his automatic telegraph, which on 5 Dec. 1876 transmitted President Grant’s 12,600-word annual message from Washington to New York in just over an hour. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 77.

128. TE technical note NS7704ZC11, 8 Sept. 1877, PTAE; TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 206–7; TE Patent 213,554, “Automatic Telegraph.” See also Papers, 3.248–50.

129. Pretzer, Working at Inventing, 88; Papers, 3.257; Feaster, “Speech Acoustics,” 12–13. TE’s first official notice that he was intent on transmitting “spoken words regardless of musical key” was in his application for U.S. Patent 474,230 (27 Apr. 1877). He called this metal-diaphragm device a “phonetic or speaking telegraph.”

130. Papers, 3.257–88.

131. Papers, 3.300 (“We can get everything perfect except the lisps & hissing parts of speech such as ‘Sh’ in shall = get only .o in coach”); TE quoted in Israel, Edison, 132–33. See also Pretzer, Working at Inventing, 91.

132. Pretzer, Working at Inventing, 92–93; Papers, 3.518.

133. Papers, 3.361; Feaster, “Speech Acoustics,” 19. The author is indebted in the sections that follow to Feaster’s important article.

134. TE unbound notebook no. 11, 26 May 1877, 109 (signed and witnessed by Batchelor).

135. The circuit-breaking tonewheel had been an essential part of TE’s acoustic telegraph designs in 1875 and 1876. Papers, 3.361–62; Feaster, “Speech Acoustics,” 20–21.

136. Feaster argues that at this stage, TE was still misinformed as to the oscillographic nature of acoustic recording, and that ironically, his ignorance allowed him to proceed without prejudice into development of the phonograph. “Speech Acoustics,” 36.

137. Ibid., 19–23.

138. Israel, Edison, 137; Papers, 3.435, 363; Journal of the Telegraph, 1 June 1877.

139. Papers, 3.379, 427–28; TE Patents 474,231 and 474,232; Charles to Tom Batchelor, 11 June 1877, PTAE; Operator, 15 June 1877.

140. TE Patent 203,014; Elisha Andrew to Gardiner Hubbard (Bell’s backer), 16 Jul. 1877, Papers, 3.435.

141. Charles Batchelor to Ezra Gilliland, 26 July 1877, Papers, 3.463.

142. Marshall, Recollections of Edison, 56.

143. Papers, 3.444.

144. TE interviewed in Talking Machine Journal, Sept. 1927; Feaster, “Speech Acoustics,” 22, 28, 24–25; TE, “The Perfected Phonograph,” North American Review, June 1888; Buffalo Evening News, 2 Aug. 1904; TE quoted in Minneapolis Star Tribune, 4 Mar. 1878; Dickson and Dickson, Life and Inventions, 122–23; TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 207; Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 115.

145. TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 207.

146. Ibid.

147. Transcript in George Gouraud Biographical Collection, TENHP.

148. Papers, 3.444. Previously, the word phonograph had meant a shorthand stenographer.

149. Patrick Feaster, “Perfectly Reproduced Slow or Fast”: A New Take on Edison’s First Playbook of Sound,” The Sound Box, Mar. 2011; Papers, 3.439 (facsimile).

150. Papers, 3.440. The first scholar to deduce the full significance of this document was Patrick Feaster, in “Speech Acoustics,” 25–26. See also Israel, Edison, 143 (facsimile). Feaster points out that the phonographic device, as sketched, would not have worked, because TE imagined the cylinder could be played back at a slow speed for a copyist to transcribe, making the sound unintelligible. “Neither Edison nor anyone else would yet have been in a position to know this.”

151. Charles Batchelor testimony, American Graphophone Company v. U.S. Phonograph Company et al., 586. For another version of this reminiscence, see Papers, 3.699–700.

152. Papers, 3.495. Coincidentally, the “phonograph” TE did design on 12 Aug. 1877 differed totally from the Kruesi model. It consisted of a resonating box with two diaphragm-needle attachments, one labled “spk” and the other “listen,” following the groove of a roll of paper tape unrolling beneath them. TE Technical Drawing NS7703B, Unbound Notes 1877, PTAE.

153. Allen Koenigsberg, Edison’s Cylinder Records, 1889–1912 (New York, 1987), xiii–xiv; Pretzer, Working at Inventing, 110; Papers, 3.446–47, 449–50. Israel, Edison, points out that TE devoted himself entirely to telephone improvements through October 1877, and did not return to phonograph development until November (139). But see also the cogent observation in Dyer and Martin, Edison, that around this time all TE’s “phonic” researches tended to blend in his head (198).

154. Charles Batchelor “The Invention of the Phonograph,” in Papers, 3.699.

155. See, e.g., Wilmington (DE) News-Journal, 1 Oct. 1877 (“This is no joke”).

156. Reprinted in Papers, 3.670–74.

157. Papers, 3.671 (facsimile), 672.

158. Papers, 3.674.

159. According to Newspapers.com, TE was called “Professor” five times in 1877, and 823 times in 1878.

160. Papers, 3.628, 4.140, 58–59, 133, 140; New York Tribune, 25 Mar. 1877; George Bliss to TE, 13 Apr. 1878, PTAE; St. Paul (MN) Globe, 3 Mar. 1878 (a widely reprinted article from the New York Sun); New York Daily Graphic, 10 Apr. 1878.

161. Papers, 4.197, 191.

162. TE’s letter was reproduced in facsimile in Daily Graphic on 16 May 1878.

163. Washington Evening Star, 19 Apr. 1878; Papers, 4.242–43; New York Tribune, 20 Apr. 1878.

164. Washington Evening Star, 19 Apr. 1878.

165. New York Tribune, 20 Apr. 1878.

166. Washington Evening Star, 19 Apr. 1878.

167. John Brisben Walker to TE, 26 Feb. 1924, TENHP; Philadelphia Inquirer, 20 Apr. 1878; Papers, 4.243, 863.

168. Feather River (Quincey, CA) Bulletin, 29 June 1878. This article is misdated as 29 Oct. 1877 at Newspapers.com. See also TE’s comments on Scott in Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 114–15.

169. Reproduced above.

170. TE Patent 200,521 was issued on 19 Feb. 1878.

171. Papers, 4.134, 3–4; Raymond E. Wile, “The Rise and Fall of the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company, 1877–1880,” ts., ca. 1970s, TENHP.

172. Adrian Hope, “A Century of Recorded Sound,” New Scientist 22 (24 Dec. 1977).

173. Papers, 4.133, 862; Pretzer, Working at Inventing, 94–95.

174. TE in New York World, 23 Apr. 1878 (“Whenever I get to love a man, he dies right away. Lefferts went first, and now Orton’s gone too”); Israel, Edison, 157, 140; Papers, 4.78, 862.

175. Papers, 4.181. Orton died on 22 April.

176. Papers, 4.243.

177. Israel, Edison, 141; Pretzer, Working at Inventing, 84.

178. Papers, 4.862. Edward Johnson remarked that Edison, “the Dam fool,” could have gotten £12,000 ($233,000) if he sold his carbon telephone to a British consortium. As it was, he included all his telephone patents in his deal with Western Union. The telegraph giant then tried to use them to batter the Bell Telephone Company into insolvency. Although this effort failed after many years of litigation back and forth, Western Union at last profited greatly by selling out to Bell. Papers, 4.178; Pretzer, Working at Inventing, 96.

179. DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 40–41; Papers, 4.259, 55, 260–62.

180. Papers, 4.260, 270. Although TE patented the tasimeter in Britain, he left it unprotected in the United States, on the grounds that he sought no royalties from “instruments of a purely scientific character.” Papers, 4.458.

181. Pretzer, Working at Inventing, 96–97; Papers, 4.88, 135, 282, 352ff., 265; TE interviewed in Daily Graphic, 4 May 1878.

182. Israel, Edison, 157; TE to William Preece, 19 May 1878, PTAE.

183. Telegraphic Journal and Electrical Review, 1 July 1878; TE to Preece, 4 May 1878, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 158; Preece to TE, 22 May 1878, PTAE.

184. Israel, Edison, 158.

185. Ibid., 159; William Thomson to Preece, 12 June 1878, PTAE; TE to Henry Edmunds, Jr., 26 May 1878.

186. For a detailed account of the microphone controversy, see Israel, Edison, 158–60. It is extensively covered in Papers vol. 4, passim. Although at least one British journal, Engineering, deliberately suppressed data that supported Edison’s case, his reputation in Britain suffered as a result of bringing it. Late in the year Thomson criticized him for failing to acknowledge that he had overreacted. “There is no doubt he is an exceedingly ingenious inventor, and I should have thought he had it in him to rise above…the kind of puffing of which there has been so much.” Thomson to Preece, quoted in Papers, 4.677–78.

187. Papers, 4.368–72, 347. For the interest of scientific officials in the tasimeter, see Papers, 4.270.

188. Papers, 4.401.

189. Papers, 4.373

190. Papers, 4.376; New York World, 27 Aug. 1878; N. N. Craig (Western Union telegraph operator), “Looking for Thrills,” ts. memoir, 25, TENHP; TE reminiscing in Papers, 4.856. “Texas Jack,” alias John B. Omohundro, was a former army scout pursuing a theatrical career in 1878. See David Baron, American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of the Moon and Win the Glory of the World (New York, 2017), loc. 1216. This book offers an excellent account of the total eclipse of 1878.

191. New York Herald, 29 July 1878.

192. Laramie Daily Sentinel, 30 July 1878.

193. New York Herald, 29 July 1878; John A. Eddy, “Thomas A. Edison and Infra-Red Astronomy,” Journal of the History of Astronomy 3 (1972); Telegraphic Journal, 1 Aug. 1878; Papers, 4.435.

194. Laramie Daily Sentinel, 30 July 1878. The following account is largely based on the reporting of Edwin Fox, TE’s companion, in New York Herald, 30 July 1878.

195. Rebecca Hein, “Moon Shadows over Wyoming: The Solar Eclipse of 1878, 1889, and 1918,” Wyohistory.org, 29 June 2017; TE reminiscence in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 230; New York Herald, 30 July 1878; Papers, 4.435.

196. TE interviewed in New York World, 27 Aug.1878; TE, “On the Use of the Tasimeter for Measuring the Heat of the Stars and of the Sun’s Corona,” paper read to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 15 Aug. 1878, in Papers, 4.432–36; New York Herald, 30 July 1878.

197. Phil Roberts, “Edison, the Light Bulb, and the Eclipse of 1878,” 8 Nov. 2014, Wyohistory.org.

198. See Allerhand, Illustrated History, 40, 107, and passim.

199. TE, “The Beginnings of the Incandescent Lamp and Lighting System,” ts., 1926, HFM.

200. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 450; Papers, 5.232–34.

201. See Baron, American Eclipse for the mystical effect of a total eclipse on many observers (chap. 16).

202. Papers, 4.432–35; Stockton Griffin to TE, 5 Aug. 1878, PTAE.

203. Stockton Griffin to E. H. Brown, 20 Aug. 1878, PTAE; Papers, 4.441. TE declined to read three other papers, on his carbon button, carbon telephone, and a new “sonorous voltameter.” Barker presented them in his stead. Papers, 4.375.

204. New York Sun, 29 Aug. 1878.

205. Papers, 4.445.

206. TE notebook entry, 2 Feb. 1877, in Papers, 3.246; Israel, Edison, 165; Papers, 4.325.

207. Papers, 4.468, 867, 868.

208. “An acquaintance,” almost certainly Charles Frederick Chandler, another member of Barker’s party, quoted in Denver (CO) News, 5 July 1891.

209. Ibid.; New York Sun, 10 Sept. 1878; Papers, 4.469.

210. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 211.

211. Papers, 4.469; New York Sun, 20 Oct. 1878.

212. Papers, 4.470, 473–487; TE to William Wallace, 13 Sept. 1878, PTAE.

213. “Edison’s Newest Marvel,” New York Sun, 16 Sept, 1878. The entire interview is printed in Papers, 4.503–5.

214. “Edison’s Newest Marvel.”

215. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 16; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 241, 235; TE Patent 214,636; TE Patent 214,637, “Thermal Regulation for Electric-Lights.”

216. Strouse, Morgan, 183.

217. Hughes, Networks of Power, 48–49; Papers, 4.551; DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 50.

218. Papers, 4.586.

219. New York Sun, 20 Oct. 1878.

220. Ibid.

221. Papers, 4.648, 642–43. New York Herald announced that “A New Talking Machine Makes Its Appearance in Menlo Park.”

222. Papers, 4.664.

223. McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 117; Papers, 4.657–58, 664.

224. Lowrey to TE, 10 Dec. 1878, PTAE; Gall, “Edison: Managing Menlo Park,” 40.

225. Francis Upton, 12 Dec. 1878, PTAE.

226. Strouse, Morgan, 230–31; TE in New York Sun, 19 Dec. 1878; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 19–21. The boilers were fed with piped water from a nearby brook. Jehl, “TAE – MP,” 26.

227. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 29–30; Bright, Electric Lamp Industry, 47–53.

228. Lowrey to TE, 25 Jan. 1879, quoted in Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 31.

229. TE quoted in Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 197; Papers, 4.756.

230. Papers, 4.756; TE reminiscence in Papers, 4.864.

231. Papers, 4.507–8, 561–62, 235, 125; Scientific American, 26 Apr. 1878.

232. Papers, 5.149, 124.

233. London Times, 22 Mar. 1879.

234. Papers, 5.126.

235. Papers, 5.126, 157; Francis Upton to Elijah Upton, 23 Feb. 1879, PTAE.

236. “Edison’s Electric-Light Inventions,” Appleton’s Cyclopedia 1879 (New York, 1880); Papers, 5.53, 5.55.

237. Quoted in Israel, Edison, 172. McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 218, points out that TE was unconsciously restating Joule’s law of resistance, W=V2 / R.

238. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 33, 53–57; Israel, Edison, 182.

239. Upton addressing the Edison Pioneers, 11 Feb. 1918, Biographical File, PTAE.

240. W. S. Andrews to E. H. Mullin, 4 Apr. 1898, Meadowcroft Collection, TENHP; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 58; Israel, Edison, 182; Association of Edison Illuminating Companies, “Edisonia,” 28–29. See also TE Patent 227,229.

241. Journal of Gas Lighting, 20 Jan. 1880.

242. TE quoted in Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 58; TE in Mar. 1882, quoted in Israel, Edison, 182.

243. Francis to Elijah Upton, 6 July 1878, PTAE.

244. Papers, 5.161, 227, 242–43.

245. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 325–27; New York Herald, 10 Dec. 1880; Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park.”

246. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 250–51. See also Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 45ff.; Papers, 5.4.

247. Papers, 5.277, 195–96; Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 63. Seven of the five hundred volumes Edison ordered for his library in 1879 were mineralogy studies.

248. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 46; Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1880), 173ff. See also Papers, 5.347–54; Francis to Elijah Upton, 31 Aug. 1878, PTAE.

249. Friedel and Israel, Edison’s Electric Light, 62–63.

250. “Edison and the Electric Incandescent Lamp,” The Street Railway Bulletin, 14 (Oct. 1914).

251. Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 252; Edwin M. Fox, “A Night with Edison,” New York Herald, 31 Dec. 1879.

252. Fox, “Night with Edison.”

253. Ibid.

254. Ibid.

255. Ibid.

256. Ibid.

257. Ibid.

258. Ibid.

259. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 30 Dec. 1879; New York Tribune, 1 Jan. 1880.

PART SEVEN · TELEGRAPHY (1860–1869)

1. “Sunday 1 Mr. Edison’s Interview” galley, E.Bio, TENHP. See also Dyer and Martin, Edison, 40–41. Note: The most important source of information about TE’s teenage years remains his series of dictated or jotted reminiscences, prepared in 1908–9 at the request of his official biographers, Dyer and T. C. Martin. Volume 1 of The Papers of Thomas A. Edison reprints all the memoranda relevant to TE’s childhood and early youth as Appendix 1, pp. 627ff. Except where otherwise indicated, the following narrative through 1869 is based on this appendix. TE’s memory often has to be taken on trust, for lack of supporting evidence, throughout the 1860s. Whenever possible, slips in his recall have been corrected in text. For example, when he recalls driving the locomotive “62 and a half miles,” he is remembering the full length of the Grand Trunk Railway from Port Huron to Detroit. It was more likely 47 ½ miles, because he also says that the engineer drove “fifteen miles” first.

2. Runes, Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison, 50.

3. TE’s working day on the Grand Trunk Railway in 1860 was at first shorter than he remembered. The train left from Port Huron at eight A.M. and returned from Detroit at 3:50 P.M. Each journey took about three hours. By the spring of 1862, schedule changes had lengthened his hours from seven A.M. to about ten-thirty P.M. Detroit Free Press, 9 Aug. and 21 Nov. 1859; TE, Weekly Herald, 3 Feb. 1862, HFM; Papers, 1.27.

4. Papers, 1.6–7, 630; Detroit Free Press, 15 Sept. 1859; George P. Lathrop, “Edison’s Father”; TE reminiscing in Lucius Hitchcock to Aunt Sade, 3 Dec. 1930, TENHP.

5. Ballentine, “Early Life of Edison”; map drawn and marked “1860” by TE, reproduced in Stamps, Hawkins, and Wright, Search for the House, 16; Papers, 1.632.

6. Papers, 1.629, 631; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 32; Nancy Wright, “The House in the Grove,” in Stamps, Hawkins, and Wright, Search for the House, 41. This essay is an important source of information about TE’s youth in Port Huron.

7. Detroit Free Press, 19 May 1860; Paul Taylor, “Old Slow Town”: Detroit During the Civil War (Detroit, MI, 2013), loc. 77; Detroit Free Press, 9 Sept. 1860, e.g. Young Al also did a good trade in Lincoln campaign buttons. TE memo, ca. 1929, Biographical Collection, TENHP.

8. Despite the fanatical anti-Lincoln bias of its leading newspaper, Michigan strongly supported the Union cause. Taylor, “Old Slow Town,” chap. 2.

9. Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 28; Weekly Herald, 3 Feb. 1862.

10. Weekly Herald, 3 Feb. 1862.

11. Ibid.

12. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 33. The story, in this and other biographies, that the British engineer George Stephenson traveled on the Grand Trunk and publicized TE’s newspaper in the London Times is apocryphal. Only one other issue of the Weekly Herald has survived, as a facsimile in Magazine of Michigan 1 (Oct. 1929). It is datelined “June [1862], Published by the Newsboy on the Mixed Train.” See also Battle Creek Evening News, 21 Oct. 1959.

13. Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 16–17.

14. Papers, 1.629; Detroit Free Press, 9 Apr. 1862.

15. Detroit Free Press, 9 Apr. 1862; Papers, 1.629; TE, Weekly Herald, 3 Feb. 1862. The generally accepted casualty total for Shiloh is 17,854.

16. Lathrop, “Talks with Edison.”

17. Ibid. TE mistakenly recalled that he dealt with the editor’s predecessor, Wilbur F. Storey. Papers, 1.630.

18. Papers, 1.630.

19. TE to Willis Engle, 10 Aug. 1862. Papers, 1.27 (“My time is taken up with my business in the cars….I don’t get home until ten in the evening”). For TE’s hearing loss around this time, see Dyer and Martin, Edison, 37; TE to William J. Curtis, 7 May 1920 (“I have been deaf for 60 years”); Ford, Edison As I Knew Him, 20, 24–25; TE Diary; Papers, 1.670; and Israel, Edison, 17. For the scarlet fever theory, see Robert Traynor, “The Deafness of Edison,” Hearing International, 19 Feb. 2013, hearinghealthmatters.org.

20. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 49–51.

21. Telegraph 6, no. 1 (28 Aug. 1869).

22. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 51. Note: It is not clear from the sparse records of this part of TE’s life just when his service with the Grand Trunk ended, or when exactly he took up telegraphy. He seems to have worked the Mount Clemens–Port Huron segment for at least a while in the fall and winter of 1862, delegating the rest of the trip to another boy. Several operators along the line recalled him stopping by to practice on their instruments. According to his own recollection, he sent a few primitive messages along a half-mile stovepipe wire rigged between his house and a friend’s in Fort Gratiot. His serious study of the medium, however, began under Mackenzie. Israel, Edison, 18; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 48–51.

23. Papers, 1.10–11.

24. Papers, 1.6, reproduces TE’s society membership card, dated 15 Sept. 1862. Library regulations did not permit the registration of boys younger than eighteen. Papers, 1.7; Detroit—Young Men’s Society, Catalogue of the Library, with a Historical Sketch (Detroit, 1865). All the volumes TE claimed to have read in youth are listed in this catalog with the exception of Fresenius’s Chemical Analysis.

25. Norman Speiden to George E. Probst, 4 Mar. 1959, TENHP; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 51; Papers, 1.631.

26. Papers, 1.10; William D. Wright to TE, 29 June 1900, TENHP; Israel, Edison, 21.

27. Ibid., 3; Henry Hartsuff on 3 Apr. 1863, quoted in “House in the Grove,” 44.

28. Ibid., 44–45; Papers, 1.631; “Edison, Miller, and Affiliated Families,” in Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 151ff.

29. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 54–55.

30. Papers, 1.631.

31. TE reminiscing in Papers, 1.632. Note: A number of unverifiable or conflicting stories about TE’s teenage wanderings were published during his lifetime. Francis Arthur Jones, e.g., writing in 1908, has TE working as a railroad night operator in Port Huron before doing so in Canada, and locates the train-convergence anecdote in Sarnia rather than Stratford, Ontario. Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 39–44. Since so few actual records of the period survive, this biography as far as possible confines itself to accounts TE himself authorized.

32. Papers, 1.661.

33. David Hochfelder, The Telegraph in America, 1832–1920 (Baltimore, MD, 2012), 3.

34. Banner motto of Telegraph in the mid–1860s. See, e.g., Papers, 1.13. TE refers nostalgically to corn whiskey in a letter to Charles Mixer, 24 July 1920, TENHP.

35. Papers, 1.655. TE recalled that only “3 percent” of these jokes were publishable (1.661).

36. Dee Alexander Brown, The Bold Cavaliers (Philadelphia, 1959), 80. Coincidentally, George Ellsworth, the telegrapher whom Brown cites as having this sixth sense, demonstrated it when working with TE in Cincinnati in 1865. Papers, 1.663.

37. W. P. Phillips (a former TE telegraph associate), Oakum Pickings (New York, 1876), 138–39 and passim for stories of life on the telegraph trail in the 1860s.

38. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 65; Ezra Gilliland interview, Cincinnati Commercial, 19 Mar. 1879. This is the only source that specifically states TE moved to Adrian “in 1863.” An old-timer quoted in Papers, 4.452 recalls him arriving there in an “old straw hat, linen coat and pants.”

39. Josephson, Edison, 44; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 65–66; Papers, 4.873.

40. Papers, 1.659.

41. Papers, 1.36–37; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 67–68.

42. Israel, Edison, 29; Papers, 1.661. “This peculiar state of the brain doing intellectual work unconsciously should be investigated,” TE wrote in 1908. It has been, in modern times. See Iwan Morus, “ ‘The Nervous System of Britain’: Space, Time, and the Electric Telegraph in the Victorian Age,” British Journal for the History of Science 33, no. 4 (2000).

43. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 70.

44. Ibid.; Papers, 1.660. See also TE memo, ca. 1929, Biographical Collection, TENHP.

45. Quoted in Phillips, Sketches Old and New, 65; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 68–69.

46. “Tom Edison’s Operating Days,” Operator 9 (1 Apr. 1878); Israel, Edison, 28–29.

47. Papers, 1.637, 660–61; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 73.

48. Papers, 1.661.

49. There is uncertainty about the chronology of TE’s stays in these cities in late 1865 and early 1866. His movements have to be inferred from fragmentary sources, best summarized in Israel, Edison, 30–33.

50. Papers, 1.28.

51. TE to Sam and Nancy Edison, ca. spring 1866, PTAE; Papers, 1.29, 657; Israel, Edison, 32.

52. Papers, 1.650; TE reminiscing in Frank L. Dyer Diary, entry for 20 Feb. 1906, TENHP.

53. Wright, “House in the Grove,” 48, 26, 49.

54. Ibid., 47–48; Papers, 1.17.

55. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 80; Papers, 1.75–76.

56. George Bliss quoted in Papers, 4.875; TE reminiscing in Papers, 1.653, 650; TE quoted in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 80.

57. Papers, 1.653–54; Louisville Courier-Journal, 4 Dec. 1866 and 8 Jan. 1867. The earlier issue contains an editorial reference to “the extraordinary and late rush of telegraphic copy this morning,” whereby space needed for Johnson’s message “has compelled us to exclude many important dispatches.” Papers, 1.75.

58. Papers, 1.30–31, 36–49, 662; Israel, Edison, 36. Faraday died on 25 Aug. 1867.

59. Z. T. Underwood in Oakland Tribune, 19 Oct. 1931; Papers, 4.874; Phillips, Sketches Old and New, 179; Eugene Baker in Cincinnati Post, 22 July 1929, clipping in Biographical Collection, TENHP.

60. See Israel, Edison, 35–36, for the sophistication of Cincinnati’s telegraph elite at this time.

61. Papers, 1.56.

62. “Edison’s Double Transmitter,” Telegrapher, 11 Apr. 1868, Papers, 1.56–58. Little is known of the approximately six months TE spent in Port Huron between October 1867 and March 1868. It is possible he returned there to help his parents adjust to their new straitened circumstances. He appears to have spent the winter working on telegraph designs and speculative articles. In March, short of money, restless, and hopeful for a job with Western Union in the East, he wrangled a free pass from the Grand Trunk Railway and made a snowbound journey via Montreal to Boston, arriving there around the end of the month. Papers, 1.635–36.

63. Papers, 1.51.

64. TE reminiscing in Papers, 1.636; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 99.

65. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 99–100; Papers, 1.637.

66. Telegrapher, 1 Aug. 1868.

67. Papers, 1.633, 38.

68. Papers, 1.635.

69. Ibid.

70. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 100–1; Josephson, Edison, 62.

71. Journal of the Telegraph, 11 Apr. 1868; Papers, 1.98–100.

72. Papers, 1.61–62.

73. Ibid., 1.77–81, 67. In August 1870 Daniel Craig wrote a letter introducing TE to Farmer, praising him as “a genius only second to yourself” and proposing a collaborative venture on a printing machine. Neither the meeting nor the venture seem to have occurred. Papers, 1.182–84.

74. Papers, 1.67, 83; TE to John Van Duzer, 5 Sept. 1868. TE’s proposed facsimile telegraph was intended for the Asian export market. See Israel, Edison, 43–44.

75. TE Patent 90,646, issued 1 June 1969; Papers, 1.84–86. His whittling marks are still visible on the preserved model of the vote recorder in HFM. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 38.

76. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 103. TE vaguely implied in 1908 that he took the recordograph to Washington and “exhibited [it] before a committee that had something to do with the Capitol,” but there was no contemporary evidence of his doing so.

77. Papers, 1.60; Israel, Edison, 42–43.

78. Papers, 1.111.

79. TE Patent 91,527.

80. Papers, 1.102–3; Israel, Edison, 45–46. Laws abandoned his Boston venture later in 1869, when the two Gold & Stock companies merged in New York.

81. Papers, 1.113; Israel, Edison, 44–45.

82. Papers, 1.121.

83. Josephson, Edison, 698; Papers, 1.116, 121, 118; Israel, Edison, 48; Charles A. Barnes, former Rochester telegraph executive, in Plainfield (NJ) Courier-News, 25 Oct. 1929; TE to Louis Wiley, 9 Feb. 1925, TENHP; TE to Frank Hanaford, 26 July 1869, PTAE; TE phonograph reminiscence quoted in John W. Lieb, Dinner in Honor of Thomas A. Edison and in Commemoration of Forty Years of Edison Service in New York, 11th September 1922 (New York, 1923), copy in TENHP.

84. Israel, Edison, 48; Papers, 1.121.

85. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 122; Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 62–63.

86. TE reminiscing, quoted in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 123.

87. James Laws Ricketts to Charles Edison, 3 Feb. 1947, Biographical Collection, TENHP. TE’s memory of being at once put in charge of Laws’s “whole plant” accelerates chronology. That promotion, and consequent “violent jump” in salary, did not occur until the summer.

88. Papers, 1.128; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 123.

89. TE Patent 96,567; Papers, 1.179, 126; Israel, Edison, 50.

90. Papers, 1.114.

91. Papers, 1.163.

92. Papers, 1.136, 138; TE in New York Morning Journal, 26 July 1891; Klein, Life of Gould, 69–70, 109, 112–13; Cornwallis, Gold Room and the Stock Exchange, 15–16; TE reminiscing in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 126.

93. Ashley quoted in Israel, Edison, 51; Papers, 1.132–34; advertisement facsimile in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 128.

94. Ibid., 129.

PART EIGHT · NATURAL PHILOSOPHY (1847–1859)

1. This Part, like Part Seven, is based on TE’s reminiscences recorded in 1908 and 1909 for his biographers Frank Dyer and T. C. Martin, and republished as Appendix 1 in vol. 1 of The Papers of Thomas A. Edison, pp. 627ff. Supplementary or corrective details from other sources are documented below.

2. Sam Edison stood 62 tall, and with his muscular frame had the effect of filling every room he entered. According to his son, he was deemed at age 69 to have had “the highest chest expansion of anyone except one” in the annals of the Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York. Papers, 4.870; Sheldon Wood to TE, 5 Sept. 1929, TENHP; TE superscript on his copy of DeLemar Lectures 1925–1929 127, TENHP.

3. Henry Ford, “The Greatest of Americans,” Hearst’s International / Cosmopolitan, July 1930; TE superscript on W. H. Raymenton to TE, 14 Nov. 1921, TENHP; Marion Estelle Edison (1829–1900) was married to Homer Page on 19 Dec. 1849.

4. TE’s other living siblings were William Pitt Edison (1831–91) and Harriet “Tannie” Edison (1833–63). For a compact genealogy of all his relatives, see Thomas E. Jeffrey, “Edison, Miller, and Affiliated Families,” in Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 151ff.

5. Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr., was born on 16 Aug. 1804. Nancy Elliot Edison’s birthdate is the subject of some dispute, being either 4 Jan. 1808 or 4 Jan. 1810. Jeffrey, “Edison, Miller, and Affiliated Families.”

6. Israel, Edison, 2–4; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 25.

7. “The Birthplace of Edison Dreams of Her Fallen Greatness,” Firelands Pioneer 13 (1900), 716ff.; Wallace B. White, Milan Township and Village: One Hundred and Fifty Years (Milan O., 1959) 15–19.

8. “Birthplace of Edison,” 440; milanarea.com.; TE to Sandusky Register, 31 Dec. 1922, TENHP.

9. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 14; TE to Ruth Thompson, 12 June 1922, TENHP; George Minard, TE schoolmate, in Sandusky Star-Journal, 13 Aug. 1923; R. F. McLaughlin to Mary C. Nerney, 4 Nov. 1929, Biographical Collection, TENHP.

10. Maria Cooke via Isoline Minty to Mary C. Nerney, 14 Dec. 1929, Biographical Collection, TENHP. See also Rev. C. Emmons in Pigott (AL) Banner, 25 Oct. 1929.

11. Samuel Edison, Jr., aged ninety, interviewed in Port Huron by George P. Lathrop, ca. 16 Aug. 1894.

12. TE quoted in Josephson, Edison, 13; Papers, 2.786. See also Dyer and Martin, Edison, 18.

13. “Second reader…as they used to term it.” Cooke/Minty to Mary C. Nerney, 14 Dec. 1929, TENHP; TE quoted in Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 6–7.

14. Israel, Edison, 4; Ballentine, “Early Life of Edison,” 1; oldtowneporthuron.com.

15. Wright, “House in the Grove,” 13ff.

16. Terry Pepper, “Seeing the Light: The Lighthouses of Lake Huron,” Terrypepper.com; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 24–25; Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 12–13.

17. Israel, Edison, 7; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 23–24; Israel, Edison, 6.

18. Taylor, “Old Slow Town,” loc. 5322; A. T. Andreas Co., St. Clair County, Michigan (Chicago, 1883), 550; Israel, Edison, 6.

19. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 25; Papers, 1.23–24, 27; Wright, “House in the Grove,” 30–31.

20. TE quoted in Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 7; M. G. Bridges to TE, 19 June 1911, TENHP; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 24; illustration in DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, xxii; Israel, Edison, 2; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 15; TE quoted in Israel, Edison, 14; reminiscence of a Port Huron contemporary of TE in Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 11–12.

21. A. R. Ogden to Arthur E. Bestor, 23 July 1879, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 7; Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 11; John F. Talbot to TE, 26 Nov. 1920, TENHP.

22. Papers, 4.870; TE superscript on Charles Gaston to TE, 23 July 1927, TENHP; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 26.

23. Ford, Edison As I Know Him, 20; Papers, 1.24. It is possible that TE first encountered Parker’s book in its abridged junior reader form (First Lessons in Natural Philosophy, 1848). The Union School curriculum carried the full version, as did many other American schools. Papers, 1.24.

24. Henceforth Parker, Natural Philosophy.

25. Ibid., xiii.

26. Ibid., xiv.

27. Ibid., xiv–xv.

28. Ibid., 20, 31–32.

29. Ibid., 81, 60.

30. Ibid., 98, 155, 168, 143.

31. Ibid., 98, 155, 168, 143.

32. Ibid., 258, 258.

33. Ibid., 259.

34. Apparently TE tried electrotherapy on Mattie Wilson, a young Fort Gratiot woman who concussed herself while ice skating. “My wife…says she well remembers the shock you gave her in the chair in the old Edison store.” George A. Fritz to TE, 27 Oct. 1927, TENHP.

35. Parker, Natural Philosophy, 294.

36. Ibid., 298ff., 304, 310.

37. Ibid., 173, 176, 174, 178–79.

38. Ibid., 179, 210–12, 220.

39. Ibid., 245.

40. Ibid., 233, 237–42.

41. Ibid., 396.

42. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 6; Papers, 1.628–29; TE quoted in Josephson, Edison, 27.

43. Papers, 1.629.

44. Parker, Natural Philosophy, xv; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 28.

45. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 28; Israel, Edison, 11. An archeological excavation of the site of the long-razed Edison home at Fort Gratiot in the late twentieth century disclosed many bottles, beakers, crucibles, test tubes, funnels, and other chemical paraphernalia. See Stamps, Hawkins, and Wright, Search for the House.

46. Ballentine, “Early Life of Edison,” 1; Israel, Edison, 11; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 290; Runes, Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison, 50. “The ear boxing incident never happened,” TE told Henry Ford in 1929, when they passed through Smiths Creek Station. But on the same journey he repeated his less believable story of being hauled aboard a departing train by the ears. Ford, Edison As I Know Him, 20, 24–25. Robert Traynor, “The Deafness of Edison,” February 9, 2013, Hearing International, Hearinghealthmatters.org, focuses on the theory that his hearing loss was caused by scarlet fever.

EPILOGUE (1931)

1. AP report, Sandusky (OH) Register, 21 Oct. 1931; Herbert Hoover, “Statement in a National Tribute to Thomas Alva Edison,” 20 Oct. 1931, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu.

2. Hoover, “Statement.”

3. AP news release, 21 Oct. 1931; Hartford Courant, 22 Oct. 1931; New York Daily News, 22 Oct. 1931; Chicago Tribune, 22 Oct. 1931. In 1963 TE’s coffin was reinterred in the grounds of Glenmont, where Mina is also buried.

4. AP news dispatch, 22 Oct. 1931; Montreal Gazette and Hartford Courant, same date.

5. Tampa Tribune, 22 Oct. 1931; Chicago Tribune.

6. As noted above, TE left an estate of $12 million ($198 million in today’s money), and there was some bickering among his children as to its fair disposition.

7. The three illegitimate children Sam fathered after the death of Mary Edison in 1871 were all girls. See Jeffrey, “Edison, Miller, and Affiliated Families.”

8. The following catalogue of local sound effects is taken from Ballentine, “Early Life of Edison” (Ballentine lived in the Edison house in Fort Gratiot after TE’s departure), as well as from John F. Talbot to TE, 26 Nov. 1920, and TE reminiscing to Ruth Thompson, 12 June 1922, both in TENHP.