The Wizard of Menlo Park

by Randall E. Stross

  Another project under way was the laboratory’s ongoing work on improving the quality of the telephone transmitter. Under Edison’s direction, the laboratory was in the midst of testing different materials as experimental diaphragms that would vibrate when receiving sound waves. A partial list of candidates: glass, mica, hard rubber, celluloid, aluminum foil, parchment, pith, leather, chamois, cloth, silk, gelatin, ivory, birch bark, rawhide, pig’s bladder, fish guts, and a $5 bill. To each, a mouthpiece was attached and then mounted in a frame for convenient handling. By holding the frame up and speaking in a loud voice while holding a finger on the rear of the diaphragm, one could detect the vibrations, all without the trouble of attaching it to a working telephone and applying electrical current.

  No less important than the technical antecedents was the setting, this after-hours laboratory. When Edison was working long hours, which on occasion meant all-night work sessions, his assistants were expected to do the same. Early on, Edison established a tradition of providing a midnight dinner in the lab, brought up by the night watchman. The feast was accompanied by a convivial conversation that was the only time of the workday that Edison would allow himself to relax. An employee described the typical pattern: “Hilarity came with the filling of stomachs, bantering and story telling were interlarded, until Edison arose, stretched, took a hitch at his waistband in sailor fashion and began to saunter away—the signal that dinner was over, and it was time to begin work again.”

  The day after Edison had noted the idea for recording voice messages received by a telegraphy office, he came up with a variation. That evening, on 18 July 1877, when the midnight dinner had been consumed but the men had not yet dispersed to return to the work of comparing different types of diaphragms for the telephone, Edison entertained himself speaking into one, while pressing his finger on the rear surface, feeling the vibrations. After a while, he turned around to face Batchelor and casually remarked, “Batch, if we had a point on this we could make a record on some material which we could afterwards pull under the point, and it would give us the speech back.”

  As soon as Edison had pointed it out, it seemed so obvious that they did not pause to appreciate what Batchelor would later describe as the “brilliancy” of the suggestion. Everyone jumped up to rig a test. John Kruesi, the laboratory’s chief machinist, took command of soldering a needle to the middle of a diaphragm; he then attached the diaphragm to a stand holding one of the wheels used in the automatic telegraph. Batchelor cut some strips of wax paper, and within an hour, they had the gizmo set up on the table, paper inserted on top of the wheel, and the needle adjusted so that it pressed lightly on the paper. Edison sat down, leaned into the mouthpiece, and while Batchelor pulled the paper through, he delivered the stock phrase the lab used to test telephone diaphragms: “Mary had a little lamb.”

  When they took a look, the paper strip, as expected, had irregular marks. Batchelor reinserted the beginning of the strip across the top of the wheel and beneath the needle, then pulled, trying to maintain the same speed as the first time. Out came “ary ad ell am.” “It was not fine talking,” Batchelor recalled, “but the shape of it was there.” The men celebrated with a whoop, shook hands with one another, and worked on. By breakfast the following morning, they had succeeded in getting clear articulation from waxed paper, the first recording medium—in the first midnight recording session.

  The all-nighter at the laboratory must have been a routine occurrence, for the discovery was treated surprisingly casually in the lab’s notebooks. The entries for 18 July 1877 were extensive but focused on the telephone; only at the bottom of one page was the following brief entry:

  Just tried experiment with a diaphragm [sic] having an embossing point & held against parafin [sic] paper moving rapidly the spkg vibrations are indented nicely & theres [sic] no doubt that I shall be able to store up & reproduce automatically at any future time the human voice perfectly

  Though Edison used the first-person voice, Batchelor and James Adams, another assistant, signed their names to the page, too.

  It was a singular moment in the modern history of invention, but, in the years that would follow, Edison would never tell the story the way it actually unfolded that summer, always moving the events from July 1877 to December. We may guess the reason why: in July, he and his assistants failed to appreciate what they had discovered. At the time, they were working feverishly to develop a set of working telephones to show to their best prospect, William Orton, president of Western Union, and Batchelor’s diary shows entry after entry that July in which he dryly recorded varied phrasings of a single routine: “worked all day and night on Speaker telegraph.” We can assume that Batchelor’s assignments were tightly coupled with Edison’s own experimental agenda of the moment, and the task that occupied the entire staff was to improve the telephone’s ability to handle human speech rather than music. There was no time to pause and reflect on the incidental invention of what was the first working model of the phonograph.

  Other potential distractions were shut out, too, such as suggestions from professional acquaintances to strike out in a wholly new direction. On the very day that the laboratory noted its breakthrough in recording sound, George Field, an early investor in Edison’s telegraphy work, wrote him with a suggestion to take notice of the recent demonstration of electric streetlights in Paris. “I feel quite confident,” Field said, “that if you will apply yourself to it that important results might follow.” Edison was unwilling to change course—or even to give the phonograph sustained attention.

  The first, brief public mention of the crude phonograph came in mid-August 1877, a month after the midnight birth (even then it still lacked a name). Edward Johnson told the Philadelphia Record that Edison had invented an instrument “by which a speech can be recorded while it is being delivered on prepared paper” and the same paper could “redeliver” it at any time. Edison and Batchelor, focused as they were at the time on improving the telephone for speech, naturally thought that their device would be used for speech, ignoring music. But curiously, even Johnson, the impresario in charge of exhibiting Edison’s musical telephone, failed to consider the possibilities for recording music, too.

  It took a long while for Edison to decide what to call the contraption. By this time, “phonograph” had been jotted onto a laboratory notebook, but the word was in common usage at the time as a synonym for “shorthand.” The invention continued to be labeled in the notebooks with the broader rubric “speaking telegraph,” reflecting the assumption that it would be put to use in the telegraph office, recording messages. An unidentified staff member drew up a list of possible names for the machine, which included:

  Tel-autograph

  Tel-autophone

  Polyphone = manifold sounder

  Autophone = Self-sounder

  Cosmophone = Universal sounder

  Acoustophone = Audible speaker

  Otophone = Ear-sounder = speaker

  Antiphone = Back-talker

  Liquphone = Clear speaker

  Chronophone = Time-announcer = Speaking clock

  Didaskophone = Teaching speaker = Portable teacher

  Glottophone = Language sounder or speaker

  Climatophone = Weather announcer

  Klangophone = Bird-cry sounder

  Hulagmophone = Barking sounder

  Omphlegraph = voice writer

  Epograph = speech writer

  aerophone = air sound

  phonomime

  Ecophone

  As he and his staff made progress on the telephone’s speech capabilities, Edison kept Western Union’s Orton briefed on the good news. The sensitivity of Edison’s carbon microphone permitted the speaker to stand ten feet away from the speaking tube, he wrote excitedly, after another long night of experimenting. In September, Edison’s telephones were placed in competition against Bell’s in Orton’s presence, and Edison won an immediate order for 150 sets. Edison wrote a colleague of Orton’s surprise: “He had n
o idea that he could get it so loud.”

  The expense of maintaining the laboratory was considerable, the money Edison had received in 1875 was spent, and the initial order for telephones from Western Union did not immediately ease the cash shortage. In October 1877, he wrote his father that he was “at present very hard up for cash,” but if his “speaking telegraph” was successful, he would receive an advance on royalties. The commercial potential of his still-unnamed recording apparatus remained out of sight. Edison seems to have been disappointed when he told Benjamin Butler, an attorney who had represented him in the past, that he had not yet achieved the goal he had mentioned to Butler: developing the ability to “print” the human voice on paper using a particular mark for a given sound, without prior recording, as one typesets a romanized alphabet.

  Edison said that he could at least capture the human voice on paper by recording speech and then play it back “at any future time.” Butler thought this so remarkable that “I do not understand it at all.” However it worked, he told Edison, there was no need to go further in his experimental work (advice that ratified the Menlo Park crew’s view that the human voice was the ultimate prize in recording sound). He sensed, correctly, that Edison did not appreciate the significance of his own discovery. “I need not say that you had better keep it perfectly secret,” Butler advised.

  A secret it remained, effectively, as the mention the previous month in the Philadelphia Record had been missed by other newspapers. But only two weeks later, Edward Johnson could not remain quiet, not when French rivals were getting attention for similar work. He was infuriated by an article in Scientific American describing C. L. Rosapelly and Etienne-Jules Marey’s work on instruments for graphically—and cumbersomely—recording speech by simultaneously registering the movement of thorax, larynx, lips, tongue, and palate. Once recorded, those lines would somehow have to be translated into audible speech. If Scientific American’s respectful treatment of this path to failure was not exasperating enough to Johnson, the magazine had also voiced the prediction that it would lead someday to the recording of speech that could be transmitted electrically by wire. With Edison’s permission, Johnson wrote to the editor of Scientific American to say there was no need to wait for the French to perfect their technique for capturing speech on paper—Mr. Edison had already achieved everything the French hoped for, and could use paper to reproduce speech long distances, too.

  An engraved illustration accompanied Johnson’s long letter, showing a strip of paper that ran along the top of two rollers, with a recording stylus and telephone mouthpiece suspended over one, and a playback stylus and a reproducer that looked from the outside just like the mouthpiece suspended over the other roller. A “boss,” or protuberant line, ran the length of the paper, so the stylus, which rested on top, could easily make an indentation in response to the amplitude of the sound. The invention still lacked a name and was referred to as “the apparatus.”

  The editors of Scientific American were so excited—so emotionally moved, they confessed in an introduction, by the immediate prospect of being able to listen to the voices of the dead—that they jumped ahead to a list of possible applications of this new capability. Spoken messages might replace written letters. The words of history’s greatest orators could be enjoyed in perpetuity. And “music may be crystallized as well.”

  The publication of Johnson’s letter in Scientific American in early November set off a frenzy in America and Europe. The New York Sun was fascinated by the metaphysical implications of an invention that could play “Echoes from Dead Voices.” The New York Times predicted that a large business would develop in “bottled sermons,” and wealthy connoisseurs would take pride in keeping “a well-stocked oratorical cellar.” To the English Mechanic, still absorbing the capability of the telephone, it appeared that Edison’s new invention was “more remarkable still,” for it could convey the human voice at any time, even “a hundred years hence.” Such was the authority of Scientific American’s imprimatur that all of this extraordinary attention was lavished not on the first working phonograph made available for public inspection, but merely on a description supplied by Edison’s assistant.

  No machine was ready for public inspection because just before Johnson wrote his letter describing how a paper strip served as the recording medium, Edison had shifted his experimental focus from paper to tinfoil. Instead of using a raised ridge embossed on paper as a soft surface that was easily impressed by the recording needle, Edison now conceptualized a one-foot-long cylinder, whose surface had been threaded, and upon which a sheet of tinfoil would be placed. By positioning the recording needle on the top of the cylinder at the beginning of the thread, it rested on a continuous groove below the foil’s surface, easily impressing the foil just like the embossed ridge of the paper.

  When setting down on 5 November 1877 the outlines of his design, Edison still conceptualized the device as a medium for speech. He estimated that a single sheet could hold about two hundred spoken words. But the next day, Johnson’s letter to Scientific American appeared, and from that moment on, Edison no longer worked in obscurity. The permanence of this change was something that he, like anyone else, could not have appreciated at the time. But one immediate benefit of the press’s marveling was that the extensive coverage supplied Edison with creative ideas about how the phonograph could be adapted for many more uses than telegraphy or senatorial speeches.

  Years before, Edison had begun to systematically record all laboratory findings and the progress of his own thinking about the projects. His jottings in this period reflect the influence of speculations of strangers. By late November, Edison and his staff had caught on to the phonograph’s commercial potential as a gadget for entertainment. On a page signed by Edison, Batchelor, Adams, and Kruesi, a list of possible uses for the phonograph was noted, assembled apparently by free association: speaking toys (dogs, reptiles, humans); whistling toy train engines; music boxes; clocks and watches that announced the time. There was even an inkling of the future importance of personal music collections, here described as the machine for the whole family to enjoy, equipped with a thousand sheets of prerecorded music impressed upon tinfoil, “giving endless amusement.”

  The design of a tinfoil phonograph had been conceptualized, then refined, and a myriad of future uses enumerated. The first actual model, however, remained to be built. John Kruesi took on the assignment. On 4 December 1877, Batchelor’s diary laconically noted “Kruesi made phonograph today”; it received no more notice than the other entry, “worked on Speaking Tel,” the invention that continued to be at the top of the laboratory’s research agenda. Even the loquacious Johnson had little more to say when he received the machine in New York: “Complete success. Talks plainer than telephone.”

  It is not clear whether the decision to immediately display the new creation to the press was Johnson’s or Edison’s. What is clear is that the idea was not first vetted by a patent attorney—Edison would not get around to executing his first patent application for the phonograph until the next week. The one-week delay would later cause many difficulties in his efforts to secure patents in countries outside the United States. Given his immersion in patent battles in the telegraph industry, it is somewhat surprising to see Edison’s lack of caution in proceeding with the phonograph’s unveiling. The decision can be explained, perhaps, by the absence of a professional business structure and consulting counsel for the laboratory, by haste born of pride of accomplishment, or from underestimating the commercial significance of the invention.

  However ill-advised, the debut came off not just smoothly but brilliantly. On 7 December 1877, Edison, Batchelor, and Johnson walked into the New York offices of Scientific American, placed a small machine on the editor’s desk, and, with about a dozen people gathered around, turned the crank. “How do you do?” asked the machine, introducing itself crisply. “How do you like the phonograph?” It itself was feeling quite well, it assured its listeners, and then cordially bid
everyone a good night.

  To the editors of Scientific American, the performance was utterly astounding. How could such a small machine mimic so accurately the human voice? Even for someone thoroughly familiar with the science underlying the machine, “it is impossible to listen to the mechanical speech without his experiencing the idea that his senses are deceiving him.” Edison’s choice of favoring this journal with the demonstration was shrewd, as the editorial staff was familiar with the latest experiments that attempted to re-create the human voice. The state of the art was not impressive: large machines the size of a pipe organ, endowed with keyboards, pipes, and rubber larynx and lips were supposed to deliver a humanlike sound but were only able to reproduce what sounded like a single monotonous note of an organ. And yet somehow Edison could coax what sounded like a naturally inflected human voice from “a few pieces of metal, set up roughly on an iron stand about a foot square.”

  So enchanted were the editors that Edison was given credit for solving what had been seen as two separate problems, decoding the sound notations (misunderstood as “dots and dashes”) that were recorded on the tinfoil, and then re-creating them. It was as if instead of having to read the individual words, one could drop a book in a machine and it would automatically read itself. In fact, Edison could not decode the scratches, and had failed in his attempt to solve the first problem, that is, translating the microscopic marks into a phonetic alphabet. But there was no need for anyone to break the recording down into analyzable units; the phonograph automatically played whatever had been recorded, blithely insensible to differences in language, equally articulate in all tongues. It was already possible to project life-sized stereoscopic images of an individual upon a screen. “Add the talking phonograph to counterfeit their voices,” the journal suggested, “and it will be difficult to carry the illusion of real presence much further.” This was stop-the-presses news. Scientific American, which had been ready to publish its regular issue on the day of the talking phonograph’s visit, delayed publication one day so that an illustrated account could be inserted, a fact that pleased Johnson exceedingly.