a telegrapher friend: McClure, Edison and His Inventions, 68. The story’s credibility is not enhanced when we observe that Edison and friend have their encounter on an evening that was by appearances no different from any other, yet Edison’s wedding was on Christmas Day, 1871.
After the wedding and a weeklong honeymoon: PTAE, 1:385n2.
According to one source: This is the recollection of Edward Ten Eyck Jr., who was passing along the impressions of others who were older than him—Mary Stillwell Edison died in 1884, when Eyck was five years old. David Trumbull Marshall, Recollections of Edison (Boston: Christopher, 1931), 108.
She remembered: Jehl, Reminiscences, 511. According to Jehl, Edison, for his part, was pleased that his wife, and her unmarried sister Alice, who also lived with them to provide Mary companionship during Edison’s prolonged work hours, were “amusing themselves while he was interesting himself at the laboratory.”
financially comfortable: PTAE, 1:301.
had to sell his house: PTAE, 2:312.
placed the first working system: The first regular operations of a duplex system in the United States began in March 1768, between New York and Boston. PTAE, 1:32n7.
“any damned fool ought to know”: “The Napoleon of Science,” NYS, 10 March 1878, PTAED, SB031032b.
He later tried, but failed: PTAE, 3:280–281.
“should be in every family”: Edison & Murray, circular, n.d., PTAE, 2:208.
It sold well enough: PTAE, 2:207.
“You captivate my whole heart”: Daniel Craig to TAE, 18 January 1871, PTAED, D7110B.
The next month: Daniel Craig to TAE, 13 February 1871, PTAED, D7110D.
This was Edison’s: George Bliss to TAE, 25 September 1878, PTAED, D7822ZBD.
pen had a sharp needle: PTAE, 2:463. For a sample of the circular produced by the pen, see PTAE, 2:561.
“There is more money”: TAE to Stephen Field, 13 September 1875, PTAED, LB001023.
one year older: When cross-examined in a civil case on 12 March 1896, Batchelor said he was fifty years old, so he was at least one year, and perhaps was two years, older than Edison. See his testimony in American Graphophone v. U.S. Phonograph, PTAED, QP001585.
had come to the United States: Israel, Edison, 86.
“We have now”: Charles Batchelor to James Batchelor, 28 May 1877, PTAED, MBLB1125.
Edison’s ongoing work on automatic telegraphy: TAE, notebook, PN-75-01-05, PTAED, A204; PTAE, 2:375. Freed from the financial worries that had weighed on her the year before, Mary Edison threw a masquerade party for her husband on February 11, 1875, the occasion of his twenty-eighth birthday. PTAED, SB178, scrapbook image 11.
settled on land in Menlo Park: The proximate reason for Edison’s move to Menlo Park was a dispute he had with the municipality of Newark. Earlier, Edison had rented factory space from a Newark landlord on what Edison had been given to understand was a monthly basis. When Edison gave notice in his third month, paid the rent he owed, and moved to another space in Newark, he was served with a notice that he still owed rent for nine more months on the original space. A city ordinance guaranteed landlords one year’s rent, he learned belatedly. When he recalled the story years later, he said, “This seemed so unjust that I determined to get out of a place that permitted such injustice.” He spent several Sundays investigating possible sites for a relocated lab, one of which, Menlo Park, was suggested by his bookkeeper, whose family happened to live about a mile away. See Dyer and Martin, Edison, 267.
It consisted of: “A Visit to Edison,” Philadelphia Weekly Times, 29 April 1878, PTAED, SM029055f.
No town hall: Jehl, Reminiscences, 498.
One saloon: Dyer and Martin, Edison, 269.
The town was too small: E. C. Baker, Sir William Preece: Victorian Engineer Extraordinary (London: Hutchinson, 1976), 162.
in New York City: Ibid., 156.
one could glimpse: “Edison’s Phonograph,” Newark Daily Advertiser, 3 May 1878, PTAED, MBSB10574X.
“an elongated schoolhouse”: “A Visit to Edison,” Philadelphia Weekly Times, 29 April 1878, PTAED, SM029055f.
“country shoe factory”: “The Phonograph Etc.,” Boston Daily Evening Traveler, 23 May 1878, PTAED, SM029128b.
At the rear: Ibid.
The first floor: “An Hour with Edison,” Scientific American, 13 July 1878, PTAED, SM009042a.
A “spider web”: “That Wonderful Edison,” NYW, 29 March 1878, PTAED, MBSB10463.
The twelve or so: Bernard S. Finn, “Working at Menlo Park,” in Working at Inventing: Thomas Edison and the Menlo Park Experience, ed. William S. Pretzer (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 34.
a disheveled figure: “A Marvelous Discovery,” NYS, 22 February 1878, PTAED, MBSB10378.
“the fire of genius”: Ibid.
Thomas Alva Edison was already: To his rivals in the telegraphy world, he was unflatteringly described as “gray as a badger and rapidly growing old.” See “Echoes from 197,” Operator, 15 June 1877, 9, quoted in PTAE, 3:289.
in Preece’s diary: Baker, Sir William Preece, 162.
It was likened: “The Latest Newark Invention,” reprint from Daily Advertiser [Newark, N.J.], n. d., TAEPM, 13:960.
A sales manager: P. Mullarkey to TAE, 17 September 1875, PTAED, D7504C. Mullarkey reported to Edison the next week, “One man yesterday wasted three hours of my time and then pronounced it ‘quite a curiosity.’ I am so tired from today’s that I am hardly able to stand.” P. Mullarkey to TAE, 23 September 1875, PTAED, D7504E.
The fault: Frederic Ireland to TAE, 26 October 1876, PTAED, D7608N. High-tech companies in the following century would also blame the victim, their customer. Edison’s pen venture also anticipated the latter-day discovery by Hewlett-Packard that the right pricing strategy could yield boggling profits in the printer business. HP practically gives away ink-jet printers, in order to secure a highly profitable, perpetually renewing succession of ink-jet-cartridge purchases. In the case of the electric pen, Batchelor and Edison tried to experiment with prices, floating the idea in 1877 of slashing the price of a new pen and giving a bottle of ink away for free as a sales-promotion gimmick. Charles Batchelor to Robert Gilliland, 8 May 1877, PTAED, MBLB1113. George Bliss, the general manager of the Electric Pen & Duplicating Press Company, scolded them for not placing a high price on the ink. Bliss wielded his considerable sales and marketing experience like a cudgel over the inexperienced Edison and Batchelor: “The men who make the most money are those who put a first class price on their goods & stick to it.” George Bliss to TAE, 23 May 1877, PTAED, D7711S. This was easy to say when no other products were on the market; a year later, though, with competitive products flooding in, Bliss had to abandon high prices and smug certainty. The newest competitive entrant “can be made for nothing and sold for less, so the parties claim. When will it end?” he lamented. George Bliss to TAE, 16 April 1878, PTAED, D7822W.
American Novelty Company: PTAE, 3:193n11.
Batchelor’s “Office Door Attachment”: Charles Batchelor, technical note, 18 November 1876, PTAED, MBN001059.
An idea: Charles Batchelor, technical note, 8 January 1877, PTAED, NE1695044.
American Novelty Company: The company was incorporated in November 1876 but had failed by June 1877, by which time it had been renamed the Electro-Chemical Manufacturing Company and stripped of the one business that actually had customers, that of duplicating ink. PTAE, 3:192n10, 289.
It was while: Robert V. Bruce, Bell: Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 147.
The more famous rendering: Ibid., 181.
Bell lacked the gifts: “Sound and Electricity,” NYT, 18 May 1877.
former sales agent: PTAE, 2:207.
Johnson’s excitability: In January 1877, Johnson was the general manager of the American Novelty Company and, having heard rumors that Edison had been critical of Johnson’s management of funds advanced to him, he had written Edison that he understood that
“I am a burden to you” and offered to resign. Edward Johnson to TAE, 3 January [1877], PTAED, D7701A. The squall passed as quickly as it had come; two days later, the two corresponded as if it had never happened. Edward Johnson to TAE, 5 January 1877, PTAED, D7701B.
his eagerness in April 1876: Edward Johnson to TAE, 24 April 1876, PTAED, D7601F.
“We should not be at all surprised”: “The Edison Telephone,” Woodbridge Independent, 14 June 1877, PTAED, MBSB10192X.
“Mr. Edison has been so often scoffed at”: “The Motograph,” Newark Daily Advertiser, 2 May 1877, PTAED, MBSB10147X.
competing musical telephone: “Prof. Gray’s Telephone Concert,” NYT, 3 April 1877.
Compared to Gray’s: “Prof. Edison’s New Telephone,” NYT, 17 July 1877.
When Johnson saw the review: Edward Johnson to TAE, 20 July 1877 [conjectured], PTAED, D7719V.
he was happy: Edward Johnson to TAE, 17 July 1877, PTAED, D7719T.
he begged Edison: Ibid.
The New York Daily Graphic: Ibid.
On the day of the concert: Edward Johnson to Josiah Reiff, 20 July 1877, PTAED, D7719U.
now the Times was impressed: “Prof. Edison’s Telephone Concert,” NYT, 19 July 1877.
Johnson, fond of exaggeration: Edward Johnson to TAE, 20 July 1877 [conjectured], PTAED, D7719V.
The songs: “Prof. Edison’s Telephone Concert,” NYT, 19 July 1877.
Johnson knew: Edward Johnson to Josiah Reiff, 20 July 1877, PTAED, D7719U.
one Joseph Hipple: Hipple’s remarkable vision deserves to be reproduced in full:
If I understand the telephone, and I think I do, because I have read all the newspapers I could get hold of, I don’t see why in a big city like New York they shouldn’t have music in every house, the same as water and gas. All they would have to do would be to have one room in the city and have the best musicians they could find there, and enough of them to give all parts and perhaps some good singers, too. Then have wires reaching to any man’s house who wanted to pay for them. When he didn’t want any music he needn’t have any, because he could take the wire out of the machine. This would be cheap. It wouldn’t cost half as much as a piano, and would be better music. A company could go into it; but they should have the best musicians. They should play all the time. I don’t mean all day and all night but from about three o’clock in the afternoon, until bedtime, say nine o’clock. [T]hey could have relays. Of course we couldn’t have such a thing here [Spruce Mills, Iowa]. Another might get up a room with dance-music in it for those that wanted to buy that kind and have wires, etc.
Joseph Hipple, “Music On Tap,” letter to editor, NYDG, 26 March 1877, PTAED, MBSB10104X.
telegraphy remained: Laboratory notebook, 11 July 1877, PTAED, TI2186.
He did have a vision: Ibid.
the practicality of the telephone: PTAE, 3:441n1.
New York Paper Barrel Company: J. L. Thomson to TAE, 10 March 1877, PTAED, D7702G.
A legacy of this work: Charles Batchelor, Journal, October 1906, PTAED, MBJ007.
A sketch and brief caption: Laboratory notebook, 17 July 1877, PTAED, NV12016.
A partial list: Laboratory notebook, 20 July 1877, PTAED, NV12023.
An employee described: The account is that of Charles Clarke. Bernard S. Finn, “Working at Menlo Park,” in Working at Inventing, 42–43.
The day after: The narrative that follows is based on Batchelor’s testimony on 12 March 1896 in American Graphophone v. U.S. Phonograph, PTAED, QP001585 and a similar account, with a few additional details, in his journal, October 1906, PTAED, MBJ007. The only substantive detail in these accounts that is demonstrably in error is Batchelor’s placing the date in November 1877, instead of the actual month, July 1877, a forgivable lapse after having listened to Edison for decades subsequent to the event tell reporters his own garbled and conflated chronology of the phonograph’s invention.
The entries for 18 July 1877: Laboratory notebook, 18 July 1877, PTAED, TI2196.
James Adams: Adams, a former seaman and a failed salesperson who had tried to peddle the Inductorum, had started working at the laboratory as a night watchman and had worked his way into the ranks of the experimenters. Robert Conot characterizes him as a “hard-swearing, hard-drinking, tubercular man of considerable talent.” Conot, Streak of Luck, 72.
failed to appreciate: When Edison got back in touch with William Preece in England in early August 1877, three months after Preece’s visit to Menlo Park, Edison spoke excitedly of the speaking version of the telephone, able to articulate human speech, dog barks, cricket chirps—it is “now absolutely perfect,” he claimed. TAE to William Preece, 2 August 1877, PTAED, Z005AB. His motive in writing Preece was to ask him to find an agency that would market his telephones in England (“I should feel greatly obliged”), so he put the very best face on the current state of his telephone equipment. Yet Edison did not deem his discovery two weeks’ previous of how to record sound to be sufficiently important to mention.
Batchelor’s diary: Charles Batchelor, Diary, 1877–78, PTAED, MBJ001.
George Field: George Field to TAE, 18 July 1877, PTAED, D7702ZAM. ENHS has no record that indicates Edison replied to Field.
Edward Johnson told: ENHS does not have a copy of the clipping, which apparently appeared on 14 August 1877 in the Philadelphia Record. In an interview with a reporter from the same paper the following year, the reporter claimed that the August 1877 brief had been the first public announcement of the phonograph. Edison requested a copy “for my scrapbook,” and the reporter reprinted the item in its brief entirety. See “Edison ‘At Home’,” Philadelphia Record, 6 June 1878 [conjectured], PTAED, MBSB10648.
By this time: Laboratory notebook, 12 August 1877, PTAED, NS7703A. Side note: 12 August 1877 is the same date affixed erroneously (and, I believe, intentionally) to a sketch of a cylinder phonograph actually drawn much later and signed by Edison. See PTAE, 3:495n1.
An unidentified staff member: Untitled sheets with T. A. Edison letterhead on first page, n.d., PTAED, D7702ZEO.
The sensitivity of Edison’s carbon microphone: TAE to William Orton, 27 July 1877, PTAE, 3:469.
In September: TAE to Franklin Badger, 17 September 1877, PTAED, LB001285.
he wrote his father: TAE to Samuel Edison, 21 October [1877], PTAE, 3:599–600.
Edison seems to have been disappointed: TAE to Benjamin Butler, 13 October 1877, PTAED, LB001306.
Benjamin Butler: PTAE, 3:324n6.
could at least capture: Ibid.
Butler thought: Benjamin Butler to TAE, 23 October 1877, PTAED, D7702ZCQ.
He was infuriated by an article: “Speech Automatically Transmitted in Shorthand by the Telegraph,” Scientific American, 3 November 1877,273. This brief article served to preview the longer article that appeared, with illustrations, in the next issue: “Graphic Phonetics,” Scientific American, 14 November 1877, PTAED, MBSB10276X.
With Edison’s permission: Edward Johnson, “Wonderful Invention: Speech Capable of Indefinite Repetition from Automatic Records,” letter to the editor, Scientific American, 17 November 1877, PTAED, MBSB10274 (or identical copy: SM030022a). Although the cover date was 17 November 1877, the journal was available by 6 November 1877, the same date it was reprinted in the New York Sun (see the following citation). PTAE, 3:617n1.
The New York Sun: “Echoes from Dead Voices,” NYS, 6 November 1877, PTAED, MBSB10269X.
The New York Times: It is striking how the disparagement of women seems to have been endlessly amusing to male writers, and presumably their male readers, in 1877. “Bottled sermons” would not displace the sermons delivered in person by clergy because “in no other way can a weekly opportunity be afforded to ladies for mutual bonnet inspections.” “The Phonograph,” NYT, 7 November 1877.
To the English Mechanic: “Edison’s Phonograph,” English Mechanic, 30 November 1877, PTAED, MBSB10290X.
Edison had shifted his experimental focus: Johnson most likely composed his undated lette
r on 6 November 1877. The Menlo Park notebooks show that on 1 November 1877 work continued on strips of wax paper (PTAED, QP001779), but on 5 November 1877 Edison proposed using a sheet of tinfoil to be placed on a grooved cylinder (PTAED, TI2348).
When setting down: Laboratory notebook, 5 November 1877, PTAED, TI2348.
Edison had begun: PTAE, 1:xliii. Edison wrote in a pocket notebook in October 1870 that “all new inventions I will here after keep a full record.”
On a page: Laboratory notebook, 23 November 1877, PTAED, NV17018.
conceptualized, then refined: A sketch entered on 29 November 1877, just before Kruesi started building the first model, shows side and end views of the design of what would, in a few days, be realized as a working model. Laboratory notebook, 29 November 1877, PTAED, NS7703D.
On 4 December 1877: Charles Batchelor, Diary, 1877–1878, PTAED, MBJ001.
Even the loquacious Johnson: Edward Johnson to Uriah Painter, 7 December 1877, PTAE, 3:661.
feeling quite well: Over one hundred years later, Steve Jobs borrowed the same parlor trick when he pulled the first Macintosh computer out of a bag and had it introduce itself on stage in January 1984: “Hello, I am Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag.” See Steven Levy, Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything (New York: Viking, 1994), 182.
Edison was given credit: “The Talking Phonograph,” Scientific American, 22 December 1877, PTAED, MBSB10300. In France, Leon Scott claimed that his phonautograph anticipated Edison’s phonograph, which he criticized for not creating an intelligible visual record of human speech. See PTAE, 4:188n3.
This was stop-the-presses news: Edward Johnson to Uriah Painter, 8 December 1877, PTAE, 3:663–667. On the same day, Edison composed an unrelated letter to a famous figure whom he did not know, seeking recognition. “Dear Sir,” wrote Edison to Charles Darwin, “several small green colored insects were caught by me this summer having come into my laboratory windows at night.” The bugs gave off a strong smell that resembled naphthalene, and if Darwin was not already aware of such an insect, Edison offered to mail him some specimens the following summer. It was signed “Thomas A. Edison, Telegraph Engineer.” Darwin’s son Francis politely declined the offer, explaining his father was already “at work on different subjects.” TAE to Charles Darwin, 7 December 1877, Cambridge University Library, UK, PTAE, 3:657–658.
The Wizard of Menlo Park Page 34