Edison

by Edmund Morris

  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 vide
o 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.