Edison

by Edmund Morris

  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.