Edison

by Edmund Morris

  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 f
ollowing 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 Y
ork 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.