Edison

by Edmund Morris

  129. Herter deposition, 129, 575, 554; TE Rationale, 16B; but see “Edison’s Revolution in Iron Mining,” McClure’s Magazine, Nov. 1897.

  130. Mallory deposition, 642–43, 646; Herter deposition, 555, 567, 548–49; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 108–10.

  131. Herter deposition, 546; Mallory deposition, 655.

  132. See Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 254–57, for the development of the peephole player.

  133. See http://www.ifbbpro.com/​news/​the-first-bodybuilding-movies; Atlanta Constitution, 9 Mar. 1894. See also Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 39–40.

  134. https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=HWM2ixqua3Y.

  135. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 286–87; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 307; Millard, Edison and Business, 54; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 44.

  136. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 286–87.

  137. Ibid., 286.

  138. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 40–44; Poughkeepsie Eagle-News, 11 Aug. 1884; “Annabelle,” Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema, http://www.victorian-cinema.net/​annabelle; Joshua Yumibe, Moving Color: Early Film, Mass Culture, Modernism (New Brunswick, NJ, 2012), loc. 713ff.; http://earlysilentfilm.blogspot.co.uk/​2013/​08/​peerless-annabelle-symphony-in-yellow.html, which contains the best biographical details.

  139. Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 2.60ff.; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 45. See W. K. L Dickson, “Edison’s Invention of the Kineto-Phonograph,” Century Magazine, June 1884.

  140. The fact that Edison’s statement was published in Century Magazine as an introduction to an article about the Kinetoscope by W. L. K. and Antonia Dickson, as well as their identical use of it later in The Life and Inventions of Thomas Alva Edison (1894) and History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, and Kineto-Phonograph (1895), suggests that he may have simply copied out a promotional text that they drafted for him. See Part Five and Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 250 and passim, for further discussions of Dickson’s compulsive revisionism.

  141. Millard, America on Record, 42–44; Israel, Edison, 297; Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 35.

  142. Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 26, 35; New York Times, 10 May 1894.

  143. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 293.

  144. Ibid., 294.

  145. New York World, 1 Apr. 1895; Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 39; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 310.

  146. Israel, Edison, 355; Charles Batchelor Diary, entries for 15 Apr. 1892 et seq., PTAE; Waters, “Edison’s Revolution”; Iron Age, 28 Oct. 1897.

  147. Mallory deposition in Edison v. Allis Chalmers, 677.

  148. Josephson, Edison, 374.

  149. Madeleine Edison Oral History, TENHP. “Thomas is back again and it is good to have him near me.” MME to Lewis and Mary Miller, 8 July 1894, EFW.

  150. Marion Edison to TE, 24 July 1894.

  151. Lewis Miller to Mary V. Miller from Glenmont, ca. mid-Mar. 1894. See also Theodore Miller to Mary V. Miller, 18 Mar. 1894: “Isn’t it funny about Marion going to Europe [so suddenly]. It is probably just as well…she seems to treat Mina very shabbily.” EFW.

  152. Oscar Öser to TE, 23 July 1894, PTAE; Louise Juechzer to TE, 23 July 1894, PTAE; Marion Edison Öser to TE, 10 Apr. 1896, PTAE.

  153. TE to Editor, Cassier’s Magazine, 14 Nov. 1894, PTAE.

  154. Dickson and Dickson, Life and Inventions, 362; “An Authentic Life of Edison,” New York Times, 11 Nov. 1894. See also Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 395–96.

  155. Frank Dyer to Francise Kehl, 29 Aug. 1936, TENHP.

  156. TE to William Pilling, 12 Oct. 1894, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 355, 352; TE Patents 465,251 and 485,840 (“Method of Bricking Fine Iron Ores”); Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 120; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 159; Iron Age, 28 Oct. 1897.

  157. NJ&P Concentrating Works Letterbook, 21 Feb. and 20 Mar. 1895, PTAE; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 149; “Nobody had any hopes at all that they would ever be perfected.” Herter deposition in Edison v. Allis Chalmers, 558.

  158. Century Magazine, June 1884; TE to Norman C. Raff, 5 February 1895, PTAE.

  159. Dickson and Dickson, History of Kinetograph, 19–20, 54, 14.

  160. TE to Norman C. Raff., 5 Feb. 1895, PTAE.

  161. New York Times and Rochester (NY) Democrat Chronicle, 14 Mar. 1895; New York Press, 14 Mar. 1895.

  162. New York Times, 14 Mar. 1895.

  163. New York Evening Sun, 15 Mar. 1895.

  164. See, e.g., Buffalo Evening News, 14 Mar. 1895; Papers, 6.821.

  165. See, e.g., New York Journal, 22 May 1896.

  166. Carlson, Tesla, 239–41; TE quoted in Philadelphia Press, 24 July 1896 (“To my mind it solves one of the most important questions associated with electrical development”); Baltimore Herald, 27 May 1896.

  167. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 46, and Emergence of Cinema, 84–86; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 358. For a detailed account of the films made in the Black Maria in 1894, see Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 47–51 and Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, chap. 22.

  168. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 105; Dickson and Dickson, Life and Inventions, 311.

  169. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 91, 94; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 356–58, 360–64.

  170. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 366, 311–12, 283–85, 304; Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 92–93, 47.

  171. The author is grateful to Paul Spehr for this perception. Man Who Made Movies, 366.

  172. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 371–72.

  173. Ibid., 352–56; TE to Frederick P. Fish, 1 Nov. 1895, PTAE; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 282–85; Dickson, “Brief History.” “It’s too depressing, heartbreaking to go unrecognized in the art, yet it was my work which was as commercialized by me, adopted in every detail by the whole million making world—ah me.” Dickson in 1932, quoted in Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 282–83.

  174. See Le Prince’s Roundhay Garden Scene, at https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=nR2r__ZgO5g. There is a detailed account of his disparation in Jean-Jacques Aulas and Jacques Pfend, “Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, inventeur at artiste, précurseur du cinéma,” Journals.openedition.com (2000). See also Richard Howells, “Louis Le Prince: The Body of Evidence,” Screen 47, no. 2 (July 2006), and The First Film, a 2013 documentary by David Nicholas Wilkinson, at https://vimeo.com/​ondemand/​thefirstfilm/​181293064.

  175. Dickson and Dickson, Life and Inventions, 309; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 55–56; De Graaf, Edison and Innovation, 133ff.

  176. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 91.

  177. TE Rationale, 23A, 27A, 30A, 23A–24A, PTAE.

  178. TE quoted in Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 120; Waters, “Edison’s Revolution.” See, e.g., illustration in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Jan. 1894, 409.

  179. Dan Smith interviewed by Mary Nerney, Nov. 1928, TENHP.

  180. TE to MME, 9 Aug. 1895, PTAE.

  181. Ibid., 11 and 18 Aug. 1895, PTAE.

  182. Ibid., 21 Aug. 1895, PTAE.

  183. Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 84. For a table of the various wages and salaries TE paid at Ogden, see 85–91.

  184. Walter Mallory to James C. Parrish, 9 Sept. 1895, and TE to MME, 23 Aug. 1895, both PTAE.

  185. TE to MME, 23 Aug. 1895, and Mallory to James C. Parrish, 9 Sept. 1895, PTAE.

  186. Mallory, “Edison Could Take It,” 3.

  187. Mallory deposition, 648; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 501; TE to MME, 18 Aug. 1895, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 337.

  188. “Special cable despatch,” 6 Jan. 1896, to New York Sun, 7 Jan. 1896.

  189. Andrew Robinson, “Radiation’s Risks and Cures,” The Lancet, 16 Mar. 2016.

  190. “Ten hours after [the] cable despatch…I started experimenting.” TE superscript on William Bowen to TE, 7 Apr
. 1898, PTAE; TE to Arthur Kennelly, 27 Jan. 1896, quoted in Israel, Edison, 309.

  191. James Barry to TE, 4 Feb. 1896, and William Randolph Hearst to TE, 5 Feb. 1896, PTAE; David Shepherd, “Thomas Edison’s Attempts at Radiography of the Brain (1896),” Mayo Institute Proceedings 49 (Jan. 1974); Edward P. Thompson, Roentgen Rays and Phenomena of the Anode and Cathode (New York, 1896), 117; TE quoted in New York Times, 11 Feb. 1896.

  192. Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 115–66; Israel, Edison, 301–2.

  193. Roland Burke Hennessy, “Edison and the Röntgen Light,” Metropolitan Magazine (UK) 3, no. 3 (Mar. 1896).

  194. Ibid.

  195. Electrical Review, 18 Mar. 1896. TE published another information-sharing article, “Influence of Temperature on X-Ray Effects,” in Electrical Engineer on 22 Apr. 1896. He also contributed to “Photographing the Unseen: A Symposium of the Roentgen Rays,” Century Magazine 52 (May 1896).

  196. Electrical Review, 18 Mar. 1896; Carlson, Tesla, 224; TE to Nikola Tesla, 13 Mar. 1896, PTAE. For summaries of the X-ray research respectively accomplished by TE and Tesla in 1896, see Thompson, Roentgen Rays, chaps. 10 and 11.

  197. Until at least 1893, Tesla reportedly “had the strongest admiration” for TE. T. Commerford Martin, The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla (1893; New York, 1995), 4; quoted in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 5 Mar. 1896.

  198. New York Morning Journal, 22 May 1896; TE quoted in Electrical Review, 2 May 1896; TE Patent 865,367, “Fluorescent Electric Lamp.”

  199. TE to Sir John Pender, 13 Mar. 1896, PTAE; TE in New York Herald, 28 Mar. 1896; TE in Electrical Engineer, 1 Apr. 1896; TE to MME [1896], PTAE; Israel, Edison, 310. It would have been risky for Edison to patent the fluoroscope, since three other scientists had developed similar devices earlier in the year. However, as Adam Allerhand notes, “Edison’s [fluoroscope] ultimately prevailed. Edison did the most thorough research, promoted his device, and marketed it.” C. C. Trowbridge, “The Use of the Fluoroscopic Screen in Connection with Röntgen Rays,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 11, no. 3 (30 Mar. 1898); Allerhand, Illustrated History, 462.

  200. Michael Pupin to TE, 28 Mar. 1896, PTAE.

  201. TE superscript on ibid.

  202. New York Tribune and New York Sun, 27 Apr. 1896.

  203. TE to Charles W. Price, 29 May 1896, PTAE. Regarding Tesla’s current lamp, TE remarked, “He gets his results from the inductive coil and the Geissler tube. It is of a ghastly color. You cannot get a pleasant mellow yellow light without low temperature waves as well as light.” New York Morning Journal, 26 July 1896.

  204. “Claims of Moore, Tesla, and Edison,” Western Electrician, 6 June 1896. See, e.g., New York Morning Journal, 22 May 1896; New York Times, 22 Mar. 1896.

  205. Israel, Edison, 301–2, 374.

  206. Quoted in Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 63, 85, 82. A selection of early Edison movies collected by the Library of Congress can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/​playlist?list=PLD28424FAA9414F49.

  207. Blackton took a bow at the end of this ninety-five-second short, and went on to become a major movie producer and the father of film animation.

  208. Image THF96100, HFM. TE’s meticulous account of this convention in a letter to Mina (16 Aug. 1896, PTAE) corrects some of the memory slips in Ford’s own several accounts, recorded many years later. While TE does not mention Ford, his letter makes plain that their meeting must have occurred between 11:30 P.M. and 12:30 A.M. that night. See also Western Electrician, 22 Aug. 1896.

  209. Henry Ford interview, “When did I first see Mr. Edison?”, 1928, TENHP; Henry Ford, “My Life and Work,” McClure’s Magazine 54 (Oct. 1922).

  210. Leigh Dorrington, “The First Automobile Races in America,” Prewar.com.

  211. TE to MME, 16 Aug. 1896, PTAE.

  212. Ibid.; TE to MME, ca. 1896, “Tuesday” [1890s], PTAE.

  213. Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 167; American Iron and Steel Association, Statistics of the American and Foreign Iron Trades for 1896 (Philadelphia, 1897), 32; Harrisburg Daily Independent, 26 Dec. 1896; Wilkes-Barre Times, 6 Jan. 1897.

  214. Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 42–43; DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 106; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 122–23; Buffalo News, 30 Aug. 1896; Louisville Courier-Journal, 24 Nov. 1896.

  215. Louisville Courier-Journal, 24 Nov. 1896; Nikola Tesla folder, Biographical Collection, 1896, TENHP; New York Morning Journal, 22 May 1896; “Tesla on the Roentgen Streams,” Electrical Review, 2 Dec. 1896.

  216. Carlson, Tesla, 224; TE in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 6. Oct. 1912. By late November 1896, many other patients and scientists, notably Elihu Thompson, had begun to suffer radiation damage. See New York Morning Journal, 29 Nov. 1986, and New York Press, 30 Nov. 1896.

  217. Francis L. Chrisman, notes from an unpublished interview with TE, ca. Nov. 1896, Articles File, PTAE.

  218. Ibid. See also Percy Brown, “Clarence Madison Dally (1806–1904),” American Journal of Radiology 165 (Jan. 1995).

  219. Leonard Peckitt Reminiscences, Biographical Collection, TENHP.

  220. Ibid.

  221. Ibid.

  222. Ibid.

  223. Ibid.

  224. Leonard Peckitt to TE, 22 Jan. 1897, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 359.

  225. Peckitt to TE, 22 Jan. 1897, PTAE; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 93; Dan Smith interviewed by Mary Nerney, Nov. 1928, TENHP.

  226. Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 95–96; Herter deposition, 546–59ff.; Iron Age, 28 Oct. 1897; Harrisburg Daily Independent, 28 Dec. 1896; Waters, “Edison’s Revolution.”

  227. Mallory to Stuart Coats, 29 Jan. 1897, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 358.

  228. Harrisburg Daily Independent, 28 Dec. 1896. This text of this article was widely syndicated. The price did reach $2.10 in June 1897 and increased by only five cents over the next fiscal year. American Iron and Steel Association, Statistics of the American and Foreign Iron Trades for 1896 (Philadelphia, 1897), 26.

  229. Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers 27 (1897), 457–58.

  230. Israel, Edison, 356, 360.

  231. TE/Thomas Edison, Jr., release memorandum, 23 Feb. 1897, Legal File, TENHP; Thomas Edison, Jr., to TE, 14 Jan. 1897, PTAE.

  232. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 4 Jan. and 19 May, 1897, PTAE.

  233. Ibid., 6 Aug. 1897, PTAE.

  234. TE Patent 675,057; Meadowcroft, Boys’ Life of Edison, 223; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 151–52; TE quoted in Israel, Edison, 360.

  235. The following account of the operation of the Ogden plant is based on articles in Iron Age, 28 Oct. 1897; McClure’s Magazine, Nov. 1897; and Scientific American, 22 Jan. 1898.

  236. Iron Age, 28 Oct. 1897.

  237. McClure’s Magazine, Nov. 1897; Engineering and Mining Journal, 10 Oct. 1891; Israel, Edison, 403.

  238. Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 110; TE to E. Hubbell Hotchkiss, 25 Jan. 1899, TENHP. TE had also borrowed $9,000 from Tom’s estate on 18 Jan. 1897, when he was still his son’s guardian. A month later, on 23 Feb., he released the estate to Tom, at which time it was worth $17,309.91 ($533,145 in modern money). It is not clear from surviving documents whether the 30 Sept. 1987 loan was a reworking of the earlier debt, which was not paid off until Apr. 1905. TE/Thomas Edison, Jr., bond, 25 Apr. 1898, Legal File, TENHP.

  239. Thomas Edison, Jr., to William Edison, 16 Dec. 1898, PTAE; Bond and mortgage memorandum, 18 Jan. 1897, Legal File, TENHP.

  240. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 27 Nov. 1897, PTAE.

  241. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 4 Nov. 1897, PTAE.

  242. On 1 Oct. 1897 Tom ordered 200,000 bulbs of the type “now known as X-Ray lamps” from the Shelby Electric Company of Ohio. Memorandum in PTAE. In New York Sunday Herald, 5 Dec. 1897, Tom mentions showing a sample bulb to TE, who declined t
o comment on it.

  243. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 4 Nov. 1897, PTAE; U.S. Trademark 34,806 (15 Dec. 1897); Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, 161; New York Sunday World, 5 Dec. 1897. The New York Sunday Herald simultaneously published a similar story under the headline “EDISON JR., WIZARD.”

  244. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 12 Nov. 1897, PTAE.

  245. NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 12 Jan. 1898, PTAE; TE to MME, 9 Feb. 1898, PTAE.

  246. NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 12 Jan. 1898, PTAE. Walter Cutting had succeeded his brother Robert L. Cutting, Jr., as a more cautious backer of the NJ&PCW.

  247. Mallory in NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 12 Jan. 1898, PTAE. Later in the meeting, Mallory confirmed that Edison would lend the NJ&PCW $51,500 ($1.6 million in 2018 dollars) over the next six months. Walter Mallory in NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 12 January, 1898, PTAE.

  248. Mallory to Ira Miller, 29 Jan. 1898; New York World, 2 Jan. 1898; Omaha Bee, 22 Jan. 1898; Trenton Evening Times, 5 Feb. 1898; New Mexico Mining and Minerals Division, “Real de Dolores Mine Safeguard Project,” Emnrd.state.nm.us; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 583–84. The records of the Dolores mine are in the Document File Series—Mining (1899–1901), TENHP. See also Ralph E. Pray, “Edison’s Folly,” http://www.mine-engineer.com/​mining/​edison.htm.

  249. NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 12 Jan. 1898, PTAE; Mallory in NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 12 Jan. 1898, PTAE; Mallory quoted in “Edison’s Revolution in Iron Mining,” McClure’s Magazine, Nov. 1897.

  250. TE to MME, 9 Feb. 1898, PTAE.

  251. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 3 Feb. 1898, DSP (“I may never come back to you all alive—but you have not lost much—for I know I have not been the son to you as I should have.”); TE to MME, 9 Feb. 1898, PTAE.

  252. Thomas Edison, Jr., to MME, 19 Aug. 1898, DSP; Mary V. Miller to TE and MME, 23 Jan. 1898, DSP.

  253. Theodore Miller to Lewis Miller, 15 April 1898, EFW; George E. Vincent, ed., Theodore W. Miller, Rough Rider (Akron, OH, 1899), 64; William Edison to MME, ca. 12 Mar. 1898, DSP; Thomas Edison, Jr., to John Randolph, 19 Apr. 1898, PTAE; agreement between Thomas Edison, Jr., and Charles F. Stilwell, 19 Mar. 1898, PTAE.

  254. Vincent, Theodore Miller, 74; William Edison to MME, ca. early June 1898, DSP.