Edison

by Edmund Morris

  375. TE to James Hood Wright, ca. Aug. 1887, PTAE.

  376. Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities,” 13.

  377. Edward Johnson superscript on Uriah Painter to Johnson, 12 Feb. 1888, PTAE.

  378. TE to Edward Johnson, 12 Feb. 1888, PTAE.

  379. Scientific American, 31 Dec. 1887.

  380. Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities,” 16; Israel, Edison, 282.

  381. National Park Service map of 1888 plant, TENHP; Arthur Kennelly interview, Biographical Collection, TENHP; National Park Service, Edison Laboratory, 1.13–15; Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 44–45.

  382. National Park Service, Edison Laboratory, 17, 19; TE in Evansville Courier, 27 Aug. 1928: DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 85.

  383. Israel, Edison, 271; Harry F. Miller Reminiscences, Biographical Collection, TENHP.

  384. Israel, Edison, 292; Spehr, Man Who Made the Movies, 76–77. TE planned to experiment with high-speed photography in his new laboratory as early as Nov. 1887, three months before meeting Muybridge (79).

  385. Israel, Edison, 292–93; Spehr, Man Who Made the Movies, 76–77.

  386. Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities,” 21; Israel, Edison, 289.

  387. Ibid., 286.

  388. Insull to Alfred Tate, 23 May 1888, PTAE.

  389. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 153–55.

  390. Israel, Edison, 293; Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities,” 24–25.

  391. Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities,” 25.

  392. Madeleine Edison was born on 31 May 1888.

  393. Quoted in Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 132.

  394. TE to Ezra Gilliland, 11 Sept. 1888, quoted in Israel, Edison, 289.

  395. Gilliland to TE, 13 Sept. 1888, PTAE; Albion, Florida Life of Edison, 43–44.

  396. TE Caveat 110, 8 Oct. 1888, PTAE. Facsimile reproduction in DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, xviii.

  397. Richard Howells, “Louis Le Prince: The Body of Evidence,” Screen 47, no. 2 (July 2006). See especially The First Film, a 2013 documentary by David Nicholas Wilkinson, available at https://vimeo.com/​ondemand/​thefirstfilm/​181293064.

  398. TE to Dyer and Seely, 8 Oct. 1888, PTAE. For a detailed account of the development of the Kinetograph by TE and Dickson, see Spehr, The Man Who Made the Movies, 82 ff.

  399. TE quoted by Lucile Erskine in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10 Mar. 1912.

  400. For accounts of the “War of the Currents,” critical of Edison’s and the Light Company’s cynical misuse of the electrocution issue to attack Westinghouse, see Richard Moran, Executioner’s Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair (New York, 2002); Mark Essig, Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Life and Death (New York, 2003); Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World (New York, 2004).

  401. Israel, Edison, 329; Charles Batchelor account in Cassier’s Magazine 5, Nov. 1893; Allerhand, Illustrated History, 284 ff.

  402. New York Times, 13 Dec. 1889.

  403. Moran, Executioner’s Current, chapter 4.

  404. Essig, Edison and the Electric Chair, 196–97; TE quoted in Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 124; Moran, Executioner’s Current, loc. 2071.

  405. TE’s moral opposition prevented the Light Company and its successor, Edison General Electric, from entering the AC market until the spring of 1890. Israel, Edison, 332–33.

  406. New York Times, 6, 13, and 18 Dec. 1889.

  407. Moran, Executioner’s Current, loc. 2147; New York Times, 6 Dec. 1888.

  408. See A Warning from the Edison Electric Light Co. (privately printed, 1888) and McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 328–30, for Johnson’s early involvement in the AC/DC rivalry.

  409. Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 1.29–30.

  410. Leroy Hughbanks, Talking Wax: The Story of The Phonograph (New York, 1945), chap. 3.

  411. De Graaf, Edison, 80; Stephan Puille, “Prince Bismarck and Count Moltke Before the Recording Horn: The Edison Phonograph in Europe, 1889–1890,” translated by Patrick Feaster, 1912, PTAE. The Goethe quotation is from Faust, Part One. Some of these unique cylinders, including Mark Twain’s, melted away in the Edison Works fire of December 1914. One that survived was recorded by TE himself. It was vocally addressed to James G. Blaine, the 1888 Republican presidential candidate, and took him on an imaginary tour of the world. Schenectady Gazette, 28 January 1996.

  412. Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 147; Julius Block Edison cylinder recording, ca. 14 Oct. 1889, Marston.records.com.; Julius Block, “Edison Album” 1889, New York Public Library Digital Collections.

  413. Israel, Edison, 370; Lewis Miller to Mary V. Miller, ca. mid-Apr. 1889, EFW. Hammer’s 7-part retrospective series on TE’s inventions was serialized in Electrical World between 31 Aug. and 12 Oct. 1889.

  414. Alan Walker, Hans von Bülow: A Life and Times (NY 2010), 409; New Brunswick Home News, 2 Mar. 1888; New York Times, 21 Apr. 1888; Israel, Edison, 321–23. Villard had previously and successfully combined all Edison’s European lighting companies (321).

  415. Israel, Edison, 322; Josephson, Edison, 353; TE to Henry Villard, 1 Apr. 1889, quoted in Israel, Edison, 324.

  416. Ibid.

  417. The word apotheosis was used to describe TE’s stay in Paris by Figaro on 30 Aug. 1889. Except where otherwise indicated, the following account is based on daily accounts in Le Figaro, 12 Aug.–12 Sept. 1889, with additional details from Annegret Fauser, Musical Encounters at the 1889 Paris World’s Fair (New York, 2005); Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 233–44 and Israel, Edison, 370–71. TE’s own account is in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 747–50.

  418. Francis Upton Scrapbook, 22 Aug. 1889, PTAE, Boston Globe, 8 Sept. 1889.

  419. Le Figaro, 28 Aug. 1889; New Albany Evening Tribune, 10 Sept. 1889; Étienne-Jules Marey, La Chronophotographie (Paris, 1829), 26; Marta Braun, Picturing Time: The Work of Étienne-Jules Marey, 1830–1904 (Chicago, 1995), 189–90.

  420. William J. Hammer, “Edison’s Display at the Paris Exposition,” trilingual booklet in Beinecke Library, Yale University; Israel, Edison, 371; K. G. Beauchamp, Exhibiting Electricity (London, 1997), 182–84; TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 747ff.; New York World, 16 Sept. 188.

  421. Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, L’Éve-Future (Paris, 1886). The complex story of Villiers’s twelve-year obsession with TE, culminating in book publication of his seminal science fiction novel, is well told in Gaby Wood, Edison’s Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life (New York 2002); A. W. Raitt, The Life of Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (New York, 1981); Carol de Dobray-Rifelj, “La Machine Humaine: Villiers’ Éve-Future and the Problem of Personal Identity,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 20 (Spring 1992); and Ritch Calvin, “The French Dick: Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Philip K. Dick, and the Android,” Extrapolation, 22 June 2007 (www.thefreelibrary.com). TE seems to have remained unaware of the novel until the dying Villiers sent him a copy just before his arrival in Paris. In 1910 he contributed $25 toward the erection of a statue in Villiers’s memory.

  422. Le Figaro, 3 Sept. 1889, translated by the author.

  423. TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 750–53; Scientific American, 21 Sept. 1889; Israel, Edison, 371; Le Figaro, 12 Aug. 1889.

  424. Puille, “Prince Bismarck”; Israel, Edison, 371–72; Tageblatt der 62. Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte in Heidelberg vom 18–23 Sept. (Heidelberg, 1890); 141; New York Herald, 21 Sept. 1889; Le Figaro, 12 Aug. 1889.

  425. See TE to Henry Villard, 8 Feb. 1890, PTAE: “I would now ask you not to oppose my gradual retirement from the lighting business, which will enable me to enter fresh and more congenial fields of work.”

  426. This fantasy of TE’s was ventured, shortly after his return to the United State
s, on the writer George Parsons Lathrop, and published in “Talks with Edison.” TE might possibly have been channeling two passages by Tennyson: “And the soul of the rose went into my blood,” from Maud, and “I am a part of all that I have met,” from Ulysses.

  PART SIX · SOUND (1870–1879)

  1. Papers, 1.151–56; Israel, Edison, 52.

  2. Papers, 1.146, 151.

  3. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 53–54 [misdated as 1869]. John Ott was the elder brother of Frederick Ott, who also worked for TE. He suffered a crippling stroke in 1895, but TE continued to employ and support him for life. His crutches and wheelchair were displayed near TE’s coffin. Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 53.

  4. William Ford, Industrial Interests of Newark, N.J. (New York 1874), 231; Israel, Edison, 52–55; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 53.

  5. TE Patent 128,608; Papers, 1.147, 151–54. This instrument, which substituted a single print wheel for Calahan’s two, never went into production.

  6. Israel, Edison, 52.

  7. Papers, 1.161–70. The Edison-Pope gold printer remained in common use throughout the 1880s.

  8. Papers, 1.172–73.

  9. TE to Sam and Nancy Edison, 9 May 1870, HFM.

  10. The “Family” folders in TENHP offer abundant evidence of the pecuniary consequences of worldly success.

  11. J. J. Anger to TE, 28 Oct. 1929, TENHP.

  12. Israel, Edison, 54–55.

  13. Papers, 1.196–207.

  14. Papers, 1.182; Prescott, Electricity and Telegraph, 688–89.

  15. Prescott, Electricity and Telegraph, 725; TE Patent 114,656; Papers, 1.173–75. TE also briefly experimented with automatic telegraphy in Boston in May 1868; Israel, Edison, 60ff.; Papers, 1.242–43; Papers, 1.246.

  16. This document (Papers, 1.208–9) is apparently the source of the tallest of TE’s autobiographical tales, first published in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 132–33—that he asked Lefferts to name a price for his universal stock ticker, hoping for $3,000 to $5,000, and was flabbergasted to be given a check for $40,000, or $796,000 in today’s money. The story may be a mélange of memories, and is impossible to substantiate from the available records. However, Lefferts’s draft did result in a contract with TE on 26 May 1871, conditionally worth much more than $40,000. See Papers, 1.283–87.

  17. TE to his parents, 30 Oct. 1870, HFM.

  18. Walter L. Welch, Charles Batchelor (Syracuse, NY, 1972), passim. Welch accurately describes Batchelor as “the balance wheel of an organization of which Edison was the mainspring” (5).

  19. Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 506.

  20. Israel, Edison, 61; Papers, 1.218–19, 222–23.

  21. Papers, 1.218, 220.

  22. Daniel Craig to TE, 12 Jan. 1871, Papers, 1.235.

  23. Israel, Edison, 62; Papers, 1.232.

  24. New York Times, 23 Apr. 1878; The Independent, 25 Apr. 1878.

  25. Papers, 1.237; William Orton to Anson Stager, 20 and 24 Jan. 1871, quoted in Israel, Edison, 54.

  26. Papers, 1.270.

  27. TE quoted in New York Herald Tribune, 19 Oct. 1931.

  28. Papers, 1.277–78, 226.

  29. David Hochfelder, The Telegraph in America, 1832–1920 (Baltimore, MD, 2012), 109; Papers, 283–92.

  30. Ibid., 1.283–94.

  31. Papers, 1.225–26. The purchase deal benefited Pope and Ashley at 510 Gold & Stock shares each, as opposed to only 180 for TE. Israel, Edison, 54–55; Papers, 1.226.

  32. Mary Edison interview in New York World, 1 June 1884, quoted in Papers, 1.563–64.

  33. Mary Edison interview, Papers, 1.564.

  34. Dated personal documents are scanty for this period of TE’s life. The author infers his chronology from the reminiscences of Mary Edison, cited above, and Edward Johnson, cited below. Mary says she was “going home from school” when she took shelter in the factory, which suggests June at the latest. If she was speaking precisely in saying she was “fifteen and a half years old” at the time, the encounter could have been as early as April, but her memory of a five-month courtship ties in better with the later date. It implies a proposal from TE in November, followed by their confirmed marriage on 25 December. Johnson’s memories of TE being almost penniless when they first met suggests a rough coincidence with the latter’s begging letter to Harrington on 22 July. Finally, Mary’s denial that she ever worked for TE in a “factory” does not conflict with evidence that she was employed in a short-lived news reporting business he established that fall. See Papers, 7.566–67.

  35. Papers, 1.295–96. TE gives a breezy account of his business method (“which certainly was new”) in ibid., 1.644.

  36. TE to George Harrington, fragment, 22 July 1871, PTAE.

  37. Papers, 1.308–9, 644.

  38. Papers, 1.346; TE Patents 123,984 and 121,601; Edison, 69, 67.

  39. Papers, 1.264–65. The Automatic Telegraph Company building stood at 66 Broadway.

  40. Edward Johnson to T. C. Martin, 21 Nov. 1908, TENHP. He remembered this first spell of association with TE as lasting about three months.

  41. Johnson quoted in Executive Intelligence Review, 9 Feb. 1896; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 148.

  42. Johnson quoted in Electrical World, undated clipping, ca. Mar. 1899, 1899 General File, TENHP.

  43. Electrical World, undated clipping, ca. Mar. 1899, 1899 General File, TENHP.

  44. Papers, 7.564.

  45. Ibid.

  46. Israel, Edison, 74–75; Papers, 1.346. Until the publication of volume 7 of the The Papers of Thomas A. Edison, which contained Mary Edison’s own account of her wedding, a nineteenth-century legend that TE returned to laboratory after the ceremony and forgot to come home that night was widely accepted by Edison biographers. That story is now discredited. It is true, though, that he went back to work briefly, with Mary’s permission, to deal with a problem to do with his stock-ticker delivery. See Papers, 7.560–62.

  47. Description based on early photographs of Mary Stilwell Edison. Nicholas Stilwell’s occupation was probably the reason Edison included, in his last notebook entry before the wedding, a double-tooth design to prevent band saws from running out of line. Papers, 1.376.

  48. Newark Daily Advertiser, 5 Jan. 1872; Papers, 1.385, 7.635; TE quoted in Israel, Edison, 75.

  49. Ibid.

  50. Papers, 1.377, 429, 430.

  51. Papers, 1.429–31.

  52. Papers, 1.496, 645. See, e.g., S. A. Woods Co. to Edison and Murray, Papers, 1.499.

  53. Israel, Edison, 77; Papers, 1.493, 496–97.

  54. Ibid.

  55. Facsimile in Papers, 1.437.

  56. Papers, 1.506–7.

  57. See, e.g., Papers, 1.508–12; William Orton testimony, Atlantic & Pacific Telephone Company v. George B. Prescott [et al.], vol. 71, 117–18, 125; Josephson, Edison, 109.

  58. Orton testimony, 129–32; Israel, Edison, 79. TE’s specific mandate was to develop duplex or diplex designs that would amplify but not conflict with the Stearns patent, which Western Union owned. Israel, Edison, 79; Orton testimony, 118ff. Orton and TE made their agreement verbally—a mistake on the former’s part that later involved them both in tormented lawsuit over quadruplex rights. Litigation Series, Quadruplex Case, vols. 70ff., PTAE.

  59. Phillips, Sketches Old and New, 183.

  60. Ibid.

  61. “Affidavit of Thomas A. Edison in Regard to his Inventions of Duplex and Quadruplex Telegraphy,” 27 Apr. 1875, reprinted in Papers, 2.810; TE, “Testimony of invention” to Lemuel Serrell, 15 Feb. 1873, Quadruplex Case, 71.2, PTAE. See also Papers, 1.527, 529.

  62. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 148–49; Israel, Edison, 83; Papers, 1.591.

  63. Ibid. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 149.

  64. Israel, Edison
, 83; TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 150.

  65. TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 150.

  66. Francis B. Keene, U.S. consul in Geneva, quoted in David Lindsay, Madness in the Making: The Triumphant Rise and Untimely Fall of America’s Show Inventors (1997; New York, 2005), 229. See also Leah Burt, “George Edward Gouraud,” ts., Biographical Collection, TENHP.

  67. TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 151.

  68. Ibid., 150.

  69. Papers, 1.501–2; TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 152.

  70. TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 151; Israel, Edison, 87.

  71. TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 152; London Echo, 22 Aug. 1889.

  72. Joseph Murray to TE, 12 June 1873.

  73. Orton quoted in Maury Klein, The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (Baltimore, MD, 1986), 198; Israel, Edison, 99; Papers, 2.235.

  74. Israel, Edison, 93–95; Papers, 2.3 ff.

  75. TE in Golden Book, Apr. 1931, quoted in Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 232. The rest of this paragraph is closely based on Israel, Edison, 87–95.

  76. TE quoted in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 158; Papers, 2.239. The article erroneously listed George Prescott of Western Union as co-inventor of the quadruplex. There were legal repercussions. See Israel, Edison, 98.

  77. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 156; TE quoted in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 156. For another indication of the quadruplex’s complexity, see Papers, 2.314.

  78. Prescott, Electricity and Telegraph, 843–44. “In essence,” Paul Israel writes, “Edison used a cascade of electromagnets to bridge over the time during which the reversed current regenerated the magnetic field in the main relay magnet.” Israel, Edison, 98. See also TE Patent 207,724, executed on 14 Dec. 1874.

  79. Quoted in Israel, Edison, 99.

  80. TE Patent 158,787, filed 13 Aug. 1874; TE in Scientific American, 5 Sept. 1874; TE in Dyer and Martin, Edison, 183. TE discovered the motograph principle on 10 Apr. 1874. Papers, 2.178–79.

  81. TE Patent 158,787.

  82. Papers, 2.178; Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences, 69; Scientific American, 5 Sept. 1874 (italics added). TE’s letter to the magazine on this date is reprinted in its entirety in Papers, 2.282–83.