Edison

by Edmund Morris

  21. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 146; William Pretzer, “Edison’s Last Breath,” Technology and Culture 45 (2004).

  22. L. W. McChesney, “A Light Is Extinguished,” privately printed booklet (approved by Mina and Charles Edison), 4–6, TENHP; Oakland Tribune, 20 Oct. 1931. The following account of the ceremonies attending TE’s death is based on the official schedule of events, ts., 18 Oct. 1931, Funeral File, TENHP; Charles Edison to Henry Ford, telephone transcript, 19 Oct. 1931, HFM; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 296–305; and Associated Press, United Press, and International News Service reports in syndicated newspapers, 18–22 Oct. 1931 (henceforth AP, UP, and INS).

  23. Quoted in Galveston (TX) Daily News, 20 Oct. 1931.

  24. The original aphorism can be found in Helen Zimmern, ed., Sir Joshua Reynolds’ Discourses (London, 1887), 194.

  25. Pittsburgh Press, 19 Oct. 1931.

  26. Einstein and Ford quoted in AP report, 19 Oct. 1931; Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Herbert Hoover (1931), 3.362.

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

  PART ONE · BOTANY (1920–1929)

  1. TE to William Ores, 24 Jan. 1921, TENHP; TE marginalia in his copy of Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone, 13–14, TENHP. These notes appear to have been made ca. 1911.

  2. In 1862 Kelvin, then Sir William Thomson, defined the second law of thermodynamics as: “Although mechanical energy is indestructible, there is a universal tendency to its dissipation, which produces…diffusion of heat, cessation of motion, and exhaustion of potential energy through the material universe. The result of this would be a state of universal rest and death.” Quoted in Gleick, Information, 271.

  3. McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 214. Confirmation of Einstein’s theory by observations of bent starlight during a solar eclipse had been announced by the Royal Society on 9 November 1919.

  4. TE’s copy of Albert Einstein, Relativity: The Special and General Theory, ed. Robert Lawson (New York 1920), 4, TENHP. De Bothezat was an aeronautical scientist in the employ of the U.S. government and an expert on fluid dynamics. His paper, which he sent to TE in typescript (TE General file, 1920, TENHP), appears to be an early draft of a lecture on relativity that he later delivered before the Indiana Association of MIT. Technology Review 24 (1922).

  5. F. A. Christie, e.g., on John Wesley Powell’s Truth and Error, or the Science of Intellection in Unity, 9 Mar. 1899; “Edison’s Views on Life and Death,” Scientific American, 30 Oct. 1920; TE quoted in “Edison Working on How to Communicate with the Next World,” American Magazine, Oct. 1920. TE’s “units of life” or “entities” perpetuating certain evolutionary characteristics seems to have derived from Darwin’s theory of primitive cells built up of “gemmules” that subsequently transubtantiated into organs with specific functions. TE marginal notes on pp. 355–69 of his copy of Darwin’s The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (New York, 1899), TENHP. In another such note, TE wrote, “Entities explain everything” over a discussion of the genetic patterns latent in a fertilized egg. T. Brailsford Robertson, The Chemical Basis of Growth and Senescence (Philadelphia, 1923), 197, TENHP. In his copy of Sherwood Eddy’s New Challenges to Faith (New York, 1926), p. 4, TE defined intelligent behavior as the result of “previous stimuli stored in the organ of memory.” For an analysis of TE’s deterministic theory of “director” particles, see Anthony Enns, “From Poe to Edison,” in Martin Willis and Catherine Wynne, eds., Victorian Literary Mesmerism (New York, 2006), 65ff.

  6. Richard Outcault interview, GE Monogram, Nov. 1928.

  7. New York World, 17 Nov. 1889; Papers, 8.206; Marion Edison Öser, “The Wizard of Menlo Park, by His Daughter,” Mar. 1956, TENHP; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 773; The American Magazine, 78.5 (Nov. 1914).

  8. For the reorganization of Thomas A. Edison, Inc., in 1915, see Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 62 ff.

  9. Charles Edison, Flotsam and Jetsam (privately printed, New York 1967), introduction; “Charles Edison: From Bohemia to the Boardroom” in Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 104. See also “Ex-Jersey Governor Was Once a ‘Village’ Poet,” New York Times, 27 Sept. 1967.

  10. Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 107–8; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 79; “Business Activities of Mark Jones,” memo, ca. 1925, 8, TENHP.

  11. Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 107–8; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 79–80; Charles Edison to MME, 6 Jan. 1930, TENHP.

  12. Charles Edison to MME, 18 Mar. 1920, TENHP.

  13. MME to Theodore Edison, 23 Mar. 1920, PTAE.

  14. Ibid.; Jeffrey, “ ‘Commodore’ Edison,” 33–34.

  15. TE interviewed by Edward Marshall, National Labor Digest, July 1919; U.S. Senate, 66th Cong., 2nd sess., Awarding of Medals in the Naval Service: Hearing Before a Subcommittee on Naval Affairs (Washington, DC, 1920), 546; Josephson, Edison, 454; William H. Meadowcroft to Frank Baker, 21 Aug. 1920, TENHP; TE superscript on Henry Lanahan to TE, 3 May 1920, Legal File, TENHP.

  16. MME to Theodore Edison, 23 Mar. 1920 and 9 May 1929, PTAE; Lynn Given interview, 20 Mar. 1990, TENHP; TE to George M. Wise, Bombay, ca. July 1920, and TE superscript on J. K. Small to TE, 6 Oct. 1920, TENHP; TE to J. F. Menge, 24 May 1920, TENHP.

  17. The following account is taken from an unidentified newsclip, TE General File 1920, TENHP.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Grant, Forgotten Depression, loc. 1425, 1995; Sullivan, Our Times, 165.

  20. Sullivan, Our Times, 176ff.; New York Times, 17 Sept. 2003; Grant, Forgotten Depression, loc. 1370; McDonald, Insull, 209.

  21. Israel, Edison, 454–55; MME to Theodore Edison, 16 Oct. 1920, PTAE.

  22. MME to TE, n.d., ca. Oct. 1920, EFW. The executives fired by TE were John Constable, Frank Fagan, Stephen Mambert, and William Maxwell.

  23. MME to Theodore Edison, 18 Oct. 1920, PTAE. TE was still berating his son at the beginning of a family visit in November. “If Papa keeps at Charles as he did at dinner tonight I would not ask him to stay for such a week of torture—Charles is too sensitive and finely put together to stand it.” MME to Theodore Edison, 1 Nov. 1921, PTAE.

  24. MME to Theodore Edison, 5 Nov. 1921, PTAE; Grant, Forgotten Depression, loc. 1390.

  25. TE to C. S. Williams, 5 Jan. 1921, TENHP; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 196; TE to Sherwood Moore, 5 Jan. 1921, TENHP; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 109–13, 126; Israel, Edison, 455; TE pocket notebook 20-08-04, TENHP. In one, seemingly arbitrary case, TE fired a young college-educated employee, the friend of his electrochemical assistant Paul B. Kasakove. “He’s lost the lustre in his eye. You mark my words, he’s going to be a very sick man.” Kasakove scoffed at this opinion, but several months later the dismissed youth suffered a manic collapse. Kasakove, “Reminiscences,” TENHP.

  26. Marion Edison Öser to TE, 23 Apr. 1920, TENHP.

  27. TE superscript on A. Holt to TE, 5 Mar. 1920, “Family” folder, TENHP; MME to Theodore Edison, 6 Apr. 1920, PTAE; Jeffrey, “Tom and Beatrice.”

  28. R. W. Kellow to William Edison, 9 Jan. 1920, and William Edison’s reply, same date, “Family” folder, TENHP.

  29. TE memo, 3 Jan. 1920, and TE superscript on William Edison to R. W. Kellow, 9 Jan. 1920, “Family” folder, TENHP.

  30. Miller Reese Hutchison Diary, 1 Jan. 1921, TENHP.

  31. TE superscript on Roland Collins to TE, 29 Dec. 1920, TENHP; MME to Theodore Edison, 6, 7, and 12 Jan. 1921, PTAE.

  32. Sward, Legend of Henry Ford, 114.

  33. Charles Edison, Flotsam and Jetsam, quoted in Venable, Out of the Shadow, 57.

  34. Venable, Out of the Shadow, 81; unidentified newsclip, datelined New York, 7 May 1921, TENHP.

  35. Thomas A. Edison, Inc. (hereafter TAE Inc.) had made a record profit of $2.9 million in 1919. In 1920, this figure fell to $820,000; in 1921, the
company lost $1.3 million. The effect of the depression was particularly evident in sales of Edison disk phonographs, which plummeted from 141,907 units to 34,326 in the same period. Millard, Edison and Business, 292, 294; Grant, Forgotten Depression, loc. 5796, 2948, 2982; Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 210.

  36. Grant, Forgotten Depression, loc. 2790; TE quoted by Charles Edison in Venable, Out of the Shadow, 81. For TE’s convenient deafness, see, e.g., his interview in New York Sun, 27 Aug. 1884.

  37. Charles Edison to TE, 12 Sept. 1921, TENHP; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 81.

  38. One new intellectual venture for TE at this time was a Bryanesque monetary plan, extensively researched, for a replacement of the gold standard by a commodity-based currency. Although it was not taken seriously by contemporary economists, his Proposed Amendment to the Federal Reserve Banking System (West Orange, NJ, 1922) has recently been praised as imaginative and anti-inflationary by David L. Hammes in Harvesting Gold: Thomas Edison’s Experiment to Re-Invest American Money (Silver City, NM, 2012). See also “Says Edison Beat Bryan Money Plan,” New York Times, 24 Nov. 1922; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 197–212; and Israel, Edison, 446, 527.

  39. TE pocket notebook 20-10-15, TENHP. This recording, played on a “William and Mary”-style Edison console, may be heard at https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=ewe-bnrx1kA.

  40. TE pocket notebook 23-12-23, TENHP; TE superscript on an article ms. by Francis A. Grant of Musical America, ca. Dec. 1920, TENHP; TE memos to Sherwood Moore, 1920–21, TENHP; Kasakove, “Reminiscences,” 145; TE pocket notebook 20-08-000; TE patent 1,492,023; Theodore Edison Oral History 1, 118–19, TENHP.

  41. Meadowcroft, Boys’ Life of Edison, 241; MME to Theodore Edison, 8 Apr. 1921, PTAE.

  42. Warren G. Harding Inaugural, 4 Mar. 1921, American Presidency Project, http://presidency.ucsb.edu.

  43. New York Times, 5 Aug. 1921; unidentified newsclip, datelined 7 May 1921, TENHP; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 81.

  44. Israel, Edison, 455; New York Times, 6 May 1921. See also Dennis, “Edison Questionnaire.”

  45. T. C. Martin,“Edison a Student at Seventy-Four,” World’s News, 18 June 1921; “Edison Answers Some of His Critics,” New York Times, 23 Oct. 1921; Newton, Uncommon Friends, 7. According to his publicity assistant, John Coakley, TE’s papers of choice were the Times and staunchly Republican New York Herald Tribune. John Coakley Oral History, 36, TENHP.

  46. Oliver Lodge folder, Biographical File, TENHP; Sherwood Eddy, New Passages to Faith (New York, 1926), 119, copy in TENHP; TE to Myron Herrick, 28 June 1921, TENHP; TE interviewed in Detroit News, 26 Oct. 1921; Electrical Review and Western Electrician, 10 Nov. 1914.

  47. New York Evening Mail, 10 May 1921; New York Tribune 11, 12 May 1921.

  48. New York Globe, 12 May 1921; New York Times, 13 May 1921; Lancaster (PA) Intelligencer, quoted in Dennis, “Edison Questionnaire.”

  49. New York Tribune, 12 May 1921; Boston Globe, 15 May 1921; Thomas Edison National Historic Park, “150 Questions” list, Nps.gov; Dennis, “Edison Questionnaire.”

  50. New York Times, 18 May 1921; Einstein folder. Biographical Collection, TENHP. In a 1924 letter, recently discovered, Einstein wrote his sister, “Scientifically I haven’t achieved much recently—the brain gradually goes off with age.” Guardian, 14 Mar. 2018.

  51. H. Winfield Secor, “An Interview with Nicola Tesla,” Science and Invention, Feb. 1922; Edwin R. Chamberlain to TE, 17 May 1921, TENHP.

  52. TE superscript on Edwin R. Chamberlain to TE, 17 May 1921, TENHP; Dennis, “Edison Questionnaire.” See also “What Do You Know? The Edison Questionnaire,” Scientific American, Nov. 1921; TE quoted in “Mr Edison’s Brain Meter,” Literary Digest, 28 May 1921.

  53. G. W. Plusch to TE, 12 May 1921, TENHP; “Mr Edison’s Brain Meter,” Literary Digest, 28 May 1921; Washington Times, 23 May 1921; Arizona Republic, 22 May 1921; “Diogenes Looking for a Man that Can Answer a Few Simple Questions,” https:lccn.loc.gov/​2016678705; Boston Globe, 15 May 1921.

  54. TE superscript on H. C. Stratton, 11 May 1921, TENHP; TE quoted in Newark Evening News, 14 May 1921. For a comprehensive survey of reaction to what the San Francisco Examiner called “Thos. Edison’s Mental Teasers,” see Dennis, “Edison Questionnaire.” See also “The Edison Questionnaire—Its Aim, Its Results, and Its Collateral Significance,” Scientific America 125 (Nov. 1921).

  55. Dennis, “Edison Questionnaire”; Literary Digest, 28 May 1921. TE issued two more, equally forbidding questionnaires that summer. See Chicago Tribune, 12 May and 30 July 1921.

  56. MME to Theodore Edison, 6 July 1921, PTAE.

  57. Leland Crabbe, “The International Gold Standard and U.S. Monetary Policy from World War I to the New Deal,” Federal Reserve Bulletin, June 1989; Olean (NY) Evening Herald, 12 July 1921; John W. Dean, Warren G. Harding (New York, 2004), loc. 1653. Harding was successful in retarding passage of the Bonus Bill in 1921 and successful again in vetoing it the following year.

  58. MME to Theodore Edison, 18 July 1921, PTAE. Harding was also a regular visitor to Chautauqua, Mina’s family resort. But according to a UP report, this was to be TE’s “first meeting” with the president. Minneapolis Tribune, 25 July 1921.

  59. Lief, Harvey Firestone, 208; Akron Times, 23 July 1921. Except where otherwise noted, this account of the TE/Harding weekend is derived from Harvey S. Firestone with Samuel Crowther, Men and Rubber: The Story of Business (New York, 1926), 228ff., plus eyewitness reports in the July 1921 Clippings File, TENHP. (Harding brought a large press party with him to the campsite.) See also MME to Theodore Edison, 23 July 1921, PTAE, and photographs in the Library of Congress Prints and Photography Division online catalogue, Nos. LC-H27, A3138-3151 and F81-15260.

  60. Firestone, Men and Rubber, 230.

  61. Canton (OH) Daily News, 24 July 1921.

  62. Quoted in Lief, Harvey Firestone, 209.

  63. Francis Champ Chambrun, “Famous Travelers: Edison, Ford, Firestone,” dnr.maryland.gov. Harding’s visit with the Vagabonds received enormous publicity, due to the presence of fifteen White House reporters, photographers, and movie cameramen. Although Mina cannot have been gratified by headlines such as “EDISON SLEEPS AS BISHOP PREACHES,” many reports noted the president’s fascination with TE. Clippings Folder, July 1921, TENHP.

  64. Grant, Forgotten Depression, chap. 18, passim. TE memo, ca. 31 Dec. 1921, pocket notebook 20-08-00, TENHP; Israel, Edison, 409, 521; Edisonian 5, no. 1 (Winter 2009); New York Times, 5 Aug. 1921; MME to Theodore Edison, 20 Nov. 1921, PTAE.

  65. Charles Edison to TE, 21 Oct. 1921, TENHP.

  66. MME to Theodore Edison, 19 Feb. 1921, PTAE.

  67. Charles confirmed this in later life. “If father hadn’t stepped in, we would have been completely broke.” Venable, Out of the Shadow, 81. A report on the cost of operating Edison Industries at this time put the total at slightly over $1 million per annum, of which $298,832 went to labor and help. Meanwhile there was only $28,000 worth of work in progress. John V. Miller to TE, 30 June 1922, TENHP.

  68. H. F. Miller to TE, 31 Dec. 1921, TENHP; Beatrice Edison to MME, 22 June 1922, TENHP; TE to Dr. Gaunt, n.d., 1922, TENHP; John V. Miller to TE, 23 Jan. 1922, TENHP.

  69. Sources differ as to the precise extent of TE’s 1920–21 purge. The figure given here is that of Charles Edison, who calculated a reduction from 10,000 to 3,000 by 28 Feb. 1922 (Israel, Edison, 455.) As early as 5 Aug. 1921, The New York Times reported it as 8,000 to just over 1,000. A typescript, “Business Activities of Mark Jones,” ca. 1925 (TENHP), gives it as 11,000 to 11,500.

  70. TE interviewed in Detroit News, 26 Oct. 1921.

  71. Edmund Morris, Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan (New York, 1999), 37, 693.

  72. “Radio Currents,” Radio Broadcast 1, no. 1 (May 1922).

  73. Millard, America on Record, 137–38; TE superscrip
t on L. R. Garretson to TE, 1 Feb. 1922, TENHP.

  74. Memo, ca. early 1920s, William Benney folder, Biographical Collection, TENHP.

  75. MME to Theodore Edison, 9 Feb. 1922, PTAE.

  76. MME to Theodore Edison, 10 May 1922, PTAE.

  77. TE to William J. Curtis, 7 May 1920, TENHP.

  78. Millard, America on Record, 132; DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 112; TE Patents 1,369,272 and 1,411,425; Harold Anderson Oral History, 7–8, COL; Wile and Dethlefson, Edison Artists, 148–50.

  79. TE superscript on William D. Johnstone, Jr., to TE, 15 July 1922, TENHP. TE’s pocket notebooks, 1920–23, concentrate mainly on recording improvements.

  80. Rubber Age, 25 Oct. 1922; Western Canner and Packer, May 1922; Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 53–54, 34, 47; Lief, Harvey Firestone, 239. Rubber Age, 25 Oct. 1922, “conservatively” estimated current U.S. rubber consumption at 270,000 tons, “eighty percent of which will go into tubes and tires.” World production was put at 330,000 tons.

  81. Rubber Age, 25 Oct. and 10 Nov. 1922; Kendrick A. Clements, The Life of Herbert Hoover: Imperfect Visionary, 1918–1928 (New York, 2010), x; Silvano A. Wueschner, “Herbert Hoover, Great Britain, and the Rubber Crisis, 1923–1926” (Ebhsoc.org, 2000); Finlay, Growing American Rubber, 55–57.

  82. New York Times, 23 July 1922.

  83. Harvey S. Firestone to TE, 9 Jan. 1923, TENHP; Harvey S. Firestone and Samuel Crowther, Rubber: Its History and Development (Akron, OH, 1922); TE to Firestone, 16 Jan. 1923, TENHP.

  84. “I was astounded at the knowledge of rubber that he had on hand….He told me more than I knew and more than I think our chemists knew.” Firestone, Men and Rubber, 226–27.

  85. TE Patent 60,646; see Part Seven; Papers, 2.651, 2.670, and 3.71; “An Hour with Edison,” Scientific American, 13 July 1878.

  86. TE to Firestone, 16 Jan. 1923, TENHP. TE went through the book (preserved in TENHP) in less than a week and added none of his usual marginalia. There was one world map that might have cautioned him, showing that rubber plants flourished nowhere outside the tropics, except for a thin strip of natural guayule in north-central Mexico.