43. Boston Herald, 13 Apr. 1915; Hutchison to TE, 10 Jan. 1911, TENHP.
44. TE to Leonid Mundingo, 19 Apr. 1911, TENHP (“I am very deaf myself and consider it a great advantage as the modern world is so noisy.”); Hutchison to John Monnot, 1 Sept. 1911, TENHP.
45. Hutchison to TE, 10 Jan. 1911, TENHP; American Year Book 1911, 372; Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 27 Jan. 1911, TENHP; TE to Carlo Pfister, 27 Jan. 1911, TENHP. The German newspaper Staats-Zeitung published slightly variant numbers on 1 Aug. 1911, indicating a European (with Russia) total of 169 boats—nineteen more than Hutchison had estimated in January.
46. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entries for 27 Jan. and 9 Feb. 1911, TENHP. The Italian and Brazilian embassies also responded.
47. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 9 Feb. 1911, TENHP.
48. Ibid., entry for 21 Jan. 1911: Hutchison to Nixon & Mannock Ltd., 25 Mar. 1911, and to Richard L. Dyer, 13 Jan. 1911, TENHP.
49. Israel, Edison, 426; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 61.
50. By 1910 the drain on National Phonograph had reached $100,000 a month. Millard, Edison and Business, 196.
51. Ibid., 197, 195, 212. Engineers aware of TE’s prejudice against disks had to develop an Edison prototype in secret before he was persuaded to take it over himself. Frank Dyer to TE, 9 Nov. 1912, TENHP.
52. Israel, Edison, 428; Millard, Edison and Business, 197, 203–5.
53. The treasurer of TAE Inc. calculated that its constituent companies were worth $10,329,036 at the time of absorption. TE’s personal share of that total was $379,097. Ernest Berggreen to R. G. Dun, 24 Feb. 1911, TENHP. See also Millard, Edison and Business, 197–99; Israel, Edison, 427–28; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 61–62.
54. MME to Charles Edison, 26 Feb. and 2 Mar. 1911, TENHP.
55. Ibid., 7 Oct. 1910, CEF.
56. Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 143, 110; Gelatt, Fabulous Phonograph, 166–67; MME AP interview, 10 Jan. 1947, TENHP.
57. Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 82–83; TE quoted in Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 40; TE Patent 1,110,428.
58. TE Patents 1,002,505 and 1,119,142.
59. A rival phenolic product, Bakelite, appeared at the same time and involved both Edison and Aylsworth in a prolonged patent infringement suit that the General Bakelite Company eventually lost. See Vanderbilt, Edison, Chemist, 240–45.
60. MME to Charles Edison, 7 Oct. 1910 and 6 Mar. 1911, CEF.
61. Georgianne Ensign Kent, Vartanoosh: My Grandmother’s Story (New York, 2006), 105–16.
62. Ibid., 105.
63. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 26 Aug. 1910, TENHP; New York Times, 27 Aug. 1910. For the complexity of the synchronization problem in the production of early sound movies, see Geduld, Birth of the Talkies, 43ff.
64. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entries for 13 Mar. and 22 Apr. 1911, TENHP; Hutchison Extracts 23 Jan., 6 and 19 Mar., 4 and 26 May 1911, TENHP.
65. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entries for 28 July, 1 Apr., and 1 May 1911, TENHP.
66. Items 958–994, “Edison’s Patents, 1910931,” http://edison.rutgers.edu/patente6.htm; “T. A. Edison’s Color Pictures,” Nickelodeon, 1910; TE to Johann S. Bergmann, 28 June 1911, TENHP.
67. TE Patent 1,016,875; Hutchison Extracts, 21 July 1911, TENHP.
68. Sandusky (OH) Star-Journal, 3 Aug. 1911; 1911 Clippings File, TENHP.
69. MME to Charles Edison, Oct. 1912 (“that horrible tobacco smoke that you are compelled to breathe all the time”), TENHP; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 13. Charles soon acquired the nickname “Smoke.” Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 98.
70. Years later the diplomat Myron Herrick, a fellow passenger on the Mauretania, reminded TE “how, in your innocence, you did not know that your fame had grown and that all the European world was at your feet.” Herrick to TE, 28 June 1921, TENHP.
71. Leon Edel, ed., Henry James Letters, vol. 4, 1895–1916 (Cambridge, MA, 1984), 579; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 12; TE quoted in People, 27 Aug. 1911. Peggy James was a Bryn Mawr classmate of Madeleine Edison.
72. Manchester Guardian and Times, 9 Aug. 1911; “Mr. Edison’s Impressions of Europe,” ts., 1911, TENHP; Venable, Out of the Shadow, 14.
73. Unidentified newsclip, London, 10 Aug. 1911, TENHP.
74. New York World, 10 Aug. 1911. TE was presented with a copy of the Parliament Bill signed by Asquith, Lloyd George, and other senior government members.
75. Huntington (IN) Herald, 10 Aug. 1911.
76. Hutchison to John Monnot, 8 June 1911, TENHP. Except where otherwise indicated, the following account of TE’s European tour is based on the letters of Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, Aug.–Sept. 1911, DSP.
77. 1911 Clippings File, TENHP; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 21 Aug. 1911, DSP.
78. New York World, 28 and 31 Aug., 1911; New York Times, 3 Sept. 1911; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 21 and 29 Aug. and 2 Sept. 1911, DSP; Charles Edison’s detailed account of this incident in Venable, Out of the Shadow, 16–17.
79. MME to Charles Edison, 15 Sept. 1911, TENHP; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 15 Sept. 1911, DSP.
80. Francis Jehl to William J. Hammer, 8 Oct. and 1 Nov. 1911, TENHP.
81. Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 4 Sept. 1911, DSP; “Edison in Hungary and Moravia,” Electrical World, 7 Oct. 1911.
82. Madeleine to John Sloane, 4 Sept. 1911, DSP.
83. “Inventor Edison’s Daughter,” Wilkes-Barre Times Leader, 28 Nov. 1894; Francis Jehl to William J. Hammer, 8 Mar. 1912, TENHP (“The old man don’t seem to assist her a bit in a pecuniary sense”); Josephson, Edison, 301.
84. Quoted in Schenectady (NY) Gazette, 27 Nov. 1931.
85. Theodore Edison Oral History 1, 17–18, TENHP; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 19 Sept. 1911, DSP.
86. Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 19 Sept. 1911, DSP. Charles returned home before the rest of the family to attend the fall semester at MIT.
87. Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 23 Aug. 1911, DSP.
88. Marion Edison Öser to TE, ca. 24 Feb. 1912, TENHP; Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 7 Oct. 1911, TENHP.
89. MME to Charles Edison, 6 Mar. 1911, TENHP; Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8 Oct. 1911.
90. New Bedford (MA) Mercury, 31 Aug. 1911; “Mr. Edison’s Impressions of Europe,” 1911, TENHP; Ogden (UT) Standard, 26 Sept. 1911; St. Paul (MN) Dispatch, 29 Sept. 1911.
91. Syracuse (NY) Herald, 1 Oct. 1911; Sigmund Bergmann to TE, 5 and 17 Oct. 1911, TENHP. The article, translated for TE to read, informed him that he was “more inventive than smart.” TE’s reply to Bergmann has not survived.
92. New Bedford (MA) Mercury, 31 Aug. 1911; “Edison’s Impressions of European Industries,” Scientific American, 18 Nov. 1911.
93. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8 Oct. 1911; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 2 Aug. 1911, DSP; Pittsburgh Telegraph, 19 Aug. 1911; Detroit News, 20 Aug. 1911.
94. Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8 Oct. 1911; Madeleine Edison to John Sloane, 2 Aug. 1911, DSP; Pittsburgh Telegraph, 19 Aug. 1911; Detroit News, 20 Aug. 1911.
95. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 7 Oct. 1911, TENHP; Seattle Star and Washington Times, 18 Oct. 1911. The most detailed account of TE’s reaction (“What’s the use talking about it until I get it?”) is in St. Louis Post-Dispatch,19 Oct. 1911.
96. Israel, Edison, 468. TE received only three votes of support from the NAS. At about the same time and for a more anatomical reason, Marie Curie was rejected for membership of the Institute of France.
97. The Merchant of Venice, IV.1; Edison Monthly, June 1911; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 742.
98. MME to Charles Edison, 27 Oct. 1911, TENHP; Israel, Edison, 429.
99. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 11 Nov. 1911, TENHP; Jeffrey
, Phonographs to U-Boats, 76–77.
100. Hutchison to TE, entries for 12 Dec. and 2 Nov. 1911, TENHP. According to Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York, 1989), 203, this perception in 1911 may have been slightly exaggerated. Kennedy rates the U.S. Navy as third in the world on the eve of World War I.
101. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 2 Nov. 1911, TENHP; New York Sun, Washington Post, and New York Times, 3 Nov. 1911.
102. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entries for 26 and 27 Nov. 1911, TENHP; Cincinnati Enquirer and Marion (OH) Star, 28 Nov. 1911; Sandusky (OH) Star-Journal and Houston Post, 7 Dec. 1911.
103. Hutchison, “My Ten Years,” entry for 31 Dec. 1911. TENHP.
104. Ibid., entry for 9 Jan. 1912; Henry Ford, Edison as I Know Him (New York, 1930), 13. The adjective nouveau is MME’s (to Theodore Edison, 16 May 1920, PTAE). Ford’s snapshots are preserved in HFM and can be viewed online. The best analysis of the Edison-Ford relationship is in Sward, Legend of Henry Ford, 110–15.
105. W. J. Bee to Henry Ford, 6 Apr. 1911, and Bee to W. C. Anderson (Ford’s companion on the plant tour), same date, TENHP. Despite an assertion by Matthew Josephson that Ford called upon TE “unannounced” in 1909 (Edison, 456), it is clear from these letters that the two men had not met since their initial encounter in 1896.
106. The loan was at 5 percent and understood to be repayable in storage battery sales to Ford. Contract between Ford and TE, 29 Nov. 1912. Original copy plus draft termination agreement, July 1925, R. W. Kellow File, TENHP.
107. TE to Henry Ford, 29 Oct. 1912, HFM.
108. Hutchison Extracts, 14 Feb. 1912, TENHP. See also Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 82.
109. MME to Charles Edison, 9 Feb. 1912, PTAE. By now, Hutchison was earning 20 percent on all battery contracts.
110. Hutchison to Charles Edison, 15 Apr. 1912. This letter, one of several similar in TENHP, totals six and a half closely typed pages.
111. The most detailed account of the sessions of the Insomnia Squad is Jeffrey, “When the Cat Is Away.” See also O. Simmons, “Edison and His Insomnia Squad,” Munsey’s Magazine, Sept. 1916; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 5–60.
112. Jeffrey, “When the Cat Is Away,” 11; Edison Phonograph Monthly, Feb. 1914.
113. TE to Edward H. Johnson, 30 Oct. 1912, TENHP; Carl Wilson to Peter Weber, 9 July and 5 Sept. 1912, TENHP.
114. Carl Wilson to Peter Weber, 5 Sept. 1912, TENHP.
115. The original of this photograph, preserved at TENHP, has conflicting dates of 11 Sept. and 18 Oct. 1912 inscribed on the back. Thomas Jeffrey believes the latter date (added in the 1960s by a Park Service archivist) to be correct, on the assumption that the supper was a celebration of five weeks’ successful work. If so, TE and his team look anything but triumphant. The author credits the earlier date, which Norman R. Speiden, the first curator of the Edison Papers, took from an old print “sent down from Glenmont by Mrs. Edison.” Jeffrey also doubts the photo was taken at night. However, the sharpness of the shadows, and the increasing radiance of the light emanating from somewhere beyond TE’s left elbow, suggest it was indeed artificially lit.
116. Jeffrey, “When the Cat Is Away,” 17.
117. TE Patent 1,197,723. See L. I. Schiff, “Motion of a Gyroscope According to Einstein’s Theory of Gravitation,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 46, no. 6 (1960); TE Patent 1,234,451. The lateness of TE’s record-improvement blitz caused a postponement of the introduction of his disk phonograph system. In January 1913 Edison Phonograph Monthly ran a cover picture of TE auditing a record and defensively reported that he had undertaken “a long, hard grind” toward perfection. “But those who have heard the sample records…agree that it has been more than worth while.”
118. The following quotations are taken from Will Irwin, “Why Edison Is a Progressive,” Californian Outlook, 12 Oct. 1912. The interview, conducted on 17 September, was widely reprinted and made use of in Progressive Party literature. TE declined to speak at meetings in support of Roosevelt, but he contributed three times to his campaign fund. Because of the Republican/Progressive split, Woodrow Wilson was elected. Roosevelt easily defeated Taft in the final vote.
119. See Morris, Colonel Roosevelt, 117–19.
120. TE quoted in Irwin, “Why Edison Is a Progressive”; MME to Charles Edison, 19 Jan. 1913, (“Women will become as shrewd and wordly as the men. Everybody following his & her career and home forgotten entirely”), PTAE.
121. The following interview quotations are taken from Lucile Erskine, “Women Will Not Be Men’s Equals for 3000 Years,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 10 Mar. 1912.
122. TE to Edward H. Johnson, 30 Oct. 1912, TENHP.
123. Frank Dyer to TE, 9 Nov. 1912, TENHP.
124. Ibid.
125. Announcement typescript, 18 Nov. 1912, TENHP. See also Israel, Edison, 433–34.
126. Hutchison Extracts, entry for 1 Jan. 1913, TENHP.
127. Hutchison to Charles Edison, 10 Jan. 1913, TENHP.
128. Except where otherwise indicated, the following summary of the early history of sound pictures is based on Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 178–79, 438–39, and Geduld, Birth of the Talkies, 31–39.
129. See Bowser, Transformation of Cinema, 73.
130. TE patent 1,286,259, filed 6 Mar. 1913. The basic U.S. patent of the Kinetophone was number 1,054,203, “Combination Phonograph and Moving Picture Apparatus,” held by TE’s employee Daniel Higham. A perfectly preserved Kinetophone system is on exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn (Image ID: THF 36593).
131. TE superscript on George Harrold to TE, 10 Mar. 1913, TENHP. The cylinder operated a toothed wheel that, acting as an electrode, repeatedly opened and closed a telegraph-like circuit to the synchronizer. An electromagnetic governor on that device transferred the pulsations to the projector. Buffalo News, 23 Feb. 1913.
132. There is a detailed description of the Kinetophone projection process (which TE kept secret for fear of patent infringement) in Hutchison to Charles Edison, 13 Feb. 1913, TENHP.
133. “Lecture,” footage restored by the Library of Congress from TE’s introductory talking picture The Edison Kinetophone (1913).
134. Dunkirk (NY) Evening Observer, 4 Jan. 1913; New York Sun, 4 Jan. 1913.
135. Dunkirk (NY) Evening Observer, 4 Jan. 1913.
136. New York Times and Paterson (NJ) Guardian, 4 Jan. 1913; Salt Lake City News, 16 Jan. 1913; Canonsburg (PA) Daily Notes, 7 Jan. 1913. For an account of another Kinetophone preview that month, held by TE at the Orange Country Club, see Isaac Marcosson, “The Coming of the Talking Picture,” Munsey’s Magazine 48 (Mar. 1913).
137. “Movies Are ‘Talkies’ Too,” New York World, 4 Jan. 1913; “Edison Says ‘Talkies’ Will Replace Movies,” syndicated feature in multiple newspapers, 8–9 Jan. 1913. William Edison bid $15,000 on behalf of some “businessmen of high standing” for restaurant rights at talkie venues in New York. “This is no bull con but a straight out and out proposition,” he wrote his father. TE informed him that all rights had been disposed of already. William Edison to TE, 16 Jan. and ca. 27 Feb. 1913, TENHP.
138. P. J. Brady quoted in New York Times and New York World, 4 Feb. 1913; eyewitness account of Ralph H. Beach to Francis Jehl, 20 Dec. 1937, HFM (“[Edison] needed the money, but did not take it”); Hutchison to Charles Edison, 13 Feb. 1913, TENHP; C. H. Wilson to Charles Wetzel, 25 Jan. 1913, TENHP; Hutchison to TE, 16 Jan. 1913, TENHP.
139. In 1921 TE told an interviewer he had been “all on fire to spread this means of education broadcast over our land.” New York Herald, 15 May 1921.
140. Israel, Edison, 420–21; Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 82ff.
141. Hutchison Extracts, entry for 24 Jan. 1913, TENHP; MME to Charles Edison, 14 Jan. 1913, PTAE; Hutchison to Charles Edison, 13 Feb. 1913, TENHP.
<
br /> 142. MME to Charles Edison, 26 Jan. 1913, PTAE. According to P. J. Brady, the lawyer who represented Dos Passos, the deal included “large royalties” and would ultimately have been worth “several millions” to TE. New York World, 4 Feb. 1913.
143. Newark (NJ) Call, 8 Feb. 1913.
144. Hutchison Diary, entry for 17 Feb. 1913, TENHP; New York World, New York Evening Telegraph, and New York American, 18 Feb. 1913. The World reported that the ovation lasted ten minutes. Hutchison, who stayed behind at the Colonial after TE left, timed it at fifteen. “They say it is the greatest hit they have ever had in their theater.” Hutchison to TE, 17 Feb. 1913, TENHP.
145. New York Times, 18 Feb. 1913. The Library of Congress restoration of this film gives an approximate idea of how Edison talkie technology worked at its best. Although the program is cornball by modern standards, it includes a beautiful performance of “Silver Threads Among the Gold” by the tenor George W. Ballard. There is an unavoidable lapse in synchronism at the end, when “God Save the King” plays in audio while the minstrels mouth the words of “The Star Spangled Banner” in video. This is because the soundtrack derives from an alternative take, filmed for British release.
146. “Instructions for Installing and Operating the Edison Kinetophone Telephone System,” ts., 17 Mar. 1913, TENHP.
147. Hutchison to Charles Edison, 13 Feb. 1913, TENHP.
148. Ibid. A diagram of this complex headset-handset apparatus, complete with buzzers, buttons, “horn transmitter,” and multicolored line wires, is preserved in TENHP (Motion Picture folder, 19 Feb. 1913).
149. New York Evening Telegraph, 18 Feb. 1913; New York Tribune, 13 Jan. 1913.
150. Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 Feb. 1913; Ottawa (KS) Evening Herald, 26 Sept. 1913; Philadelphia Item, 23 Feb. 1913; World Magazine, 16 Feb. 1913; Comanche Chief, 19 Sept. 1913; New York Evening Telegraph, 18 Feb. 1913; Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, 31 Dec. 1913.
151. TE Patent 1,286,259.
152. New York Times, 4 Jan. 1913; New York Evening Sun, 18 Feb. 1913. See also “Edison Gets War Scenes for Talking Pictures,” New York Telegram, 21 Jan. 1913.
Edison Page 75
