Edison

by Edmund Morris

  16. Charles Batchelor Diary, entry for 24 Mar. 1890, PTAE; Wall Street Journal, 31 Mar. 1890; New York World, 1 Apr. 1890; Chicago Tribune and Philadelphia Times, 8 Apr. 1890; McDonald, Insull, 48; Israel, Edison, 334; Dyer and Martin, 53.

  17. Parker, Natural Philosophy, 18.

  18. Iron Age 46 (27 Nov. 1890).

  19. Edison made this comparative remark when being quizzed on his lack of religious belief. New York Times, 2 Oct. 1910.

  20. TE in Telegrapher, 8 Aug. 1868 and 16 Oct. 1869; TE, “On a Magnetic Bridge or Balance for Measuring Magnetic Conductivity,” Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 36 (Aug. 1887); William J. Hammer in Electrical World, 21 Sept. 1889; John Birkinbine and Thomas Edison, “The Concentration of Iron-Ore,” Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers 17 (Feb. 1889).

  21. Hounshell, “Edison and the Pure Science Ideal.” For an account of TE’s explorations of electromagnetic science, see Israel, Edison, 30–61.

  22. TE Patent 228,329, executed 3 Apr. 1880, issued 1 June 1880.

  23. Birkinbine and Edison, “Concentration of Iron-Ore”; TE Patent 430,280, issued 17 June 1890. At this early stage of Edison’s development of the movie camera, he used the names “Kinetoscope” and “Kinetograph” indiscriminately. They later took on more precise meaning. See, e.g., TE Patent 589,168.

  24. “Edison Has an Idea,” Minneapolis Times, 17 Apr. 1890; Paul C. Spehr, “Unaltered to Date: Developing 35mm. Film,” in John Fullerton and Astrid Soderburgh Widding, Moving Images: From Edison to the Webcam (Bloomington, IN, 2000), loc. 378ff.

  25. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 288; TE and W. K. L. Dickson Patent 434,588, issued 19 Aug. 1890.

  26. Carlson, “Edison in the Mountains,” 42.

  27. Hornellsville (NY) Weekly Tribune, 21 Mar. 1890; Marion Edison to MME, Mar. 1890, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 384; Marion Edison to TE, 28 Dec. 1890, PTAE (“Do please add a line or two to one of Mina’s letters I should like so much to hear from you”), and to MME, ca. Aug. 1890, PTAE.

  28. Marion Edison to MME, ca. Aug. 1890, PTAE.

  29. Engineering News, Oct. 1980; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 119–20, 144; Engineering and Mining Journal, 10 Oct. 1891.

  30. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 191; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 145.

  31. Tate to Samuel Insull, 10 July 1890, PTAE; Lathrop, “Talks with Edison”; Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1890, PTAE.

  32. Lathrop to Tate, 30 June 1890, PTAE.

  33. Finding aid, Rose Hawthorne Lathrop Papers, Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne Archive, Hawthorne, NY.

  34. TE to Lathrop, ca. early Oct. 1890, PTAE.

  35. Lathrop to TE, 13 Oct. 1890 and 10 Aug. 1891; TE to Lathrop, ca. early Oct. 1890; all PTAE.

  36. Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1891, and TE to Lathrop, ca. early Oct. 1890, both PTAE.

  37. Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1891, PTAE.

  38. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 283; Dickson and Dickson, History of Kinetograph, 8–12; TE caveat, 8 Oct. 1888, TENHP; Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 30–31; Minneapolis Times, 17 April 1890.

  39. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 210. A reshoot, Monkeyshines No. 2, already showed improvement in camera technique. See https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=9jSbExx-960.

  40. Dickson, “Brief History”; John Belton, Widescreen Cinema (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 18. For an exhaustive account of film R&D at the Edison laboratory in 1889–90, see Spehr, “Unaltered to Date.”

  41. Dickson, “Brief History.”

  42. The complex chronology of the invention of cinema, involving simultaneous experiments and claims of precedence in France, Britain, and the United States, is a subject of continuing, unresolved debate by scholars in all three countries. Edison’s relations with Étienne-Jules Marey and his pioneer work on the Kinetoscope in 1888 and 1889 will be discussed in Part Five.

  43. Poughkeepsie Daily Eagle, 1 Jan. 1891, quoting New York Sun; Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1891, PTAE; Buffalo Enquirer, 27 May 1891; Hartford Courant, 10 June 1891.

  44. Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1891, 17 Mar. and 15 Apr. 1892; Tate to Lathrop, 15 Apr. 1891; Lathrop to MME, 24 June 1891, all PTAE.

  45. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 190. On 11 Apr. 1883, Edward H. Johnson specifically recommended Sprague to TE, as “of all men the very one to take charge of your Railway Experiments.” TE did hire him, but assigned him to install small-town lighting systems at the very time he was forming his own Edison-Field Electric Railway Company. Papers, 7.61–65, 67.

  46. Buffalo Commercial, 16 Jan. 1890.

  47. Rowsome, Birth of Electric Traction, loc. 1420, 1461ff.

  48. Frank J. Sprague to Edison General Electric Co. and Henry Villard, 2 Dec. 1890, PTAE. See also Rowsome, Birth of Electric Traction, loc. 1547ff.

  49. See, eg., Sprague in The New York Times, 23 Sept. 1928, and Harriet Sprague, Frank J. Sprague and the Edison Myth (New York, 1947), passim.

  50. Harry Livor to TE, 4 Mar. 1891, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 335; New York Evening World, 5 Feb. 1891; Wall Street Journal, 7 Feb. 1891. See also McDonald, Insull, 39ff.

  51. Donald R. Baker and A. F. Buddington, Geology and Magnetite Deposits of the Franklin Quadrangle and Part of the Hamburg Quadrangle, New Jersey, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 638 (Washington, DC, 1970), 38, 49, 52; TE Rationale, 5–6, PTAE; TE in Engineering and Mining Journal, 10 Oct. 1891.

  52. “Report of Mr. Edison on Mill and Property at Ogden,” NJ&PCW Board Minutes, 16 July 1890, PTAE; Engineering and Mining Journal, 10 Oct. 1891; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 36–37.

  53. Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 72.

  54. Ibid., 34; Walter Mallory deposition in Edison v. Allis Chalmers, 640; Israel, Edison, 349; Scranton Republican, 9 Apr. 1891; Charles Batchelor Diary, entry for 8 Mar. 1891, PTAE.

  55. TE to Henry Livor, 10 June 1891, and Livor to TE, 14 Apr. 1890, PTAE.

  56. Israel, Edison, 350; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 33.

  57. Carlson, “Edison in the Mountains,” 48–49; Henry Livor to TE, 11 June 1891; Bethlehem Iron to W. S. Perry, 15 June 1891; Perry to Bethlehem Iron, 24 July 1891, all PTAE.

  58. Israel, Edison, 350; TE in Buffalo Morning Express, 8 Nov. 1891; 47 F. 454 (SDNY, 1891), 1891 U.S. App. Lexis 1151; “Locomotion in Water Studies by Photography,” Scientific American Supplement, 10 Jan. 1891. Edison was familiar with Marey’s pioneering work and could not fail to recognize its superiority to his own. He was at least dimly aware of that of William Friese-Greene. The British inventor wrote to him on 18 Mar. 1890 to say he was sending by separate post “a paper with description of Machine Camera for taking 10 a second.” There is no trace of this paper in TENHP, but receipt of the letter was acknowledged. Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 1.178; William Friese-Greene to TE, 18 Mar. 1890, PTAE.

  59. Reading (PA) Times, 14 May 1891. See also Chicago Tribune, 13 May 1891.

  60. Ibid.

  61. Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 May 1891.

  62. New York Tribune, 27 May 1891. Richard Dyer was the brother and partner of Frank Dyer, future president of Thomas A. Edison, Inc.

  63. Ibid.; Allerhand, Illustrated History, 226ff.; Electrical Review, 15 Oct. 1892; New York Evening World, 26 May 1891.

  64. Ibid. The New York Sun, 28 May 1891 is the source of a doubtful story that TE first demonstrated the Kinetograph to a group of women touring his laboratory a few days previously. It is true that Mina Edison hosted a lunch at Glenmont on 20 May for some 200 members of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, and that she invited them to visit the plant afterward. However, Edison was in Chicago that day. Jane C. Croly’s densely detailed account of the event (which gives a good idea of the elegance of Mina’s entertainments) makes no mention of a movie show. Jane C. Croly, The History of the Woman’s Club Movement in America (New York
, 1898), 110. See also Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 504.

  65. New York Sun, 28 May 1891; Lathrop to TE, 29 May, 1891.

  66. New York Sun, 28 May 1891.

  67. Ibid.

  68. Ibid.

  69. TE Patent 493,426; Musser, Emergence of Cinema, 71; New York Sun, 28 May 1891.

  70. New York Sun, 28 May 1891.

  71. “Edison’s Kinetograph,” Harper’s Weekly 35 (13 June 1891).

  72. Ibid.

  73. Henry Hart interviewed in New York Morning Journal, 26 July 1891.

  74. Ibid.

  75. Phonogram, TE’s house magazine, predicted that with all other lighting companies included as liable in the infringement decision, Edison General Electric was due as much as $50 million in back damages, and $2 million a year in future royalties. Phonogram 2, no. 10 (Oct. 1892).

  76. TE quoted in Asheville Citizen-News, 11 Nov. 1891.

  77. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 661; TE U.S. Patents 589,168 and 493,426; TE quoted in Asheville Citizen-News, 11 Nov, 1891. TE made no attempt to patent the Kinetograph overseas, probably because he quailed at the cost and difficulty of claiming precedence over the rival inventions of Marey, Le Prince, Friese-Greene, and others. But he thereby lost millions and enabled such French competitors as Lumière and Pathé to make substantial inroads into the U.S. market. For a discussion of TE’s decisions to patent, or not patent, various aspects of his motion picture devices, see Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, chap. 18. For an online study of the even more momentous lamp case, see Ron D. Katznelson and John Howells, “Inventing Around Edison’s Lamp Patent: The Role of Patents in Stimulating Downstream Development and Competition,” www.law.northwestern.edu. The authors argue that it was a victory for all parties, particularly the American consumer. For a general analysis of TE’s patenting policy, see Israel, Edison, 316–19.

  78. New York Morning Journal, 26 July 1891.

  79. Ibid.

  80. Ibid. Poe’s protagonist is named “Ellison.”

  81. Tate to Lathrop, 27 Aug. 1891, and Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1891, PTAE.

  82. Lathrop to TE, 10 Aug. 1891, PTAE.

  83. Lathrop to Tate, 29 Aug. 1891, PTAE; Galveston Daily News, 13 Dec. 1896; Greg Daugherty, “Thomas Edison’s Forgotten Science Fiction Novel,” Smithsonian, 3 Jan. 2018. For an extensive discussion of TE’s relationships with science fiction writers, see Israel, Edison, 363–69.

  84. TE to Edward Marshall, Seattle Times, 25 Jan. 1920.

  85. TE quoted in New York Sun, 28 May 1891. TE later proposed that a “scientifically-kept watch for interstellar signaling should be established in Michigan, where enormous masses of ore might be expected particularly to attract magnetic signals from space if any should be sent.” TE to Marshall, Seattle Times, 25 Jan. 1920.

  86. Carlson, “Edison in the Mountains,” 50; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 23, 145; Israel, Edison, 350.

  87. Engineering and Mining Journal, 10 Oct. 1891.

  88. Thomas Robins, “Friends in a Lifetime,” ts. memoir, 1944, 3–4, Biographical Collection, TENHP.

  89. Ibid., 4; Thomas Robins, “Notes on Conveyor Belts and Their Use,” Transactions of the American Institute of Mining Engineers 26 (Apr. 1896).

  90. Robins, “Friends In a Lifetime,” 5; Frederic V. Hetzel, Belt Conveyors and Belt Elevators (New York, 1922), 10–11.

  91. Minutes, Board Meetings of the NJ&PCW, 31 Aug. 1891, 20 Feb. 1892, PTAE.

  92. TE in New York Sun, 21 Feb. 1892; McDonald, Insull, 45–50; Hammond, Men and Volts, 173, 194; Josephson, Edison, 363–64; Jean Strouse, Morgan: American Financier (New York, 1999), 313.

  93. Charles Batchelor Diary, entry for 6 Feb. 1892, PTAE; Josephson, Edison, 364; New York Times, 6 Feb. 1892.

  94. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 52, no. 5 (11 Mar. 1892); Annie S. Maunder and E. Walter Maunder, The Heavens and Their Story (Boston, 1908), 182; New York Evening World, 8 Feb. 1892; New York Times, 9 Feb. 1892.

  95. Sherburne B. Eaton to TE, 8 Feb. 1892, PTAE (“I suppose Insull will be back in the morning with some interesting news from Boston”); New York Sun, 15 Feb. 1892. For TE’s ongoing electromagnetic research at this time, see Israel, Edison, 306-11.

  96. New York Evening World, 8 Feb. 1892; New York Times, 9 Feb. 1892.

  97. New York Sun, 15 Feb. 1892. See the “photographic registers” of the solar storm at its peak on 13 Feb. 1892 in Maunder and Maunder, Heavens and Their Story, 182.

  98. New York Sun, 15 Feb. 1892.

  99. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 261; “Conference re Edison Museum,” ts., 20 Aug. 1928, TENHP.

  100. New York Tribune, 20 Feb. 1892. Some newspapers reported that Edison had attended a pre-merger conference with Villard and Insull. When the latter complained about Coffin’s coup in reversing what had been planned as an Edison General Electric acquisition, Villard allegedly snapped, “It never would have happened except for your mismanagement.” New York Tribune, New York World, and Middletown (NY) Times-Press, 20 Feb. 1892.

  101. New York Times, 21 Feb. 1892. See also McDonald, Insull, 51. Insull, in his unpublished memoirs, confirmed that he and Edison resumed friendly relations, but the “spell had been broken” between them and was never restored. Israel, Edison, 336–37.

  102. McDonald, Insull, 51. See, e.g., Hammer Reminiscences, Biographical Collection, TENHP. “What he did to Edison and his interests…would fill a book….Considerable of it was crooked.” For a more charitable view of Insull in 1892, see Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 265.

  103. McDonald, Insull, 52, 339 and passim; Sterling (IL) Daily Gazette, 25 June 1892; Charles Batchelor Diary, entries for 29 and 24 June 1892, PTAE.

  104. Israel, Edison, 336; Strouse, Morgan, 314.

  105. Tate, Edison’s Open Door, 278. Kennelly later became a professor of electrical engineering at Harvard.

  106. Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 146–47, 41–42; DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 152, 156; Israel, Edison, 352.

  107. Clipping quoted in Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 320; Israel, Edison, 352.

  108. Dan Jones interview, Nov. 1928, Mary C. Nerney Notebook, TENHP.

  109. Ibid.; TE to MME, n.d. “Thursday,” PTAE. TE’s letters to his wife during the 1890s often bear no date other than an occasional named weekday. The author’s speculative dating of some of these letters sometimes differs from that of the editors of PTAE (bracketed below).

  110. TE to MME, n.d. “Tuesday,” ca. 1894 [1890s]; n.d. [1895]; 9 and 12 Aug. 1895; n.d. [1896]; all PTAE.

  111. TE to MME, two letters [1896], PTAE.

  112. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 268; Phonogram 2, no. 10 (Oct. 1892); Dickson, “Brief History”; Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 1.140–42; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 388.

  113. Dickson and Dickson, History of Kinetograph, 19; Indianapolis News, 15 Mar. 1894; Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 214, 265–67; Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 2.26; Dickson, “Brief History.” Dickson’s explanatory sketch of the Black Maria is reproduced in Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 266.

  114. Israel, Edison, 384–85. Carlos Levison’s courtship of Marion Edison is a frequent subject of discussion in her correspondence in PTAE.

  115. Town Topics clip, ca. Jan. 1893, preserved by Madeleine Edison, DSP. (“I have an idea that a disgruntled companion or chaperone for Marion was responsible for this.”)

  116. Jana F. Brown, “Sons of the Phonograph,” Horae Scholasticae, Winter 2009; Israel, Edison, 385; Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 266; Marion Edison to John Randolph, 18 Jan. 1893, and Randolph to Marion Edison, 31 Jan. 1893, PTAE; TE to MME, “Thursday,” ca. Mar. 1893 [1895], PTAE.

  117. TE to MME, “Thursday,” ca. Mar. 1893 [1895], PTAE.

  118. “Mr. Dickson is seriously ill.” Theodore Lehmann to Alexander Elliott, Jr., 3 Feb. 1893, PTAE
.

  119. J. V. Miller to Elliott Joslin, 3 Aug. 1931, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 461; loan certificates in H. F. Miller Legal File, 12 and 19 June 1893, PTAE; TE to Charles Kintner, 20 June 1893, quoted in Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 1.97; TE Patents 513,097, 567,187, 602,064, 605,475, and 607,588.

  120. Allerhand, Illustrated History, 297–98. Although TE remained on the board of GE for a few years, he took no part in the affairs of the company.

  121. John Randolph to Marion Edison Öser, 19 Nov. 1894, PTAE. The reconstruction of Ogden required another capitalization increase to $1.5 million, almost half of which came out of TE’s own pocket. Israel, Edison, 352, 354.

  122. TE to Tate, 19 Apr. 1893, quoted in Josephson, Edison, 374.

  123. J. V. Miller to Elliott Joslin, 3 Aug. 1931, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 461; loan certificates in H. F. Miller Legal File, 12 and 19 June 1893, PTAE; Review of Reviews, July 1893; TE to Charles Kintner, 20 June 1893, quoted in Hendricks, Origins of American Film, 1.97. In mid-1893 Bradstreet gave TE an astonishing credit rating of $3 million. He ascribed it to property. “It did not come from my inventions.” TE in Review of Reviews, July 1893. The modern equivalent would be $86.4 million.

  124. TE Patents 513,097, 567,187, 602,064, 605,475, and 607,588.

  125. Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 296; Scientific American, 20 May 1893; TE inscription in a copy of Muybridge’s Descriptive Zoopraxigraphy (1893), quoted by Josephson, Edison, 392. When Dr. Hopkins asked if the Kinetograph was going to be exhibited at the world’s fair in its full with-sound form, TE replied, “No, didn’t have time to perfect.” Superscript on George Hopkins to TE, 25 Apr. 1893, PTAE. For an account of this public relations disaster, see Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 297–99.

  126. Scientific American, 20 May 1893.

  127. Ibid. See also Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 34–36 and Spehr, Man Who Made Movies, 296–97.

  128. TE Rationale, 16–16A; Johnson, Edison’s “Ogden Baby,” 107; Mallory deposition, 645; Waters, “Edison’s Revolution”; Emil Herter deposition in Edison v. Allis Chalmers, 546.