Edison

by Edmund Morris

  222. Edison Electric Light Co., Sixteenth Bulletin, 2 Feb. 1883; North British Daily Mail, 4 Dec. 1882.

  223. Papers, 6.736.

  224. Papers, 7.727.

  225. Snow Removal File (1922), TENHP; Papers, 6.802, 23ff., 824–25; TE Patent 228,329 (described at length by TE in New York Evening Post, 24 May 1881; Chicago Tribune, 24 June 1881. TE did not personally discover the Quogue deposit, as some sources suggest. His only recorded visit to the site took place with Insull in early June 1881. Papers, 6.76.

  226. Edison Ore-Milling Co. Minutes, 2 June and 28 Oct. 1881, 17 Jan. 1882, PTAE; Sherburne Eaton in Papers, 6.765–70; Engineering and Mining Journal 52 (1891). TE won a contract to supply two hundred tons of beach magnetite ore to the Poughkeepsie Iron & Steel Co., but that concern got into difficulties and canceled its order. TE closed down his Rhode Island operation in December 1882. See Eaton in Papers, 6.765–70.

  227. Papers, 6.756, 793, 754, 773.

  228. Papers, 6.772–73; Samuel Johnson to Lord Chesterfield, 7 Feb. 1755, quoted in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, chap. 13.

  229. Edouard Reményi to TE, 25 Apr. 1883, PTAE.

  230. Papers, 7.73, 6.809; Israel, Edison, 218, 221.

  231. Papers, 6.793–94.

  232. Israel, Edison, 218–19; Edward Johnson to TE, Papers, 7.129–34; Bowers, Lengthening the Day, 105.

  233. Papers, 7.609–10, 75; Israel, Edison, 221.

  234. Israel, Edison, 223–24; Papers, 6.798.

  235. Papers, 7.74, 6.809; DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 67.

  236. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 29 July 1883.

  237. Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park.”

  238. Papers, 7.217–18.

  239. William Pitt Edison to TE, 12 Aug. 1883, PTAE.

  240. “TE” to William Pitt Edison, 14 Aug. 1883, PTAE. This letter’s salutation, “Friend Pitt,” and sign-off, “With kind regards,” suggest it was written by Insull.

  241. Reprinted in Science, 2.29 (24 Aug. 1883).

  242. Ibid. If any individual other than TE was impugned in Rowland’s address, it was the publicity-seeking physicist George Barker of the University of Pennsylvania. See Hounshell, “Edison and the Pure Science Ideal.”

  243. Bowers, “Edison and Early Electric Engineering in Britain,” in Graham Hollister-Short and Frank James, eds., History of Technology, vol. 13 (New York, 1991).

  244. Israel, Edison, 217; Papers, 7.190–91.

  245. TE to Theodore Waterhouse, 24 July 1883, Papers, 7.191.

  246. Ibid.

  247. Chicago Tribune, 19 June, 1883; TE, “Instructions and Directions, Central Stations,” 1883, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 225, 224; A. Stuart to Samuel Insull, 28 May 1884, PTAE. See also TE’s detailed description of his canvassing method in Papers, 7.203–8.

  248. Papers, 7.76; Israel, Edison, 225. See, e.g., TE’s struggle to get fully paid for the village system he installed in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, in July 1883. Ibid., 201–3.

  249. James Pryor to Samuel Insull, 6 Sept. 1883; TE superscript on Pryor to Insull, 6 Sept. 1883; Pryor to TE, 19 Sept. 1883; TE to Pryor, 20 Sept. 1883; all PTAE.

  250. Pryor to TE, 24 Sept. 1883, PTAE; Papers, 7.268. The Gramercy Park house cost TE $400 a month, whereas his hotel suite, with incidental expenses, cost $200 a week. Pryor-Edison Lease, 23 Sept. 1882, PTAE; Papers, 7.309.

  251. Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park.”

  252. McPartland, “Almost Edison,” 252; Bright, Electric Lamp Industry, 71.

  253. Dickson to TE, 23 May 1883, PTAE. In old age Dickson claimed that TE hired him, but his work application in March 1883 was acted on by Insull, and his billet-doux to TE in May made clear that he had not yet been noticed by the Old Man. TE probably took an interest in him after W. S. Andrews, the chief engineer at the Machine Works, praised his skill at the end of the year. Dickson to Insull, and Raymond Sayer to TE, both 28 Mar. 1883, PTAE; Dickson to TE, 23 May 1883, PTAE; Papers, 7.101–2; Andrews to TE, 16 Dec. 1883, PTAE.

  254. TE Patent 307,031, executed 15 Nov. 1883, issued 21 Oct. 1884.

  255. Dickson to TE, 23 Jan. 1924, TENHP.

  256. Papers, 7.369; U.S. Patent 307,031.

  257. Papers, 7.102.

  258. Papers, 7.369; TE interviewed in New York Sun, 27 Aug. 1884.

  259. Papers, 7.370, 482, 481.

  260. DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, 67; McDonald, Insull, 31; Israel, Edison, 228. “If you want money wire me.” Insull to TE, 22 Feb. 1884, Papers, 7.434. See also Mary Edison to Insull, 27 Feb. 1884, Papers, 443.

  261. Insull to A. O. Tate, 27 Oct. 1884, PTAE; McDonald, Insull, 31–32.

  262. S. B. Eaton to Insull, 18 Feb. 1884, PTAE.

  263. Papers, 7.436, 454.

  264. Ibid.

  265. TE pocket notebook 84-02-85, 2, TENHP. The editors of the Edison Papers identify this sketch as “a telephone and resonator in a Wheatstone bridge arrangement.” Papers, 7.434.

  266. Insull to TE, 22 Feb. 1884, Papers, 7.433.

  267. Papers, 7.480.

  268. “Edison’s Electric Shark Hunt,” Nebraska Daily State Journal, 4 April 1884.

  269. Ibid. The Vedder Museum, maintained by the St. Augustine Historical Society, was a local attraction for many years. It burned down in 1914. “The Vedder Museum,” n.d., http://lostparks.com/​vedder.html.

  270. Papers, 7.346, 480–81.

  271. Papers, 7.480; De Borchgrave and Cullen, Villard.

  272. TE to Eaton, 24 Apr. 1884, PTAE.

  273. Rowsome, Birth of Electric Traction, loc. 661, 692.

  274. Papers, 7.482–83; TE to Eaton, 24 Apr. and 9 May 1884, PTAE.

  275. Papers, 7.494. Nicholas Stilwell suffered from dementia, and Mary had been keeping him in her house under nursing care.

  276. Papers, 8.328.

  277. Papers, 7.518–19, 536–57; Mary Edison to Middlesex County Sheriff, 15 May 1884, PTAE.

  278. Papers, 7.561; James W. Pryor House Inventory, 1882, PTAE; Mary Edison to Insull, 30 Apr. 1884, PTAE; Olive Harper, “In the Wizard’s Home: How Thomas A. Edison’s Residence Is Fitted Up,” New York World, 1 June 1884. The article was reprinted or excerpted in several major newspapers. See also Papers, 7.562–70.

  279. Washington Post, 26 November 1878.

  280. Harper, “In the Wizard’s Home.”

  281. Papers, 7.632; Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park.”

  282. Mary Edison described her children in Harper, “In the Wizard’s Home.”

  283. Papers, 7.483, 575.

  284. Carlson, Tesla, 69–70; Papers, 6.821. See also Jehl, “Thomas A. Edison,” 90. (“He used to order every dish twice”). According to T. C. Martin, writing in the February 1894 issue of Century Magazine, Edison also boggled at Tesla’s appetite and asked if he was a cannibal.

  285. Carlson, Tesla, 68–70. Tesla began to work for TE on 8 June 1884. He was paid $100 a month, a high wage by TE’s standards, and the equivalent of $2,690 in 2018. Salary List, Edison Machine Works, PTAE.

  286. TE Edison Medal acceptance speech, 18 May 1917, Electrical Review and Western Electrician 70 (26 May 1917).

  287. Mary Edison to Andrew Disbrow, 13 May 1884, PTAE; Papers, 7.632.

  288. Papers, 8.328.

  289. TE to Eaton, 22 July 1884, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 234–35.

  290. Papers, 7.620–21.

  291. Ibid., 7.622; Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park,” 5.

  292. Alice Stilwell Holzer to William A. Symonds, 2 July 1932, HFM. In old age, Marion Edison Öser said the same thing, very likely repeating what she had been told as a child. Israel, Edison, 233.

  293. William R. Gowers, A Manual of Diseases of the Nervous System (London, 1893), 2.375–76. See also the editorial discussion of Mary Edison’s death in Papers, 7.620–24.
It includes the pertinent information that in late 1883 the Edison household ordered “two one-half ounce bottles of sulphate of morphia, a form suitable for hypodermic injection.”

  294. New York World Supplement, 17 Aug. 1884; Papers, 7.630–35.

  295. The full article is reprinted with commentary in Papers, 7.630–35. It states that TE tried for two hours after his wife’s death to revive her with shocks from an electric “cabinet.” Electrotherapy in overdose cases was not unknown in the nineteenth century, but later that year TE said he did not believe in it. Papers, 7.633.

  296. TE quoted in New York Sun, 27 Aug. 1884; Mary Edison Holzer to Francis Jehl, 27 Apr. 1935, TENHP.

  297. Insull to Harriet Clarke, 17 Sept. 1884, PTAE.

  298. Papers, 7.590, 573; San Francisco Examiner, 21 Sept. 1884; Smithsonian Institution, SI neg. 85-8773. The column’s 2,100 bulbs represented one day’s output of the Edison Lamp Works.

  299. TE in Buffalo Courier, 8 Sept. 1884.

  300. Edison and Gilliland v. Phelps, Testimony on Behalf of Edison (2 June 1886), 3; Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities”; Papers, 7.658.

  301. Edison and Gilliland, 3; TE Patent 438,304. TE executed eight more sonic-communication patents before the end of 1884.

  302. Israel, Edison, 227–29, 322, 228; Papers, 7.685–88, 7.687–98; Lowrey to TE, 19 Oct. 1884, PTAE; McDonald, Insull, 32ff.; De Graaf, Edison and Innovation, 67; Insull to Tate, 27 Oct. 1884. In 1909 TE boasted to his biographer T. C. Martin, “I am the only man that ever beat Drexel & Morgan Company over an election of directors and officers.” Papers, 7.731.

  303. U.S. Patent 422,577, filed 1 Dec. 1884. The idea of inductive signaling from moving trains was not original to TE or Gilliland. It appears to have been first proposed by A. C. Brown of the Eastern Telegraph Co., in 1881, and more fully articulated by the British inventor Willoughby Smith in his paper, “Voltaic-Electric Induction,” read before the Institution of Electrical Engineers on 8 Nov. 1883. Fahie, History of Wireless Telegraphy, 100–111.

  304. Edison and Gilliland, 5; Papers, 7.681, MME interviewed by Milton Marmor of AP, 10 Jan. 1947, TENHP.

  305. TE to Richard Dyer from Adrian, ca. 22 Feb. 1885. Papers, 8.38–40.

  306. Papers, 7.48–49, 8.22; Fritz, Bamboo and Sailing Ships, 5.

  307. Fritz, Bamboo and Sailing Ships, 5.

  308. Papers, 8.64–65. The price was later reduced to $2,750.

  309. Papers, 8.64, 179–80.

  310. Israel, Edison, 237–38.

  311. Papers, 8.163–64; MME/Marmor interview, TENHP; TE quoted in Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 273. The date of this first encounter between TE and MME is not known, but it likely occurred early in 1885, when MME was in school and TE was often visiting Boston. Some sources suggest that they met, improbably, in New Orleans at the beginning of March. However, they both recalled meeting in the Gilliland apartment, and each mentioned the musical incident. Marion Edison Öser stated that they already knew each other when they met again at the beach house that summer. “Wizard of Menlo Park.” See also Papers, 8.163–65.

  312. MME interview, 10 Jan. 1947, TENHP.

  313. Israel, Edison, 244; Ellwood Hendrick, Lewis Miller: A Biographical Essay (New York, 1925); Papers, 8.246–47. On 25 Feb. 1886 the New York Sun estimated Miller’s fortune at $2.5 million, or $68.7 million in today’s money.

  314. Israel, Edison, 244; Hendrick, Lewis Miller; Papers, 8.246–47.

  315. “We all set around the table to write up our diaries.” TE Diary, entry for 15 July 1885, PTAE. This seven-day journal—the only personal diary TE ever kept—can be read in its calligraphed entirety online at edison.rutgers.edu/​NamesSearch/​SingleDoc.php?Docid=MA001. It has also been published in Runes, Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison, and in Papers, 8.162ff.

  316. Ibid., entries for 14 and 15 July 1885.

  317. Ibid., entries for 17 and 19 July 1885.

  318. Ibid., entry for 21 July 1885.

  319. Ibid.

  320. Ibid., entry for 12 July 1885.

  321. Ibid., entries for 12 and 15 July 1885; Papers, 8.189; TE Diary, entry for 20 July 1885.

  322. TE Diary, entries for 12–21 July 1885, passim. See also the editorial annotations in Papers, 8.170–89.

  323. TE Diary, entry for 17 July 1885.

  324. Israel, Edison, 246–47.

  325. MME interview, 10 Jan. 1947, TENHP; Papers, 8.217. Louise Igou married Robert A. Miller in 1887.

  326. MME interview, 10 Jan. 1947, TENHP.

  327. AP clipping, 2 Feb. 1947, PTAE.

  328. Öser, “Wizard of Menlo Park,” 10. See also Israel, Edison, 233, 253.

  329. TE to Lewis Miller, 30 Sept. 1885, PTAE.

  330. Edward Johnson to Uriah Painter, 12 Oct. 1885, PTAE.

  331. The female members of the Miller family were more doubtful about TE than the patriarch. Israel, Edison, 248.

  332. TE Diary, entry for 19 July 1885, PTAE; “The Most Difficult Husband in America,” Collier’s Magazine, 18 July 1925. See Papers, 8.256–58 for TE’s current plans for the development of his Florida estate.

  333. Kristin Herron, The House at Glenmont: Edison National Historic Site (West Orange, NJ, 1998). See New York Tribune, 19 July 1884, for details of the Pedder case.

  334. Glenmont was valued at $400,200 at the time Pedder’s creditor, Arnold, Constable & Co., took it over in part payment of his debt. New York Tribune, 19 July 1884.

  335. Papers, 8.315; Hughes, Networks of Power, 45; Bright, Electric Lamp Industry, 71, 75.

  336. Papers, 8.328–29, 261, 257–58, 319; TE to William Mawer, 9 Feb. 1886, PTAE; Fort Myers Press, 9 Nov. 1885 and 13 Feb. 1886; Philadelphia Inquirer, 3 Feb. 1886.

  337. Papers, 8.348, 344; Charles Batchelor Diary, entries for 20 and 23 Feb. 1886, PTAE; New York Sun, 21 Feb. 1886.

  338. “Under the Wish-Bone,” Akron Daily Beacon, 25 Feb. 1886; Philadelphia Inquirer, 25 Feb. 1886; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 273–74. Despite the attendance at the ceremony of TE’s eldest associates, Edward Johnson and Charles Batchelor, TE chose Lt. Frank Toppan, USN, a friend of Ezra Gilliland’s, to be his best man. Papers, 8.339–40.

  339. Atlanta Constitution, 27 Feb. 1886; Papers, 8.423–24, 429.

  340. MME to Mary V. Miller, 28 Feb. 1886, PTAE; Doctrines and Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church (Cincinnati, 1854).

  341. MME to Mary V. Miller, 28 Feb. 1886, PTAE.

  342. TE executed only thirty-one patents in the eighteen months following Mary Edison’s death, compared to 164 in the equivalent period preceding.

  343. Papers, 8.348, 427; TE Florida Notebook, entry for 16 Apr. 1886, 178, PTAE.

  344. Author’s count of devices or experimental innovations, in TE’s Florida notebooks, that are not merely whimsical.

  345. Papers, 8.483–87, 493–95, 105–11, 375, 475; George P. Lathrop, “An Interview with the Wizard of Menlo Park,” New York Union and Advertiser, 22 May 1885.

  346. This observation was first made by the editors of the Edison Papers. Papers, 8.105.

  347. Fort Myers Press, 20 Feb. 1886; MME to Mary V. Miller, 28 Feb. 1886, PTAE.

  348. This marital problem, and MME’s general unhappiness on honeymoon, may be clearly deduced from Lewis Miller’s letter to her of 26 Apr. 1887. See Papers, 8.695–97.

  349. TE memorandum to Eli Thompson, ca. Apr. 1886, Papers, 8.517–24.

  350. Papers, 8.362, 377.

  351. TE quoted in Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 277.

  352. Hammer, “Edison and His Inventions,” ii.

  353. TE quoted in Chautauqua Assembly Magazine, Oct. 1886; Papers, 8.549–50; McDonald, Insull, 38. For a short discussion of TE’s attitude to labor, see Israel, Edison, 444.

  354. See Israel, Edison, 23
8–39, 241–42; TE Patent 333,291 (“Way-Station Quadruplex Telegraph”) issued 29 Dec. 1885, and 422,072, issued 25 Feb. 1890.

  355. Israel, Edison, 243.

  356. Ibid., 243, 255; Chicago Tribune, 14 Aug. 1886; Papers, 8.527; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 274.

  357. Quoted in Israel, Edison, 267.

  358. “Mina Miller Edison Pregnancies and Miscarriages/Stillbirths,” unpublished research note by Michele Albion, 28 Feb. 2007, with additional research by Thomas E. Jeffrey, author’s collection; Papers, 8.682–84.

  359. U.S. Patent 352,105; Allerhand, Illustrated History, 273–78.

  360. For an analysis of the internet myth that TE “stole” technology from Tesla, see The Edisonian, vol. 11 at http://edison.rutgers.edu/​newsletter11.htm#7.

  361. Frank Sprague to Edward H. Johnson, 13 Sept. 1886, quoted in Papers, 8.621; Israel, Edison, 324–25. See also Papers, 8.625.

  362. The actual purchase was made by Francis Upton, who took advantage of its availability in Paris on 25 Nov. 1886. Papers, 8.655–56.

  363. Allerhand, Illustrated History, 279–83; Papers, 8.637–38.

  364. Papers,7.729, 8.672, and 667.

  365. Papers, 8.675–76; New York Sun, 15 Feb. 1887; Fort Myers Press, 14 Apr. 1887.

  366. Papers, 8.696.

  367. Lewis Miller to MME, 26 Apr. 1887, Papers, 8.695.

  368. Jane Miller to MME, 19 May 1887, TENHP.

  369. Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 20.

  370. See Papers, 8.714; Israel, Edison, 281. TE was not afraid of an infringement suit regarding wax incision, since he had experimented with it himself in the 1870s.

  371. Welch and Burt, Tinfoil to Stereo, 23; Israel, Edison, 281.

  372. TE quoted in Israel, Edison, 281.

  373. TE to George Gouraud, 21 July 1887, Papers, 8.768. Gouraud was taken aback by TE’s ferocity on this subject. Gouraud to TE, 6 Aug. 1887, PTAE. For a detailed account of the contention between the parties, see Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities.”

  374. Israel, Edison, 282, 280; Wile, “Edison and Growing Hostilities,” 13; TE superscript, 2 Dec. 1887, on Uriah Painter to TE, 30 Nov. 1887, PTAE; Gardiner Hubbard to Edward Johnson, 13 Oct. 1887, PTAE.