Edison
Page 87
94. Ibid., 129.
PART EIGHT · NATURAL PHILOSOPHY (1847–1859)
1. This Part, like Part Seven, is based on TE’s reminiscences recorded in 1908 and 1909 for his biographers Frank Dyer and T. C. Martin, and republished as Appendix 1 in vol. 1 of The Papers of Thomas A. Edison, pp. 627ff. Supplementary or corrective details from other sources are documented below.
2. Sam Edison stood 62 tall, and with his muscular frame had the effect of filling every room he entered. According to his son, he was deemed at age 69 to have had “the highest chest expansion of anyone except one” in the annals of the Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York. Papers, 4.870; Sheldon Wood to TE, 5 Sept. 1929, TENHP; TE superscript on his copy of DeLemar Lectures 1925–1929 127, TENHP.
3. Henry Ford, “The Greatest of Americans,” Hearst’s International / Cosmopolitan, July 1930; TE superscript on W. H. Raymenton to TE, 14 Nov. 1921, TENHP; Marion Estelle Edison (1829–1900) was married to Homer Page on 19 Dec. 1849.
4. TE’s other living siblings were William Pitt Edison (1831–91) and Harriet “Tannie” Edison (1833–63). For a compact genealogy of all his relatives, see Thomas E. Jeffrey, “Edison, Miller, and Affiliated Families,” in Jeffrey, Phonographs to U-Boats, 151ff.
5. Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr., was born on 16 Aug. 1804. Nancy Elliot Edison’s birthdate is the subject of some dispute, being either 4 Jan. 1808 or 4 Jan. 1810. Jeffrey, “Edison, Miller, and Affiliated Families.”
6. Israel, Edison, 2–4; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 25.
7. “The Birthplace of Edison Dreams of Her Fallen Greatness,” Firelands Pioneer 13 (1900), 716ff.; Wallace B. White, Milan Township and Village: One Hundred and Fifty Years (Milan O., 1959) 15–19.
8. “Birthplace of Edison,” 440; milanarea.com.; TE to Sandusky Register, 31 Dec. 1922, TENHP.
9. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 14; TE to Ruth Thompson, 12 June 1922, TENHP; George Minard, TE schoolmate, in Sandusky Star-Journal, 13 Aug. 1923; R. F. McLaughlin to Mary C. Nerney, 4 Nov. 1929, Biographical Collection, TENHP.
10. Maria Cooke via Isoline Minty to Mary C. Nerney, 14 Dec. 1929, Biographical Collection, TENHP. See also Rev. C. Emmons in Pigott (AL) Banner, 25 Oct. 1929.
11. Samuel Edison, Jr., aged ninety, interviewed in Port Huron by George P. Lathrop, ca. 16 Aug. 1894.
12. TE quoted in Josephson, Edison, 13; Papers, 2.786. See also Dyer and Martin, Edison, 18.
13. “Second reader…as they used to term it.” Cooke/Minty to Mary C. Nerney, 14 Dec. 1929, TENHP; TE quoted in Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 6–7.
14. Israel, Edison, 4; Ballentine, “Early Life of Edison,” 1; oldtowneporthuron.com.
15. Wright, “House in the Grove,” 13ff.
16. Terry Pepper, “Seeing the Light: The Lighthouses of Lake Huron,” Terrypepper.com; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 24–25; Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 12–13.
17. Israel, Edison, 7; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 23–24; Israel, Edison, 6.
18. Taylor, “Old Slow Town,” loc. 5322; A. T. Andreas Co., St. Clair County, Michigan (Chicago, 1883), 550; Israel, Edison, 6.
19. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 25; Papers, 1.23–24, 27; Wright, “House in the Grove,” 30–31.
20. TE quoted in Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 7; M. G. Bridges to TE, 19 June 1911, TENHP; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 24; illustration in DeGraaf, Edison and Innovation, xxii; Israel, Edison, 2; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 15; TE quoted in Israel, Edison, 14; reminiscence of a Port Huron contemporary of TE in Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 11–12.
21. A. R. Ogden to Arthur E. Bestor, 23 July 1879, PTAE; Israel, Edison, 7; Jones, Edison: Sixty Years, 11; John F. Talbot to TE, 26 Nov. 1920, TENHP.
22. Papers, 4.870; TE superscript on Charles Gaston to TE, 23 July 1927, TENHP; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 26.
23. Ford, Edison As I Know Him, 20; Papers, 1.24. It is possible that TE first encountered Parker’s book in its abridged junior reader form (First Lessons in Natural Philosophy, 1848). The Union School curriculum carried the full version, as did many other American schools. Papers, 1.24.
24. Henceforth Parker, Natural Philosophy.
25. Ibid., xiii.
26. Ibid., xiv.
27. Ibid., xiv–xv.
28. Ibid., 20, 31–32.
29. Ibid., 81, 60.
30. Ibid., 98, 155, 168, 143.
31. Ibid., 98, 155, 168, 143.
32. Ibid., 258, 258.
33. Ibid., 259.
34. Apparently TE tried electrotherapy on Mattie Wilson, a young Fort Gratiot woman who concussed herself while ice skating. “My wife…says she well remembers the shock you gave her in the chair in the old Edison store.” George A. Fritz to TE, 27 Oct. 1927, TENHP.
35. Parker, Natural Philosophy, 294.
36. Ibid., 298ff., 304, 310.
37. Ibid., 173, 176, 174, 178–79.
38. Ibid., 179, 210–12, 220.
39. Ibid., 245.
40. Ibid., 233, 237–42.
41. Ibid., 396.
42. Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 6; Papers, 1.628–29; TE quoted in Josephson, Edison, 27.
43. Papers, 1.629.
44. Parker, Natural Philosophy, xv; Dyer and Martin, Edison, 28.
45. Dyer and Martin, Edison, 28; Israel, Edison, 11. An archeological excavation of the site of the long-razed Edison home at Fort Gratiot in the late twentieth century disclosed many bottles, beakers, crucibles, test tubes, funnels, and other chemical paraphernalia. See Stamps, Hawkins, and Wright, Search for the House.
46. Ballentine, “Early Life of Edison,” 1; Israel, Edison, 11; Nerney, Edison, Modern Olympian, 290; Runes, Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison, 50. “The ear boxing incident never happened,” TE told Henry Ford in 1929, when they passed through Smiths Creek Station. But on the same journey he repeated his less believable story of being hauled aboard a departing train by the ears. Ford, Edison As I Know Him, 20, 24–25. Robert Traynor, “The Deafness of Edison,” February 9, 2013, Hearing International, Hearinghealthmatters.org, focuses on the theory that his hearing loss was caused by scarlet fever.
EPILOGUE (1931)
1. AP report, Sandusky (OH) Register, 21 Oct. 1931; Herbert Hoover, “Statement in a National Tribute to Thomas Alva Edison,” 20 Oct. 1931, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu.
2. Hoover, “Statement.”
3. AP news release, 21 Oct. 1931; Hartford Courant, 22 Oct. 1931; New York Daily News, 22 Oct. 1931; Chicago Tribune, 22 Oct. 1931. In 1963 TE’s coffin was reinterred in the grounds of Glenmont, where Mina is also buried.
4. AP news dispatch, 22 Oct. 1931; Montreal Gazette and Hartford Courant, same date.
5. Tampa Tribune, 22 Oct. 1931; Chicago Tribune.
6. As noted above, TE left an estate of $12 million ($198 million in today’s money), and there was some bickering among his children as to its fair disposition.
7. The three illegitimate children Sam fathered after the death of Mary Edison in 1871 were all girls. See Jeffrey, “Edison, Miller, and Affiliated Families.”
8. The following catalogue of local sound effects is taken from Ballentine, “Early Life of Edison” (Ballentine lived in the Edison house in Fort Gratiot after TE’s departure), as well as from John F. Talbot to TE, 26 Nov. 1920, and TE reminiscing to Ruth Thompson, 12 June 1922, both in TENHP.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
Unless otherwise credited, all images are courtesy of National Park Service, Thomas Edison National Historical Park.
1Edison in his laboratory library, under Aurelio Bordiga’s Genius of Electricity, 1911. Library of Congress.
2Edison collecting botanical specimens, circa 1927.
3Charles Edison, circa 1920.
4Aerial photograph of Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 1920s.<
br />
5Edison listening to phonograph records at home, 1920s.
6Edison napping in front of Harvey Firestone and President Harding at Vagabond camp, 23 July 1921.
7Thomas and Mina Edison on his seventy-fifth birthday, 11 February 1922.
8Theodore Edison, 1924.
9Edison letter regarding invention of phonograph, 1927.
10Henry Ford, Edison, and Harvey Firestone in Florida, circa 1928.
11Edison botanical sketch, 1920s.
12Thomas Edison brooding in the chem lab.
13Menlo Park reconstructed at Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Michigan, 1929.
14Edison and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels aboard USS New York, 1915.
15Edison film studio in the Bronx, circa 1910.
16Madeleine Edison, circa 1911.
17Edison asleep in his laboratory, 1911. Photograph by Miller R. Hutchison.
18Edison receiving Morse signals from Hutchison, circa 1912.
19Edison and the Insomnia Squad at midnight “lunch,” fall 1912.
20Diamond Disc retail advertisement, 1913.
21Edison A-100 “Moderne” Diamond Disc phonograph, 1915.
22The great fire of 9 December 1914.
23Commodore Edison and the crew of USS Sachem, 1917.
24Commodore Edison at Key West Naval Station, 1918.
25Edison in his chemistry laboratory, 1902. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
26Edison’s chair and lamp in the sitting room at Glenmont, circa 1900s.
27Thomas Alva Edison, Jr., circa 1900.
28Illustration from Edison’s cadmium-copper storage battery patent application, 15 October 1900.
29Edison’s trademark signature, 1902.
30Edison at Seminole Lodge, early 1900s.
31Edison and model cement house, circa 1906.
32Edison’s A-12 storage battery, 1909.
33Edison’s A-12 storage battery, 1909.
34Edison at his Ogden mine, 1895.
35Marion Edison as a teenager.
36Edison’s sketch of his tabletop Kinetograph, 28 May 1891.
37The Black Maria, circa 1893.
38Eugene Sandow models for W. K. Dickson’s camera, March 1894.
39The Ogden mine workforce, circa 1895.
40Edison sketched by William Dodge Stevens, Ogden, 1897.
41William Edison, circa 1898.
42The Ogden mill under snow, late 1890s.
43Thomas Edison refracted. Courtesy of Edmund Morris.
44Edison’s house in Menlo Park, January 1880.
45Members of the Menlo Park laboratory team, 1880.
46The Edison electric train, Charles Batchelor driving.
47Stages of splitting and shearing a splint of madake bamboo into filaments ready for carbonization.
48Menlo Park in the winter of 1880–81. Painting by Richard F. Outcault.
49Shell winding for Edison’s large magneto dynamo, 1879.
50Edison’s “Jumbo” dynamo at the Paris Electrical Exposition, 1881.
51Power monitor panel, Edison Pearl Street station, 1882.
52Mary Edison and feathered friends, 1883.
53A page of Edison’s diary, summer 1885.
54Mina Miller, at about the time Edison first met her.
55Glenmont in Llewellyn Park, soon after Edison’s purchase of it.
56Edison’s Magritte-like sketch of Mina as an airborne clock.
57Notebook pages, 1886.
58Edison’s plan for his Fort Myers estate, spring 1886.
59Edison’s new laboratory in West Orange. Phonograph Works in background. Original source unknown.
60Edison’s first Kinetoscope caveat, 8 October 1888.
61Edison with his microphotographic camera. Photograph by W. K. Dickson, 1888.
62Edison with his phonograph in Washington, April 1878. Original source unknown.
63Mary Stilwell Edison, circa 1871.
64Edison chemical printer spelling out the word “BOSTON,” January 1872.
65Edison & Murray workforce, Ward Street, Newark, 1873.
66A freehand sketch by Edison of his quadruplex system.
67The Edison Electric Pen with batteries and press, 1875.
68Edison sketch instruments, 1876.
69Edison sketch voices, 1876.
70Edison’s embossing recorder-repeater, February 1877.
71Edison’s sketch of his first phonograph, circa November 1877.
72Edison’s letter of thanks to The Daily Graphic, 16 May 1878. Thomas A. Edison Papers, Rutgers University.
73The total eclipse seen from Creston, Wyoming, 29 July 1878. Astronomical drawing by E. L Trouvelot. Original source unknown.
74Charles Batchelor in the Menlo Park laboratory. The first photograph ever taken by incandescent light, 22 December 1879.
75Edison’s “New Year’s Eve Lamp,” 1879. Division of Work and Industry, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
76Edison as a young telegrapher, circa 1863.
77Al Edison, newsboy, circa 1860.
78The Detroit Free Press reports the Battle of Shiloh, 10 April 1862. Original source unknown.
79Gold price postings annotated by future president James A. Garfield. Black Friday, 1869. Original source unknown.
80Alva Edison as a child, circa 1850.
81Edison’s birthplace in Milan, Ohio. Original source unknown.
82“Milan from near the Sandusky City Road,” by J. Brainerd, 1847. Original source unknown.
83Nancy Elliott Edison, circa 1854.
84Locomotive, from Richard Green Parker’s Natural Philosophy.
85Sam Edison tilling his field at Fort Gratiot, date unknown.
BY EDMUND MORRIS
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan
Theodore Rex
Beethoven: The Universal Composer
Colonel Roosevelt
This Living Hand: And Other Essays
Edison
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
EDMUND MORRIS was born and educated in Kenya and attended college in South Africa. He worked as an advertising copywriter in London before immigrating to the United States in 1968. His first book, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1980. Its sequel, Theodore Rex, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography in 2002. In between these two books, Morris became President Reagan’s authorized biographer, and wrote the national bestseller Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan. He then completed his trilogy on the life of the twenty-sixth president with Colonel Roosevelt, also a bestseller, and published Beethoven: The Universal Composer and This Living Hand: And Other Essays. He was married to fellow biographer Sylvia Jukes Morris for fifty-two years. Edmund Morris died in 2019.
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