The Wizard of Menlo Park (48 page)

He told the
New York American:
“Wizard Edison Menaces with Prison the Men Who Used His Son’s Name.”

In 1900:
“Edison Will Make Automobiles the Poor Man’s Vehicle,”
Elmira Telegram,
22 June 1902,
TAEPM,
221:217.

prototype electric car:
“Edison’s Most Important Discovery,”
Harper’s Weekly,
21 December 1901, 1302.

By 1902:
“Chauffeur Gave Edison a Scare,”
NYW,
30 June 1902,
TAEPM,
221:219.

he was excited to see:
TAE to George B. Dresher, 18 May 1910, ENHS, Letterbook, vol. 82.

Prospective customers were told:
“Mr. Edison’s Perpetual Hobby,” advertisement, n.d. [1910?], ENHS, Primary Printed—Edison Companies Box 24. National Phonograph Company—Advertisements. The fact that its trademarked name, “phonograph,” had entered the language and the dictionary was also offered as proof of its uniqueness.

In at least one instance:
“Thos A. Edison” [composed by George Silzer of Harger & Blish] to George Sturgis, 10 February 1915, ENHS, TAE Inc. Phonograph Division, Maxwell files, Box 1, Correspondence, February 1915.

Edison’s staff was so aghast:
William Maxwell to George C. Silzer, 17 February 1915, ENHS, TAE Inc. Phonograph Division, Maxwell files, Box 1, Correspondence, February 1915.

one man, writing from Marcus:
George Hooper to TAE, 17 February 1915. ENHS, TAE Inc. Phonograph Division, Maxwell files, Box 1, Correspondence, February 1915.

William Maxwell:
William Maxwell to George C. Silzer, 25 February 1915, ENHS, TAE Inc. Phonograph Division, Maxwell files, Box 1, Correspondence, February 1915.

The dealer replied:
George Silzer to William Maxwell, 5 March 1915, ENHS, TAE Inc. Phonograph Division, Maxwell files, Box 1, Correspondence, February 1915.

An entire block:
Paul Kasakove, untitled reminiscences, n.d., ENHS, 15.

By 1907:
“Something About Our Concrete Buildings,”
Edison Phonograph Monthly,
July 1907, 3. Concrete also permitted Edison to thumb his nose at the bricklayer’s union, which had threatened to blacklist him when he earlier had used his own nonunion staff to quickly throw up a small brick out-building. See Kasakove, untitled reminiscences, 15.

A pithy rubric:
“Made in America in 1888—Made Perfect in 1914,” advertisement in
Detroit Times,
12 January 1915, ENHS, TAE Inc. Phonograph Division, Maxwell files, Box 1, Correspondence, 1914.

“When the King of England”:
Advertisement,
Edison Phonograph Monthly,
December 1906, 15.

In 1908:
Edison phonograph advertisement,
Cosmopolitan,
June 1908.

Another advertisement promised:
“Never overlook the value of an Edison Phonograph as an ice breaker…,” advertisement, April 1907, ENHS, Primary Printed—Edison Companies Box 24. National Phonograph Company—Advertisements.

Victrola:
Andre Millard,
America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 130, 131.

cost about seven cents:
Ibid., 49.

insisted that his discs be twice the thickness:
Andre Millard,
Edison and the Business of Invention
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 301.

An adapter permitted:
TAE to G. M. Gregg, 18 February 1914, ENHS; William H. Meadowcroft to D. J. Walker, 5 May 1914, ENHS.

“these miserable dance”:
TAE to A. G. Spencer, 23 November 1915, ENHS.

Jazz was for:
Hugh R. Fraser, “The Old Man,” unpublished manuscript, 1954, ENHS, 463.

He also dismissed:
TAE to Thomas Graf, 20 November 1911, ENHS.

Sergei Rachmaninoff:
Emily Thompson, “Machines, Music, and the Quest for Fidelity: Marketing the Edison Phonograph in America, 1877–1925,”
Musical Quarterly
79:1 (Spring 1995): 169n90. Paul Kasakove’s recollection is slightly different. He remembers Edison’s summary dismissal of Rachmaninoff as “He thumps!”: Kasakove, untitled reminiscences, 35.

In 1911, Edison wrote:
TAE to Thomas Graf, 20 November 1911, ENHS.

Edison approached music:
“Edison Analyzes Music, Finds Lack of Originality,”
NYW,
12 February 1911.

His daughter Madeleine:
Madeleine Sloane, Oral History, 1 December 1972, ENHS, Interview #1, 11.

He spent a year and a half:
TAE to Ledger Smith, 25 June 1915, ENHS.

He did his best:
Norman Speiden, transcript of ENHS tour, 8 January 1971, ENHS, 9.

A little item:
“Thomas A. Edison Says He Hears Through His Teeth,”
Schenectady Union-Star,
6 November 1913.

she came into the sitting room:
Madeleine Sloane, Oral History, 1 December 1972, ENHS, Interview #1, 14.

recalled the disillusionment:
A. E. Johnson and K. Ehricke, Oral History, 29 March 1971, ENHS, 19–20.

Workers spread word daily:
Nerney,
Edison,
251.

He was exasperated:
TAE to Marcella Goodspeed, 9 June 1911, ENHS.

And it was those customers:
TAE to Thomas Graf, 20 November 1911, ENHS.

By the time Edison’s factory:
Kasakove, untitled reminiscences, 18.

On rare occasions:
TAE to Alfred W. Doerx, 28 June 1913, ENHS.

Victor signed Enrico Caruso:
“Talking Machine Companies Pay $1,000,000 for Voices of Artists,”
Music Trades,
17 August 1912.

The others whom Victor signed:
John Harvith and Susan Edwards Harvith, eds.,
Edison, Musicians and the Phonograph: A Century in Retrospect
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1987), 16.

One exception:
“Sarah Bernhardt Secured for Our Records,”
Edison Phonograph Monthly,
February 1910, 3. The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has made available online more than six thousand cylinders whose music has been digitized, including a few of Bernhardt’s. See http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu.

she did endorsements:
“A Celebrity Extraordinaire Who Rivaled Eiffel Tower,”
NYT,
2 December 2005.

Edison hated the negotiations:
TAE to A. Kobb, 1 May 1914, ENHS.

Stravinsky had written:
Fraser, “Old Man,” 469–470. On another occasion, Edison was highly pleased by the phrasing of a correspondent, who referred to “the music of bank-notes.” See William H. Meadowcroft to Frederick A. Whiting, 18 May 1917, ENHS.

“I believe if you record”:
TAE draft for F. L. Dyer letter of 26 December 1911, 20 December 1911, ENHS, cited in Harvith and Harvith,
Edison, Musicians and the Phonograph,
5.

Over time, Edison did add:
Ibid., 16.

The first record to sell:
Roderic Peters, Oral History, 23 March 1973, ENHS, 6. Dalhart’s name is rendered incorrectly in the transcript. “The Prisoner’s Song” was first recorded acoustically in 1924.

In 1912, the chairwoman:
Sadie American to TAE, 25 April 1912, ENHS, TAE Inc. Phonograph Division, Dyer folders, unmarked folder #1.

The Topeka agency:
A. S. Thomas to Harger & Blish, 26 January 1915, EHNS, TAE Inc. Phonograph Division, Maxwell files, Box 1, Correspondence, January 1915.

It fell to Edison’s salespeople:
Thomas A. Edison, Inc., Edison Retail Salesman’s Manual, June 1916, ENHS, Primary Printed—Edison Companies, Box 41, Phonograph Division (TAE Inc.), Dealer’s Material—Sales Manuals [second folder of two with identical label], 19–20.

“I am sure”:
TAE to Santa Fe Watch Company, 16 April 1913, ENHS.

The company immediately responded:
Thomas J. Schlereth,
Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life
(New York: HarperPerennial, 1991), 193.

When a man leaves home:
Advertisement for the National Phonograph Company,
Edison Phonograph Monthly,
February 1907, 22.

If one complained:
TAE to Harger & Blish, 8 February 1915, ENHS, TAE Inc. Phonograph Division, Maxwell files, Box 1, Correspondence, February 1915.

A typical letter:
TAE to Santa Fe Watch Company, 30 November 1914, ENHS.

all-concrete houses:
“Concrete Dwellings,”
Insurance Press,
30 October 1907,
TAEPM,
221:414.

film’s frames were tiny:
Edison Home Kinetoscope,
brochure, 15 April 1912, ENHS, Primary Printed—Edison Companies, TAE Inc. (Motion Pictures), Box 23, Folder: Kinetoscope-Apparatus Catalogs, 1912–1924.

“suppose, instead of the dull”:
“Edison and the New Education,”
Harper’s Weekly,
4 November 1911, 8. The melding of education and entertainment, here championed by Edison, was brilliantly condemned in Neil Postman’s polemic,
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
(New York: Viking Press, 1985).

He compiled a list:
Allen L. Benson, “Edison’s Substitute for School Books,”
World To-Day,
March 1912.

His marketing pitch:
“Edison and the New Education.”

A year after the release:
Thomas A. Edison, Inc., Sales Department Bulletin No. 31, 16 December 1912, ENHS, Primary Printed—Edison Companies, Box 24, Motion Pictures, TAE Inc. Home Kinetoscope Dealer’s Forms and Bulletins, 1912–1914. Seven years later, Edison proposed that the federal government assume the responsibility of producing educational films and offering them to schools for modest rental fees. See “Edison on Educationals,”
NYT,
9 February 1919.

When a business colleague:
TAE to W. C. Anderson, 26 August 1912, HFM & GVRC, Box 2, Folder 2–27.

The next month:
“Time Card in Edison’s Laboratory,”
Norwalk [Ohio] Reflection,
5 October 1912.

Edison had told reporters:
Israel,
Edison,
422.

warn off anyone:
Not every offender was pursued with equal fervor. After handling the problems with the businesses that rented the name of Thomas Edison Jr., the legal team found another problem: an Edison Employment Bureau in New York City. The owner claimed the Edison name by virtue of his brother-in-law, who possessed that surname, and expressed the hope that Edison “is not so much of an egotist as to think we named the Bureau to trade on his name.” Edison directed his attorneys to drop the matter. Howard Hayes to TAE, 12 October 1903,
TAEPM,
226:40.

In the early evening:
“Edison Sees His Vast Plant Burn,”
NYT,
10 December 1914; “The Edison Plant Fire-Swept,”
Edison Phonograph Monthly,
January 1915, 4–6; “Mrs. Edison Saved Husband’s Records,”
NYT,
11 December 1914.

The facilities for phonograph:
“Mrs. Edison Saved Husband’s Records.”

A private letter:
W. G. Bee to Henry Ford, 10 December 1914, HFM & GVRC, Box 4, Folder 4–5. After the fire, Edison refused to publicly acknowledge any deficiencies in concrete. He argued that “temperatures were far in excess of those in the ordinary fire” and that the damage to his structures had been exaggerated by the brick manufacturers, who had published a pamphlet titled
The Edison Fire.
See Edison’s letter to the editor: “Edison’s Concrete,”
NYT,
30 April 1915.

skipping over two thousand gallons:
W. G. Bee to E. G. Liebold, 17 December 1914, HFM & GVRC, Box 4, Folder 4–5.

They also discovered:
William Maxwell to Southern California Music Company, 14 December 1914, ENHS, TAE Inc. Phonograph Division, Maxwell files, Box 1, Correspondence, 1914.

would receive a kind offer:
W. G. Bee to E. G. Liebold, 11 December 1914, HFM & GVRC, Box 4, Folder 4–5.

He cracked jokes:
W. G. Bee to Henry Ford, 10 December 1914, HFM & GVRC, Box 4, Folder 4–5.

“Although I am”:
“Edison Sees His Vast Plant Burn.”

The striking absence:
“Abnormality Like His a Blessing,”
NYT,
12 December 1914.

“It’s like the old days”:
Edison made a similar statement the day after the fire: “It prevents a man from being afflicted with ennui.” “Some Answers Which Mr. Edison Made to Telegrams and Letters Received the Day After the Fire,”
Edison Phonograph Monthly,
January 1915, 6.

“I never intend to retire”:
“Edison Sails for Europe on First Trip in 22 Years, to Catch Up with Worries,”
Evening World,
2 August 1911.

CHAPTER 11. FRIEND FORD

lopsided arithmetic:
A classic
Saturday Night Live
sketch playfully pretended that a celebrity musician knew as much about every one of his fans as they knew about him. As Paul Simon was standing in line outside a movie theater, a woman approached him.

Woman: Paul Simon! Hi! Oh, I’m sure you don’t remember, but I saw you in your concert at Central Park.

Paul Simon: [pauses to think] You were sitting on a plaid blanket…under the elm tree.

Woman: Yes, yes!

Paul Simon: You’ve changed your hair since then. I like it very much.

Woman: Thank you. Thank you!

Paul Simon: And thank
you
for yelling, “More!”

Other strangers approach Simon, each bringing out a feat of memory more amazing than the last and each portraying the celebrity as intimately acquainted with the quotidian details of the stranger’s life. Simon even remembered the man who had bought one of his records in a Seattle record store: “Oh, yes, you had a problem with the second side, there was a scratch on the second cut…” The sketch concluded with Simon’s memory failing him upon the arrival of Art Garfunkel, his collaborator for eleven years. Simon: “And your name is?” The show originally aired 22 November 1986. The transcript is posted to a Web site, Saturday Night Live Transcripts. See http://snltranscripts.jt.org/86/86ememory.phtml.

At dinner on the first day:
Henry Ford, in collaboration with Samuel Crowther,
Edison as I Know Him
(New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, 1930), 1–5, 11.