ABBREVIATIONS USED TO DESCRIBE DOCUMENTS

The following abbreviations describe the basic nature of the documents included in the fifth volume of The Papers of Thomas A. Edison:

In these descriptions the following meanings are assumed:

Document Accounts, agreements and contracts, bills and receipts, legal documents, memoranda, patent applications, and published material, but excluding letters, models, and experimental notesPage xlv

Draft A preliminary or unfinished version of a document or letter

Experimental Note Technical notes or drawings not included in letters, legal documents, and the like

Letter Correspondence, including telegrams

Model An artifact, whether a patent model, production model, or other

The symbols may be followed in parentheses by one of these descriptive terms:

abstract A condensation of a document

copy A version of a document made by the author or other associated party at the time of the creation of the document

fragment Incomplete document, the missing part of which has not been not found by the editors

historic drawing A drawing of an artifact no longer extant or no longer in its original form

letterpress copy A transfer copy made by pressing the original under a sheet of damp tissue paper

photographic transcript A transcript of a document made photographically

telegram A telegraph message

transcript A version of a document made at a substantially later date than that of the original, by someone not directly associated with the creation of the document

STANDARD REFERENCES AND JOURNALS

ARCHIVES AND REPOSITORIES

In general, repositories are identified according to the Library of Congress system of abbreviations. Parenthetical letters added to Library of Congress abbreviations were supplied by the editors. Abbreviations contained entirely within parentheses were created by the editors and appear without parentheses in citations.

MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS AND COURT CASES

References to documents included in Thomas A. Edison Papers: A Selective Microfilm Edition (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1985 – ) are followed by parenthetical citations of reel and frame of that work; for example, Cat. 1185:34, Accts. (TAEM 22:562). Documents found at NjWOE after the microfilming of contemporaneous material will be filmed as a supplement of the next part of the microfilm edition.

Page 1RESEARCH TO DEVELOPMENT AT MENLO PARK JANUARY 1879 – MARCH 1881