1. Probably the article, “A Marvelous Discovery” in the 22 February New York Sun. Cat. 1240, item 378, Batchelor (TAEM 94:115).

2. According to the company letterhead, E. C. Quinby was president of the Metal Mfg. Co. They were manufacturers of “plain tin, stamped and japanned wire.” The letterhead indicated that they planned to change their name to the Metal Stamping Co. Page 138

3. On 4 March, William Carman, acting as Edison’s secretary, essentially repeated this marginal note in a letter to Quinby (Lbk. 1:406 [TAEM 28:268]). On 7 March, Quinby responded by again asking Edison if he had a device to “get the sound of a person’s voice to my sense of hearing through the teeth.” Edison did not respond and Quinby wrote again on 20 July to ask if Edison had such a device (DF [ TAEM 15:7, 144]). On Edison’s deafness see TAEB 1:7, 643, 656; 2:581, 786; 3:223, 230 n. 2, 399–400, 518, 623, 692–93.

1. This refers to a number 9 or 10 sewing needle. “Edison Speaking Phonograph Instructions for Operating Experimental Apparatus,” CR (TAEM 96:515).

2. On 19 February Charles Batchelor ordered tinfoil from J.J. Crooke, manufacturer of Crooke’s compound tinfoil, indicating that he liked “the thickest the best.” The following day Batchelor indicated in a technical note that tinfoil for the small phonograph was .002 inches thick. Batchelor to Crooke, Cat. 1238:258, Batchelor (TAEM 93:186); Vol. 14:43, Lab. (TAEM4:184).

3. Around this time an editor of Popular Science Monthly wrote, “The voice, indeed, is somewhat muffled and minified when returned from Page 139 the iron tongue of the phonograph; but its intonations, inflections, pauses, and quality, are rendered with surprising fidelity.” “The Edison Phonograph,” 10 (1878): 748–49; this issue of the magazine was published by 21 March and contained material prepared as late as the beginning of the month.

1. Dalton and J. W. S. Arnold (see Doc. 1263) had visited Edison at Menlo Park the previous day. Dalton wanted both a large and a small phonograph and Edison sent him to Joseph Murray to see about having them made. Murray wrote to Edison about this on 2 March and again on 4 March, inquiring what price he should charge. On 4 March, Murray indicated that Dalton was “delighted” with Edison’s phonographs and might “be the means of some out let for them as he wants to use them on Lecture tour to Elustrate sound.” In April, Dalton purchased one of the first small phonographs manufactured by Sigmund Bergmann. Arnold to TAE, 2 Mar. 1878; Murray to TAE, 2 and 4 Mar. 1878; Edison Phonograph Co. royalty report for April 1878, all DF ( TAEM 18:932; 19:46–48, 175.).

2. Cornelius Agnew was professor of eye and ear diseases at College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. DAB, s.v. “Agnew, Cornelius Rea.”

3. John Dalton was the first American physician to specialize in experimental physiology. DAB, s.v. “Dalton, John Call.”

4. It is not known if Edison went to see Agnew.

1. Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), professor of natural philosophy at Glasgow University, was among the world’s premier contemporary physicists and electrical engineers. DSB, s.v. “Thomson, William.”

2. Probably John Fleming of Smith, Fleming & Co.

3. This statement corroborates William Mallory’s reminiscence that Edison’s favorite meal .consisted of apple dumplings (what Gouraud calls a pie) and coffee, which Edison told him was the first meal he ate after he arrived in New York in 1869 with little money in his pockets. Gouraud probably became aware of Edison’s preference for this pastry when he and Edison ate at a French pastry shop in High Holborn Street Page 141 when the inventor was in London in 1873. Dyer and Martin 1910, 116-17, 150.

4. See Doc. 1210 n. 2.

5. George Gouraud had represented the Automatic Telegraph Co. in London. At this time he was resident director in Europe for the Mercantile Trust Co. See TAEB 1:280 n. 7.

1. On the previous day, George Prescott had written Edison:

I am going to publish a full account of the telephone, and want to give all the points in yours—of which the Scribner article is a mere sketch. Will you write out such an account of the improvements obtained by your method over all others as you wish to have published & also the particulars as to the manner of their production. Also inform me where your Musical telephone can be seen— I will send an artist to draw it. I want to make the telephone as complete in its description as the telegraph is. [DF (TAEM 17:19)]

Edison eventually supplied Prescott with his account which was published in Prescott 1878c, 218–34. Edison’s draft is in DF (TAEM 17:180–96; 162:1047–49).

2. Several hundred pages of drawings related to Edison’s work on telephony up to this time were entered as exhibits in the telephone interference proceedings of the Patent Office and more are in the surviving notebooks and technical notes at the Edison National Historic Site. However, an apparently extensive set of drawings kept in a notebook by James Adams disappeared upon his death. Edison Exhibits, TI 2 ( TAEM 11:203–626); Vols. 10–15 and 18, NS-76–003, and NS-Undated-006, all Lab. (TAEM 3:813–1008; 4:1–193; 8:505–22).

3. Charles Barnard (1838–1920) edited the “World’s Work” department of Scribner’s Monthly from 1875 to 1884. Among his writings were articles on scientific and technical subjects (NCAB 13:64–65). He and Mayer had recently coauthored a volume on the science of light (see Doc. 1175 n. 2). On 7 March, Mayer declined Edison’s suggestion that he and Barnard write a book on the telephone and instead suggested Brown Ayres as “a young man in the [Stevens] Institute,” who was an experienced experimenter and “fully competent to write out the work” (DF [TAEM 18:938]).

1. See Doc. 1226.

2. Ellen Adams.

3. The experimental room was connected with the electrician’s office at the Western Union headquarters building. Israel 1992, 144.

1. TAE to Lemuel Serrell, 20 Feb. 1878, Lbk. 1:343 (TAEM 28:216).

2. On 3 March, Painter had written Edison “send me piece of foil with 48 000 words on!” In response to Edison’s statement, Painter replied on 5 March “I wanted to see if you realized how much 48,000 words were! I will be satisfied if you send me a piece at the rate of 48 000” (DF [TAEM 15:305, 313]). See Doc. 1277; Edison and Johnson 1878, 531, 534.

3. The instructions accompanying the commercial tinfoil phonograph (Doc. 1416) recommended an average rate of speed of sixty revolutions Page 143 per minute. That phonograph also had twenty-four grooves per inch, with a finer model having forty; Edison may have experimented with an even greater number. The eight-inch cylinder refers to the tinfoil recording surface, which was placed over the ten-inch mandrel of the phonograph. “Edison’s Speaking Phonograph: Description and Instructions for Operating,” CR ( TAEM 96:510).

1. Adams wrote this on the back of a letter from Batchelor of the same date in which Batchelor indicated that he would “send two Instruments monday night (Mar 4) on brackets to test with new calls” (DF [ TAEM 19:643]). Batchelor sent the brackets and a new receiver on 6 March (Doc. 1240).

2. Developed by A. Callaud of France, the Callaud battery was a simplified version of a Daniell gravity battery (see TAEM 1:615 n. 3). King 1962a, 243, 245; Pope 1872, 106–7.

3. On Saturday 2 March they made a test on a 30 mile loop to Wilmington and back to Philadelphia. Henry Bentley to George Prescott, 15 Oct. 1880, Box 1093, NjWAT; Bentley’s testimony TI 1:318 (TAEM 11:136).

4. George Barker was professor of physics at the University of Pennsylvania (see TAEB 2:328 n. 8). On 8 March he wrote to Edison that Bentley was “enthusiastic about your carbon telephone, which has surprised and delighted me also beyond measure” (DF [TAEM 15:333]).

5. That is, the transmitter.

1. Not found.

2. Gustave Story, electric pen agent for Belgium and Holland, persistently sought an appointment as manager of the European business in place of George Beetle. In a letter to Bliss of 20 December 1878, Story denigrated Beetle’s management and boasted, “I am certain that by myself alone I could in one year give greater publicity to the goods than all the agents united” (DF [TAEM 50:387]). An electric penpamphlet issued by Story is in Cat. 1032:131, Scraps. (TAEM 27: 921).

3. On 14 February, Bliss had written to Edison, “[Baron] D’Apremont being Gen’l agent for the pen in France is anxious to give it a good exhibit.” Nothing futher is known about him. DF (TAEM 15: 237).

4. Edme Hardy was then manufacturing Edison’s electric pen. See Doc. 1259.

5. The Operator of 1 March (p. 9) noted a report by M. Sergins Kern in the Chemical News that “the diffusion of Edison’s electric pen is much Page 146 checked by Government regulations, as the use of printing implements for private study is strictly forbidden in Russia.”

6. Joseph Stearns’s duplex, the first practical method of mutliple telegraphy, had been adopted by Western Union in 1872 (see TAEB 1:101 n. 3, 521 n. 3). The Stearns duplex was not widely used in France as it proved undependable on Morse ink-recorder lines and inadequate for use with the Hughes printing telegraphs that were extensively employed on major lines (Butrica 1986, 112–13).

7. In the early 1870s, Bernard Meyer invented the first practical synchronous multiplex telegraph. Meyer’s design used a distributor which allowed several instruments to share a single wire. It was first put into operation on the Paris-Lyon line in 1872 and subsequently used on other major French lines. Butrica 1986, 88–97.

8. This and the following paragraph probably refer to the lighting of the Place de l’Opera with Jablockhoff candles driven by a Gramme dynamo. King 1962c, 404.

9. Unidentified.

1. The contract was a licensing agreement for manufacture and sale of phonographs in the United Kingdom by a British firm, the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Co. (see note 7). The agreement specified Edison’s royalty as half of the net profits on the sale of all phonographs “toys clocks figures and all instruments of all kinds” involving his patented invention. A supplemental agreement provided for a £1,500 non-refundable advance on the royalties anticipated from the contract (both agreements, dated 22, March, are in Miller [TAEM 28:1080, 1086]). On 7 March, George Nottage, manager of the British company, indicated that he was sending the papers to Edison (DF [TAEM 19:215]). The power of attorney sent by Puskas is unsigned (Miller [TAEM 28:1177), but an agreement of 16 April between Edison and Puskas did include a power of attorney for Puskas regarding these matters (TP).

2. Puskas is probably referring to his cable of 8 February (see Doc. 1196 n. 5).

3. The 22 March contract specified that the company was not bound to participate in any infringement proceedings, but that if it elected to do so it would be responsible for one-third of the cost. Miller ( TAEM 28:1080).

4. Henry Bessemer (knighted the following year) was a very prominent and wealthy inventor, engineer, and industrialist (then retired), known primarily for developing the process and equipment for manufacturing steel identified with his name; he had had extensive and expensive experience with issues of patent rights. DNB, s.v. “Bessemer, Sir Henry;” McHugh 1980, ch. 9 & 11 passim. Page 149

5. See Doc. 1554.

6. The City of London was a politically separate administrative territory of about one square mile in the midst of metropolitan London, containing the major financial, legal, and press institutions and business headquarters of England and the British Empire.

7. The London Stereoscopic and Photographic Co. advertised itself on its letterhead as a prize-winning portrait photography establishment and official photographers for several international expositions as well as for the Prince and Princess of Wales. The firm was a partnership of George Swan Nottage and Howard John Kennard (of whom nothing further is known), with Nottage managing. According to Nottage, bringing out scientific novelties was also their specialty. Nottage to TAE, 7 Mar. 1878, DF (TAEM 19:215).

8. Located in the western part of central London, Regent Street was (and remains) among the more fashionable and expensive of commercial addresses. The company’s headquarters, however, was in the City of London, at 54 Cheapside. Agreement with Edison, 22 Mar. 1878, Miller (TAEM 28:1080).

9. That is, of the City of London, not of the whole metropolis. On or before 18 February, Nottage sent a cable to Edison, but Edison could not at first establish who “Sheriff Nottage” was. James James to TAE, 18 Feb. 1878, DF (TAEM 15:248); see also Doc. 1248.

10. Edison’s and Puskas’s 16 April 1878 agreement formalized this division (TP).

11. In response to Puskas’s cable of 2 March (see Doc. 1208 n. 7), Edison wrote to Serrell on 5 March “concerning further foreign patents” on the phonograph and Serrell advised him that “it will be best for you to look over the drawings and spec[ification]s as we have them, leave out any unnecessary matter, and add any improvements.” He also asked Edison to call at his office to discuss the “best way of proceeding.” Serrell to TAE, 6 Mar. 1878, DF (TAEM 18:634).

12. The advance from the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Co. was put in the hands of this London bank; their New York agents (of whom nothing further is known) were to let Edison have the funds once he presented the signed contract. Contrary to Puskas’s understanding here, George Nottage’s letter to Edison of 7 March indicated that the transaction in New York would be handled by the Bank of New York. DF ( TAEM 19:215).

13. See Doc. 1204. Apparently this phonograph did not arrive in time to be used in Preece’s lecture and demonstration at the 27 February meeting of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, as the machine brought by Puskas was the only American-made phonograph shown there (see Doc. 1249 n. 2).

1. On 3 March, Painter wrote Edison: “I had Johnson come over here to see Hubbard yestdy— I have got them to agree to make him manager of the Phono’ Co’— Then you & I can know it is all going on OK. & can keep it within our control— What do you think of it?” DF (TAEM 15:308).

2. Imre Kiralfy, a Budapest-born actor and theatrical impresario, had just returned from Paris where he had “made a Number of important arrangements for American Inventions” and on 24 February asked to meet with Edison to discuss similar arrangements for his inventions. Kiralfy came out to Menlo Park on 1 March, where, according to Charles Batchelor’s diary, he spent the entire day. On 16 March, Charles Cheever wrote Gardiner Hubbard that Kiralfy, whom he identified as “pretty well known in New York as a party who gets out theatrical novelties for exhibition in the various parts of the country,” had applied for the “exclusive right to use the Phonograph for the exhibition of concerts.” Although he thought Kiralfy “about as enterprising a chap as there is going in the business,” Cheever felt that it would be “injudicious for us to tie ourselves up by giving him exclusive right for all concert purposes.” Obituary, New York Times, 29 Apr. 1919, 15; Kiralfy to TAE, 24 Feb. 1878, DF (TAEM 19:839); Cat. 1233:60, Batchelor (TAEM 90:83); Cheever to Hubbard, 16 Mar. 1878, Box 1205, NjWAT.

In a New York Sun interview of 29 April, Edison reported that Kiralfy had visited him the previous week and

was in ecstasies over the phonograph. He wants me to make him forty or fifty large cylinders, which he proposes to take to Paris. After securing the finest musical performers, each one will be invited to play into different diaphgrams, and the notes are to be recorded Page 152 by the cylinders. The greatest prima donnas, tenors, contraltos, and bassos are to sing, and their words and melody transcribed by the phonograph. [“The Inventor of the Age,” Cat. 1240, item 561, Batchelor (TAEM 94:186)]

In May and June Kiralfy also sought to exhibit Edison’s musical telephone in a series of European concerts; Edison was to receive ten per cent of the gross receipts. On 11 June, Edison gave Kiralfy a six-month option on such exhibitions but nothing appears to have come of this. Kiralfy to TAE, 29 May, and 4, 5, and 8 June, 1878, DF (TAEM 19:854, 858–860); TAE to Kiralfy, 11 June 1878, Lbk. 3:264 (TAEM 28:713).

3. After his signature, Johnson gave his address as “Room 28 Tribune Bldg NY.”

4. Robert Hoe & Co., founded in 1822, primarily manufactured printing presses, most notably its famous rotary presses. The company also did repair work, manufactured other items, such as a circular saw, and did contract work for others. Lubar 1987, 259–65.

5. See Doc. 1168 n. 7.

6. Joseph Moody had apparently become Oliver Russell’s partner in the toy contract. He was associated with the Lykens Valley Railroad & Coal Co. in New York. William B. Hollingshead deposition, p. 3, American Graphophone v. Leeds & Catlin, Equity No. 8, 570, Circuit Court of the U.S., Southern District of New York.

7. James James.

8. Henry Davies.

9. Nothing is known regarding this matter or about Blair, but see TAEB 3:452. Robinson may be Heber Robinson, manager of the Philadelphia Western Union. “The Philadelphia New W.U. Office,” Operator, 1 July 1876, 7; Reid 1879, 178.

1. Edison’s letter to Bentley describing these changes has not been found. Changes in Edison’s telephones from around this time are indicated by Docs. 1222, 1240, and 1241 and include a glass disk and a steel spring to compress the carbon in the transmitter, a new mouthpiece design, and changes in the call signal. Edison and his staff also experimented with the type and number of battery cells and with induction coils. Other possible modifications of the transmitter design are shown in drawings of 22 February, 1 and 6 March, and of the receiver in drawings of 6 March (Vol. 14:45, 51–55, Lab. [TAEM 4:186, 192–96]).

2. This was a private telegraph line between Drexel & Co. in Philadelphia and Drexel, Morgan & Co. in New York. The latter company, founded in 1871, brought together in New York the London-based Morgan and Philadelphia-based Drexel banking houses. Carosso 1987, 136–74.

3. According to the 9 March Philadelphia Inquirer (“Phonograph and Telephone Experiments,” p. 2), Bentley exhibited the Edison phonograph and the carbon telephone transmitter at a private gathering on 8 March. Probably reflecting Bentley’s view, the article called the carbon button “a more important if not more wonderful invention” than the phonograph and noted that Bentley demonstrated the telephone over a seven hundred and fifty mile line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh via Baltimore. According to Bentley’s later testimony in the Telephone Intereferences, the Philadelphia Local Telegraph Co. logbook of 8 March recorded a “test with Edison’s phonograph and carbon telephones to Baltimore via Pittsburgh, failure.” Bentley stated that “the Baltimore operator telegraphed that he failed to hear us” (TI 1:318–19 [ TAEM 11:136]).

4. The American Academy of Music on Broad St. in Philadelphia, which opened on 26 January 1857, was at this time the largest opera house in the United States (Blodget and Freedley 1885, 16–17). On 8 March, Barker wrote Edison about his lecture and asked for suggestions of “good things for me to do, and to ask of you the loan of the large phonograph and of some of your carbon telephones.” He indicated that Orton had “cheerfully” agreed to the use of Western Union wires for demonstrating the telephone at the lecture and that Bentley “promised to give me talk on the stage with Chicago direct.” Barker hoped that Edison himself would “find time to come on to the lecture & stay with me” (DF [TAEM 15:333]).

1. Figure labels are: “line,” “ground,” “inside coarse,” “inside fine,” “outside fine,” “outside coarse,” and “battery”; the first four are very badly smeared. The entire figure is degraded from ink bleed in the letterpress copy paper.

This circuit diagram for the telephone unit from George Prescott’s 1878 book on the telephone shows the plug moved to the center.

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An arrangement of Edison’s telephone used in demonstrations in France and England during 1878.

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2. Batchelor’s sketch is the same as his 1 March drawing except for the text at lower right, “carbon & zinc on one & zinc & carbon on other.” The 1 March drawing is the first evidence of this design. On 7 March a local circuit was added for the sounder, and on 18 March the plug was moved to the center of the board (Vol. 14:50, 56, Lab. [TAEM 4:191, 198–99]). It is unclear from these drawings whether the instrument at the top of the board is a sounder or a relay for a local circuit that operates a sounder that is not shown. Edison described this arrangement in Prescott 1878c (pp. 228–29) as best for “lines of moderate lengths, say from one to thirty miles,” and a drawing of 12 March shows it on a line with way stations (Vol. 14:60, Lab. [TAEM 4:202]). The drawing in Prescott shows the sounder R′, plug switch S, receiver R, transmitter T, primary induction coil PA, secondary induction coil s, and battery E. The unlabeled key should have been Κ and is shown under the switch. Edison described its operation as follows. Page 156

When a plug is inserted between 3 and 4, the relay or sounder R′, battery E, and key Κ only are included in the main line circuit, and this is the normal arrangment of the apparatus for signalling purposes. The battery, usually about three cells of the Daniell form, serves also both for a local and main battery. When a plug is inserted between 1, 2 and 4, the apparatus is available for telephonic communication.

A telephone unit of this design was illustrated in Prof. William Barrett’s article on the carbon telephone in the 21 November issue of Nature (Barrett 1878d; see also DuMoncel 1974, 198).

3. This refers to sounders manufactured by Jesse Bunnell, possibly one of two he devised himself. He received a patent for one of these on 16 February 1875 (U.S. Pat. 159, 894). The other was known as the giant sounder. According to an advertisement in the Operator (15 Aug. 1875, 2), he applied for patent protection for this device, but no patent seems to have been granted. In a 23 March letter to electrical manufacturer Henry Thau, Charles Batchelor indicated that the Bunnell sounders Edison was using were half-size (Lbk. 1:460 [TAEM 28:310]).

1. What Edison meant by the “universal mouthpiece” is unknown. It may be the cupped design shown in ‘“Bentley’s Exhibit’ Edison’s Carbon Telephone March 25th 1878” (TI 2:535 [TAEM 11:662]); cf. ‘“Bentley’s Exhibit’ Edison’s Carbon Telephone No. 1,” (TI 2:534 [TAEM 11:662]) and Prescott 1878a, 854. This cupped design is also shown in a Charles Batchelor drawing of 22 March; however, the telephone based on that drawing was finished with a different mouthpiece (see headnote p. 173, n. 3; NS-78–011, Lab. [TAEM 7:918]; ‘“Bentley’s Exhibit’ Edison’s Carbon Telephone No. 4,” TI 2:537 [TAEM 11:66s]).

2. See Doc. 1269 (fig. 15).

3. These were for the Paris Universal Exposition. Charles Batchelor to Henry Thau, 23 Mar. 1878, Lbk. 1:460 (TAEM 28:310).

4. Laboratory records of induction coil experiments are incomplete. Regarding earlier induction coil experiments see Doc. 1219 n. 2. Notes of 14 March record tests with six different coil designs, each using different wire gauges and resistances; “Coil No. 5” became the standard coil (see Doc. 1355). Vol. 14:59, 64–68, Lab. (TAEM 4:201; 207–11).

5. The Society of Telegraph Engineers was founded in London in 1871 and later became the Insitution of Electrical Engineers. Edison and Batchelor were both members. Edison sent Bentley’s report (Doc. 1247) to William Preece, who was also a member, but no mention was made of the report in the Society’s journal.

1. In a letter of 6 March, Mayer thanked Edison for devoting a day to showing him experiments during a recent visit and, among other topics, asked for another point and spring for his phonograph as his initial one had been worn almost totally away. DF (TAEM 18:935).

2. Mayer had asked about the dished diaphragm in his 6 March letter (see note 1) and on 14 March he suggested another way to create a “membrane dished like the drumskin of the ear” (DF [TAEM 18:942]). On 29 May, Edison wrote Clarence Blake about a

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dished diaphragm of postal card, when it is dished it requires no dampers, but if flat it may be dished by light dampers with same results = Of course the voice is more human and it will record the lowest tones perfecly but the loud talking makes it squeak. [CJB]

See also figure 21 in Doc. 1341, which shows a concave diaphragm.

3. In a 7 March letter Mayer told Edison that in addition to his academic duties he had “given my word to 3 publishers to write 10 books for them within three years.” DF (TAEM 18:938). Page 159

4. Brown Ayres was a student at the Stevens Institute in 1878. He had visited Menlo Park with Mayer and Henry Morton in January, and Mayer had suggested that he rather than Mayer write a book on Edison’s telephone researches (Doc. 1232 n. 3; Ayres to TAE, 20 Jan. 1878, DF [TAEM 15:187]). On 9 March, Ayres asked Edison to name a day when he could come out to the laboratory to confer on the book, but nothing further came of this and Edison’s account was published in Prescott 1878c (DF [TAEM 17:21]; see Doc. 1232 n. 1). Ayres went on to study with Henry Rowland at Johns Hopkins University before becoming professor of physics and electrical engineering at Tulane University. He later became president of Tulane (DAB, s.v. “Ayres, Brown”).

On 30 March, Ayres submitted an article on the theory of “The Telephone” to the Journal of the Franklin Institute, which was published in the June issue (Ayres 1878). Primarily a mathematical analysis of telephone technology, it briefly described Edison’s carbon telephone. Ayres also discussed experiments in which telephone conversations were carried on “between different floors of the same building, using the gas and water pipes as conductors” and suggested that there was a “close analogy between these telephonic currents” and Edison’s etheric force. This led him to suggest using a telephone as a “delicate electroscope” for detecting rapidly oscillating currents.

5. In his 6 March letter (see note 1), Mayer had enclosed “a dozen of magnetized needles” (each stuck the same distance into the center of a cork with the Ν pole up) and suggested that Edison “Put two, then 3, then 4, then 5, & so on in a basin of water and bring down over them a rather large cylindrical bar magnet— The experiments will explain themselves. They will greatly amuse you & they are very suggestive.” See also Doc. 1175 n. 4.

6. Francois Eugène Vidocq was a legendary French police officer and adventurer of the early 1800s who became the quintessential detective in European and American popular fiction and culture for the rest of the century. Edwards 1977.

7. On a letter from John Holland, a Cincinnati pen manufacturer who wrote regarding the use of iridium and diamond points for the phonograph, Edison instructed his secretary to “Write and say that I have both a saphire and Diamond point both of which work well but are rather expensive, say that I have never tried Iridium and if he would be so kind as to send a small piece I would try it and send him a record with results.” On 10 April, Holland sent a piece of brass wire tipped with iridium in the manner used in his best “Gold Pens.” DF (TAEM 18:974, 980).

8. In his 6 March letter (see note 1), Mayer supplied the address and office hours of Dr. Daniel Roosa, indicating that he was “the best aurist in N.Y.” and “a particular friend of mine.” Roosa, who was on the faculty of the University of the City of New York, had been present when Mayer lectured on the phonograph before the New York Ophthamological Society two weeks earlier. DAB, s.v. “Roosa, Daniel Bennett St. John.”

9. In a postscript to his letter of 6 March (see note 1), Mayer had written that his friend Ogden Rood, professor of physics at Columbia College, wanted one of the long cylinder phonographs for the college Page 160 and was willing to pay as much as sixty dollars. DAB, s.v. “Rood, Ogden Nicholas.”

10. See Doc. 1239 n. 3.

1. Edison was responding to Orton’s letter of the previous day, which stated that he had read Edison’s phonograph contract (Doc. 1190) and found that it “contains no reservation for the W.U. Co. particularly— nor telegraph business generally.” Orton also asked to see Edison and try his new telephone, noting that “Bentley speaks of it with increasing favor.” LBO 21:32–33.

2. See Doc. 876.

3. On 19 March, Uriah Painter wrote Gardiner Hubbard:

I saw Mr Orton to-day & told him I had secured the ap’t of “Phonograph ag[en]t for Johnson & that we would have some machines on the market in few days. He said he considered it one of the most curious things he had ever seen but he did not see how it was going to be brought into practical use— I told him it was a good thing to build on. That we were going to put it into a stock Co & I could get him some of the stock. He said he did not know about it, he would see about after a while— I dont believe he will put up a cent on it at present. [Box 1205, NjWAT]

1. See Doc. 1213 n. 3.

2. See App. 3.

3. In this telegram, misdated 27 February in TAEM-Gi, Bliss told Edison that Louderback was “crazy to be agent for the Phonograph give him a helping hand.” DF (TAEM 18:929); see also Doc. 1221 n. 2.

4. See Doc. 1271.

1. Not found.

1. See Doc. 1224.

2. On the design of these phonographs see Doc. 1195. They were being manufactured in the New York shop of Sigmund Bergmann, and on 18 March, Gardiner Hubbard wrote George Bradley, “Mr Cheever will have 25 Small Phonos— finished the last of this week Mr Johnson says he has orders sufficient to take the whole lot at once” (Box 1205, NjWAT).

3. On 14 March, Charles Cheever wrote Gardiner Hubbard:

Consultation with Johnson first of this week and with Edison two or three times has resulted in my deciding that it would well for us to have a small lot of 25 of the long cylinder Phonograph made at once to be used for lecturing purposes, by long cylinder Phonograph I mean the larger one of the two that Edison made. Exactly how these should be put out and what royalty we should receive for lecturing purposes I have not exactly made up my mind though I have got the scheme in the rough in my head and will write you at length about it in a day or two, in the meantime I have two parties bidding on it and wish to give contract tomorrow afternoon for having them made as everydays delay counts against us. [Box 1205, NjWAT; see Doc. 1276 n. 1]

A phonograph demonstration in New York, with William Cullen Bryant seated at right.

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4. William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), the well-known poet, was a staunch Republican who had edited the New York Evening Post for fifty-nine years (DAB, s.v. “Bryant, William Cullen”). On 15 March, Charles Cheever wrote Gardiner Hubbard about the hundreds of persons who had come to the phonograph company headquarters to see the phonograph, including “William Cullen Bryant who has been here once and sent a request to have a chance to come here again and bring some friends. .. . Mrs Astor ... requested me to bring one to her house and show it to about forty friends” (Box 1205, NjWAT). The New York Daily Graphic of 15 March shows Bryant at a phonograph demonstration in New York (“Singing and Talking by Machinery,” Cat. 1240, item 403, Batchelor (TAEM 94:123).

5. Gardiner Hubbard had married Gertrude McCurdy of New York in 1846. Bruce 1973, 83.

1. Bentley probably meant “M.P.”; that is, Menlo Park.

2. The Pennsylvania Railroad bridge at New Brunswick, N.J., had burned down the previous day. Cat. 1233:68, Batchelor (TAEM 90:86); Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 Mar. 1878, 1.

3. In American telegraph systems, when messages were not being transmitted the circuits were closed and electric current flowed continuously through the line. An open wire would have signified a break in the line.

4. Edison sent this letter to Preece, but the other leaves have not been found. However, the second enclosure accompanying Doc. 1204 would be appropriate were it not clearly dated “Feby.”

5. According to the Philadelphia Local Telegraph Co. logbook, they succeeded in making tests to Menlo Park on 10 March: “Making tests with Menlo Park via New York, 138 miles; also to Menlo Park direct; got talking distinctly, also singing; words in conversation sound muffled” (quoted in Bentley’s testimony, Evidence for Edison, TI 1:319 [TAEM 11:136]). These tests were conducted with both Edison and Batchelor (Bentley to George Prescott, Box 1093, NjWAT).

6. “The Speaking Phonograph,” New York Daily Graphic, 12 Mar. 1878, Cat. 1031:82, Scraps. ( TAEM 27:781).

7. Plush 1878, 270.

8. See Doc. 1195 n. 2.

1. Doc. 1237.

2. Neither Edison’s letter to Puskas nor the Nottage letter and cable have been found. The earliest extant letter from Nottage is dated 7 March. DF (TAEM 19:215).

3. The Académie des Sciences was officially created in 1816 and remains the most prestigious general scientific society in France and a unit of the national government. Crossland 1992, 14–19, 50–56.

4. The patent had been granted on 19 February (see Doc. 1202 n. 4). As in the British patent, the phonograph was part of a telephone patent.

5. Not found; however, Edison made the same proclamation to Alfred Mayer on 2 March (Doc. 1229).

6. Puskas had been interested since sometime the previous year in arranging a telephone exchange system in Brussels but apparently did not establish one. See Doc. 1153; Holcombe 1911, 356.

7. Preece’s talk, on 28 February, was for the Society of Telegraph Engineers, whose meeting was held on the premises of the Institution of Civil Engineers. Puskas’s role in the event is reported (as “Puscus”) in the 8 March issue of Engineering. “The Phonograph,” Cat. 1240, item 449, Batchelor ( TAEM 94:139); see also William Preece to TAE, 28 Feb. 1878, Cat. 1240, item 117, Batchelor (TAEM 94:117).

8. Prince Rudolf von Habsburg.

9. Puskas gave his own account of the event in an interview reported in a dispatch from 28 May. “Edison’s Phonograph in Paris,” New York Daily Graphic, 8 June 1878, Cat. 1029:146, Scraps. ( TAEM 25:238).

10. Charles Batchelor wrote Puskas on 27 February; the phonograph had been sent to the express company three days earlier. Batchelor to Puskas, 27 Feb. 1878; Batchelor to Baldwin Bros. & Co., 24 Feb. 1878, Lbk. 1:369, 349 (TAEM 28:233, 221).

11. The original of this letter has not been found; another less complete translation is in DF (TAEM 97:718). This translation was published in the New York Herald of 29 March in an interview with Edison (“That Wonderful Edison,” Cat. 1240, item 463, Batchelor [TAEM 94:p477]).

12. The Académie des Sciences was officially one of several components of an overall National Institute. Crosland 1992, 50–58, 82–84, 87–90.

13. Count Théodore-Achille-Louis du Moncel made scientific and telegraph instruments, wrote numerous works of scientific reference and popularization, and served as an engineer and administrator for the French telegraphs. DBF 12:191; Butrica 1986, 202, 208; DSB, s.v. “Du Page 169 Moncel, Théodose Achille Louis” (both spellings of his first name were and remain common).

14. Puskas.

15. Jean-Baptiste-André Dumas, among the century’s leading industrial and theoretical chemists, as well as a politician, prominent government official, and holder of various professorships, had been permanent secretary of the Académie des Sciences since 1868. DSB, s.v. “Dumas, Jean-Baptiste-André.”

16. Charles-François-Hervé Mangón was chief engineer (specializing in rural drainage, irrigation, and hydraulics) in the government’s foremost engineering division, the Ponts et Chaussées, and a professor at its professional school. Gde. Ency., s.v. “Mangón (Charles-François-Hervé).”

17. Henri-Edouard Tresca was undersecretary of the Conservatoire des arts et metiers, its professor of industrial mechanics as well as that for applied mechanics at the Ecole Céntrale des Arts et Manufactures, and had been commissioner general for the 1855 Universal Exposition in Paris. Gde. Ency., s.v. “Tresca (Henri-Edouard).”

18. Henri-Amé Resal, professor at both the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Mines and the second editor (from 1874) of Liouville’s Journal, had been a mining engineer and superintendent of railways; he specialized in mathematical and engineering mechanics and thermodynamics. WWWS, s.v. “Résal, Henri-Amé”; DSB, 8:382b, 11:78b.

19. Nothing specific has been found about this event, but see Du Moncel 1974, 261.

20. Some accounts in the press indicated that many observers voiced intense scepticism, particularly when Du Moncel failed in his first attempt to make the phonograph work himself (for quotations and discussions see Charbon 1981, 48–49 and Du Moncel 1974, 244–46). Later it was claimed that the eminent chemist Henri Sainte-Claire Deville, professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, had been the most outspoken of the scoffers (“The Present Bugbear of French Savants,” Sci. Am. Suppl. 6 [Dec. 1878]: 2452).

21. Edme Hardy was an award-winning maker of scientific and telegraph instruments (notably chronographs) and the French manufacturer for Edison’s electric pen. He was soon manufacturing Edison phonographs as well. Turner 1983, 75 (fig. 9); Butrica 1986, 164, 185 n. 36, 205; Doc. 1259.

1. This was a reply to Edison’s letter of 12 February (Doc. 1205). Edmunds expressed his disappointment that Edison could not “put the phonograph into my hands commercially,” but indicated that he would be pleased to “lecture & exhibit it scientifically.” DF (TAEM 15:288).

2. This was Edmunds’s “phonoscope” in which the vibrations of a diaphragm varied the rate and appearance of electrical discharges in an evacuated chamber (a Gassiot tube). Preece demonstrated one in February during his lectures on the phonograph before the Royal Institution and the Society of Telegraph Engineers. He apparently sent Edison the page proofs of the Society’s 1878 Proceedings (pp. 68–74) containing the text of his lecture at the 27 February meeting (“The Phonograph,” Cat. 1030:45, Scraps. ( TAEM25:281). An extensive description and illustrations of the device were published in the 17 August Scientific American Supplement (“The Phonoscope and the Phoneidoscope” [6: 2182], Cat. 1032:52–53, Scraps. [TAEM 27:846]); another description is in Tritton 1993, 38.

3. James Adams; see Doc. 1258 n. 2.

4. In his 26 February letter (see note 1), Edmunds told Edison that he had “promised to read a paper before the Society of Arts—& am only waiting your notes diagrams & Phonograph,” which Edison had promised in his letter of 12 February (Doc. 1205). The Royal Society of the Arts was Britain’s most prominent organization for promoting technical progress.

5. Under the title “The Speaking Phonograph,” the Scientific American Supplement (5:1828–29) reprinted an article that had first appeared as “A Marvelous Discovery” in the 22 February 1878 New York Sun. Cat. 1240, item 378, Batchelor (TAEM 94:115).

6. See Doc. 1239 n. 3.

7. This is in contrast to the 125 carbon cells employed during a musical Page 171 telephone demonstration between New York and Albany in August 1877. One hundred miles is roughly the length of the telegraph line between Philadelphia and New York. Prescott 1878c, 281–83.

1. Unidentified.

2. Newspaper notices of the aerophone began to appear within a few days, and on 18 March, Gardiner Hubbard told George Bradley that “Mr Edison has never made a single airophone theoretically it is perfect. What practical difficulties there may be in the way he does not know Mr Edison is at work all the time on the Phonograph & will do nothing else, until he has finished that” (see also Cheever to Bradley, 16 Mar. 1878, both Box 1205, NjWAT). Soon after the appearance of the first articles about the aerophone, Edison began to receive letters of inquiry about the invention. In reply to two letters from Allen & Co., Edison wrote, “Aerophone not perfected sufficiently for introduction or sale= The cost will be small at any rate” and indicated “that phono is taking up so much my time at present that aerophone is left in abeyance Expect to take it up in little while when will notify & they can come down & see it.” To William Kimball & Co., who wanted him to construct an aerophone to advertise Vanity Fair tobacco, Edison replied, “I will do what you desire but owing to time consumed on my phonograph I will be unable to perfect it for some time you will hear of it through the papers.” Edison’s answers are marginal notes on Allen & Co. to TAE, 20 and 22 Mar. 1878 and Kimball to TAE, 25 Mar. 1878, all DF (TAEM 15:373, 387, 400).

3. Slang term for money. Farmer and Henley 1970, s.v. “rhino.”

1. I.e., the carbon button; see, e.g., Doc. 407.

2. According to Bentley’s testimony in the Telephone Interferences, on the following day they made another test between Menlo Park and Philadelphia ‘“with new disk spring; test very satisfactory’ Mr. Edison wrote to me and stated that he had made a spring; he sent me a spring made of brass, and thought there was great advantage in it. After experimenting with it, however, we did not agree with him. The articulation, when conversation was carried on in a low voice, was very rough.” TI 1:319 (TAEM 11:136).

3. In Prescott 1878c (pp. 226–27), Edison wrote:

While engaged in experimenting with my telephone for the purpose of ascertaining whether it might not be possible to dispense with the rubber tube which connected the diaphragm with the rheostatic disk, and was objectionable on account of its tendency to become flattened by continued vibrations, and thus necessitate the readjustment of the instrument, I discovered that my principle, unlike all other acoustical devices for the transmission of speech, did not require any vibration of the diaphragm—that, in fact, the sound waves could be transformed into electrical pulsations without the movement of any intervening mechanism.

The manner in which I arrived at this result was as follows: I first substituted a spiral spring of about a quarter inch in length, containing four turns of wire, for the rubber tube which connected the diaphragm with the disks. I found, however, that this spring gave out a musical tone which interfered somewhat with the effects produced by the voice; but, in the hope of overcoming the defect, I kept on substituting spiral springs of thicker wire, and as I did so I found that the articulation became both clearer and louder. At last I substituted a solid substance for the springs that had gradually been made more and more inelastic, and then I obtained very marked improvements in the results. It then occurred to me that the whole question was one of pressure only, and that it was not necessary that the diaphragm should vibrate at all. I consequently put in a heavy diaphragm, one and three quarters inches in diameter and one sixteenth inch thick, and fastened the carbon disk and plate tightly together so that the latter showed no vibration with the loudest tones. Upon testing it I found my surmises verified; the articulation was perfect and the volume of sound so great that conversation carried on in a whisper three feet from the telephone was clearly heard and understood at the other end of the line.

1. See Doc. 1251; cf. Doc. 1125.

2. Bentley’s testimony, TI 1:319–20, 328 (TAEM 11:136–37, 141). Plush 1878 (p. 269) describes the Franklin Institute telephone:

• g, the carbon disc.

• e and f two thin platinum plates, connected in the local circuit.

• Resting on the platinum, f is a small disc of glass, h, of the same diameter as the carbon. On this glass plate rests a short brass tube, m, fastened to the round metal plate, c. This plate does not vibrate as the diaphragm in the ordinary telephone, being quite rigid; it simply arrests the atmospheric concussions, and conveys them, by direct contact, to the carbon disc.

• b, the mouthpiece.

• a, hard rubber case.

• d, a core extending through the handle, from the platinum, e, to the nut, k, to which it is connected by a movable screw, so arranged as to be capable of any desired longitudinal adjustment.

A carbon telephone transmitter with an iron handle used in tests in Philadelphia.

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3. See Bentley’s testimony, TI 1:323, 325, 328, and ‘“Bentley’s Exhibit’ Edison’s Carbon Telephone No. 1” and ‘“Bentley’s Exhibit’ Edison’s Carbon Telephone, March 25th 1878,” TI 2:534–35 (TAEM 11:138–39, 141, 662–63). On 22 March, Batchelor made a measured drawing of an iron-handle transmitter with a longer carbon-fluff holder. Batchelor erased and redrew the mouthpiece in the drawing, changing it from a cone to a cupped shape. Henry Bentley received an instrument with the mouthpiece as first drawn, but indicated that this design did not give “satisfactory results” (NS-78–011, Lab. [TAEM 7:918]; ‘“Bentley’s Exhibit’ Edison’s Carbon Telephone No. 4,” TI 2:537 [TAEM 11:665]).

1. See headnote above.

2. This was entered into evidence in the Telephone Interferences with a date of 26 November 1877 (see TAEB 3:642 n. 1). However, it is clearly the modified design from about 12 March 1878.

1. This letter was written on three small pieces of paper about the size of a Western Union telegram form. No item appears at the bottom of any of them.

2. In a 22 March letter to George Bliss, Enos Barton asked him to intercede on behalf of Western Electric to

convince Edison of the fact that his best interest, telephonically, lies in cooperating with us to secure the adoption of his transmitting telephone by the Gold & Stock.

I think that [Elisha] Gray takes very little stock in having the telephones go by his name. They are making the Phelps instruments in New York, and pressure is being used to extend that style and title of telephones, as you and Edison well know.

I believe that Edison’s instrument is of sufficient merit to secure its adoption sooner or later, certainly for a transmitting instrument, over both the Phelps duplex and the Gray bi-polar. [DF ( TAEM 19:664)]

3. Buffalo to Rochester; see Doc. 1224.

1. This letter, dated “12—78,” says:

You know I am good at a promise, but really this time I will fix you up as I am more satisfied with my Telephone. You better make your Lecture on the spkg phonograph = as Johnson finds in his travels that the phonograph takes away all interest in the Telephone; —Mayer has article April No. Pop Sci Mo. Look for it= [UHP]

2. Academy Music Hall in Philadelphia; see Doc. 1239.,

3. Edison forwarded this letter to William Preece.

1. Helena Blavatsky was the Russian-born founder of the Theosophical movement, a mix of spiritualism, occult ancient science, and ideas from ancient Egyptian and Asian religions. In 1875, she joined with Henry Olcott and William Judge to found the Theosophical Society in New York City. On 18 December 1878, Blavatsky and Olcott sailed to London, where they formed a branch of the Theosophical Society; they then traveled to India where they established the Society’s headquarters. DAB, s.v. “Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna”; the most recent biography of Blavatsky is Cranston 1993; Gomes 1994 provides an extensive bibliography on Theosophy.

2. On 11 March, Olcott had wired Edison from Metuchen, “Came here to see you on important business. Return by next train will go Page 177 straight to Church St” (DF [TAEM 15:346]). Later that day he wrote Edison:

Mme Blavatsky hopes you will be able to dine with her on Thursday at 6 pm and will be pleased to explain to you something about the occult forces that you desire to know.

If, however, you shall be unavoidably prevented from coming in town on that day, & will telegraph her on Wednesday evening so that she can make necessary arrangements, she will come out, agreeably to your polite invitation, with me on Friday by the 11 am train & return at 3 o’clock. [DF ( TAEM 15:344)]

Edison and Blavatsky never met (Blavatsky to TAE, 14 Dec. 1878, DF [TAEM 16:514]). However, Olcott did go to see Edison, on behalf of U.S. Commissioner Richard McCormick, regarding his exhibit for the Exposition (Olcott to TAE, 20 Dec. 1889, DF [TAEM 125:767]). According to Olcott’s Old Diary Leaves: The History of the Theosophical Society, during this visit

Edison and I got to talking about occult forces, and he interested me greatly by the remark that he had done some experimenting in that direction. His aim was to try whether a pendulum, suspended on the wall of his private laboratory, could be made to move by will-force. To test this he had used as conductors, wire of various metals, simple and compound, and tubes containing different fluids, one end of the conductor being applied to his forehead, the other connected with the pendulum. As no results have since been published, I presume that the experiments did not succeed. [Olcott 1895, 467]

These experiments may have been those described in Doc. 499.

3. The two-volume Isis Unveiled: A Master-key to the Mysteries of Ancient and Modern Science and Theology (Blavatsky 1972) was Blavatsky’s first major work on Theosophy. Although she claimed that it was dictated by “My Master, and occasionally others whom I knew on my travels years ago,” Blavatsky took extensive passages directly from other, unattributed works. Edited by Henry Olcott, Isis Unveiled was published in 1877. The first volume, titled “Science,” included a discussion of Edison’s 1875–76 etheric force experiments (p. 126); the second volume was titled “Theology.” A discussion of Isis Unveiled is in Campbell 1980, 32–39.

4. Before the Civil War, Henry Olcott had been an agricultural teacher and journalist, but by the time he met Edison, he had become a lawyer, although he also continued to act as a journalist. Olcott had met Blavatsky in 1874 while writing a series of articles for the New York Daily Graphic on the spiritualist Eddy brothers. When Olcott and Blavatsky formed the Theosophical Society in 1875 he became president and Blavatsky served as corresponding secretary. In 1878 he was also honorary secretary of the Citizen’s National Council, formed to promote the passage of Congressional legislation authorizing United States participation in the Paris Universal Exposition. DAB, s.v. “Olcott, Henry Steel”; Olcott 1975, 467.

1. According to Bentley’s testimony in the Telephone Interferences:

Mr. Edison placed a piece of metal underneath the diaphragm in order to improve its articulation. This piece of metal was not suggested by me, but I stated to him that he must have some substance there which would not expand and contract so much as the rubber tubing which he had placed there. I thought a piece of hard wood would be best, but it was difficult to hold-the wood there in a proper position always, so he soldered a small piece of brass tubing underneath the diaphragm. This we continued to use. Mr. Edison also sent me a spiral brass spring to go underneath the diaphragm on the button, but we thought it caused too great vibrations. [TI 1:327 (TAEM 11:140)]

2. The members of the Western Union Board of Directors who sat as the Executive Committee were William Orton, William Vanderbilt, Edwin Morgan, Augustus Schell, Harrison Durkee, James Banker, Alonzo Cornell, Hamilton Twombly, Norvin Green, Joseph Harker, and Samuel Barger. Western Union 1877.

3. According to the Philadelphia Local Telegraph Co. logbook, Merrihew was in Washington on a test line 140 miles and they “got what was said distinctly.” Bentley’s testimony, TI 1:319 (TAEM 11:136).

4. Doc. 876.

1. Edison had made the offer in this memorandum by 15 March. See Doc. 1256.

2. See TAEB 2:524–25.

3. The issued patent is probably U.S. Patent 198, 087. It includes figure 12 of Caveat 75, which Edison later claimed was the “First Telephone on Record” (see TAEB 2:720, 723 n. 17). Other telephone-related applications later issued as U.S. Patents 203, 013–203, 018, 208, 299, 474, 230, 474, 231, 492, 789. The other two applications are probably Cases 145 and 148, executed on 13 and 24 December 1877. Caveat 76A was executed about 28 February 1878 and filed on 8 March; it included 110 drawings (Doc. 1227 n. 1; TAE to Painter, c. 8 Mar. 1878, UHP; Cat. 1146, Lab. [TAEM 6:624]). For the record of Edison’s experiments see Doc. 1232 n. 2.

4. Edison used carbon in his telephone experiments as early as October 1876 (Doc. 799). Although he did not execute his first patent application for a carbon telephone-until 18 April 1877 (Case 130), the design included in that application dates from 9 February 1877 (Doc. 860).

5. Edison and Orton met on 21 March following Orton’s return from Washington. The next day, Orton wrote Edison concerning his understanding of their interview and indicated that

although by the terms of the contract we are entitled to have “three months satisfactory trial” after the complete issue of letters patent, I am not disposed to avail myself of so much time, and yet it will be necessary for us to have reasonable and proper time in which to make such trials as shall be deemed advisable. I trust, therefore, that you will furnish us with at least one set of Telephones as soon as they can be produced, and as soon thereafter as a satisfactory trial is had and an examination can be made of your pending claims for patents, I shall be ready to close up the matter. [DF ( TAEM 19:666)] Page 182

There are two draft responses to Orton’s letter on the back of a 23 March letter from F. M. Beall of Philadelphia. One of these, apparently written by Josiah Reiff, complained that Orton’s letter “does not accept my offer but makes a new proposition,” then declined to accept it and asked for the appointment of arbitrators to determine the price the company should pay Edison for his telephone as set forth under the terms of the 22 March 1877 agreement (DF [TAEM 19:670]). Edison’s own draft protested that

As the telephones have already had an exhaustive test by an officer of your appointment Mr Bently and as my whole experiments & patents matter since 1875 have been a matter of record and accessible to the officers of your Co having that matter in charge I hope you will close the matter at once as my offer was made very low and based upon the supposition that you were ready to close the contract at once but if I am to be delayed by officers of your Co who are personally inimicable to my interest I shall withdraw the offer. [DF (TAEM 19:669)]

1. On 15 March, Edison had cabled Preece: “Telephone great success Adams leaves for England Tuesday with apparatus tell Brewer & Jensen Puskas” (WHP). Page 183

2. James Adams sailed on 19 March on the Montana. He took with him two sounder brackets, two relay brackets, two bells, 2 three-cell battery boxes, six carbon transmitters and six Bergmann receivers, one “Iron core Receiver,” one “cut Transmitter,” diaphragms for the receivers, a box of carbon buttons (“fluffs”), a galvanometer, a 600-ohm induction coil, eight cords, two phonographs with tinfoil, miscellaneous tools, and “Diagrams of Sounder & Relay brackets diagrams to work in circuit containing Morse insts & permanent battery also for a long ckt with permanent battery.” Cat. 1233:78, Batchelor ( TAEM 90:92); Batchelor memorandum, 18 Mar. 1878, DF (TAEM 18:439).

3. By reverse currents, Edison is referring to the alternating currents used with the Wheatstone ink-recording automatic, which was used extensively on British lines and would have caused extensive crosstalk (induction) problems on telephone lines. The small station system was probably the London District Telegraph, established in 1859 and made part of the Post Office system during the nationalization of the telegraph. Preece 1877, 703; Kieve 1973, 56–59, 160, 167, 169.

4. It is not known if Orton sent Preece copies of the report on the Philadelphia tests. Preece did write Orton for information and received a cable from him stating that “Edison has done it can talk perfectly between New York & Philadelphia on regular morse wires twenty to thirty on a pole & running through short cables.” Orton to Preece, n.d., WHP.

5. On 2 March, Preece lectured “On Mr. Edison’s Phonograph.” The London Stereoscopic and Photographic Co. subsequently “issued an interesting shilling pamphlet” which included extracts from Preece’s lecture “and the reports and interviews of several American journalists with Mr. Edison.” “Proceedings at the Meetings of the Physical Society of London,” Proceedings of the Physical Society 3 (1878): 2; “The Phonograph,” Tel. J. and Elec. Rev. 6 (1878): 255, Cat. 1030: 19, Scraps. (TAEM 25:265).

1. These letters have not been found, but were no doubt related to concerns by the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Co. about the potential legal strength of Edison’s British Patent 2, 909 (1877). On 7 July, Edison’s British patent solicitors, Brewer and Jensen, sent Vallance and Vallance a detailed, expert analysis of that patent both in terms of the technology and of British patent law and practice (Miller [ TAEM 28:1131]). Nothing further is known of Vallance and Vallance.

2. This demonstration phonograph had been sent late in February. See headnote p. 63.

3. It is unknown if Edme Hardy manufactured any phonographs for the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Co. They appear to have had their phonographs manufactured in Britain, probably by Augustus Stroh. See headnote p. 63; Docs. 1301 n. 3, 1310 n. 5, and 1645.

4. On 4 March, Edison had sent fifty feet of various thicknesses of tinfoil. TAE to Puskas, 4 Mar. 1878, Lbk. 1:404 (TAEM 28:266).

5. No records have been located regarding the number of phonographs Puskas had manufactured.

6. The Paris Advertiser, an English-language paper, noted on 9 May that “Edison’s phonograph, which is shown four or five times a day at the Salle des Conferences, on the Boulevard des Capucines, is having a great success in society circles at Paris” (Cat. 1029:60, Scraps. [TAEM 25:191]). An example of Parisian press reports about the phonograph is “Phonographe, Telephone. Phonautographe, Plume Electrique” in the 6 April issue of Le Monde Illustré (Cat. 1029:150, Scraps. [TAEM 25:240]); flyers with text in six languages advertising these demonstrations are in Cat. 1240, items 737–38, Batchelor (TAEM 94:258).

1. Bell’s admiration for the phonograph was apparent in his “speech at a large meeting [in London] in behalf of a new school to teach the deaf articulation. He said if Mr Edison could take a piece of iron & make that speak, how much easier should it be for the good teacher to take the vocal engine God had made & bid them talk.” Hubbard to TAE, 24 Apr. 1878, DF (TAEM 19:60).

2. In another letter from London, probably sent shortly after this, Bell wrote Hubbard:

There is a question in my mind how far Edison can control the principle of the Phonograph:—for I long ago pointed out the very mode of producing sound that he employs. In my public lectures in America I exhibited the tracings obtained by means of the human Page 187 voice and stated that if you could “by any mechanical means” produce a motion similar to that indicated by a sound-curve you would produce the sound itself. I have stated the idea in the most definite terms for instance I have stated in illustration “ If I could move my hand in the way in which the air is now moved by my voice articulate words would proceed from my hand. Of course the same result would follow in the case of other materials. For instance if pieces of wood or of iron were moved in the proper manner—articulate sounds could be produced by their motion. Now in the Telephone this is accomplished by moving a plate of iron in the desired manner by subjecting it to a varying attraction from a magnet” &c &c &c.

It seems to me therefore that all that Edison can rightly claim is his apparatus and the mode of making the voice produce a record of its own vibration That can be utilized as a means of reproducing the original vibrations. But the idea of producing the effects of articulate speech by moving a plate of iron or other material in the way in which the air is moved by the voice—is certainly my invention and if that point is not claimed in any of my patents it should have been—for I stated the principle again & again in my public lectures. I say this not to detract from the merits of Mr Edison’s invention but to state my opinion that he should not cover too broad a ground—for I have now a new invention suggested to me by the Phonograph which can be turned to immediate account so as probably to realize a large fortune in a couple of months or so. I want your advice in the matter as to whether I should patent my idea. Also whether it would be necessary to pay a royalty to Edison. I give you full power to make any arrangement with him in the matter. Perhaps he might be glad to unite our interests regarding the Phonograph & Telephone and give each other the benefit of our ideas for the phonograph cannot be made a commercial success for a long time to come whereas my idea immediately available.

Bell’s idea was a policeman’s rattle made by recording “a word such as ‘Fire, Fire,’—remove the tinfoil—stereotype the impression—and then cast copies from it to be placed round a wheel as in the rattle.” The letter and a transcription are in Box 1103, NjWAT.

Hubbard sent the undated letter to Charles Cheever, who responded:

Taking the various points into consideration I should not advise Mr Bell’s applying for a Patent as suggested, it strikes me the result would be very disagreeable for us and injurious to Mr Bell as well as to our interest in the Phonograph invention.

Mr Bell says that he long ago pointed out the very mode of producing sound that he (Edison) employs stating it could be done by various mechanical means. In that particular sense it certainly was not patentable by Mr Bell, if it was I fear that in the very same train of reasoning Mr Bell’s Patents would be considered valueless for want of novelty, or to illustrate the thing differently I consider that if a description such as Mr Bell gave of what might be done by mechanical means in the way of producing articulation were patentable from the description given of it by him, then the various descriptions Page 188 given in different electrical works in regard to the Telephone would date so much prior the time of Mr Bells actual invention, that is the invention would not be considered as new. [Cheever to Hubbard, 21 May 1878, Box 1205, NjWAT]

3. Bell is probably referring to Leon Scott and Charles Cros. Scott was a stenographer and typesetter interested in making a written record of words as fast as they could be spoken. While attempting to create what he called “natural stenography,” Scott conceived a mechanical model of the ear to trace acoustical vibrations on a hard surface, which he called the phonautograph. In the introduction to an 1878 collection of his publications on the phonautograph, Le problème de la parole s’écri-vant elle-meme, Scott insisted that his earlier inventive work and that of Cros had anticipated the Edison phonograph. He also criticized the phonograph because it did not create an intelligible visual record of human speech. Charbon 1981, 16, 25–26; “The Phonograph,” Engineering, 8 Mar. 1878, Cat. 1240, item 449, Batchelor (TAEM 94:139); Hankins and Silverman 1995, 134–37.

1. Edison and his coexperimenters had described line noise this way for some time; see, for example, Doc. 963.

2. On 23 March, Hubbard went “to see Mr Edison in regard to his new Telephone, to ascertain if we could secure it to the Bell Telephone Co.” He then told Thomas Sanders, the Bell Telephone Co. treasurer, “I think it is an infringement on our Patents, but that it may also be a very valuable improvement what does Mr [Thomas] Watson think of it. Please ask him to write his views about it fully.” Hubbard to Sanders, 25 Mar. 1878, Box 1193, NjWAT.

1. On 17 March, Mayer had written Edison about his idea for recording books for the blind on metal sheets, providing the following description and drawing:

Guides on a frame, can readily be placed over the lines of impressions and then a style with a vibrating plate attached can be run over the lines by the blind person and the page will talk to him. This represents the style and plate running over the elevations and depressions in the electrotyped or cast page. [DF (TAEM 18:948)]

Alfred Mayer’s sketch of the hand unit in hispían for recorded books for the blind.

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2. For Edison’s clockwork design see Doc. 1310. Edison’s 28 February phonograph caveat shows several designs for recording on continuous rolls by use of a reciprocating lever indenting in a transverse groove across the face of the paper or foil (Doc. 1227 [figs. 44, 45, 54, 59, 60, 61, 62, and 64]). He first conceived such a design in connection with his telegraph recorder/repeater in 1877 (see Doc. 947).

3. Although Mayer responded the following day that he was “encouraged Page 191 to go on” by Edison’s letter, there is no evidence of further work on this idea. DF (TAEM 97:645).

4. Barker’s letter to Edison is Doc. 1254. Mayer replied on 21 March that the article, “On Edison’s Talking Machine” (Mayer 1878a), had already appeared in the April issue and opined that Barker “had better experiment more and talk less.” DF (TAEM 97:645).

1. Arnold had written Edison on 2 March about his benefit lecture on the “Voice and the Ear” for the New York Ear Dispensary and asked for the use of a phonograph as well as Edison’s presence at the lecture (DF (TAEM 18:932]; see also “Explaining the Phonograph,” New York Tribune, 20 Mar. 1878, Cat. 1240, item 429 [TAEM 94:130]). The lecture took place on 23 March at Chickering Hall where Arnold exhibited one of Edison’s small phonographs; he was apparently unsuccessful in acquiring the larger phonograph he had asked Edison for on 7 March (DF [TAEM 15:8]). An account of the lecture accompanied by Arnold’s text and illustrations of the phonograph, appeared in the 25 March issue of the New York Tribune (“The Phonograph,” Cat. 1240, item 455, Batchelor [TAEM 94:143]). The “conversational” and “singing” telephones Arnold used in his lecture were probably Edison’s carbon-transmitter (his “speaking” telephone) and electromotograph receiver (his “musical” telephone).

2. According to the New York Tribune article about his lecture (see note 1), Arnold was a professor at the University of the City of New York (later New York University); Wilson 1878 (p. 46) identifies John W. S. Arnold as a physician.

1. Richard McCormick sent a printed letter, dated 9 March, indicating that “exhibitors who have not filled up and returned to this office form No. 4, ‘Information for the Jury,’ should do so as soon as possible.” He urged those who had not yet received a form to write him as soon as possible. On 15 March, Edison wrote to tell McCormick that he had not yet received it. Presuming that McCormick sent the form immediately upon receipt of Edison’s letter, it is likely that Edison filled out and returned it within a few days. “Circular to Exhibitors. No. 8,” 9 Mar. 1878, DF (TAEM 97:633); TAE to McCormick, 15 Mar. 1878, Lbk. 1:437 (TAEM 28:296).

2. Edison was apparently referring only to his machinists and not to his experimenters or office staff. The 20 March New York World reported that he employed eight men, “and these the most expert machinists—Swiss workmen all of them.” “A Wonderful Machine That Will Be of Immense Value For Various Purposes,” Cat. 1240, item 435, Batchelor (TAEM94:131); see also Chapter 1 and 2 introductions, pp. 3 and 132, and Doc. 1302.

3. However, the instructions on the back of the form indicated that “If the spaces opposite each question are not adequate, the answers can be written on separate sheets of paper, attached and numbered to correspond.” DF (TAEM 18:400).

1. On 7 March, Nottage had written Edison, “I have at last settled the agreement with Mr. Puskass relating to the Phonograph and the agreement is transmitted by this mail for your signature, with the sum of £1500 (Fifteen hundred pounds) to be handed to you by the Bank of New York on the due execution of the Deeds.” Edison turned a third of the money (minus expenses due) over to Lemuel Serrell for Puskas’s account. Nottage to TAE, 7 Mar. 1878, DF (TAEM 19:215); agreements with Nottage and George Kennard, 22 Mar. 1878, Miller (TAEM 28:1080, 1086); TAE to Puskas and TAE to Serrell, both 22 Mar. 1878, Lbk. 1:457–58 (TAEM 28:307–8); see also Doc. 1237.

2. In his letter of 7 March (see note 1), Nottage had written: “I consider it most important that if you have made any essential improvements—as I gather from your Telegram to Mr. Puskass, you have— that you should at once Patent them in this Country, so that if the Original Patent should be upset these would stand. This is very necessary to our mutual success.” Puskas made the same point in Doc. 1248, although that letter had not yet reached Edison when he wrote this. Edison’s response refers to preparations already in progress before this problem became evident (see Doc. 1237 n. 11).

3. James Adams, who had departed for England a few days earlier.

4. In his 7 March letter (see note 1), Nottage told Edison that “it is most important that you should send me as early as possible, one or two of the plate machines, in order that our representatives may take orders for them, while the Excitement of the Novelty is commencing.”

5. On the American system of interchangeable parts see Rosenberg 1969, Mayr and Post 1981, and Hounshell 1984. Page 195

6. Most American clocks, apart from decorative cases, cost less than two dollars to make, far less than those made in England. Landes 1983, 310–13.

7. Nothing more is known about this machine.

8. See Doc. 1259.

9. Nottage had sent his own portrait with his 7 March letter (see note 1) and asked for one of Edison. Other than pictures from his childhood and youth, two undated photographs survive showing Edison in his mid to late twenties. TAEB 1:5, 27, and frontispiece; 2:frontispiece; Frost 1969, 18, 24, 26–27.

1. Cheever to Gardiner Hubbard, 15 Mar. 1878, Box 1205, NjWAT. Illustrated articles appeared in the 15 March New York Daily Graphic Page 196 (“Singing and Talking by Machinery”) and in the 30 March issues of Frank L.slie’s Illustrated Newspaper (“The Latest Scientific Wonder”), Harper’s Weekly (“The Phonograph”), and Scientific American (“The Phonograph”) (Cat. 1240, items 403, 428, 436, 439, Batchelor [TAEM 94:123, 129, 132, 136]).

2. Mayer 1878a and Prescott 1878a. On the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. exhibitions see Doc. 1246 n. 4 and “Explaining the Phonograph” in the 21 March New York Tribune (Cat. 1240, item 431, Batchelor [TAEM 94:130]). Dr. J. W. S. Arnold also exhibited the phonograph during his lecture at Chickering Hall on 23 March (see Doc. 1263).

3. Articles can be found in Cats. 1029 and 1031, Scraps. (TAEM 25:161; 27:732) and Cat. 1240, Batchelor (TAEM94:1); correspondence with reporters can be found in “Edison, T. A.—Articles,” 78–005, DF (TAEM 17:1). The tenor of many of these articles is evident from the following sample of headlines: “The Napoleon of Science” (New York Sun), “That Wonderful Edison” (New York World), “The Wizard of Menlo Park” (New York Daily Graphic), “A Wonderful Genius” (Boston Herald), and “The Inventor of the Age” (New York Sun).

4. “Four Hours with Edison,” New York Sun, 29 Aug. 1878, Cat. 1240, item 859, Batchelor ( TAEM 94:339).

5. Maguire to TAE, 17 Mar. 1878, DF (TAEM 17:26); Doc. 1324 n. 8.

6. On Edison’s relationships with various reporters, see his correspondence with them in TAEM-G1–3, s.vv. “Croffut, William,” “Cummings, Amos,” “Fox, Edwin,” and “Maguire, Thomas.”

1. William Croffut (1835–1915) was an established newspaper writer and editor at this time. He had reported on the Civil War for the New York Tribune and later worked for the New York World as well as the New York Daily Graphic. Obituary, New York Times, 2 August 1915, 9.

2. Croffut visited the laboratory and published an account of the visit in the 2 April Daily Graphic (Doc. 1277).

3. This article, titled “The New Speaking Machine” (p. 157), described the aerophone as “in fact, a phonograph with its power tremendously increased.” In it Croffut reported some of the uses Edison thought the device might have, such as in railroad locomotives and lighthouses, then observed that it could prove annoying if applied, for example, to political campaign speeches. He ended the article with the whimsical observation, “What an instrument of slander will the aerophone be in the hands of the malicious! It occurs to us, by the way that this Mr. Edison has done enough, and ought not to be allowed to prosecute his diabolical inventions any further. His brain ought to be muzzled. Will the Sheriff of Menlo Park please to restrain him?”

1. The controversial congressman, lawyer, and former general Benjamin Butler had been one of the attorneys for Jay Gould’s Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Co. in its suit against Western Union over control of the patent rights to Edison’s quadruplex telegraph designs. In previous years he had appeared on Edison’s behalf in related actions. See TAEB 2:374, 491, 806.

2. Charles Dana had been owner-editor of the New York Sun since 1868 (DAB, s.v. “Dana, Charles Anderson”). On 23 March, Sun reporter Amos Cummings had written Edison:

I find that Mr. Dana is at length satisfied that I have not been imposed on. He has read Scribner’s and the Science Monthly, and astonished me on Wednesday by saying that they backed me up “in every word.” He won’t come to hear my machine nor go into the Tribune and as he wants to see it and know more about it I have invited him and J. S. Pike, late U.S. Minister to the Hague, to come with me and see you on Wednesday next. If I am trespassing on your time or annoying you by the visit, say so and it’s all right. You will find Pike and D. two as sensible old blokes as you ever struck—no frills nor flounces. [DF (TAEM 17:30)]

1. This is in part a reply to Doc. 1248, which would have just arrived.

2. This is the 16 April agreement, which also gave Puskas power of attorney in regards to the phonograph in Britain (TP).

1. Edison probably began this draft soon after the successful design changes and tests of his telephone on 12 and 13 March 1878. The page of figures appears to have been drawn before the text was composed; thus, the differing lists of battery materials in the text of the caveat and in the description on the page of figures (see fig. 15).

2. Figure labels are (clockwise) “d,” “felting,” “g,” “h,” “c,” “a,” and “b.” An illustration in Plush 1878 (p. 269) shows (on a larger scale) the same electro-mechanical design in an instrument with a handle (see headnote p. 173).

3. Not shown.

4. At center.

5. This paragraph accompanied the figure in the original.

6. It is not clear whether this is the battery design mentioned by Edison in Doc. 1241.

7. Text is “mercury.”

1. This notification constituted part of the official initiation of an extensive set of patent interferences (quasi-judicial proceedings in the Patent Office) to sort out Edison’s and others’ rights to various telephone designs (on interferences in the context of the U.S. patent system, see TAEB 1, App. 3; Israel and Rosenberg 1991). Faced with several inventors seeking patents for all or some aspects of telephone technology, the patent office examiners declared a set of thirteen interferences on this date, each on a separate feature or on a small number of closely related ones (see note 7). The initial set of interferences included Edison and the six persons listed below, some of whom later were fully or partly dropped while others were added and the issues somewhat reconstrued. In “Speaking Telephone Interferences: Decisions of the Examiners-in-Chief” (TI 5 [TAEM 11:891]), the original contestants were said to be fourteen in number, but that many have not been identified. More declarations followed, different interferences involved different antagonists, and no one individual, including Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, and Elisha Gray, the primary claimants to fundamental telephone patents, figured in all of them.

The first thirteen interferences were designated by letters A through M (headings on some records refer to A through Ν but no other records of Ν have been found). Others of which Edison retained records were Interferences 1 through 6, Interference B³, and Edison v. Dolbear v. Anders (TI 6–8 [TAEM 11:919, 977, 1019]). Although not declared until 14 August 1879, Interferences 1 through 6 also involved earlier inventive work and the depositions, exhibits, and arguments regarding them significantly overlapped those for the initial set of telephone interferences; No. 1 was combined procedurally with the earlier set. Almost all of the decisions on the initial set of interferences were appealed within the Patent Office and the consequent rulings were announced on 23 October 1884, but that by no means settled all the disputes (some of the patents involved did not issue until the 1890s; see notes 3 and 13).

Printed records of all these cases constitute the materials designated “TI” and “Telephone Interferences” in TAEM and TAEB; the portions directly related to Edison’s involvement in the proceedings are on TAEM 11, passim. The document file at the Edison National Historic Site for the years involved also includes considerable related correspondence. During 1880, Edison’s laboratory and workshop records were examined, categorized, and rearranged as documentary evidence was prepared for use as exhibits (see TAEB 3:19–20). Further material exists in the application files for the various patents involved and in the collections of papers and artifacts of Bell and Gray.

2. This was sent to Edison in care of his patent attorney Lemuel Serrell and a marginal note indicates that a copy was sent to Western Union, the assignee of the patent.

3. Case 130 eventuated in U.S. Patent 474, 230, issued on 3 May Page 204 1892. It was the earliest application for a variable-resistance telephone transmitter in which a diaphragm pressed against carbon. The patent drawing is reproduced in TAEB 3:254; a transcription of the original application and a copy of the drawing are in TI 2:2–5, 13 (TAEM 11:185–86, 190). Case 130 was also involved in Interference B.

Four of Edison’s other applications were caught up in this first set of telephone interferences, namely Cases 141 (executed 9 July 1877, involved in Interferences M and 1), 144 (31 August 1877, C and D), 145 (13 December 1877, L and E), and 148 (24 December 1877, G and J). The patents that eventually emerged were 474, 231 and 474, 232 (both from Case 141, issued 3 May 1892) and 492, 789 (Case 144, issued 7 March 1893). Neither Case 145 nor 148 (which actually concerned a design for acoustic telegraphy but which included features relevant to telephony) resulted in a patent; for transcriptions of the applications see TI 2:25–30 (TAEM 11:198–202).

Further applications (Cases 158 and 178) were dealt with in other, later telephone interferences. See TI 6 and 7 (TAEM 11:919, 977).

4. Commissioner from January 1877 to November 1878. NCAB 13:364.

5. No copy of the U.S. Patent Office Rules of Practice remains with the original. A copy of the 1875 edition is in Quad. 72.15; the section dealing with interferences is on pages 15–19 (TAEM 9:228–30).

6. A preliminary statement was a sworn affirmation stating when the inventor claimed to have accomplished the point in question and what kinds of evidence would be presented to support that assertion. Attorneys for opposing parties regularly sought to use such claims as final limits on what evidence could be introduced and what questions could be raised throughout the rest of the proceedings. The due date for these statements was changed and Edison did not officially attest to his preliminary statements on these interferences until 25 September 1878. They were filed three days later. TI i:ix-xxi (TAEM 1 1:14–20).

7. Similar statements concerning the claim(s) in question were provided for each of the other interferences. TI 1 :ii-vi’/2 (TAEM 11:10–12).

8. This read: “The method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically, as herein described, by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sounds, substantially as set forth.” See note 20.

9. This interference was expanded to include claims by two more inventors, W. L. Voelkers and J. W. McDonough, and it was linked with Interference No. 1, which involved John Irwin, Francis Blake, Jr., Edison, and Voelkers.

10. Four applications by Gray were at issue in the initial set of telephone interferences, three from this date and one from 17 January 1878. Whether any part of these eventuated in an issued patent has not been determined. Gray’s deposition and supporting evidence are in TI 3:289–434, NjWOE; transcriptions of the applications are at TI 3:289, 307, 319, and 333. For Gray’s inventive work and claims regarding telephony see also Doc. 1212 n. 13; Prescott 1878c, 151–217; Gray 1977; Hounshell 1975; Gorman et al. 1993.

11. Otherwise unidentified.

12. Emile Berliner had immigrated to the United States from his Page 205 native Hanover (recently annexed by Prussia) in 1870. His principal inventive work to this point involved telephone-transmitter and microphone designs (DAB, s.v. “Berliner, Emile”; Wile 1974). On 3 September 1880 all claims he had in this and other general interferences were dismissed, but Interference M, with Edison, and his patent application remained pending (TI i:ii [TAEM 11:10]).

13. Berliner’s telephone-transmitter application eventuated in U.S. Patent 463, 569, issued on 17 November 1891. The text of the April 1877 caveat upon which it was based is transcribed in Wile 1974, 309-13. The patent drawing is shown in King 1962b, 325.

14. Unidentified beyond his association with Dolbear and Pope shown below.

15. George Richmond had developed a variable-resistance telephone transmitter employing water (Doc. 1021; TAEB 3:517 n. 2). On 1 May 1879 his claims were dismissed from this and all but one of the other interferences. He submitted no evidence or argument to support that case. (TI i:ii [TAEM 11:10]). No copy of Richmond’s application has been located.

16. In January 1880, Washington, D.C., patent attorneys George Dyer and Zenas Wilber took charge of Edison’s new U.S. patent applications. Lemuel Serrell continued to act for him in regard to prior U.S. applications and interferences and foreign patents. The firm dissolved in February 1882, at which time Edison transferred all of his new patent business to the firm of Richard Dyer (George’s son) and Henry Seely, with Dyer acting as his principal attorney. George Dyer and Serrell continued to act on Edison’s behalf in regard to some of his older cases. See TAEM-G2,s.vv. “Dyer, George W,” “Dyer, Richard N.,” “Dyer & Seely,” and “Wilber, Zenas Fisk.”

17. Dolbear was professor of physics and astronomy at Tufts University in Boston. He had an agreement with Gold and Stock Telegraph Co. that gave him funding and the assistance of Franklin Pope, as patent solicitor, to prepare, file, and argue for a patent application on his claimed invention, and gave Gold and Stock (and thus Western Union) ownership of any resulting patent; BDAS, s.v. “Dolbear, Amos Emerson”; Dolbear’s deposition, p. 9, Telephone Interferences; Dolbear’s application and supporting deposition are in TI 3:435–70, NjWOE.

18. Holcombe (otherwise unidentified) was dismissed from the interferences on 29 July 1879 (TI 1 :ii [ TAEM 11:10]). No copy of Holcombe’s application has been found.

19. The prominent inventor Moses Farmer was electrician at the U.S. Torpedo Station in Newport, R. I. See TAEB 1:68 n. 8; on the role of inventors as patent attorneys see TAEB 1, App. 3.

20. This was Bell’s patent for the use of “undulating current” in telegraphy, which emerged through judicial and business decisions as the key patent for all telephony. It is printed in Prescott 1878c, 205–15.

21. Anthony Pollok was a partner in one of the leading law firms dealing with patents in Washington, D.C., patent attorney for Bell and Gardiner Hubbard, and a longtime advisor to Hubbard. Bruce 1973, 130, 138, 161.

22. Henry Townsend, first assistant patent examiner, was apparently also a friend of Edison’s, cf. TAE to Townsend, 26 Feb. 1878; Townsend to TAE, 16 and 28 May 1878; all DF (TAEM 18:1000, 15:285, 715).

1. Joshua Bailey. A typed transcript of the letter to Puskas is in TP (a photocopy of the original, which may also be in TP, is at NjWOE). Dated 21 March, it states: “This will be handed to you by Mr Bailey who goes to Europe to represent the Gray interest. He desires to effect a consolidation of certain Telephone interests. I leave this matter wholly to your descretion.”

1. This is a response to Puskas’s 18 March letter (Doc. 1259) enclosing letters from Vallance & Vallance; these letters have not been found.

2. The provisional specification of British Patent 1, 644 (1878) was filed on 24 April.

3. That is, Edison’s first British patent covering the phonograph, No. 2, 909 (1877).

4. The same day, Edison wrote another letter to Puskas about this issue:

As far as I can learn I think I am entitled to every claim I have made in my patent and possibly I could prove priority of invention on every one. What I want to know is this

If a person patents an article and makes a great number of claims all of which he is entitled to by reason of being the first can he not hold them or is the number of claims limited I want some light. Let them specify. [TP]

5. Nothing is known of this visit. However, an illustration of Edison demonstrating the phonograph to visitors at his laboratory, published in the 30 March issue of Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, represents a visit from around this time. “The Latest Scientific Wonder,” Cat. 1240, item 428, Batchelor (TAEM 94:129).

1. Butler wrote from New York on 5 March, from Ansonia, Conn., on 21 March, and from Havana on 17 May, when he told Edison, “I write to you in order that it may not be a case of ‘out of sight out of mind .’” DF (TAEM 19:840; 15:377, 676).

2. Nothing is known of Vesey Butler beyond his association with Edison. The jocular familiarity shown in correspondence such as this indicates that he knew Edison rather well, perhaps as a telegraph operator. In 1876 he was selling Edison’s electric-pen copying system. He continued his association with Edison through 1880, promoting the inventor’s electrical inventions in Cuba. See TAEM-G1, s.v. “Butler, Vesey F.”

3. On 5 March, Butler wrote from New York,

I was very much surprised at meeting a man today who told me he was Profr Edisons agent for the “Telefone” in the Island of Cuba—the individuals name is “James”—and I told him that I had an idea that he was mistaken that I was Butler of Havana & I considered myself one of Professor Edisons special staff & his head cook & bottle washer in Cuba—& nearly two years in his respectable service—& that if there was any Telephoning to be done that I was the boy who was going to do it— [DF (TAEM 19:840)]

1. 1 May was the scheduled opening day of the 1878 Universal Exposition in Paris.

2. Elisha Gray exhibited several “Apparatus for Transmitting Musical and Other Sound by Telegraph,” including telephones and devices for acoustic telegraphy. Pickering 1878, s.v. “Gray, Elisha.”

3. Bliss is referring to the pending Patent Office interference proceedings and Gray’s claims of priority to the invention of the telephone. See Doc. 1270 n. 9.

4. On 19 April, Bliss wrote Edison, “Gray now draws compensation from the Telephone Co. He spends most of his time in the country ala Edison! He came in a day or two ago and remarked that ‘I did not need to go down to Menlo Park to find material for a newspaper article.’ It makes all the difference in the world how a fellow feels about that.” DF (TAEM 18: 288).

5. Edison drafted a note to Zenas Wilbur in the margins of the first page of this letter and then heavily canceled much of it. The legible remnant is: “.. . made at the time mentioned—The whole thing I be-lieve to be a damned Swindle GBP is to get ³/10 of Grays Interest & Pope ¹/10 for doing the business Edison.”

6. That is, the rotary press for use with the electric pen.

1. Probably John Fleming of Smith, Fleming and Co.

2. See TAEB 2:305–9.

3. Reiff to TAE, 19 and 22 Mar. 1878, DF (TAEM 19:448, 663).

4. Edison was suing Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Co. for his salary as company electrician. He settled this suit and the Domestic Telegraph Co. suit (see Doc. 1170 n. 1) about ten days later when he accepted a payment of $1,500. A&P Executive (1878–79): 7–8; see also TAE to George Norris, 23 Mar. 1878, Lbk. 3:461 (TAEM 28:311).

5. Neither the paper nor “Wm” have been identified.

6. See Doc. 1282 n. 1.

1. Edward Johnson had begun to receive manufacturing bids for twenty-five large phonographs at the end of March. The instruments, made by Wm. G. & G. Greenfield (also known as the Hope Machine Works) of East Newark, were to be capable of recording six times more than the small demonstration phonographs (Doc. 1195). The completed instruments actually recorded five times as much. The Greenfield shop produced twenty-six machines, one of which is in the private collection of Charles Hummel. Although Johnson initially hoped to provide clockwork drives for the large cylinder phonographs, none were ever supplied. Johnson to Painter, 28 Mar. 1878, and Cheever to Page 212 Hubbard, 30 Mar. 1878, both Box 1205, NjWAT; Wm. G. & G. Greenfield bill to Edison Speaking Phonograph Co., 1 July 1878, and Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. circular, Form 502, n.d., both UHP; Wm. G. & G. Greenfield to TAE, 27 June and 5 July 1878, both DF ( TAEM 19:90, 94). Regarding the letters of inquiry see 78–018 (DF [TAEM 17:877]) and scrapbooks of “Applications for Phonographs” (UHP).

One of the phonographs manufactured by Wm. G. & G. Greenfield for the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co.

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The Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. advertised the small phonograph as suitable for “private use and instruction, being very portable.” Johnson believed that the large phonograph would be more suitable for public entertainments such as lectures and musical performances. Like the small ones, they were offered only for “experimental demonstration, in advance of the Standard Instrument which Mr. Edison is now at work upon, and which, when completed, will be practically applied to numerous branches of commercial and scientific industry.” The standard, which was not expected to be ready for three to six months, was to be a disk phonograph. Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. circular, Form 502, n.d., UHP; Johnson to Painter, 28 Mar. 1878, Box 1205, NjWAT.

2. It is unknown if a special circular was printed for Bell Telephone agents. Johnson printed a circular for the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. (which may not have been distributed) offering for sale small $30 and large $60 phonographs and the outfits for them. The outfit comprised five pounds of tinfoil, a gum pot and brush, an extra embossing point, a piece of rubber for damping, a centering pin, and a small screwdriver, all in a “Neat Box.” Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. circular, Form 502, n.d., UHP; Hilborne Roosevelt to Gardiner Hubbard, 12 Apr. 1878, Box 1205, NjWAT.

3. In a 20 March letter to Hubbard, Charles Cheever had proposed leasing small phonographs to lecturers who would have exclusive rights to exhibit within assigned territories. Cheever believed “the interest in the thing as a lecture will only last while it is a novelty and for that reason it seems best to start the thing at one and the same time in all parts of the country” through such leasing plans. Cheever expected that purchasers of the small phonograph would either lose interest in its novelty or become dissatisfied as improved models were made available. He thought the main advantage of

leasing the small machines for a year instead of selling them is that by the end of the year we suppose our apparatus will be so much more perfect in every way, that the apparatus now made will be a detriment to us rather than a benefit if in the hands of the public and we therefor prefer to call them in and smash them up. [Box 1205, NjWAT] Page 213

Johnson’s circular (see note 2) indicated that the phonograph company was planning to sell these instruments and was “not at present prepared to appoint exclusive agents.”

4. Although Johnson ordered twenty-five small ($30) phonographs, the company only sold five in April. Edison received a 20% royalty on each machine. One small phonograph was sent that month to Thomas Watson, superintendent of the Bell Telephone Co. The company failed to sell any others until the following January. See Doc. 1302; Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. to Watson, 15 Apr. 1878, Box 1205, NjWAT; Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. royalty statement for April 1878, DF (TAEM 19:175); Doc. 1397 n. 3.

5. Anthony Gref, Jr., was a clerk or secretary to Charles Cheever.

1. For Croffut’s authorship see Doc. 1266. He was evidently accompanied by Peter Cusacks, an artist, whose signature is in the lower right corner of the illustration. Wilson 1878, 307.

2. Mungo Park was a Scottish surgeon and explorer who made several expeditions to Africa. He died leading a British party down the Niger River in 1806. DNB, s.v. “Park, Mungo.”

3. See TAEB 3:3–4.

4. Repeaters were used to overcome the attenuation of electrical signals over long distances. They were used routinely in long-distance telegraphy, although Edison had been unable to develop a repeater well-adapted to the rapid transmission of signals by automatic telegraphy (TAEB 1:30–31; 2:661). The even higher frequency of telephone signals posed still greater difficulties, which were not overcome until the early twentieth century (Wasserman 1985; Fagen 1975). In April 1877, Edison had developed his first telephone repeater—the pressure relay (see Docs. 885, 887, 926).

Circuit diagram of Edison’s telephonic repeater.

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The repeater discussed by the Graphic consisted of a magnet (M), a carbon-telephone transmitter (C), and an induction coil (I). As the magnet responded to fluctuations in the main line current, it activated the transmitter by vibrating its diaphragm which in turn pressed on the carbon button and altered the resistance of the repeater circuit. This varied the resistance of the primary winding of the induction coil and induced a current in the secondary winding, which was passed to the main line. This device is illustrated and described in Prescott 1878c, 39–40.

5. Slang term for a swindler or confidence man. Farmer and Henley 1970, s.v. “banco-steerer.”

6. “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching,” by George Root, Page 220 was a popular Union song during the Civil War. DAB, s.v. “Root, George Frederick.”

An 1878 photograph of the telephonic repeater.

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7. The opening lines from Shakespeare’s Richard 111 occasionally appeared in Edison’s notebooks; he and Batchelor also used them for the text of electric pen tests. See, for example, Cat. 298:133(2); NS-77–004; all Lab. (TAEM 5:259; 7:539); DF (TAEM 13:290, 293, 295).

8. This quotation is from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard.” Edison had inscribed this stanza in laboratory notebooks on at least two previous occasions. Cat. 297:88, NS-77–004, both Lab. ( TAEM 5:798, 7:619).

9. Edison experimented with different substances, including sapphire, as recording points for his phonograph. See Doc. 1242 n. 7 and Johnson to TAE, 28 Mar. 1878, DF (TAEM 19:53).

10. Alfred Mayer had suggested this to Edison in early March (see Doc. 1242 n. 2).

11. Charles Dickens’s novels are actually considerably longer. Edison repeated this claim in the North American Review.. Edison and Johnson 1878, 531, 534.

1. Batchelor entered in his diary that day: “Orton Bentley & many others conversed over the wire but could not get a single word over Phelps.” According to press accounts, several dozen witnesses shared nine receivers in Bentley’s office to listen to the conversations. Present Page 221 were George Phelps and James Merrihew, Western Union superintendent for Philadelphia. Among those with Edison and Orton at the Western Union building in New York was George Phelps, Jr. Philadelphia newspapers reported enthusiastically on the carbon telephone’s “highly successful” hour-long test over the difficult route to New York. They also gave more charitable reviews of the magneto’s performance than Batchelor did; one noted that it transmitted “words and occasional sentences.” Cat. 1233:92; “Experiments with Telephones,” Philadelphia Record and “Long-Range Chatting,” Philadelphia Times, both 3 Apr. 1878, Cat. 1240, items 493, 496; all Batchelor (TAEM 90:99, 94:156).

2. The telephone in question is probably the design shown in George Prescott’s article from the August 1878 issue of Scribner’s Monthly (Prescott 1878d, 601–2). In this article and in the revised edition of his book on telephony (Prescott 1879, 565–67), Prescott presented this design as the new form of transmitter that followed Edison’s decision to remove the rubber tube in mid-March (see Doc. 1252). In the first edition of his book, which appeared in June, Prescott added a paragraph at the last moment (probably in late March or early April) which discussed but did not illustrate “the latest form of transmitter which Mr. Edison has introduced” (Prescott 1878c, 36–37). In the Scribner’s article, this paragraph introduces the drawing and description of this transmitter:

Edison’s carbon-telephone transmitter design of early April.

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The prepared carbon, represented at C, is contained in a hard-rubber block open clear through so that one side of the former is made to rest upon the metallic part of the frame which forms one side of the connections of the circuit. The opposite side of the carbon is covered with a circular piece of platinum foil, P, with leads to a binding post insulated from the frame and forming the other connection for placing the instrument in circuit. A glass disk, G, upon which is placed a projecting knob, A, of aluminum, is glued to the foil; and the diaphragm, D, connecting with the knob serves when spoken against, to communicate the resulting pressure to the carbon. A substantial metallic frame surrounds the carbon and its connections, and their complete protection against injury, to which they are liable from careless handling, is thereby secured.

Prescott also indicated in the article that the function of the design was “to concentrate a greater pressure upon the small surface of the carbon.”

3. See Doc. 1173 n. 3.

1. This letter was prompted by George Barker’s letter of 31 March in which he asked for Johnson’s help in exhibiting Edison’s phonograph and musical telephone during his 15 April lecture at the Philadelphia Academy of Music. At Edison’s request, Johnson had offered his phonograph to Barker, but there had been some confusion on Barker’s part as to whether he would have to pay Johnson the $100 fee he charged for phonograph exhibitions (see Doc. 1211). On 26 March, Edison wrote Johnson and asked if he would be willing to waive the fee if Barker paid his expenses and in his 31 March letter Barker himself stated that he could not pay the fee. On 4 April, Johnson replied to Barker that his promised phonograph was unavailable because it was on permanent exhibition in New York. On 6 April, Barker expressed dismay and asked if Johnson could “get Edison’s for that evening, for I would rather omit the phonograph altogether, than attempt to use the little concern Mr. Bentley had here.” Barker to TAE, 25 Mar. 1878; Johnson to TAE, 28 Mar. 1878; Barker to Johnson, 31 Mar. and 6 Apr. 1878; all DF (TAEM 15:395, 414, 434, 472); TAE to Johnson, 26 Mar. 1878, Lbk. 1:473 (TAEM 28:319); see also Doc. 1286.

2. William Vanderbilt was the majority stockholder of Western Union. He had taken over the family’s railroad and telegraph empire after the death of his father, Cornelius, in January 1877. DAB, s.v. “Vanderbilt, William Henry”; Klein 1986, 202.

3. Although there is no record of Orton’s discussions with Vanderbilt, on 6 April Orton and other directors of the American Speaking Telephone Co. met informally to discuss the proposed agreement with Edison regarding his carbon telephone. (A majority of the board was affiliated with Western Union.) On 16 April the full board of the company approved a resolution agreeing that Western Union should guarantee Edison a payment of up to $6,000 per year for the life of the patents with American Speaking Telephone to assume the actual costs. The directors also wanted the agreement to provide for the acquisition of his future telephone patents to “be bought, and paid for, year by year, as patents are secured at a price, not to exceed a moderate fixed sum in any one year, rather than by adding to the contemplated annuity.” American Speaking Telephone Minutes, 25.

1. On 20 December 1889, Olcott wrote Edison regarding a letter from Edison’s private secretary, Alfred Tate, that had been printed in a Manchester newspaper and which claimed that Edison had never been a member of the Theosophical Society. As evidence to the contrary Olcott sent this copy of the 4 April 1878 letter in which Edison had enclosed his membership certificate. Olcott also indicated that he had a second letter from Edison “acknowledging your receipt of the Society’s Diploma of Fellowship with thanks.” Olcott noted that both of these letters were then at the Society’s headquarters in Madras, India. DF (TAEM 125:767).

2. Edison’s membership form is illustrated in Cranston 1993, 184. In a letter dated 30 April 1878, Helena Blavatsky told Edison that he was now “a ‘Fellow’ of our Society—which is more than proud of its new Son” (DF [TAEM 15:579]). The only role Edison played in the Theosophical Society was to waive the royalty on the exhibition phonograph purchased by the Bombay branch of the Society and to provide copies of his portrait for this and other branches of the Society (Olcott to TAE, 14 Dec. 1878; Blavatsky to TAE, 14 Dec. 1878; Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. royalty statement for December 1878; all DF [TAEM 16:512–14; 19:204]).

1. Edison was replying to Croffut’s letter of 4 April in which he had asked, “Did you see my hoax? And are you in a state of fiery wrath? Or how is it?” (DF [TAEM 17:70]). The hoax was an article by Croffut that appeared in the 1 April New York Daily Graphic (p. 215), titled “A Food Creator,” which described a fictitious Edison invention that could manufacture food out of air, water, and earth (Cat. 1240, item 470, Batchelor [TAEM 94:150]). During the 2 April telephone test (see Doc. 1278), Edison reportedly joked over the line to Batchelor in Philadelphia: “By the way, don’t you want half a dozen of my latest? Invented since you left this morning. It changes fire clay into rice pudding and corn meal into gold dust. Warranted for nine hundred and ninety-nine years.” (“Long-Range Chatting,” Philadelphia Times, 3 Apr. 1878, Cat. 1240, item 496, Batchelor [TAEM 94:156]).

2. In his 4 April letter (see note 1), Croffut had asked to “borrow a phonograph a little while to experiment with. Have you got an old rusty one anywhere?” Edison loaned him one of the small phonographs (see Doc. 1304).

1. The June issue of the North American Review carried an article with Edison’s byline titled “The Phonograph and Its Future” (Edison and Johnson 1878). This article described the present capabilities of the phonograph and discussed possible uses which included “Letter-writing, and other forms of dictation books, education, reader, music, family record; and such electrotype applications as books, musical-boxes, toys, clocks, advertising and signalling apparatus, speeches, etc., etc.” The article concluded by describing how the phonograph could make the telephone a valuable adjunct to long-distance telegraph service by allowing messages to be recorded. The issue carrying this article had appeared by 28 April, when several New York papers carried excerpts Page 225 from it (see “The Phonograph of the Future,” New York Herald, “Edison’s Wonder,” New York Sun, and “Practical Uses of the Phonograph,” New York Times, Cat. 1029:24–26, Scraps. [TAEM 25:174–75]). The article was also reprinted in the 18 May Scientific American Supplement (5:1973).

2. Edison also telegraphed Johnson, “Can I see proof of Review article early monday morning.” DF ( TAEM 71:72).

1. Ezra and Roscoe Gould, from whom Edison and George Harrington had leased space for the American Telegraph Works in October 1870, had brought suit against Edison in 1877, presumably for back rent. A final hearing before a referee had been scheduled for 6 April, but Edison finally accepted Gould’s offer to settle the claim for $300. No record of the case has been found. TAEM-G1, s.v. “Manners, A”; receipt of 6 Apr. 1878, DF (TAEM 19:498).

2. See Docs. 1170 n. 1 and 1275 n. 4.

3. Zenas Wilber had written Edison on 31 March urgently requesting a confidential loan of “$200 or $250 immediately.” Since Wilber was the Patent Office’s chief examiner of electrical apparatus and would have reviewed many of Edison’s patent applications, such a loan would likely have been considered highly inappropriate. In another letter of 31 March, James MacKenzie wrote that “our friend Wilber calls in very often and always has a talk with me about you he is evidently your staunch friend and also Prescotts (in my eye) who is going to be Prest W[estern]U[nion]T[elegraph].” DF (TAEM 15:432, 436); on Wilber see TAEB 2:87 n. 3.

4. Unidentified.

1. See Doc. 1237 n. 1.

2. See Doc. 1248.

3. Edison did not cable Gouraud and did not give him power of attorney in regard to the British phonograph.

1. See Doc. 1280 n. 1.

2. According to a local paper, William Applebaugh had demonstrated an Edison phonograph at a private party in his Brooklyn home the evening of 25 February. He may have continued to exhibit his phonograph there. “Phonograph, A Machine that Talks and Sings,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 26 Feb. 1878, Cat. 1240, item 385, Batchelor (TAEM 94:117).

3. These are probably the machines manufactured by Wm. G. & G. Greenfield. See Doc. 1276 n. 1.

4. On 9 April, Barker had asked Edison to loan Johnson a large phonograph for the Philadelphia engagement and, in return, promised to give “the Phono. Co. a big puff if they care to have it” (DF [TAEM 15:486]). Barker’s lecture was scheduled for Monday, 15 April.

5. Nothing is known of this machine.

6. In an undated memorandum, probably written about 12 April while he was in Philadelphia helping Barker prepare for his lecture, Batchelor informed Edison that “I told him [Barker] I thought you would lend your big one [phonograph] just for that occasion.” Batchelor also notified Edison that Barker “wants a rehearsal on Sunday [14 April] to the Academy and will send letter previous as to the experiments to try on that morning.” DF (TAEM 15:517).

7. Johnson apparently enclosed Barker’s 6 April letter to him in Page 228 which Barker asked Johnson to arrange with Edison to transmit music from Menlo Park over the electromotograph telephone during his lecture. DF (TAEM 15:472).

1. Probably “That Wonderful Edison,” New York World, 29 Mar. 1878, Cat. 1240, item 463, Batchelor (TAEM 94:147).

2. The reporter was probably a Mr. Babcock, who was introduced by an 18 March letter to Edison from John Speed, editor of the New York World. DF (TAEM 17:29).

3. After briefly describing the vast range of chemicals kept in the Menlo Park laboratory, the World reporter asked “What is the idea of your keeping a wholesale drug-store here, Mr. Edison?” Edison replied, “I keep all these things, because I don’t know how soon I may need Page 229 them. Whenever I see a new chemical or drug announced I buy it, no matter what it costs.” He then described “a bottle containing a clear, straw-colored liquid” as “composed of morphine, chloral-hydrate, chloroform, nitrate of amyle, cassia and cloves. Those things have no chemical action on each other, and they’ll stop any kind of pain immediately.”

By the time a group of reporters visited from Boston on 22 May, Edison had labeled the preparation in the bottle “Polyform” (clipping from the Boston Evening Transcript of 23 May 1878 enclosed with George Chapman to TAE, 10 June 1878, DF [TAEM 19:365]). Edison and his assistants tried other words—polyanodyne, polypharmakon, and polymorph—as part of a general effort to find Greek-based names for several of his inventions (see Doc. 1303).

4. Edison freely provided recipes for the mixture; see other letters in 78–033, DF (TAEM 19:345). He did not file a patent application for it until 1879 and no U.S. patent issued (Serial No. 2, 206, 8 Sept. 1879, “Medicinal Preparation” in “Abstract of Edison’s Abandoned Applications,” p. 12, PS [ TAEM 8:539]). In 1880 a British patent (No. 599) was issued to William Lake, as Edison’s agent. For a discussion of nineteenth-century patent medicines see Young 1961.

5. Unidentified.

6. Edison stated in his British patent that the preparation was a combination of “all of the most powerful chemical compounds which act anaesthetically,” dissolved in “menstruums which are also anaesthetics” (alcohol, ether, and chloroform), all subject to the limitation that they “have no chemical action upon each other.” Edison’s list of ingredients and proportions here omits the amyl nitrate mentioned in the news account (see note 3) and differs from those in the British patent and elsewhere. The formulas in the U.S. and British patent applications are in agreement except for 3 pennyweights of opium included in the former, which was mentioned in the preliminary version of the latter but dropped from the final specification. The ingredients from the British patent are: “One ounce of hydrate of chloral, four ounces of alcohol, two ounces of chloroform, two ounces of camphor, two minims of oil of peppermint, two minims of oil of cloves, three pennyweights of salicylic acid, three pennyweights of nitrate amyl, two pennyweights of morphia sulphate, two ounces of ether.” Brit. Pat. 599 (1880); W. H. Hayward to TAE, 9 July 1878, DF (TAEM 19:375); Serial No. 2, 206, 8 Sept. 1879, “Medicinal Preparation” in “Abstract of Edison’s Abandoned Applications,” p. 12, PS (TAEM 8:539).

7. A fluid ounce equals 29.76 ml.

8. A grain is ¹/⁴⁸⁰ troy ounce, i.e., 0.06479 g.

9. A drachm (or dram) equals 60 minims (drops) or ⅛ fluid ounce, i.e., 3.72 ml.

1. Bliss’s biographical essay on Edison had appeared in the 8 April Chicago Tribune. See App. 3.

2. E.g., “Easy Enough,” Chicago Alliance, 13 Apr. 1878, Cat. 1029:13, Scraps. (TAEM 25:168).

3. Neither the clergyman nor the magazine has been identified.

1. This technical note and another dated 12 May containing obscure designs are the only indication that Edison worked on electric lighting between the fall of 1877 and the summer of 1878. Several items dated January 1878 are actually from 1879 and are related to U.S. Patent 224, 329, which Edison executed on 23 January 1879 (Vol. 16:1–5, Lab. [TAEM 4:479–87]). For Edison’s 1877 work on electric lighting see Docs. 1044, 1048, 1078, 1098, and 1136.

2. Edison was thinking of using his newly discovered tasimeter principle to regulate the current in incandescent lighting elements in order to prevent their destruction from overheating. At the right of the top drawing the lighting elements are shown as coiled metal wire (probably platinum). As the elements heated and the temperature in the lamp increased, a rubber rod (the vertical piece in the middle of the drawing) expanded and pushed down on the horizontal pivoted lever, thus reducing the pressure on the carbon button at the left. As the pressure decreased, the carbon’s resistance increased which reduced the current flow and allowed the lighting elements to cool. As they cooled, the process would reverse. In the other drawing the rubber rod is moved to the center of the carbon mount.

3. This explanatory note was added later by Edison; the term “tasimeter” was not used until June (see Docs. 1316 and 1329 n. 1). The first notice of the tasimeter principle appears in the Washington Evening Star of 19 April where Edison stated:

Night before last I found out some additional points about the carbon which I use in my carbon telephone. It may be used as a heat measurer. It will detect one fifty-thousandth of a degree Fahrenheit. I don’t know but what I can make an arrangement by which the heat of the stars will close the circuit at the proper time automatically, and directly. It is a curious idea that the heat of a star millions of miles away should close a circuit on this miserable little earth, isn’t it? But I do not think that it is impossible. [“National Academy of Sciences,” Cat. 1240, item 537, Batchelor ( TAEM 94:171)] Page 232

In the following drawing, the expansion and contraction of the rubber rod, rather than changing the resistance of carbon, brings more or less resistance (the coils at top) in and out of the circuit. The text on this drawing (“platina”) seems to indicate that the wire descending from the coils and possibly the coils themselves are platinum.

1. Thomas Watson had been a machinist at Charles Williams’s Boston telegraph shop when he became Alexander Graham Bell’s assistant on telephone experiments. In 1877 he became chief electrician and superintendent of manufacturing of the newly formed Bell Telephone Co. DAB, s.v. “Watson, Thomas Augustus.”

2. Probably Chauncy Smith, counsel for the Bell Telephone Co. DAB, s.v. “Smith, Chauncy.”

3. Hubbard had written Watson on 10 April:

I think you told me when I saw you last in Boston, that you had sometime since tried a Telephone, discarding the use of rubber Page 233 making it identical to the present telephone of Mr. Edison. If such is the fact, please apply for a patent at once as an improvement on the Bell Telephone & please also make a couple of telephones after this pattern that we may see how they work. [Box 1193, NjWAT]

On 17 April, Watson informed Hubbard that he had written out his patent specification and would send it with the model. Though he had been experimenting with an Edison-style carbon telephone for only a few days, Watson claimed in a 12 April letter to Hubbard that he had experimented “with plumbago without rubber and have 2 witnesses of the fact. .. Sept or Octo 1877.” Both letters are in Box 1205, NjWAT; a copy of the specification is in General Manager Letterbook 1:386–88, NjWAT; see also Doc. 1302.

4. Prescott 1878a.

5. George Maynard was the Washington, D.C., agent for the Bell Telephone Co. Later in the year, Uriah Painter asked him to file Edison’s patent specifications for the phonomotor. Maynard to TAE, 16 Sept. 1878, DF (TAEM 16:55).

6. Balance not found. Devonshire has not been identified, but was apparently a clerk at Bell Telephone Co.

1. Joseph Henry was director of the Smithsonian Institution and one of the elder statesmen of American science. His major research concerned electromagnetism. DSB, s.v. “Henry, Joseph.”

2. Henry wired Edison the next day: “Telegram received shall be happy to see you” (DF [TAEM 15:530]). On the afternoon of 18 April, Edison and Batchelor demonstrated the phonograph and carbon telephone to the National Academy meeting at the Smithsonian Institution (see Doc. 1299). George Barker had written Johnson on 6 April that he wanted to borrow a phonograph “to show it to some friends here and also to present it before the National Academy of Science at Washington Page 234 week after next” (DF [TAEM 15:472]). According to the Washington Press and Union, Barker introduced Edison and described the machines and their development (“Genius Before Science,” Cat. 1240, item 535, Batchelor [TAEM 94:170]). On the National Academy of Sciences see TAEB 2:238 n. 2.

1. Edison had just begun using the new laboratory handstamp.

2. Edison is referring to his portrait that had appeared in the 10 April New York Daily Graphic article “The Wizard of Menlo Park” (p. 281). The photograph on which the engraving was based is classification #14.910/8 (neg. 6121B), NjWOE. Cat. 1240, item 500, Batchelor (TAEM 94:158).

3. On 10 April, Edward Johnson had written Edison, “Please oblige me by sending Painter one of your good Points for his Phono I get them by fileing as you directed but can’t get them made so as to work ok for me.” DF (TAEM 15:492).

4. See Doc. 1190 addendum.

5. A few begging letters and autograph requests that Edison answered are in folder 78–002 in TAEM reels 15 and 16; unfilmed begging letters are in folder 78–002 and unfilmed autograph letters are in folder 78–006, both DF, NjWOE. Edison continued to receive such letters throughout his life.

1. Not found.

2. See Doc. 1249. Henry Edmunds had written Edison on 2 April that he was “much surprised” that Adams had not brought a phonograph for him as he had expected. He again requested a phonograph and also asked Edison to “put something else in my way as soon as you have something good—for I am sure I can introduce here for you in the best manner—both among scientific & business men.” He also asked if Edison had done any work on electric lighting as “that is a subject of great importance just now.” DF (TAEM 15:450).

3. Philadelphia newspapers carried enthusiastic reviews of the event, for which the Academy of Music had been “crowded to its utmost capacity.” Over the course of two and one-half hours, Barker lectured on the physics of sound and received music and speech via telephone from Menlo Park. Batchelor also demonstrated the phonograph, which “was applauded again and again,” causing him to repeat the experiment. The Press noted that speech received on the telephone was quite soft and “not a brilliant success” but still considered the evening a “delightfully unconventional and scientifically successful demonstration of the wonders of the telephone.” “The Telephone,” Philadelphia Inquirer, and “A Talk on the Telephone,” Philadelphia Press, both 16 Apr. 1878, Cat. 1240, items 527–28, Batchelor (TAEM 94:168); advertisement, Cat. 1029:111, Scraps. (TAEM 25:220).

4. Not found.

1. This same day Edison had telegraphed, “Is not my proposition satisfactory. I assure you that you will be paid.” What Edison had suggested is not known. DF (TAEM 15:534).

2. A landlord’s warrant provided authorization to seize a tenant’s personal property in order to compel payment of back rent and, if necessary, to sell it. Black 1968, s.v. “Landlord’s Warrant.”

3. Joseph Murray’s machine shop at 10–12 Ward St. in Newark.

4. Edison evidently remained a silent financial partner in Murray’s business. The full extent of his involvement is unclear. See Docs. 1108 and 1113.

5. This same day Murray telegraphed Edison “please come see Kirk or he will sell us out he talks well but wants to meet you send me dispatch and I will pay for it as it will quiet him.” DF (TAEM 15:533).

6. Edison had written a $200 check, which Murray acknowledged on 6 April as a loan “to be Returned as soon as possible.” Murray to TAE, DF (TAEM 17:599).

7. William Kirk was a Newark builder and landlord. See Doc. 157.

1. On 17 April, Watson had reported to Hubbard:

In my experiments to day I succeeded in producing excellent results with the Carbon Telepone and although my apparatus was rough I got articulation twice as loud as as the loudest I have ever got from our instruments and perfectly distinct.

I have written out my specification for the improvement which I will mail you tomorrow afternoon with the model. I send it to you so that you can look it over and bring it to Pollok’s notice. I think it very important we should control the Carbon patent. Is it possible? [Box 1205, NjWAT]

2. George Bradley of the New England Telephone Co.

3. Thomas Sanders was a wealthy Massachusetts merchant who, with Gardiner Hubbard, had formed the Bell Patent Association in 1875. At this time he was treasurer of the Bell Telephone Co., a position he held until 1879. DAB, s.v. “Sanders, Thomas.”

1. This is an answer to Doc. 1295.

2. The changes made in this letter suggest that Hubbard may have shown it to Edison; the word “twelve” appears to be in Edison’s hand.

1. Painter is referring to Western Union headquarters. William Orton died around six o’clock on the morning of 22 April. On hearing the news, Edison is reported to have exclaimed, “If I get to love a man he Page 239 dies right away. Lefferts went first, and now Orton’s gone, too.” “William Orton’s Career,” New York World, 23 Apr. 1878, 1.

2. Painter had tried to forestall Edison’s negotiations with Western Union. Shortly before Orton’s death, he asked Edison “are you going to be skinned by WU?” and warned that “They say you are ‘Their meat.’” Painter to TAE, 11 Apr. 1878, DF (TAEM 15:504).

3. While Edison was in Washington, he sat with a phonograph for formal photographic portraits at Mathew Brady’s gallery; the photographer was Levin Handy. Four poses are known. A widely-reproduced one shows Edison seated at a table to the right of the machine, his hand on its crank (see Doc. 1308 n. 1). Edison is posed similarly in the other portraits. In one, also republished frequently, Charles Batchelor and Uriah Painter stand behind the phonograph, the former in the middle of the picture. In another only Batchelor appears with Edison. A second view of Edison and the phonograph alone, with his position very slightly shifted and without a decorative backdrop, has also been reproduced. Painter enclosed the photographs in a 23 April letter to Edison in which he indicated that he had arranged for more plates to be completed the following day. In a 1 May letter Painter stated he would send that evening a copy of a stereoscopic version of one of the pictures, which has not been found. Photographs 14.650/1, 14.651/2,14.651/1 (Neg. Nos. 7001, 06424, 6521B), NjWOE; Jehl 1937–41, 157; DF (TAEM 15:546, 585).

4. Mathew Brady, photographer and entrepreneur, operated studios in New York and Washington. Self-consciously intent on creating a historical record of the United States in “the faces of its historic men and mothers,” Brady built his reputation promoting and displaying portraits made largely by assistants. Trachtenberg 1989, 33–44, 94.

This Brady studio photograph shows Uriah Painter and Charles Batchelor with Edison and the phonograph demonstrated in Washington in April 1878.

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1. In the interview, which followed an account of his phonograph demonstration to the National Academy of Sciences, Edison stated, “I have invented an instrument, a sort of improved ear trumpet, with a large air chamber, and a tube which gradually decreases in size, whose end is inserted in the ear, with which I can hear perfectly well. I sat as an experiment once as far back in the theater as I could get, and yet I heard with perfect distinctness.” “National Academy of Sciences,” Washington Evening Star, 19 Apr. 1878, Cat. 1240, item 537, Batchelor (TAEM 94:171).

2. Somers’s inquiry is one of many that Edison received about hearing aids following the Star interview and subsequent press reports of his work on such a device. In a 10 May letter to an “acquaintance in Chicago” which appeared in an undated newspaper clipping Edison stated: “The many letters that I have received on the subject of an apparatus for the deaf has convinced me that the demand would be enormous. So I have put two of my most skilful assistants at work testing my ideas. I feel sure that I will produce a practical apparatus within six months” (Cat. 1240, item 598, Batchelor [TAEM 94:197]). By the end of May, Edison had printed a circular to answer the continuing stream of inquiries. Two copies of this circular, copied by electric pen and headed “The Megaphone,” are in UHP; they were sent to Uriah Painter Page 241 in July because Stockton Griffin had indicated on each that Painter would have “sole control of the above invention” (Theo. Wing to Painter, 5 July 1878; A. W. McPherson to Painter, 13 July 1878; both UHP). Written by Griffin and signed by Edison, they read:

I have now two assistants engaged at my laboratory in experimenting upon an apparatus for the benefit of the deaf.

The results so far have been quite satisfactory and I hope soon to have a practical apparatus for introduction to the public.

The only drawback as yet is the large size of the apparatus.

I cannot at present say what the cost will be. Your letter will be filed for future reference.

Other letters of inquiry, some of which contain marginal notes for reply, can be found in 78–001, DF ( TAEM 15:3). Descriptions of the device are in “Ears for the Deaf,” New York Daily Graphic, 5 June 1878, and “Edison’s Ear Telescope,” New York Sun, 8 June 1878 (Cat. 1240, items 645, 660, Batchelor [TAEM 94:221, 227]); see also Doc. 1361.

3. Somers wrote from the Mt. Vernon Seminary in Washington, D.C., and listed his address as 204 F St., NW.

4. On 24 April, Edison sent Somers a reply based on this marginal draft. Lbk. 3:222 (TAEM 28:677).

1. This letter was almost certainly written on 22 April, the day of William Orton’s death.

2. Not found.

3. Joshua Bailey.

4. Text is “Spool,” “Spool,” and “Permanent magnet.”

5. Amos Dolbear had visited Batchelor and Barker about 12 April while they were preparing for the lecture and told them that “he had made a pair of large magnets & worked between N.Y. & Boston.” Batchelor memorandum, c. 12 Apr. 1878, DF (TAEM 15:517).

6. Heber Robinson.

7. The demonstration of the telephone to the National Academy on 18 April consisted of Edison talking with Henry Bentley in Philadelphia. Barker also invited audience members to speak with Bentley, and Page 243 many of them reportedly did so. When the Academy resumed its normal sessions late in the afternoon the exhibition was moved to the Western Union building a few blocks away, where it continued until sundown. A Philadelphia paper explained that the induction reported by Batchelor was caused by the wires being bundled into cables across the Susquehanna and two smaller rivers. “Genius Before Science,” Washington Post and Union, 19 Apr. 1878, Cat. 1240, item 535, Batchelor (TAEM 94:170); “Talking Through Space,” Philadelphia Record, 20 Apr. 1878, Cat. 1029:7, Scraps. (TAEM 25:165).

The next morning Edison demonstrated the phonograph in a Senate committee room and again in a House room. According to news accounts, the Capitol exhibition lasted several hours and drew large crowds. Late that night he demonstrated it to President Hayes and others at the White House. “The Phonograph at the Capitol” and “National Academy of Sciences,” both Washington Evening Star, 19 Apr. 1878, and “Astonished Congressmen,” Baltimore Gazette, 20 Apr. 1878, Cat. 1240, items 537–38, Batchelor (TAEM 94:171–72); App. 1.G27.

8. Jack Wright had assisted Edison with his English automatic telegraph experiments. See TAEB 1:595 n. 5.

9. James Brown had been Edison’s experimental assistant in 1872–73 and also assisted with the English automatic telegraph experiments. See TAEB 1:508 n. 2.

10. Unidentified; possibly a child.

11. Probably a house servant.

1. Lowrey had married Laura Tryon, daughter of New York merchant Francis Tryon, in 1862. She developed a cancer in 1876 that proved to be incurable. She died in August 1879. Taylor 1978, 18, 23.

2. 20 April.

3. Lowrey referred here primarily to the conflict over rights to Edison’s inventions in quadruplex telegraphy. See TAEB 2, App. 3; cf. TAEB 3:289.

4. Grosvenor Lowrey had become Edison’s attorney for Western Union-related patent matters in December 1875. He was the company’s general counsel, and his law firm—Porter, Lowrey, Soren, and Stone—served as its legal department. See TAEB 2:696 n. 2.

1. See Doc. 1265.

2. Charles Batchelor kept a running list of press reports to be sent to various correspondents. He planned to mail Nottage copies of the April issues of Scribner’s Monthly and Popular Science Monthly, containing articles by George Prescott and Alfred Mayer, respectively. He also planned to send the 18 March Cincinnati Commercial, which carried a biographical sketch of Edison provided by Edward Gilliland. The listed items have been crossed out and the one for Popular Science is also marked “OK.” Cat. 1308:57–58, Batchelor (TAEM 90:695–96).

3. The London Daily News of 20 April provided an account of the London Stereoscopic Company’s exhibition and indicated that A. Stroh had devised the clockwork arrangement. See Doc. 1310 nn. 3 and 5.

4. See Doc. 1237 n. 1.

1. Watson had mailed the model on 20 April (Watson to Hubbard, 20 Apr. 1878, Box 1205, NjWAT). The application (see Doc. 1290 n. 3) was filed on 25 April, and after significant modification was finally granted as U.S. Patent 245, 105 on 2 August 1881.

2. In his 20 April letter to Hubbard (see note 1), Watson suggested that “It would be well to divert Edison’s attention from the Telephone if possible. Perhaps it could be done by telling him how much more interest the Phonograph & Airophone is exciting throughout the world than the Telephone did etc. etc.” Hubbard’s reply marks a change from earlier assurances that “we need [not] fear any danger from Mr. Edison, for he is working right along with us, & thinks of nothing but the Phonograph” (Hubbard to Charles Bradley, 22 Mar. 1878, Box 1205, NjWAT).

3. Hubbard had visited Menlo Park on 23 March (see Doc. 1261 n. 2).

4. Watson reported in his 20 April letter (see note 1):

I have received a Phonograph and after some alterations I have made it work indifferently well, as received it would not work at all. if it had gone to any one who was not a mechanic and had no tools it would have done the Phonograph Co great injury. I wish I had time to make them. I think I could do better than the present makers, but that is entirely out of the question, as matters are at present.

In a letter of the same day to Sigmund Bergmann, Charles Batchelor wrote: Page 247

I saw one of your first Phonographs in Washington and I must say it was anything but good workmanship as the shaft had a least ¹/16 of an inch play in the bearings such machines cannot be worked by inexperienced hands and I had the greatest difficulty to make it work myself. [Cat. 1238:267, Batchelor (TAEM 93:191)]

1. D. Van Nostrand & Co. was a New York publisher and bookseller that specialized, according to its billhead, in “scientific, mining, engineering, military, and naval books.” Bill of 13 Dec. 1877, DF ( TAEM 14:311).

2. Edison’s interest in the Greek roots of English words may have been sparked by the suggestion that he consider more carefully the literal meaning of the word “phonograph.” John Vincent, a Methodist clergyman and co-founder of the Chautaqua movement (with Lewis Miller, father of Edison’s second wife, Mina) who had visited Menlo Park, wrote on 25 February: “Now as to the Name of your instrument—it should be a ‘Tautophone’ and not a ‘Phonograph.’ It is more than a writer or recorder—it is a repeater of sound. I intend to write an article on the Tautophone. What do you think of that name?” Vincent stated in a letter two days later that he was preparing a paper on the “tautophone.” (Edison had made plans with Vincent to give a lecture at Chautaqua on August 20. He was to give a “Lecture and illustrations of Electricity, the Telephone, Phonograph, Aerophone,” but his summer trip to the West canceled that engagement.) Vincent to TAE, 25 and 27 Feb., 25 Apr., 12 and 13 Aug. 1878 (TAEM 18:925, 928; 15:555, 1052–53); App. 1.G28; DAB, s.v. “Vincent, John Heyl.”

Probably after he received the dictionary, Edison and his assistants tried out a variety of Greek-based words as names for various of his inventions. DF (TAEM 14:242–45; 19:380, 449); the items on reel 14 (in 77–002) listing possible names for the phonograph probably date from this period rather than 1877.

1. Probably “Edison, the Magician,” Cincinnati Commercial, 1 Apr. 1878, Cat. 1031:94, Scraps. (TAEM 27:790).

2. Montclair, N.J.

3. Doc. 1282 was one; no others have been found.

1. Nothing further is known about these Sunday schools.

2. Although the company had been operating for some time, and adopted by-laws on 20 April, it had only just come into legal existence. Following extensive debate among the original investors in Edison’s Page 249 phonograph patents concerning which state’s laws would be most advantageous for them to operate under, the company was incorporated at Norwalk, Conn., on 24 April and the papers filed the following day. None of the incorporators were parties to the original agreement with Edison (Doc. 1190), though William Applebaugh, who was listed as company president, had been a witness to that agreement. The other incorporators were William Hayward (the only one with a Connecticut residence), Timothy Cornwell and Willard Candee (apparently assistants of some sort to Applebaugh and Charles Cheever, respectively), •and Anthony Gref, Jr. (a clerk or secretary for Cheever). Their combined stock represented about one-tenth of one per cent of the nominal capital. Certificate of incorporation, articles of association, and by-laws of the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co., all DF (TAEM 19:62; 51:771–72).

1. On 25 April, Murray had written Edison that “several of the first citizens of Newark” had asked him to arrange a visit to see Edison’s laboratory and “the Great Ex Newarker who they all seem delighted with” (DF [TAEM 15:554]). One hundred thirty-four members of Newark’s Essex Club visited Menlo Park on 2 May. Afterwards, Murray reported to Edison that the “visitors were delighted with your entertainment and several of them came to me and asked me if you could be induced to return to Newark” (Murray to TAE, 3 May 1878, DF [TAEM 15:602]). Accounts of the visit appeared in the Newark newspapers the following day (“Edison’s Phonograph,” Newark Daily Journal; “A Call upon the Phonograph,” Newark Daily Advertiser; “Edison’s Machine,” Newark Morning Register, Cat. 1240, items 572, 574–75, Batchelor [TAEM 94:191–92]).

2. Edison gave Murray a $250 check for rent on 26 April. In a 4 May summary of his debts Murray also acknowledged Edison’s notes to William Kirk for one, two, and three months. Murray calculated that Edison had loaned him $1,100 to pay the landlord, who, he reported, was Page 250 “determined to have it— after all the rent he received from us I supposed he would be easy with me.” He also asked whether Edison had “any work for me to do I should like it I am near busted” (Murray to TAE, 4 May 1878; see also bank notes and related correspondence, all DF [TAEM 15:604, 17:601–9]). A list of Edison’s notes to William Kirk is in Cat. 1185:376, Accts. (TAEM 22:703).

1. See Doc. 1251 n. 3.

2. In a February experiment Batchelor had used a music box to show that indentations small enough to be visible only under a microscope could generate recognizable sounds. See Doc. 1188 n. 2.

1. The only known Brady photographs are those mentioned in Doc. 1297 n. 3, though there may have been others. On 23 April, Painter had indicated that he was sending Edison two copies of the “best of all the plates.” DF (TAEM 15:546).

2. In a 1 May letter to Edison, Painter reported that Brady had printed and was about to send 200 copies of one or more of the pictures to London and Paris (DF [TAEM 15:585]). Nothing further is known about the envisioned royalties from domestic or foreign photograph sales. However, an Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. circular issued by James Redpath to prospective exhibitors indicated that George Maynard Page 252 of Washington, D.C., could supply “photographs of Edison in different sizes, made by Brady.” The circular also indicated that A. S. Seer, a New York “Dramatic Printer,” had “a handsome Three Sheet Poster with a portrait of Edison, and attractive Window Cards, specially made for Phonographic Exhibitions” (UHP). It is not known if these were Brady photographs.

In late May, Redpath wrote Painter on behalf of the phonograph company to request that he take over the Brady photograph business, telling him that “you will do better in selling the photos than any one here because every one has more than they can do, not least all that they ought to attend to.” The company proposed to send Painter a list of phonograph agents to assist his efforts. There is no evidence, however, of any subsequent effort by Painter or others to sell these photographs. Redpath to Painter, 23 May 1878, ESP Lbk. 2:74; Charles Cheever to Painter, 23 May 1878, ESP Lbk. 1:306–7; both UHP.

3. That Saturday was,27 April. Though Doc. 1190 only required a $50,000 investment, the new Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. had a capital stock of $600,000. However, only twenty-five shares at $25 per share (a total of $625) had been paid in at the time of incorporation (Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. certificate of incorporation, DF [TAEM 19:62]). For the disposition of the other 23, 975 shares (with 1,200 for Edison and 4,400—the largest holding—for Painter) after the January partners formally signed their rights over to their corporation, see Charles Cheever to Gardiner Hubbard, 16 May 1878, Box 1205, NjWAT. The agreement among the five partners of 23 May 1878 and an undated memo showing phonograph stock shares are both in UHP.

4. Nothing is known of the prospective purchaser.

5. Johnson was exhibiting the phonograph nightly at artist William Page 253 Kurtz’s gallery on Madison Square and the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. was planning to license exclusive exhibition territories throughout the United States. By mid-May the company was training eighty men who had each paid $100 for the right to exhibit the phonograph. They were to charge twenty-five cents admission for their exhibitions with the company getting twenty-five percent of the gross receipts. Edison got twenty percent of the net receipts of these exhibitions, which continued through October. He received a total of $1,031.91. Advertisement, Cat. 1031:91; “The Phonograph’s Last Device,” New York World, 17 May, Cat. 1029:68, both Scraps. (TAEM 27:789; 25:195); agreement between Ezra and Robert Gilliland and the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co., 31 May 1878, UHP; Edison Speaking Phonograph Co. royalty statement for December 1878, DF (TAEM 19:204); see also Docs. 1314 n. 4 and 1326.

A Brady studio photograph of Edison and the phonograph, marketed in the spring of 1878.

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6. Social philosopher Phineas T. Barnum was one of the most successful and innovative producers of popular entertainment in the nineteenth century, specializing in spectacles, hoaxes, and a circus. “General Tom Thumb” was the stage name of Charles Stratton, a midget who was a major attraction at Barnum’s American Museum in New York. DAB, s.vv. “Barnum, Phineas Taylor,” and “Stratton, Charles Sherwood.”

7. 1 May; no such photograph has been found.

8. Businessman Hamilton McKown Twombly was an investor and manager in many companies, primarily in the railroad industry. He married Florence Vanderbilt, daughter of William H. Vanderbilt, in 1877. After the death of Cornelius Vanderbilt the same year, Twombly was extensively involved with his father-in-law in the handling of that family’s fortunes, including its substantial ownership of Western Union, where both served on the Executive Committee. At this time Twombly was in charge of Western Union’s telephone business. Twombly’s middle name was often abbreviated as “McK.” and he was often referred to as “Hamilton McKay Twombly.” NCAB 30:17; Western Union 1877; TAEB 3, App. 1.G18.

9. Not found.

10. Painter is probably referring to the fact that on 28 April the New York Herald, like other newspapers on or near that date, devoted considerable space to reprinting and praising Edison’s article on “The Future of the Phonograph.” See Doc. 1283 n. 1.

1. This appears to be an answer to Painter’s letter of the same day (Doc. 1308).

2. Painter noted in a 1 May reply that Edison meant the photographer Brady rather than the portraitist William Kurtz (DF [TAEM 15:585]; Wilson 1878, 788). Kurtz had a gallery on Madison Square. He had written Edison on 20 April asking him to sit for “a large picture (Crayon) of you for my Gallery” (DF [TAEM 15:543]). Edison had replied the same day that he would call upon Kurtz at “the earliest opportunity.” (Lbk. 3:218 [TAEM 28:673]). It is not known if he did so.

1. This document is on one of three sheets of tracings of draft drawings labeled “Caveat 80” by William Carman. Edison did not include the drawings from this document in his filed caveat (Doc. 1341), but did use detailed versions of them in his September patent application (Case 154, figs, 1 and 2). Another tracing, of 11 April drawings by Charles Batchelor, was probably also part of this group. Caveat Drawings, Patent Drawings, both PS (TAEM 8:898–99, 749); patent application, Case 154, DF ( TAEM 18:747); Vol. 17:75, Lab. (TAEM 4:942).

Detailed drawing of Edison’s clockwork-driven cylinder phonograph from his patent application, Case 154.

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2. This machine had been in the works for several weeks before Batchelor made these drawings. He had written on 16 April of making two clockwork-driven phonographs, at least one of which was completed by 19 May. TAE to New Jersey Steel and Iron Co., 29 Mar. and 3 Apr. 1878, Lbk. 1:478, 487 (TAEM 28:324, 332); Henry Davies to TAE, 6 Apr. 1878, DF(TAEM [8:975)01.17:61, 63, 73, 75–76, 78–80, 82–83, Lab. (TAEM 4:927, 929, 940, 942–43, 945, 947, 949, 951–52); Docs. 1293, 1317, 1332; see also TAE to Clarence Blake, 21 May 1878, CJB.

3. Aside from the clockwork and the adjustable bearing (see note 6), this phonograph incorporated two significant improvements. First, instead of being glued, the ends of the foil were held in place by a metal bar pushed into a longitudinal groove. This design first appeared in a sketch of 19 March. Second, the bearing at the threaded end of the shaft (away from the clockwork) was designed to release the shaft so that the cylinder could be slid back to its starting position, rather than cranked Page 256 backwards. This also showed up in the same 19 March sketch. The mechanism drawn there strongly resembles the release shown on the clockwork phonograph of the English instrument maker Augustus Stroh, which Stroh had built in February and which was illustrated in the 8 March issue of the English journal Engineering. Vol. 17:61, Lab. (TAEM 4:927); “The Phonograph,” Engineering, 8 Mar. 1878, Cat. 1240, item 449, Batchelor ( TAEM 94:138).

The 19 March drawing of Edison’s clockwork-driven cylinder phonograph.

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Augustus Stroh’s clockwork phonograph, from the 8 March issue of Engineering.

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4. Edison had intended to apply a clockwork to his cylinder phonograph since its inception and had succeeded to some extent in February (see Docs. 1147, 1153–54, 1174, 1199, 1200, and 1204 n. 3). The arrangement of the weight and chain, invented by Christiaan Huygens in 1660 and known as “Huygens’s maintaining principle,” was common on weight-driven machinery such as European Morse telegraph registers (Knight 1877, 569; “The Phonograph,” Engineering, 8 Mar. 1878, Cat. 1240, item 449, Batchelor [ TAEM 94:140]; Prescott 1877, 484, 486). Batchelor had drawn it in 1874 (TAEB 2:292). It allowed the operator to wind up the weight without disturbing the running clockwork. The specific type of chain Edison wanted was not readily available and he had to have it made to order (TAE to New Jersey Steel and Iron Co., 29 Mar. and 3 Apr. 1878, Lbk. 1:478, 487 [TAEM 28:324, 332]; Henry Davies to TAE, 6 Apr. 1878, DF [TAEM 18:975]).

5. The pendulum, to the left of the hanging weight, is a conical (rather than oscillating) pendulum—that is, the weight moves circularly. At this time conical pendula were used in telescope drives and Hughes printing telegraphs (Knight 1877, 1661; Prescott 1877, 619, 628–29). Batchelor first drew a conical pendulum on 15 February. The design reappeared in a series of drawings beginning on 9 April and was included in Edison’s 29 May caveat (Doc. 1341, figs. 64–66) and his 16 September patent application Case 154 (Vol. 17:53, 66–67, 72–74, 77, 80, 82, 95, 105, 108, 114–15, Lab. [TAEM 4:920, 932–33, 938–41, 943–44, 949, 951, 964, 972, 975, 980–81]; Caveat Drawings, Patent Application Drawings, both PS [TAEM 8:898, 749]; patent application, Case 154, DF [TAEM 18:747]). Clockwork phonographs made in Europe Page 257 by Stroh and Edme Hardy employed fan governors rather than pendula. A representative Stroh phonograph is in the Science Museum, London (Inv. 1929–283); one made by Edme Hardy, now in the collection of the Musée National des Techniques, CNAM, Paris (Inv. 9364–0000), is pictured in Charbon 1981 (p. 64).

A weight-powered clockwork-driven tinfoil phonograph.

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6. Batchelor first drew this adjustment on 11 and 12 April. In mid-August he replaced it with adjusting screws at the base of the mouthpiece. Vol. 17:75, 78, 136–38; Lab. (TAEM 4:942, 945, 1000–1002).