A HISTORYOFEDISON'S WEST ORANGE LABORATORY
1887-1931

BY

A.J. Millard^à3//3Sù li

A HISTORYOPEDISON'S WEST ORANGE LABORATORY
1887-1931

BY

A.J. Millard
withW.B. Carlson

PREFACE.

This final report on the history of Edison's laboratory
began as National Park Service Contract number CX 1600-4-0047.
W.B. Carlson and I won the contract in June 1984 and we formed
Electro History to execute it. We carried out the research atthe Edison National Historic Site in 1984 and 1985, and jointly
wrote a first draft in June 1986. At this point it was decided
that more research was required. I produced a new version of
the history and delivered it in the first months of 1987. This
draft was approved by the Park Service and all corrections andsuggested changes have been incorporated into the final report.
Dr. Carlson has contributed material on the storage battery andPortland Cement and has written the sidebars for chapters sevenand eight. As primary author, however, I am responsible for all
errors in the text.

A.J. Millard
Electro History
28 October 1987

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE: The Best Lab Ever.

33p

Building the Laboratory
Edison's Laboratory and the Context of Industrial
Research

TWO: Financing a Grand Strategy.

29p

Research for Hire
Sidebar: Financial Practices at the Lab

THREE: Life and Work at Edison's Laboratory.

22p

Managing the West Orange Work Force

FOUR: THE PHONOGRAPH.

25p

A Case Study of Research and Development
Perfecting the Phonograph.

FIVE: Edison's Laboratory and the Electrical Industry.
A Powerful Incentive
The Leadened Collar
The Battle of the Systems
Sidebara: The Insulation Project; Edison's Finances and theElectrical Industry

47p

CHAPTER SIX: Diversification in the 1890s.

53p

The Fresh Pull
The Laboratory in the 1890s
Edison's Folly: The Ore Milling Venture
Moving Pictures
The Kinetoscope.
Sidebars: Electric traction; Edison and the "Boys" at Work; The
Black Maria.

SEVEN: R&D in the Nineteenth Century.

4Op

Final Triumph of the PhonographCompetition in the Motion Picture Business.
Forces of Change in the Laboratory.
Sidebar: The Changing Research Process at West Orange

EIGHT: An Industrial Empire.

53p

Formation of TAE. Incorporated
The Competitive Struggle.
Forming an Engineering Department
Sidebar: Marketing the Storage Battery

NINE: R&D in the Twentieth Century.
Developing the Disc Phonograph
Edison at the Helm.
The Kinetophone.

41p

CHAPTER TEN: The Rise of the Organization

35p

Out of the Ashes
The Divisional Policy
The Reorganization of the Laboratory

ELEVEN: Business and Technology: The Dictating Machine.

22p

Building the Organization
Creating an Office System

TWELVE: The Lab in War and Peace.

39p

The Naval Consulting Board
The West Orange Laboratory in the 1920s
The Changing Status of the Lab
Sidebar: End of the Edison Motion Picture Business

THIRTEEN: Decline and Fall of the Phonograph.

32p

The Post-War Depression.
The Challenge of Radio
Innovation in a Declining Industry
Sidebar: The Tone Tests.

FOURTEEN: The End of an Era.

24p

Rubber from Weeds
The Edison Legend
Finale500f

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Illustration

After Paqe

1-1
1-2
1-3
1-4

Edison in Building 4
Drawing of Planned lab
Building 5
Lab under Construction

1-1
1-5
1-12
1-13

2-1
2-2

Edison Phonograph Works
Ditto, interior

11-3
II-3

3-1

Group Around 1888 Phonograph

III-4

4-1
4-2
4-3
4-4

1888 Phonograph in Use
Doll Advertisement
Phonograph ManufactureMusic Room

IV-12
IV-14
IV-21
IV-22

5-1
5-2
5-3
5-4

Lab in 1890s
Galvanometer Room
Advertisement in Battle of Systems
Municipal System

V-l
V-8
V-25
V-31

6-1
6-2
6-3
6-4
6-5
6-6
6-7

Exhibit at Paris Exposition
Kinetoscope
Film Strips
Strip Kinetograph
Kinetograph in Black Maria
Amusement Arcade
Black Maria

VI-6
VI-29
VI-36
VI-38
VI-39
VI-41
VI-43

7-1
7-2

Edison in Chem Lab
Edison with PhonographVII-11
VII-13

8-1
8-2

Lab Complex circa 1900
Administration Building

VIII-2
VIII-8

9-1

Line of Phonographs

IX-12

10-1
10-2
10-3
10-4
10-5

Map showing Fire Damage
Edison and Hutchison
Constable, C. Edison, Mambert
Recording Committee
Music Room

X-3
X-8
X-14
X-23
X-27

11-1
11-2
11-3
11-4
11-5
11-6

1905 Business phonograph
Graphophone Advertisement
Dictating Machine Line
Telescribe Advertisment
Ediphone
Voicewriter

XI-2
XI-2
XI-5
XI-7
XI-9
XI-19

12-1
12-2

Lab Staff Ready for War
West Orange Complex in 1920s

XII-14
XII-31

14-1
14-2

Edison in Library
Mourning Edison at Lab

XIV-1
XIV-20(All illustrations are from document and photographcollections of Edison National Historic Site. Colorphotographs were taken of machines at the Site.)1

INTRODUCTION

The Edison National Historic Site attracts thousands ofpeople to West Orange who would normally avoid the harsh,de-industrialized landscape of north New Jersey. Situated about
45 minutes from New York City, the Edison laboratory and museum
is one of the most popular of all the National Parks on the
East Coast. The Park Service anticipates that over 50,000
people will visit the site in 1987— its centenary year. These
visitors come from all parts of the nation and a large section
come from abroad. It is hardly surprising that Edison'slaboratory is most popular with Japanese tourists, who share
his work ethic and commitment to innovation.
It is perhaps significant that the architects of today's
micro-electronics "revolution" find relevance in the history of
the Second Industrial Revolution, which began in the 1870s andlasted until the Great War of 1914-1918. This period of rapid
economic growth came after the first wave of industrialization
had begun to transform the economy and society of the UnitedStates. Edison's invention of the incandescent light bulb
marked the beginning of another burst of innovation thatcreated several major new industries. The Second Industrial

2

Revolution does not have the same powerful images as the First;
the steam engine and textile mill are universally recognized as
the symbols for that great movement which began in GreatBritain and spread to the United States in the second decade of
the nineteenth century. The new industries of the 1870s and1880s do not have the same familiar symbols. Edison's PearlStreet station— the architectural relic of the electricalindustry— is no longer standing in downtown Manhattan. The
Bessemer steel and synthetic chemical industries have left no
structure that the general public immediately associates with aperiod of rapid economic growth in which the United States led
the world. Edison's laboratory in West Orange, on the other
hand, is both an accessible and appropriate symbol of theSecond Industrial Revolution.
The complex of buildings in West Orange was erected in
the late 1880s, when the Second Industrial Revolution was justbeginning. As the greatest industrial research facility in the
United States, the laboratory was the breeding ground for a newgeneration of technology and the starting point of some
important new industries of the twentieth century. Here Edison
worked at spreading his electrical lighting systems all overthe industrialized West and lowering the price of electricity
until it was available to everyone. The motion picture camera
was invented at the laboratory, along with a host of otherimportant products such as the Edison storage battery anddictating machine. Edison perfected the phonograph at this3

facility and manufactured thousands of them in his nearby
factories. Two of the twentieth century's most influential
service industries— motion pictures and musicalentertainment— had their humble beginnings in this cluster ofbrick buildings.
The experimental rooms and machine shops in the lab are areminder of the highly complex technologies introduced by
Edison. The impressive, multi-tiered library is evidence of thegrowing importance of science in the technologies of the Second
Industrial Revolution— a revolution that was based on theso-called scientific industries of electricity, steel,chemicals, and communications. The rows of technical journals(many of them from outside the United States), scholarly books,
and bound patents show that the information age had begun wellbefore the twentieth century, and that Edison saw theimportance of keeping up with scientific and technical progress
wherever it occurred. The "old man" often began his day byreading the newspapers and technical journals at his desk inthe library. Now only tourists walk around the library andcross the courtyard to the experimental buildings which serve
as museums of Edison's achievements. The lathes and drills in
the grimy machine shops are quiet now, the lights no longer
burn all night in the experimental rooms and the "old man's"
bunk in the library is never used. The surviving buildings ofthis once vast industrial complex serve not only as a museum
but also as a reflection of the life and work of one of

4America's greatest businessmen. The West Orange laboratory bore
witness to a critical period in the economic history of theindustrialized West and it provides an invaluable resource tounderstand our immediate past.

I-

1

CHAPTER ONE
THE BEST LAB EVER.

When Edison reached the age of 40 in February 1887, he
had achieved more than many men do in their whole lifetimes.
(Illus 1-1, Edison in Metallurgy Lab.) As a successful
manufacturer of stock tickers, Edison had gained profits andsome influential friends on Wall Street. The invention of thephonograph had brought him world-wide fame. The apex of his
career was his development of electricity as a commercial
product at his Menlo Park laboratory. After his most famous
invention in 1879, Edison spent many years designing andinstalling the first electric lighting system. New York's PearlStreet central station was completed in 1882. It distributed
electricity for light and power to a few blocks of thecommercial district in lower Manhattan. Although the PearlStreet Station did not look like an impressive engineeringfeat, it proved that electricity supply was technologicallyfeasible. It was a triumph for Edison and the beginning of agreat new industry.
Once Edison had demonstrated the commercial potential of
his invention, he formed several companies to promote his
system of lighting and manufacture the lamps and machines toIllustration 1-1
Edison in Building 4

i

I-

2

bring electric light to the world. The Edison Machine Works wasestablished in New York to make heavy dynamos for power
stations. The Electric Tube Company made underground conductors
and the Edison Lamp Works made incandescent bulbs. Bergmann andCompany provided the switches, fixtures, and other small partsof the lighting system. Small lighting installations were
installed by the Edison Company for Isolated Lighting, but thelarge power stations were erected by local lighting companies
who had to pay for the Pearl Street technology. Edison's
important electrical patents were in the hands of the Edison
Electric Lighting Company which sold the franchises to local
lighting companies and provided overall direction to the Edison
electrical empire.
Edison soon moved out of his laboratory in Menlo Park andset up house in Granmercy Park in lower Manhattan, a short walkaway from the headquarters of the Edison Electric Light Company
at 65 Fifth Avenue. He made sure that his friends and allies
were given important positions in the new companies. The
Electric Lighting Company was presided over by Edward H.
Johnson, a friend and colleague from their days as
telegraphers. Samuel Insull, Edison's secretary at Menlo Parkand New York, was made manager of the Machine Works. As private
secretary, Insull had administered Edison's business andpersonal finances and now he had the job of running thefinancial affairs of the Edison lighting empire. The
superintendent of the Edison Machine Works was John Kruesi— aI-3faithful mechanic who had worked with the inventor for years.
Another member of the laboratory staff, Sigmund Bergmann, wasset up in his own manufacturing company.
Edison himself was absorbed with management problems
after the great engineering work at Pearl Street was complete.
He said in 1883 that "I'm going to be a business man, I'm aregular contractor for electric lighting plants and I'm goingto take a long vacation in the matter of invention."^ He formed
the Edison Construction Company to build central stations andtravelled the country erecting lighting systems. By 1886 thework of "pushing the system" was well underway. Over fifty
Edison power stations had been built in American cities andmany were in use in European countries, where installations
were made in nearly every major city on the continent. In the
United States, his factories were full of orders and running
constantly. The Edison electric lighting companies were
capitalized at around $10 million.

By 1886, Edison was thehero of his generation, a rich and powerful industrialist, andan inventor of world wide fame. He was also in love.
Edison married Mina Miller in February 1886. She camefrom a well-to-do family from Akron, Ohio, attended finishingschool in Boston, and was a more than acceptable partner for
the famous inventor. Marriage inevitably brought changes to
Edison's life. He must have been tempted to remain in New York,the center of his business interests and the home of close
associates (such as Charles Batchelor) and important financial

I-

4connections (such as Henry Villard). But instead of joining theother millionaires building mansions on the blocks to the southof Central Park, he chose a rural setting for his new life as
married man and industrialist. The newly-weds moved to West
Orange in the scenic Orange valley, a resort area for the urban
masses of Newark that was only 12 miles west from New York
City. Here they purchased a house in Llewellyn Park, an enclaveof magnificent houses that was the first planned residential
community in the United States."*
The idea for this development, "country houses for city
people," came from Llewellyn Haskell, a successful importer ofpharmaceuticals and a supporter of projects like Central Parkin New York City. Haskell helped pioneer the idea of finding
rural alternatives to living in the city in the 1850s and1860s. He purchased 350 acres of land in the Orange valley andset about creating a romantic, rustic setting for a residential
community. Llewellyn Park contained all the elements of awell-landscaped arcadia, including a 50 acre park called theRamble, and was dotted with impressive mansions built in highAmerican gothic style.^ Edison purchased Glenmont, a sprawling
castle that cost him nearly a quarter of a million dollars in1887 and was appraised at a much higher figure. Glenmont is animpressive Victorian house which reflects a multitude ofarchitectural styles and enthusiastic decorative motives.
Designed by Henry Hudson Holly, one of the most influential andpopular residential architects of his time, it is an exuberantI-

5

example of the American romanticism that was popular during the#C
Gilded Age. Glenmont came fully furnished and gave Edison
instant social substance; his biographers note that he was now
settling down to a lifestyle far removed from his Bohemianexistence as an itinerant telegrapher.
An ordinary mortal might have taken time off to savour
the pleasures of married life and business success, but Edison
was no ordinary man. He was still at the peak of his inventive
powers and the flow of ideas had not ceased during the years ofperfecting his lighting system. In addition, his honeymoon in
Fort Myers, Florida in 1886 and a convalescence from sickness
in early 1887 gave him two long breaks to contemplate future
inventions. In 1886 his mind turned to building a newlaboratory to replace the one he had left at Menlo Park. His
idea of making this laboratory an "inventions factory" had been
great success and now he was going to go one better: "the bestequipped and largest laboratory extant, and the facilities
superior to any other for rapid and cheap development of an
invention."

The Menlo Park complex was the largest private

laboratory in the United States in the 1870s; now Edisonplanned build an even bigger facility that would enable him tocarry out industrial research on an unprecedented scale andreflect his new status as the preeminent American inventor.
The first ideas committed to paper about the new lab
indicate the grandeur of his plans and something of his methodof inventing. The plan reproduced from a notebook as Illus 1.2

Illustration 1-2
Drawing of Planned Lab

I-

6shows that he was thinking about a structure that would reflect
his new prestige as a great inventor and man of substance. This
laboratory is an impressive three-story building with a Mansard
roof. The tower and courtyard are its two distinctive features(which are often found in the large textile mills of Newark),
and these give it the dignity of a public building. These andlater sketches always depict a laboratory based on a
manufacturing facility called a "shop". The machine shop wascentral to Edison's method of inventing for it was here that
his ideas were made up into experimental models. During his
years in the telegraph industry Edison had grown accustomed toinventing in this machine shop environment, where the tools andskilled machinists were always at hand to turn ideas into
working devices. His first labs were in machine shops. Edison's
style of inventing and management was influenced by the machine
shop culture he had absorbed in Newark. Wherever he moved, hemade sure that his experiments were done close to a machine
shop. In the years between the Menlo Park and West Orange
laboratories Edison's base was never far from a machine shop,
firstly in Bergmann's factory in Manhattan, and then in theLamp Works at Harrison, New Jersey.
Another fixture of Edison's method was a chemicallaboratory. The development of industrial research was closely
associated with the advancement of the science of chemistry.
The first industrial research labs were established by German
chemical companies to carry out testing and basic research, andI-

7

similarly the first American corporate laboratories were set up
for industrial chemistry. The Pennsylvania Railroad, forexample, created a chemistry laboratory as early as 1875 toanalyze and test materials. Even Andrew Carnegie, who
maintained that "pioneering don't pay," saw the advantages ofhiring a chemist to analyze the operation of his blast
furnaces. His conclusion that "9/10ths of the uncertainties of
pig iron making were dispelled under the burning sun ofchemical knowledge" was repeated by other industrialists who
saw the value of chemistry in their businesses.

Edison planned

several chemical projects for his new laboratory: tanning,
electro-chemistry, ozone for bleaching, and the production ofaluminium. Some of these experiments would have immediate
commercial application in the large tanning and textile
industries of New Jersey. Edison had also discussed several
other projects with Batchelor, including a new method to makefine wire and a process of electroplating. The latter noted in
his diary that "immediately the new lab is finished these willQ
be commenced in earnest."
By 1887 Edison's ideas for the new lab were taking shape.
Another plan for the new laboratory contained a machine shop,
chemical laboratory, and library all placed on the groundfloor. The latter was a very important part of Edison's method.
He always began an experimental project with a thorough searchof the scientific literature. The first two steps were
described thus: "1st. Study present construction. 2nd. Ask forI-8all past experience ... study and read everything you can on
the subject." The development of the electric light had shown
the importance of information gathering. Electrical technology
was international in nature and its rapid development was theresult of the transatlantic movement of men, machines, andideas. The experience of the electrical industry had shown thata key piece of information, the key to a breakthrough, could
easily be hidden in an obscure scientific journal— such as
Pacinotti's discovery of the ring armature— and Edison planned
to locate and take advantage of any new piece of scientificknowledge that came his way. He now had the money to gather all
the technical journals and scientific literature which would be
the starting point of his innovations. These were ordered forthe library which would be a resource for all Edison's workers
and a testament to the importance of information flow in his
Qlaboratory.
The second floor of the building in this plan contains
the supply and apparatus room, which were positioned close to
the experimental rooms to be called upon when needed. Edisonknew that experimenters needed all kinds of supplies andtherefore placed the supply room close to them. The supply
rooms served both experimenters and machine shops, containing acomplete store of metal parts, screws, wire, joints, gears,
tubes, and sheets. It would also contain the batteries,
magnets, and electrical sub assemblies that were needed to makeup experimental apparatus. It was Edison's goal to haveI-

9everything needed for invention at hand. This included thefacilities to make large metal parts, such as castings for
dynamos, which had usually been made outside the laboratory
because of their size. Edison decided that this inconveniencewould not hinder him at the new lab and subsequently planned toerect a forge and furnace on the ground floor.
A galvanometer room for electrical testing also figuresin the plan, evidence that Edison intended his new laboratory
to be fully equipped to carry out electrical work, especiallyon his incandescent lamp. A glass blower's room is included inthis plan and subsequent sketches show a vacuum pump room;
Edison planned a complete facility devoted to research andtesting of electric lights.
The upstairs of this planned laboratory contain theexperimental rooms where the work of invention was to be
carried out. The experimental room as conceived by Edison was along (75 feet) room filled with tables. On each table would be
experimental apparatus and the models in stages of
construction. Also placed on these tables would be theexperimental notebooks in which each experimenter would record
the progress of his work. Edison had begun using notebooks inthe formative days in Newark, envisaging them as "a daily
record containing ideas previously formed, some of which havebeen tried,..., and some that have never been sketched, tried,or described."

The notebooks would be left on the tables tobe picked up whenever a idea needed recording or the results of

I- 10a test noted. Sometimes they were used by Edison to quickly jot
down an idea and lay the plan for an innovation; at other times
they were used to record the progress and outcome of anexperiment after it had been completed. The information inthese books was indispensable to both historians and patentlawyers. The laboratory notebooks do more than document thework of the lab: they were the raw material of invention at the
Edison laboratory.

I- 11

BUILDING THE LABORATORY

Edison bought the land on which his laboratory was tostand in January 1887. The 14 acres were situated on the mainroad through the Oranges, at the bottom of the hill that led up
to Glenmont. Like the mansions of the factory masters of theIndustrial Revolution Edison's magnificent house was tooverlook the workshops and chimneys that provided his income.
In the spring he gave his assistant Charles Batchelor the taskof preparing drawings for the laboratory and overseeing its
construction. Henry Holly, the architect of Glenmont, wasretained to design the laboratory. He produced plans for ahandsome three-story building 250 foot long and 50 foot wide,
and Batchelor spent the summer turning these plans into bricks
and mortar. Edison was always around, either coming down from
Glenmont or stopping on his way to the Lamp Works in Harrison.
The inventor exerted his powerful influence, firing Holly,
denouncing bad workmanship, and constantly changing the plans.
Yet Batchelor worked steadily on, accustomed as he was to theways of the "old man."Charles Batchelor had been at Edison's side since hejoined the inventor's staff in the early 1870s. Born in
England, he was one of the many workmen who left the factoriesof the "Black Country" for the textile mills of Massachusetts

I- 12and New Jersey. Batchelor was sent to install machines in the
Clark thread mills in Newark, met Edison, and never returned
home. The dark-bearded Englishman had the craft skills thatmade Manchester the workshop of the world. A master of metal
working, he was also a competent foreman and manager. His neat,well-organized notebooks are an indication of his orderly mind
and precise hand. He was an ideal counterbalance to Edison who
often got so involved in an experimental project that he forgot
everything else. According to one of Edison's experimenters,
Batchelor was the "sometimes needed, conservative element of
the combination." ^Throughout 1887 Batchelor got on with thejob of building and equipping what was to be the largest
private laboratory in the world.
The first building to be erected was the originallaboratory designed by Holly. (Illus 1-3,#6110) The west end of
the long building faced the road that cut through the Oranges.
Here the graceful, arched windows of the library rose twostories to break the line of a plain industrial structure.
Edison's laboratory presented a dignified face to the world
passing on main street. The library— always situated by theentrance in all Edison's plans for the laboratory— gave an
impression of intellectual effort within and leant support tothe notion that learning was essential to inventing. But at theother end of the laboratory stood the power house whichcontained the steam engine and dynamos to provide power, heatand light. This was the work end of the laboratory whereIllustration 1-3
Building 5

ÀI- 13machines roared and men sweated in the grimy heat.
Once the main laboratory was completed work began on four
smaller laboratory buildings, identical in size 100ft by 25ft)
and positioned at right angles to the main building.(Illus.
1-4, Lab and satellite buildings, # 7206) They were numbered 1
through 4 starting with the one closest to Main Street.
Building 1 was devoted to electrical work and the study ofmagnetism. The "galvanometer room" in the early plans for thelab was now made into a separate building, completely dedicatedto electricity. It was constructed on a deep foundation ofbrick and cement that would dampen any shocks to the delicate
electrical measuring equipment inside. Great pains were taken
to avoid all metal fittings that might influence theelectromagnetic devices used in experiments. This building
contained all sorts of electrical measuring devices, including
several kinds of galvanometers, Wheatstone bridges, and a large
selection of meters in use in the Edison lighting system. There
were also numerous condensers, induction coils, relays, andelectro-mechanical assemblies at hand.
Building 2 was established as the chemical laboratory. It
was fitted with a balance room and lined with shelvescontaining bottles of chemicals. Building 3 was used as astoreroom for the overflow of chemicals for Building 2, an
indication of the growing importance of chemistry in the Edison
laboratory. The rear part of Building 3 was turned into awood-working shop to make the jigs and patterns needed in theJI- 14

manufacture of Edison products. The last of the satellite
buildings, number 4, was established as a metallurgicallaboratory. It contained rock crushers and graders, assay
furnaces, and containers for the many samples of ore that
Edison had collected.
These four satellite buildings indicate the experimental
directions that Edison intended to follow: electricity,chemistry, and metallurgy. They are physical proof of Edison's
habit to break down experimental problems into electrical,
chemical, and material parts. They complimented the work of themain laboratory building, and their spatial relations with it
defined the physical shape of Edison's West Orange laboratory.
Building 1 formed an entrance gateway with the west end of themain building, and the space between it and Buildings 1 and 2
formed a courtyard. His new laboratory had an open architecture
which enabled him to convert workspace and add buildings as theneed arose. The West Orange laboratory was an organic structure
which constantly changed to meet the needs of Edison's
research, new buildings added and old ones refurbished.
The five main buildings were completed by September, andBatchelor then turned his attention to fitting out thelaboratory. He followed the current industrial practice inestablishing a power house at one end of the main laboratorybuilding and running shafts along the two first floors. Leather
belts took the power from the drive shafts to the machines
below. The laboratory was wired for electricity throughout andI- 15some of the experimental rooms were fitted with outlets ofdifferent voltages, yet the days of electrically driven machine
tools were still well in the future.
The work of equipping the machine shops provided somediversion for Edison and Batchelor who scoured the
manufacturer's catalogues and purchased a wide selection ofmachine tools: lathes, drills, grinders, and presses. The great
number of machine tools ordered were too many for one shop,
consequently Batchelor divided them between two floors of themain laboratory building: heavy lathes, drill presses, andmilling machines on the first floor; smaller lathes, grinders,and polishers on the second. The heavy machine shop, under thesupervision of Batchelor, was intended to produce large
equipment like dynamos for central stations. It came equippedwith a travelling crane to move about the heavy dynamos of theelectrical industry and massive ore milling machines. The
second floor machine shop was called the "precision room," forthe men who worked here were highly skilled mechanics andwatchmakers who built experimental models.
At the end of September 1887 Batchelor began moving
experimental equipment and supplies from the laboratory in theLamp Works, where Edison and a skeleton crew of around 10
experimenters had maintained the effort on a number ofexperimental projects in electricity, ore milling and thephonograph. In October and November loads of "experimental
stuff" were shipped by horse cart from Harrison. These loads

I- 16contained the vital parts of experimental projects, and theirarrival at West Orange during the first weeks of December must
be taken as the true start of work in the new lab. 1 9
In addition to the loads of tools and equipment arriving
at West Orange, Edison had also ordered masses of supplies forthe store rooms of the lab. During 1887 and 1888 a stream ofconsignments arrived in West Orange from all parts of America,
not only lengths of steel and pipe but rare and exotic
materials such as seahorse teeth and cow hair. The main store
room was set up on the first floor of the main laboratorybuilding, in between the library and the machine shops.
Experimenting meant that one could never anticipate what could
be needed, not only tools and metal parts but also all kinds ofmaterials. At the big lab, Edison wouldn't have to search out
rare books and new technical journals because they lined the
shelves of the library, and he wouldn't have to search theworld for some crucial raw material that might be needed.
Having everything at hand was the great advantage of building
the biggest research laboratory in the world.
Edison believed that the process of invention could only
be successful if carried out next to a store house ofmaterials— "the most important part of an experimentallaboratory is a big scrap heap." 13 The larger the heap the
better, for somewhere in the pile of different materials anddiscarded experimental apparatus might be the key part toinvention. The greatest lab in the world was to be equippedI- 17

with every possible material in case it was ever needed at theheight of a research project. Edison's interest in metallurgy
was reflected in the great collection of different ores andminerals that was housed in the library. The analysis ofmaterials was one of his great strengths as an inventor; someof his greatest breakthroughs had been the identification of amaterial that would perform an important task in an invention,such as the bamboo for the filament of his incandescent bulb or
the chalk button for his telephone microphone. The lab carriedout basic research into the nature of materials because thisknowledge could easily be applied to many different projects.
For example, Edison began experiments at the laboratory in 1888
to examine the properties of hard materials that could be used
for the filament of his incandescent lamp and the stylus of thephonograph.^ Another important function of the laboratory was
to find cheaper and better materials to replace those alreadyin use.
The great store of supplies gave the West Orange
laboratory its comparative advantage over the laboratories of
Edison's rivals. The inventor truly believed that when it cameto research, bigger was indeed better. He had built a facility
that had the machine tools to turn out "anything from a lady's
watch to a locomotive," and the extensive hoard of supplies
offered significant economies of scale in the pursuit of manydifferent experimental goals. The real savings of a large lab
were in reducing the expensive delays caused by waiting forI- 18

critical materials or a machining job. A large staff fully
supported with everything it might need meant that "Inventions
that formally took months and cost a large sum can now be donein 2 or 3 days with very small expense. 15
Another advantage of a large laboratory was that itallowed efficient routing of experimental projects. Edison's
method of inventing was based on close cooperation between
experimenters and machinists. He liked to jot down some ideas
for an experimental device and then have it made up, modifying
16
it while it was being built.
The second floor plan of thelaboratory was organized to facilitate this cooperation, and
did it on a larger scale than ever before. The siting of the
precision machine shop next to the experimental rooms of thesecond floor established a floor plan built around the idea of
speed— as ideas occurred to experimenters on the second floor
they could quickly draw on the skilled mechanics of the
precision room to build the models and devices they needed. The
arrangement of facilities at the West Orange lab point to aconcept of throughput of innovation; the various elements
flowing together from one end of Building 5 to the other, from
Edison's room to the heavy machine shop and then to the
manufacturing stage. His idea to group all the experimenters
together reflected his emphasis on flexibility and goodcommunications within the lab.
The experimental rooms on the second floor were the heartof the laboratory where some of the great inventions were made.

I- 19They were divided by wooden partitions and could be arranged tosuit any project. Edison wanted a flexible floor plan to change
experimental directions as he saw fit. The rooms were lined up
on each side of the main corridor that led to the precisionshop and numbered beginning at the head of the stairs. At theend of the row of experimental rooms on the south side of thecorridor was Room 5, the photographic studio. This room was
kept locked, and had opening in the door to pass throughsupplies. Here W.K.L. Dickson experimented on the motion
picture camera and kinetoscope. Edison's room was number 12, tothe left of the stairs and facing the laboratory's courtyard.

17

Close to his room was the room of Fred Ott, whose precision
lathe often gave life to Edison's ideas. It was just a shortwalk down the hall to take advantage of the skilled men andspecialized machines of the precision shop. At any time,several experimenters would probably be in this shop, watching
the construction of models and apparatus and swapping ideas
with the machinists.

1-20

EDISON'S LABORATORY AND THE CONTEXT OF INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH

Although Edison claimed that "there is no similar
institution in existence," his new laboratory was by no means
the only research facility in the United States. By the 1880s
there was already a tradition of works laboratories andmaterial testing in American companies that dated back to theFirst Industrial Revolution. The larger, and more scientific,
industries of the Second Industrial Revolution put a higher
premium on industrial research. Several of the newcorporations— Standard Oil and the Pennsylvania railroad among
them— saw the advantages of chemical laboratories. The rapid
technological change of the "Second Industrial Revolution" madeit imperative to keep pace with technological development aswell as monitor ever more complex operations. Successful
inventors like Alexander Graham Bell needed no encouragement to
set up their own laboratories to further their work. He
established the Volta Laboratory Associates in 1881 which
ft Theincluded his cousin Chichester Bell and Charles Tainter. 1°
Bell Company faced the problems of operating a complicatedtechnological system and quickly formed corporate laboratories
charged with testing, product improvement, and examining new
telephone technology. One of the laboratory managers was Ezra
Gilliland, a self-taught electrician and an old friend of

1-21

Edison's from their days as telegraphers. Gilliland soon left
the organization to join up with Edison, and his place wastaken by Hammond V. Hayes, one of the first Phds in physics
granted by Harvard.
The triumph of the incandescent light proved that there
was money to be made in invention, and in the years after 1879
several electrical laboratories were established by private andcorporate concerns. The inventor Edward Weston constructed a
two storey laboratory next attached to his home in Newark. It
contained a machine shop, a room for electrical research, and achemistry laboratory. This duplicated (on a much smaller scale)the facilities Edison had erected at West Orange.

Many of theearly research laboratories were closely connected to machine
shops and factories. Weston's factory in Newark was the hostinstitution for his laboratory. The electrical inventor Charles
Brush worked in machine shops in Cleveland's telegraphindustry. The eminent electrician Elihu Thomson carried out
experiments and devised new equipment in a "model room" in theThomson-Houston factory in Lynn, Massachusetts. Thomson'slaboratory was called the "model room" because its function was
to produce experimental devices and patent models. Precision
machine tools occupied the bulk of the room, which also
contained electrical instruments. With "a few tools and perhaps
one or two workmen," Thomson labored to produce "devices andnew appliances...to be refined and immediately put into
manufacture."7.0

1 -22The laboratories of the electrical and communicationsindustries were outside main stream of American industrial
research in their orientation towards new technology; the major
function of the laboratories of the railroads, steel works, andpetroleum companies was testing. Much of Edison's West Orange
laboratory was also devoted to testing, namely building 4 (oresamples) and building 1 (electricity). Testing electricalequipment was a major function of the Edison laboratory for
only the lab possessed the accurate measuring equipment to do
the job. The lab tested dynamos, conductors, and incandescentbulbs for all the other organizations in the Edison electric
lighting enterprise. Building 1 housed a Lamp Testing Roomwhere a team of about four experimenters tested lamps under the
direction Charles Deshler. This laboratory was specially fitted
up to test many bulbs under different operating conditions. A
continual program of improvement in its equipment was carriedout during the first years of operation as Edison's engineersconstantly sought more precise measurement and a more realistic
operating environment.
The most impressive testing installation at thelaboratory was the dynamo room in the main laboratory building.
This was equipped with several different types of electricalgenerators and was used to simulate all aspects of central
station operation. The laboratory supplied current to houses in
Llewellyn Park and this small distribution system was used fortesting by Edison's engineers.

The whole West Orange

1-23

complex, including the Llewellyn Park lighting installation,
served as a test bed for the distribution network of cables andfeeders and for the meters in central stations which recorded
output. At the time it was built, the West Orange laboratory
was the most complete and advanced electrical testinglaboratory in the world.
It was also the largest electrical laboratory yet built.
None of its contemporaries employed more men than Edison's West
Orange complex; the laboratory of the Bell Company employed 29
men around 1885, the staff of Charles Dudley's chemicallaboratory at the Pennsylvania railroad did not exceed 30,
Thomson's model room at its peak employed less than 20 people,
and so did Weston's laboratory. In comparison, Edison's newlaboratory was built to employ over 100 men and the physicalfacilities at West Orange dwarfs those of Weston and Thomson.
There were no other facilities in the U.S. in the nineteenth
century that could compare with the West Orange laboratory interms of its great size and ambitious scope. Testing was only
one of the tasks of the laboratory, and only one small part ofa large operation which was centered on innovation
The term "research and development" implies a two partprocess: research that leads to an invention, and then thedevelopment of a commercial product from this original idea.
Although historians and economists are not agreed on a common
definition of industrial research, it must include the researchand development of new products in addition to testing and1-24

analysis. The West Orange laboratory was built to support thetechnological development of the Edison system. Its mission was
to provide the electrical technology for the second decade ofelectricity (the 1890s). The primary goal of the lab was toproduce new electrical products: This placed it firmly in thevanguard of electrical science.
Edison and his West Orange laboratory have not beencredited with original scientific research, and it is perhaps
for this reason that other laboratories are thought of as thetrue progenitors of modern industrial research. This honor is
normally given to the corporate laboratories of GE and AT&T who
had a more formally trained staff and were advertised ascarrying out basic scientific research. The GE laboratory, forexample, was described to the stockholders as "a laboratory to
be devoted exclusively to original research." Many historians
have used this definition to conclude that industrial researchlaboratories did not exist until the twentieth century. 2 2
The idea that R&D somehow requires a scientific component
has clouded the issue; it fails to grasp the objectives ofindustrial research and the primitive nature of electricalknowledge in the nineteenth century. There is no doubt that the
new industrial research organizations of the twentieth century
had highly-skilled staff, many with advanced degrees andimpressive academic credentials. Yet at the time Edison
established the West Orange laboratory in the 1880s, thecutting edge of scientific understanding of electricity was in

1-25

the operation of electrical equipment rather than in basic
research in the universities. There were no formally trained
electrical engineers. The gift of Edison electrical equipment
formed the core of MIT's newly formed department of electricalengineering. The expertise of Edison's laboratory, and its
advanced equipment, made it a center for the scientific andacademic community and many meetings were held there. In 1888
the electrical section of the American Institute met at the lab
and 250 people attended a lecture given on electricalmeasurement. J
The stated objective of the West Orange facility was toconduct experiments and "scientific investigations...with a.
viewof making inventions useful mvarious arts." 24 Despite

his many pronouncements to the contrary, Edison was not opposed
to basic scientific research in his laboratories, provided thatit might have broader applications or commercial potential in
the future. The fact that he had his eye on a commercial
pay-off for research does not detract from the quality of R&D
at the Edison laboratory. In practice, scientific endeavor in
research laboratories has always been conditioned by, andnormally channelled into, corporate goals. If pure science wasbasic research just to discover new knowledge without the
motivation of future profit there was never any pure science inindustrial research. As the one chief engineer of AT&T put it "the distinction between pure science and industrial research is(merely) one of motive."OK

The means might have changed in a

1-26

hundred years of industrial research, but the end remains thesame— profit.
Some historians have characterized Edison's relationshipwith science as more "borrowing" from it than actually creating
it. Yet when there was nothing to borrow from, Edison was
obliged to create, carrying out basic research to gain a deeper
understanding of what was going on. This was especially true of
research into electromagnetism. Although many observers
believed in the 1880s that the knowledge of electrical science
was almost perfect, in fact, it was in a state of ignorance.
Electrical equipment at the time of the pioneer Pearl Street
station was heavy, inefficient, and prone to breakdown.
Scientists and engineers on both sides of the Atlantic worked
frantically to improve the efficiency of the equipment before
the fragile electrical industry went under in a sea of debts.
Yet until more was known about electromagnetism and how it
worked in generators, there was little room to improve the low
output and poor efficiency of dynamos. The great electricalengineer Silvanus Thomson noted in 1886 that "until we know thetrue law of the electromagnet, there can be no true or complete
theory of the dynamo." 26
Edison had gathered men around him who were wellqualified to chart new ground in electrical technology; among
them were Reginald Fessenden and Arthur Kennelly. Although not
graduate trained in advanced physics, these were college
trained men with vital practical experience. Fessenden and1-27

Kennelly went on to make great contributions to electricity,
the former as an inventor and the latter as one of the eminent
nineteenth century electrical engineers. These men usedscientific methods in their laboratory work and and wrote
scholarly articles. Fessenden wrote several articles about his
work at West Orange in the 1880s and 1890s, but Edison would
not give him permission to publish them. 27 Edison would not let
academic freedom give his competitors any business secrets, andin this he was no different from the men who ran the corporate
laboratories of the twentieth century. Fessenden and Kennelly
were free to conduct expensive research for scientific goals
with the minimum of interference. The experiments inelectromagnetism carried out during the first decade of thelaboratory were scientific investigations without a short term
pay-off. This work were to provide the foundation for
innovation in the future.
The Edison laboratory was insulated from the demands ofcorporate policy, unlike the many industrial researchlaboratories of its era who had to prove their worth to a cost
conscious management. The corporate laboratories were under thecontrol of the management of the corporations who financed theoperations. They used it as a defensive weapon rather thandirecting it towards producing revolutionary new technology. As
one historian commented, "To a manager concerned with meetingthe competition in matters of service, price...and technicalcapabilities, research meant working towards straight forward1-28

technological goals."op

R&D became the tool of corporate policyin the United States and was directed more by management
strategies than by scientific considerations.
The expense of research had to be justified, and this
could only be done by showing results. In many cases the
management turned out to have a conservative attitude to R&D.
Before the great scientific endeavors of the twentieth century
the new corporate laboratory had to earn its keep and justify
its existence in a cost-conscious world. Willis Whitney, themanager of GE's laboratory, moved in this direction very
quickly and by 1901 the laboratory was solving engineering
problems brought to them by other parts of the company. Muchthe same can be said for the Bell Company's pioneer industrial
research laboratory. Hammond V Haynes, the director, had begun
projects to examine the fundamental science of telephonetransmission in his laboratory. But he soon gave this up,
abandoning theoretical work for "the practical development of
instruments and apparatus." 29 The basic scientific work, hedecided, was best carried out by institutions like MIT.
Where the Edison lab diverges from the convention of an
American research laboratory, was its relationship with the
manufacturing facility. Edison's plan was not for a laboratory
to support manufacturing, to provide defensive technology toward off the competition, as was the case with the Mechanicalroom and Dudley's lab; but as the center for a vast industrial
complex. The lab was not an adjunct to a manufacturing facility

1-29

but the brains of a larger organization. Although thelaboratory was the last part of Edison's electrical empire to
be constructed, it was the most important. Building 5, the mainlaboratory building, was the technological nerve center of the
Edison lighting industry; it housed the impressive library oftechnical literature and journals, the blueprints of many
central stations built by the Edison Central Station
Construction Department, and the technical experts on the
Edison system. The laboratory served as a repository ofoperating experience and new knowledge that was of great value
to the individual lighting companies. It was an information
center where operating problems could be brought to the lab's
experienced staff for solutions. The West Orange laboratory was
also the symbolic center of the Edison lighting industry, where
board meetings were held and important decisions made. All
technological issues were automatically referred to thelaboratory and one of the earliest meetings called at thelaboratory, in November 1887, was to discuss a technical reporton the Westinghouse lighting system.
The difference between the status of an independent
laboratory and the faceless corporate R&D department is evident
to the naked eye; the West Orange lab is an imposing, freestanding structure which expressed the status and importance of
Edison's work. (Illus 1-5, #7209) On the other hand, theindustrial research laboratories of the twentieth century are
unimposing structures: a wooden shack that housed the GE1-30

laboratory in Schenectady, anonymous offices in corporate
headquarters, and machine shops in corners of large factories.
The lab complex makes a statement about the preeminent role ofR&D in industry that no other laboratory duplicated. As thedriving force of a great industrial concern, and the center of
an international industry that was creating the second
industrial revolution, the Edison laboratory stood alone in thenineteenth century. There was no doubt in the minds of the men
making their way to West Orange in the fall of 1887. Stockedwith every conceivable supply and led by the nation's most
famous inventor, it was simply "the best laboratory ever." 30

1 -3 iNOTES FOR CHAPTER ONE
Unless otherwise stated, all primary source material isfrom the Edison National Historic Site.
1) Leonard Reich, The Making of American Industrial Research(New York: Cambridge, 1985), p. 45.
2) George Prescott, Dynamo Electricity (New York: Appleton,
1888), p. 228 estimates that there were 164 Edison
installations in the United States in 1886 and 142 in Europe.
The European installations were in W. Europe, Italy, andRussia; Mathew Josephson, Edison: A Biography (New York: McGraw
Hill, 1959) pp. 300:301.
3) Robert Stern, Pride of Place: Building the American Dream(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1986), p.129.
4) Ibid and Stern, Gilmartin and Massengale, New York City
1900. p. 421.
5) Carole Rifkind, A Field Guide to American Architecture (NewYork: New American Library, 1980), p.80.
6) Thomas A. Edison (TAE) to Hood Wright, Nov 1887, Laboratory
Notebook N 871115.
7) Louis M Hacker, The World of Andrew Carnegie (New York: J.P.
Lippincott, 1968). p. 349.
8) Batchelor diary, 1336, p. 279, Sept 1887, Laboratory
Notebook, N 870000.3.
9) J.P. Constable to product engineers, 11 Sept 1917, Lab blue
book. The first important innovation in armature design was thework of the Italian scientist, Antonio Pacinotti. His slottedring armature of 1869 was a breakthrough, but the scientificpaper describing it languished in the pages of an obscurescientific journal for ten years, unnoticed by the engineers
who were trying to make a better armature, Malcolm Maclaren,
Rise of the Electrical Industry during the Nineteenth Century(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943), p. 114. The lab
had this journal and loaned it out, Seely to TAE, 30 Dec 1892,
Document file for 1892, Electricity. All citations to document
files will follow this format of sender to recipient, date,year and name of file.
10) Josephson, p. 90.
11) Reginald Fessenden, ’’The Inventions of R.A. Fessenden,”

TRadio Hews. 1925.
12) Vouchers, #1-601, voucher series, 1886-1887.
13) Maurice Holland, ’’Edison: Organizer or Genius,” April 1927,
p. 7 in Ford Archives, Dearborn, Box 12 Folio 7.
14) Lab notebooks for 1887, Reel 279.
15) TAE to Hood Wright, Nov 1887, N871115.
16) ” Sometimes I get an idea and jot it down in the book,sometimes I would get it while the machine was being made andchange it and then note it in the book.” Edison’s testimony in
the Complainants record, Edison vs American Mutascope, p. 119,
Legal Box 173.
17) Frank L. Dyer and Thomas C. Martin, Edison: His Life andInventions (New York: Harper, 1910), pp. 648-650.
18) John Rae, ’’The Application of Science to Industry,” in A.
Oleson & J . Voss, eds. The Organization of Research in Modern
America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1979), pp. 249-263; Robert
V. Bruce, Alexander Graham Bell and the Conquest of Solitude(Boston : Little Brown, 1973), pp. 340-345; (Robert Conot, A
Streak of Luck (New York: Seaview, 1979), p. 246.
19) Scientific American 57. Nov 1887, 287-290.
20) Darwin H. Stapleton, ’’Early Industrial Research in
Cleveland,” April 1897; W. Bernard Carlson, ’’Invention,
Science, and Business: The Professional Career of Elihu
Thomson," (University of Pennsylvania, 1984); David Noble,
America by Design (New York: Knopf, 1977), p. 113.
21) Electrical Review. XXI (Oct, 1887), 391.
22) George Wise, Willis Whitney, GE and the Origins ofIndustrial Research (New York: Columbia, 1985), p. 97; Reich,
Making of Industrial Research, p.2.
23) Electrical World. X (Nov, 1888), 23824) Draft laboratory agreement with Henry Villard, 1888 W.0.
Lab.
25) Noble, America by Design, p, 112.
26) Silvanus Thompson, Dynamo-Electric Machinery (New York:
F.N. Spoon, 1886), p. 20.
27) Fessenden to TAE, 14 April 1893, Biographical Files. Of

I

Fessenden’s scientific achievements, Hans Fantel wrote in the
Hew York Times of 28 Dec 1986: ”In December 1906, for the firsttime, Fessenden injected earthly music into the heavens, andthe world hasn’t been the same since."
28) L. Reich, "Industrial Research and the Pursuit of Corporate
Security," Business History Review. LIV <1980), 504-505.
29) Wise, Willis Whitney, p. 79, see also Reich, Making ofIndustrial Research.
30) Quoted in C. Withington, Interview with A. Kennelly, 1920s
Edison Pioneers File.

II- 1CHAPTER TWO
FINANCING A GRAND STRATEGY

It was not Edison the inventor who built the West Orange
laboratory, but Edison the capitalist. He knew from experiencethat there was little money in selling patent rights; theprofits went to the financier and manufacturer. In Edison's
worldview the inventor was often the victim of the innovative
process. He claimed that the money he made was frommanufacturing the invention and not selling the patent. ^Edison therefore formulated a grand strategy for his lab,envisaging a large industrial undertaking that would
manufacture the many new products devised in the laboratory:
My ambition is to build up a great industrial works
in the Orange Valley starting in a small way andgradually working up— The Laboratory supplying theperfected invention models pattern and fitting up
necessary special machinery in the factory for each
invention. ^His conception of the process of innovation, or"pioneering" as he called it, did not end in the laboratory. It
was not enough to develop new products. Edison wanted tocontrol the manufacturing stage and use the resources of hislaboratory to continually reduce the cost of manufacture. The
idea was to innovate at all stages of production until the goalof low cost mass production was reached. This plan ofinnovation led Edison into the role of entrepreneur and factoryII- 2

manager. He wrote later that it was never his intention to act
as a capitalist, except to "pioneer" his inventions which
required both finance and control of the manufacturing
process. 3 It might not have been his original intention to
become a capitalist, but Edison certainly played the role atWest Orange, where he constructed many factories, formed
numerous companies, and carried out business strategies similar
to his industrial peers— Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller,and Henry Ford. All these captains of industry promoted
vertical integration of their operations, sought
self-sufficiency in raw materials, and had a paternalistic, andoften hostile, attitude toward organized labor. All used
innovation to create or dominate markets. All formed new typesof business organizations, operated by professional managers
and financially interrelated.
Edison planned to establish a massive industrial complex
in North New Jersey and was determined to "dot the Orange
Valley with factories." At the center of this empire was thelaboratory. Charles Batchelor was told of this grand design
while the laboratory was being built. He wrote in his diary:"Edison's idea now for the future is to get up processes for
manufacture and start factories...as soon as the new laboratory
is finished this will be commenced in earnest."^ Edison's planfor his West Orange complex was the logical extension of thevision for Menlo Park that foresaw a stream of inventions
flowing from a research laboratory. He had also begun to useII- 3

his laboratory to support manufacturing at Menlo Park.

5

The

move to West Orange permitted Edison to continue this design on
a grand scale: the laboratory was intended to be the nerve
center of a massive industrial enterprise.
This conception of industrial research was totallydifferent from the corporate R&D of companies like GE and
A.T.&T. Their laboratories were subordinate to the
manufacturing process and acted as tools of corporate policy.
On the other hand, Edison's laboratory was the brain of theorganization that controlled production and provided
leadership. The manufacturing facilities were central to
Edison's plans for the West Orange complex and subsequently
construction of the factories began as soon as the laboratorycomplex was finished in the spring of 1888.
The ground was broken for the Edison Phonograph Works in
May 1888 and the buildings were completed by the end of theyear. Located to the east of the laboratory, the Works centeredon two large buildings: one was about 75 feet wide and 200 feetlong, and the other was the same width but 400 feet long.
[Illus. 2-1, #60466] The shorter building was located next tothe laboratory and contained the many tools used to make up thecomponent parts of the phonograph. A photograph shows that its
interior was left open, allowing belts and pulleys to takepower from the overhead main shaft to each machine.[Illus. 2-2,
#0-7980] The larger building was divided into rooms separated
by a central corridor. Here were offices, the assembly andInterior of Edison Phonograph WorksII- 4

testing rooms, and the japanning ovens for the phonograph's
varnished finish. The wax cylinders and phonograph batteries
were made in this building, which also contained the finishingand packing rooms. In between these two long structures were
three smaller buildings, one of which contained the powerhousefor the Works. Fully equipped with a large foundry, andilluminated throughout by electric light, the Works could carryout all aspects of phonograph manufacture from toolmaking totesting.

r

It also had every facility to manufacture a wide

range of precision products, especially those requiring
electrical parts.
The completion of the Edison Phonograph Works in 1888
rounded out the original plan for Edison's West Orange
operation— a large manufacturing facility adjoining alaboratory complex, and all under the control of one man.
Edison intended the West Orange complex to be his own personalendeavour. The electric light had made him a rich man andenabled him to turn his dream of a great research laboratory
into reality. Edison invested a considerable part of his
fortune in the laboratory. It cost him around $180,000 to build
and this represents over two million 1987 dollars. The
laboratory was his and his alone. It was owned and operated by
Edison until his death in 1931 and he never thought of it asanything but his personal business. But the sheer scale of
Edison's grand strategy meant that he could not support it withhis own resources alone. The history of his laboratory isII- 5tempered by the continual demands of financial need: its growthand evolution influenced by Edison's search for operating
funds.
Edison quickly spent the fortune he made in electricty.
The profits from electric lighting were held in Edison's bankaccount with Drexel Morgan. Throughout 1888 and 1889 this wascontinually depleted to pay for the establishment of the West
7
Orange complex.
Buying a fine house and building a greatlaboratory, equipping it with supplies and hiring the laborprobably cost Edison close to half a million dollars by the endof 1888. Edison also assumed the costs of building andequipping the Edison Phonograph Works. Edison's strategy for
his laboratory was a grand one and so was the financial burden
he had to carry: "The Lord only knows where I am to get theOshekels— Laboratory is going to be an awful pull on me."After making the initial investment in the laboratory
Edison still needed a steady flow of cash to maintain a large
work force and cover the day-to-day expenses of R&D. The
operating costs of the laboratory alone were around $80,000 per
annum— a considerable sum in the 1880s when the deflation ofQ
the Great Depression gripped the American economy. Edison
hoped to avoid using his own money to operate the laboratory,
declaring that "it is no part of the inventor to furnish
m o n e y . I t was Edison's intent to cover all the costs of thelaboratory by selling its experimental services.
The first source of finance for the lab were theII- 6companies set up by Edison to manufacture his inventions.
Supporting research from the profits of manufacturing had beena basic strategy for financing his work. The ideal financial
basis for research, as envisaged by Edison, was a profitablemanufacturing operation. His normal practice was to form amanufacturing organization as soon as an experimental project
had proved its commercial viability, and then bill development
work to the new company. In this way continuous research could
be included in the costs of production. The company provided
the money to support research and pay for the construction of
manufacturing facilities.
Edison usually formed a separate company to absorb thecosts of developing each one of his innovations, such as the
Edison-Sims Torpedo Company or the Edison Ore Milling Company.
Edison was sometimes the sole owner of the company andtherefore the financing of R&D was simply a matter oftransfering his funds or assets. In other cases the company waspartially owned by Edison or he was the major shareholder. The
means of financing the Edison Phonograph Works, for example,
was the sale of shares to investors. Edison was the majority
stockholder, ran the Works, and decided its R&D needs.
Research and development in electricity naturally
promised to be a major occupation of the West Orange
laboratory. The physical layout of the laboratory— with
Buildings 1 and 5 heavily involved in electricity— reflects anemphasis on electrical work. The rapid growth of the electricalII- 7

industry founded by Edison had created a perfect market for theservices of a research laboratory— new products and processes
were needed and engineering support was in demand. The highly
competitive market for electrical goods placed a premium ontechnological innovation, and Edison's West Orange laboratory
was built with this in mind. Edison had appreciated the need tocontinue R&D work on electricity when he first began toorganize his lighting companies. The Edison Electric Light
Company, the holder of Edison's patents and the licenser of
local illuminating companies, was conceived by Edison to
support the great costs of the experimental effort. SamuelInsull noted that this company was "formed for the purpose of
supplying Edison with funds for carrying out experiments inconnection with the development of the electric lighting
system." ^Several manufacturing concerns had been founded by Edison
to provide the equipment with which the Edison illuminatingcompanies were electrifying America, including the Edison
Machine Works and Bergmann and Co. These manufacturing shops,
as they were called, became important customers for thelaboratory, which was kept busy continually improving thedesign of all parts of the Edison system. Edison held majority
control of the shops and after 1886 they provided him with asteady income and plenty of business for his laboratory.
While the manufacturing concerns could be relied upon topurchase specific engineering services like production

II-

8

engineering— making products cheaper and easier tomanufacture—or new product design from the lab, the Edison

Electric Light Company was often the customer for basic
scientific research related to the Edison lighting system. It
contracted for a wide range of experiments from the Edison
laboratory, ranging from measuring the resistance in powerlines to devising ways to kill bugs with electricity. The
Edison Electric Light Company also supported research thatwould help its commercial position and thwart the competition,such as the physiological experiments on the effect ofelectricity on the human body, used in the campaign against
alternating current. 12
Beyond electric lighting, Edison had identified two othermajor industries to be promoted once he had finished the West
Orange laboratory. The phonograph and ore milling businesses
were based (respectively) on new products and processes, andboth were still in the development phase: their successful
conclusion depended on further innovation at West Orange.
Edison's invention of the phonograph in 1877 had brought him
great fame but few profits. He organized the Edison Speaking
Phonograph Company in 1878 to support the development of his
fragile tinfoil instrument and market its novelty value. The
Company put up $10,000 to support Edison's experiments toimprove the invention but little was done because his time wastaken up with electricity. Once the electric light system had
been completed, Edison returned to the phonograph and expectedII- 9that his new laboratory would be able to perfect it as acommercial machine.
The Edison Ore Milling Company was formed in 1880 to
exploit his new patents on ore separation. Edison had devised amagnetic ore separator because he saw a profitable business inthe extraction and processing of the rare metals used in lamp
filaments. His first separator was designed to extract ironore, employing powerful magnets to divert iron particles from afalling stream of crushed ore. The Edison Ore Milling Company
was reorganized in August 1887, its capital increased, and a
new agreement made with Edison. The Company provided $25,000 tocover the costs of experiments and Edison promised to"construct a special laboratory for the conduct and prosecutionof said experiments." ^Edison saw the new laboratory as thetool to bring the ore milling and phonograph ventures to a
successful conclusion. It was the critical element of anindustrial empire rapidly assuming form in the inventor's mind.
The phonograph, electrical, and ore milling businesses
provided the financial foundation for the laboratory. Edison's
expectations can be seen in his estimate of the yearly businessof the lab with the following companies:
Edison Lamp Co$10,000

Edison Electric Light Co$5,000

Edison Machine Works$6,000

Phonograph Co$6,000Ore Milling Co$3,00011-10This brings the total yearly business with the Edison companies
to $27,000— a sum less than half of his estimated operating
14.
.
.
costs.
The balance was to be found in marketing the servicesof the laboratory and carrying out research for venture
capitalists.
Edison's financial planning for his laboratory was
intended to make him independent of bankers. Edison had used
the services of private bankers in the past— Drexel, Morgan and
Co. played the important role of financing the Edison electric
lighting system— and his experience with them had not beenpleasant. He disliked paying high interest rates and resented
the banks' practice of calling in their loans at short notice.
Edison believed that the private bankers were out to deprive
inventors of the returns on their inventions, and he knew thathe could get better terms in joint projects with venture
capitalists. Rather than deal with a private bank, Edisonpreferred to develop a one-on-one relationship with a venture
capitalist. Here the Wizard of Menlo Park could work his
special magic on impressionable financiers. His loathing of the
New York banking community, which he called "the usual crookedgang of Wall Street promoters," runs through hiscorrespondence. Edison avoided borrowing money from Wall Street
if possible, instead he looked to venture capital to support
his work. 15
The importance of venture capitalists in financing
Edison's work cannot be underestimated; financiers and11-11

entrepreneurs had played a crucial role in bringing his
inventions to the marketplace. Venture capitalists not only
supported Edison's R&D with their own money but had also
mobilized additional funds by using their financial
connections. In some cases they acted as entrepreneurs as wellas financiers, taking an active interest in developing a newtechnology and managing its introduction. Men like George
Harrington and Jay Gould had given him the capital to move frommachine shop operator to professional inventor in the 1870s,
and in the 1880s Edison looked to this quarter to finance his
grand strategy. He sought partners to finance the work of thelab, and create joint-projects in which Edison and financiers
shared the costs of research. This strategy had some important
advantages; by involving other capitalists in experimental
projects Edison could maintain several lines of experiment at
the same time. He also spread the risk and limited his loss if
an experimental program failed to produce results. Edison neverunderestimated the importance of finance in innovation; he knewthat "the most difficult thing for an inventor is to get holdof people who will back him up." 1 He therefore began the
search for financial support before the laboratory wascompleted, contacting several venture capitalists.
The formation of the Edison electric lightingorganization had brought Edison into contact with several
groups of investors. These were the first people he approached.
J Hood Wright, one of the most active partners in Drexel &11-12Morgan, was invited by Edison in 1887 to join in some ambitious
experimental projects but he declined, preserving his fortune.
Similarly, the German entrepreneur, Henry Villard, initiallybecame associated with Edison in the electric lighting
business. Edison wasted no time in contacting him while thebuildings were still being erected at West Orange and invitedthe financier to come and view the new laboratory. 17
Henry Villard was a very early believer in the potentialof electricity and played an important role by encouraging
Edison in his experiments. According to Edison's secretary,
William H. Meadowcroft, Villard was one of Edison's strongest
financial backers. 18 Like many of the venture capitalists
around Edison, Villard had begun his business career in therailroad industry. In 1881 Villard became president of theGreat Northern Railroad and was, at that time, heavily involvedin Edison's experiments to develop electric traction.
Unfortunately for Villard and Edison, Villard's railroad empire
crashed in 1884, forcing him to leave the country for his
native Germany. When Villard returned to the United States, he
was further impressed with the rapid advance of electricity andkeen to support Edison's new laboratory. Villard not only had
considerable entrepreneurial experience but also valuable
connections in international finance. He was to become the mostimportant venture capitalist in the early days of the West
Orange laboratory, providing funds for a major part of the
lab's work on electricity.

11-13

Edison was able to build a financial relationship with
one venture capitalist to support a massive R&D effort on thephonograph. Jesse Lippincott had made his money in the
manufacture of glassware, and had become interested inestablishing a monopoly in the new talking machine business. Hebought Edison's interest in the phonograph and provided funds
throughout the years of work to produce a commercial machine.
Money was all he could give to this project for he had little
industrial experience and was not a good businessman. His funds
ran out well before the phonograph venture began to return aprofit and he died in 1891. Alfred Tate concluded that theattempt to dominate this industry cost him both his fortune andhis life."^
The financiers of the motion picture venture were also
entrepreneurs on the lookout for profitable new businesses.
Norman C Raff and Frank Gammon were gamblers who saw a new
industry in the flickering images of the kinetoscope. They weremuch different from the Wall Street investors who supported theelectric light; Edison's biographer Matthew Josephson describes
them as "speculators, backers of race track entries ortheatrical shows" 20 These attributes were useful in the
promotion of the kinetoscope. Although Edison certainly had the
knack of seeing a commercial product in a laboratory
phenomenon, he was out of his depth in sales and usually looked
to his backers to organize marketing.
The financial relationships that Edison created, or tried11-14to create, show that he originally wanted to concentrate on theinnovating and leave marketing and sales to his financial
backers. He told J. Hood Wright, "I am perfectly aware of thefact that my place is in the laboratory."

His creation of themany electric lighting companies was partly motivated by hisdesire to shift the responsibilities of running the lighting
industry to a cadre of managers. He disliked the corporate
infighting in the electrical industry and feared that WallStreet would gain control of the enterprise. In 1884 Edison was
involved in a struggle to control the Edison Electric Lighting
Company. Although his allies resisted a takeover from theMorgan interests, Edison felt that he had been "cut-off" by thecompany and later claimed that he "took no further interest" in.

.

running it.

22

The construction of a dream laboratory marked

Edison's return to inventing after his time as a businessman in
the electrical industry. He was looking forward to spending
more time at West Orange, where he could do want he most wanted
to do— innovate.
The central theme of the financial agreements devised by
Edison in the 1880s was that he would develop new products
while his financial backers were to support the cost of
manufacture and organize the marketing. In a draft agreementwith Henry Villard for example, Villard was to assess themarket impact of the innovation and make the decision to
manufacture and market. Villard was also given the freedom tochoose the marketing arrangement as he wished, whether in the11-15form of a license, joint-operation, or outright sale ofmarketing rights. 23
Edison's boldest stroke for the finance of his laboratory
was the promotion of one single organization to manufacture andmarket the stream of innovations he planned to produce. The
Edison Industrial Company was conceived as "one organizedavenue for the manufacture and introduction of all his
inventions." ^This company was to funnel money into the labfrom many different investors. The financial arrangement
involved entrepreneurs putting up the money for manufacturingand marketing, and Edison receiving a half share in theoperation in return for the rights to his inventions. Edison
had some experience in setting up financial relationships withseveral different parties at the same time. This had been his
strategy while running several workshops in Newark during the1870s and it offered important advantages to him, not least ofwhich was the ability to move funds from one project to anotherwithout informing the investors.
He sold potential investors on the commercial potentialof the research he planned as well as the facilities of hislaboratory. Edison was careful to exclude his core businesses
from the agreements with venture capitalists. The phonograph,electrical, ore milling, and telegraph operations were
established as Edison's own. Instead Edison offered speculators
a share in completely new inventions that would emerge from themany experiments undertaken in the new laboratory. Here was the11-16

advantage of a flexible organization: it could move quickly
into "those industries as offer the most promising field for.
.
.
25
inventionand experiment.
It is significant that the future of innovation, as seenby Edison from his vantage point of 1887, was not in the great
systems of electrical technology, but in consumer durables fora mass market. He planned to develop small products with a highprofit potential and low capital requirements; the enormous
costs of introducing the electric light were still fresh in his
mind and he wanted to avoid "cumbersome inventions like theelectric light." The industries he conceived of were to supply
small items of commerce— "useful things that every man, woman
and child wants"— that would be sold through a network ofjobbers.
Edison's attempts to interest investors in new technology
reveal his ideas about the role of R&D in the Second Industrial
Revolution. The lists of projects he planned to undertake atWest Orange throws light on the research directions of his newlaboratory and shows the enormous scope of his inventive
imagination. At one end of the spectrum, he offered investors
shares in truly revolutionary new technology, such as theprocess to make electricity directly from coal with his
pyro-magnetic generator. This invention consisted of several
metal armatures within field magnets all positioned over a
furnace. Edison hoped that rapidly heating and cooling these.
27
armatures would produce rotation.

11-17

While some of the experimental projects he suggested
would, if successful, "change the entire motive power andlighting of the world," other inventions were oriented to more
immediate commercial goals: he offered valuable improvements inthe production of butter from milk, for example. 28
Surprisingly, the bulk of the innovations suggested by Edison
were directed at product improvement. He saw that R&D could be
used to reduce the cost of manufacturing many existingproducts, ranging from metal wire to plate glass. The researchof his laboratory was to be directed into finding more
efficient— and therefore cheaper— ways of doing things,
especially reducing the cost of manufacture.
Edison was fascinated with materials and confident thathe could find, or make, cheaper alternatives. The great
investment in the chemical facilities of the laboratory was
expected to generate returns in the search for artificial
substitutes for valuable materials, such as silk, ivory, andrubber. The role of R&D in the Second Industrial Revolution, as
conceived by Edison, was not completely oriented towards brave
new technologies and great new industries: The West Orange
laboratory was a place where "old devices and articles" could
2Q
be quickly and easily improved.
He often found opportunities in the familiar areas ofelectrochemistry, electromagnetism and electromechanicalmachines. Edison had built up an expertise in these areas andwas quick to apply them to a wide range of problems. His

11-18innovation for snow sweeping, for example, was a device whichused electricity to melt snow. In many cases Edison saw new
products that could be easily spun off from existing
technology. In the field of electricity, he thought he could
produce an electrically driven tricycle and a wide range ofelectrically powered tools. His confidence in his abilities asa machine builder was unbounded. He tried to interest
capitalists in the development of a mechanical cotton picker todo for cotton what the combined harvester was doing to cereal
production.
The lists of planned projects indicate that the beginningpoint of many of Edison's experimental campaigns was a close
study of the market. He looked for products that had great
market appeal and the potential to become items of mass
cosumption. For example, Edison saw enormous potential in an
improved storage battery to take the place of the lead acidcells then in use. Edison knew the electrochemical technology
well and he also knew the market. He estimated that the annual
sales of storage batteries in the U.S. amounted to one million
dollars and expected that sales would triple "if a good battery
could be obtained."^®

11-19RESEARCH FOR HIRE.

The attempt to draw many investors into supporting theWest Orange complex met with little success, and Edison was
unable to embark on the construction of the Edison Industrial
Works. The plan to focus all financial support into one
organization failed because venture capitalists tended to makeproduct specific investments. Many financiers who were drawn to
Edison were looking for the "Big Score": a revolutionary newtechnology which offered to create a new industry and generateincredible profits as the electric light had. They therefore
wanted to make their own judgements on the commercial future of
an invention rather than rely on Edison to make the choice forthem.
This was not an easy time to raise money. The Great
Depression had begun in 1872, and whatever is said about theextent of this depression, Edison found it difficult to raise
capital in the middle of a long period of deflation punctuatedO1
by financial panics.
In addition, his basic core ofinvestors— nurtured through the telegaph and electricaldays— were fully committed to the electrical industry which was
insatiable in its demands for capital. The failure to attract
funds from individual investors led to the demise of the Edison
Industrial Works and severly damaged Edison's financial
strategy. He was forced to explore many different sources of11-20funding and develop a new strategy to finance the lab: researchfor hire.
The overriding goal of the research laboratory, in
Edison's mind, was to make money. His West Orange complex was acommercial undertaking and subsequently Edison used hislaboratory to generate income in any way he could,
energetically courting many kinds of customers for services
offered by his new laboratory. This business strategy evolved
from Edison's need to find outside sources of finance for thelaboratory. He had to put the laboratory to work to pay its
keep, finding many ways of making money in addition to the workof research and development. The lab in these early years
carried out a wide range of tasks and was truly a multipurpose
facility.
This practice had begun in his Newark days, when Edison's
workshops carried out a diverse mix of research, design,
manufacturing, and repair services. Much of the work of theWest Orange facility was also a carry-over from his activities
in Newark and Menlo Park. For example, the lab still carriedout research work for A.B. Dick on the mimeograph and theAmerican Bell Telephone Company supported experiments intelephony.^ The lab performed a variety of services undercontract to outside companies. These ranged from continued workon an existing technology such as telegraphy, financed in partby Western Union, to surveys into completely new areas. For
example, the Parrot Copper company paid Edison to examine the11-21

possibilities of copper smelting with electricity. 33
The policy of contract research meant that the lab had tobe all things to all people. The income of the laboratory was
not restricted to research and development; it also earned
money from manufacture and repair. The lab serviced and rebuilt
office machinery, including the Sholes typewriter and telegraphapparatus. Sholes had brought his typewriter to Edison and thelatter claimed to have improved it and made it into acommercial p r o d u c t . T h e West Orange laboratory continued thedevelopment work on the typewriter while Edison contemplatedbuilding a large factory to manufacture an improved model. This
plan was probably forgotten during the great experimental
campaigns on the phonograph and nothing came of it.
The telegraph industry was Edison's first businessinvolvement. His knowledge of the market, and the store oftechnical expertise in the laboratory, made telegraphy anappropriate area to launch into. It was a major focus ofresearch when the laboratory opened; in December 1887 Edison
made out a list of experiments to be started which included thephonoplex, and "grasshopper" telegraph.^ The latter was awireless telegraph system that utilized induction coils tocommunicate between moving trains and a fixed telegraphstation. Edison clearly saw a vast market in wirelesscommunication over land and sea. He devoted several experiments
to this problem and claimed that he had transmitted messages
over an air space of 580 feet. This idea never achieved any11-22commercial success, but Edison had several highly lucrative
telegraph products on hand to generate funds.
The availability of two large machine shops in thelaboratory complex provided the opportunity to make money frommanufacturing telegraph instruments. The phonoplex was a
successful invention that enabled telegraph and telephonemessages to be sent over the same wire. There was a great
demand for phonoplex sets from the railroad industry and Edison
made handsome profits manufacturing the device. After
manufacturing the telegraph equipment in the machine shops,
Edison sold it directly to industry. Among the products
actually manufactured at the lab were telegraph signallingsets, phonographs, electric meters, and chemicals and plates
used in storage batteries. Edison found a more economical way
to make India ink and set up manufacture at West Orange. As
soon as the phonograph was perfected, the lab was put to work
manufacturing the cylinders, both blank and recorded, for the
new machine.
Despite the flow of money from paid research, Edison was
still plagued with shortages of operating funds. His finances
had been stretched by the costs of building the laboratory andhis great optimism had led him to undervalue the expense ofexperimentation and overvalue the commercial worth of its
product. In August of 1887 Tate wrote to Insull that the taskof building the lab "was going to require a good deal moremoney than was at first anticipated."

Consequently, Edison11-23

had to draw on his financial reserves to support his ambitious
plans to perfect the phonograph. Edison had to rely more andmore on his own money to finance the West Orange laboratory.
The lack of outside funds placed Edison more firmly incontrol of the laboratory and inexorably led to moreadventurous experimental campaigns. Although Edison thebusinessman was eager to sell shares in his R&D projects, hislaboratory was his operation and he expected to have the lastword. He directed the research effort and he controlled thework of the laboratory irrespective of who was paying for the
research. Even when the laboratory was busy selling itself as acommercial undertaking that offered R&D services for hire, it
did not lose its independence. Offering its staff and resources
to anybody who could pay for them still left the initiativewith Edison and his staff. The services of the lab did not comecheaply and Edison's customers found it very difficult tocontrol the work of the lab, as subsequent chapters will show.
Edison made the important decisions about what projects
the laboratory should follow. Many of the projects undertakenby the laboratory were done for Edison's personal financial
interest, such as the experiments on electrically driven rock
drills or the development of a torpedo motor for the
Edison-Sims torpedo in the 1880s. It was his laboratory and he
was determined to make the most of any new technology developed
there. Edison always kept some ideas for new products (andcarried out small scale research) in reserve— waiting for a11-24technological breakthrough or the influx of funds to push theirdevelopment. He boasted that "I have always got something newunderway" and one such project in the early years of the lab
was the kmetoscope.

OQ

During the late 1880s the lab wasworking on 70-100 experiments at a time, some were large andcostly like the work on phonographs; others small such as theexperiments on preserving meat and fruit. The lab provided
basic engineering services for the electric light companies intesting and redesigning electrical equipment, and, at the otherend of the spectrum, carried out Edison's flights of fancy into
flying machines and pyro-magnetic dynamos. In the balmy days of"research for hire" the laboratory could be hired to erect anore milling plant, with a capacity of 1000 tons a day, to becompleted in ninety days. 39
Here was a laboratory that could go in several different
experimental directions at one time, and usually did! It had tobe all things to all people. It was forced to serve manydifferent types of customers, from reckless venture capitalists
to the core of corporate America. To meet these needs, Edison
designed a laboratory that could innovate with speed andflexibility, creating a structure that facilitatedcommunication and cooperation. Yet so much of the effectivenessof the laboratory depended on the performance of its staff, who
needed to be as resourceful and flexible as their leader.

1

SIDEBAR 2-1
FINANCIAL PRACTICES AT THE LAB.

The lab's services were requisitioned by shop orders,each one giving a name and a number for a series ofexperiments. Each worker filled in a time card indicating thenumber of hours spent on a project, or in an experimental room,and these were used to compute the labor cost. In the earlydays of the lab only supplies were added to this basic
computation but over time methods were devised to count inoverhead. The shop orders were used for billing purposes. The
shop orders for each customer were identified, compiled, andfinally a bill was sent out to the relevant company.
Several different types of financial arrangements were
established between the laboratory and the Edison companies: insome cases a fixed limit of experimental costs was determinedfor each year of operations, in others a lump sum wasappropriated for experiments, and finally an experimental
account was sometimes established to cover continuous researchwith no limit— the company receiving bills at regularintervals. This latter arrangement was normally between the lab
and one of Edison's companies.
In times of financial hardship, Edison could call in the
many loans he had made to other Edison companies. Many of the
Edison electrical manufacturing companies had been founded with

2

his money. The Edison Machine Works, for example, owed Edison$94,457 in 1888.^ Another source of funds were his personal
notes, discounted by financiers like J. W. Chapman and thebanks of Newark, which often provided emergency cash for thelaboratory. The major source of funds for the lab was Edison's
personal fortune and it is difficult, if not impossible, todistinguish between his own finances and those of thelaboratory.
Edison funnelled money into the lab's accounts bytransferring funds from his "private" account, where he held
his income, to his "personal" account with the laboratory which
provided advances to cover experimental costs. The "personal"
account paid for experiments carried out specifically for
Edison's personal interest and it was often used to cover the
expense of experiments that had not been billed to anotherparty. When business was slack, he often put the laboratory
staff to tasks in his own household; they carried out
construction and repair work for him and also for some of his
leading assistants. Several shop orders were used to accountfor the work on Edison's house by the lab and one even covered
the making of a lunch box for Edison's daughter Marion.

NOTES

1) S. Insull to TAE, 26 Jan 1888, Electricity.

ENDNOTES FOR CHAPTER TWO
1) Article in Munsey’s Magazine. 20 July 1901, Letter Book (LB)
100521, p. 435. Henceforth letterbooks will be cited as LB
number then page number.
2) TAE to J. Hood Wright, Nov 1887, N871115.
3) TAE to Ore Milling Syndicate, 19 Feb 1901, LB 000608.
4) Batchelor Diary, 1336, Sept 1887, pp. 277-278.
5) Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory is described by RobertFriedel and Paul Israel, Edison* s Electric Light (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986)pp. 30-38
6) Orange Herald. 24 Nov 1888, 1888 Phono Gen.
7) Bank records of Drexel, Morgan, E2530, A 182.
8) TAE note to Edison Electric Light Co, 6 July 1887, in Conot,
p. 246.
9) One of his first estimates of the yearly cost of running theWest Orange laboratory was:
1) Interest on Investment (opportunity costs of aninvestment of 184,000 @ 5%) = $9,200
2) Insurance $1,100
3) Depreciation 9,200
4) Supplies 7,000
5) Labor costs 62,000
This makes total yearly operating costs $88,900. TAE Memo, 1888
W.0. Lab. The data available for 1890 shows that the year’s
experimental work was billed at about $80,000, showing that
Edison’s estimate of operating costs was fairly accurate.
10) TAE to E.H. Johnson, undated, 1888 Phono General.
11) Insull’s notes in Meadowcroft Box, #68.
12) Bill Book #3, pp. 394, 397.
13) Eaton & Lewis to Tate, 27 June 1889, H F Miller file 121.
14) Draft Agreement with Villard, 1888 W.O. Lab General.
15) TAE to Review of Reviews, Oct 19 1910, LB 100829, p. 277.
16) Article in Munsey's Magazine. 20 July 1901, LB 100521, p.
435.

17) TAE to J. Hood Wright, (Nov 1887) 1871115?
Jan 19 1888, WD Lab general.

TAE to Villard,18) Meadowcroft Box MB 68, p. 53.
19) A.0. Tate, Edison’s Open Door (Mew York: E.P. Dutton,1938), p. 152.
20) Josephson,

p. 394.

21) TAE to J. Hood Wright,(Nov 1887) N871115.

22) Undated letter TAE to E.H. Johnson,
Tate, Open door.

1888 Phono General and23) Draft agreement with Villard, W.O. Lab 1888 General.
24) "Prospectus and Plan of Organization” for Edison Industrial
Co, 1887 Edison Industrial Co.
25) Ibid.
26) TAE to J Hood Wright,(Nov 1887) N87115.

27) The Electrical World. XIV (Sept,

1889),

166.

28) Appendix A, 1888 W.O. Lab General.
29) Agreement 1887 Edison Industrial Company.
30) Exhibit A 1888, W.O. Lab General.
31) Edison wrote in 1891 that "this raising of several hundred
dollars in a panic has been tough on me," LB 900412, p. 190,
ENHS. The various interpretations and scholarly debates about
the character and extent of the Great Depression can be foundin S.B. Saul, The Myth of the Great Depression 1873-1896(London: Macmillan, 1969).
32) Accounts,

Bill Book #2.

33) Exhibit A 1888, W.O. Lab General.
34) TAE to Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraph found in Biographicalfile under S: "promoters came to me and asked me to redesign
machine and construct it of steel so it could be made on acommercial basis."35) Experiment list, 30 December 1887, 1887 Phono General.
36) Tate to Insull, 30 Aug 1887, LB 87-06-21,

p. 73.

1 1-2737) S Insull to TAE, 26 Jan 1888, Electricity, Ed Machine Wks.
38) Brooklyn Eagle. 2 Aug 1891.
39) Annotation on letter from S Ritchie, 21 Nov 1889, 1899 Ore
Milling (OM) .

Ill- 1CHAPTER THREE
LIFE AND WORK AT EDISON'S LABORATORY.

The West Orange lab quickly became famous. Edison's
already considerable reputation, and his carefully orchestrated
publicity campaign, attracted international attention to the
new laboratory. It was the new home of the "Wizard of Menlo
Park," and this gave it an aura of mystery and power. The
impressive buildings and the "Wizard's" extravagant claims did
the rest. Edison was a celebrity and his laboratory a public
place. The many visitors to West Orange were given free accessto the lab in its early years. They included newspapermen,
hangers-on, the curious bystanders who had heard about thegreat events of the lab, and gentlemen conducting their own
experiments with Edison's approval. Edison was careful tocultivate good relations with the press; it was very importantto generate favorable publicity at this time because he needed
to attract venture capitalists to the laboratory to finance his
experiments. Although many of the visitors were merely
spectators, the famous people who visited the lab, whether
royalty or popular entertainers, continued to generate freepublicity for Edison and his work, keeping him in the publiceye. These groups were carefully and lavishly entertained andIll- 2were often given the great honor of a guided tour of the lab by
the inventor himself.
The worldwide fame of the "Wizard" also attracted a wide
spectrum of workers and as soon as the lab opened in 1887, it
was inundated with applications for employment. Custom built
and well stocked with every conceivable supply, it was widely
publicized as the best lab in the world. Working for a man as
famous as Edison was considered a great honor, and even theunskilled sons of the rich clamored to work at the laboratory
at any wage. He was therefore able to pick and choose from many
applicants to create an impressive work force. "The best labever" was not merely the product of Edison's genius and thefacilities he built at West Orange. The real strength of thelaboratory were the men who worked for him.
The West Orange work force was an eclectic mix of manydifferent skills and cultures, ranging from university trained
chemists to laborers of no fixed abode. Edison's reputation wasinternational and it attracted many foreigners who came to West
Orange from all corners of the globe and from all strata ofsociety. Future captains of industry and sons of the wealthy
worked shoulder to shoulder with machinists who journeyed backto New York City to seek shelter after work. In addition toexperimenters, Edison habitually employed many machinists andtool-makers in his laboratory, along with specialists likeglassblowers, watchmakers, and draftsmen. There were also
laborers, untrained experimenters, and ambitious young men who

Ill- 3

hoped to begin their inventive careers with an apprenticeshipat this famous laboratory.
Edison brought the core of his workforce with him to West
Orange. These were called the "Boys." Batchelor, John Ott, andFred Ott were members of Edison's old guard from Menlo Park whoplayed a major role in setting up the new facility. All had
been with the "old man" (as Edison was affectionately called)
since his early days in Newark and all were on close personalterms with him. Batchelor duplicated the multi-talented Edison,an accomplished experimenter and inventor with little formal
education but a wealth of management experience in workshops
and factories. The Ott brothers represented the kind of workmen
with whom Edison had surrounded himself from his early days as
an inventor and factory manager. They were highly skilledmachinists who could interpret the "old man's" rough sketches
and produce working models of inventions in a very short time.
A hurried sketch on a piece of scrap paper with the legend"John Ott— make this" was the starting point of many of
Edison's great inventions. The Otts were more than craftsmen;
they experimented freely and frequently participated in theformative stages of an invention. Their forte was to makemechanical things work, and then make them work a bit better.
Fred Ott's craftsmanship and his rapport with Edison madehim a close associate of the latter. Nicknamed "Santcho
Pantcho," Ott was Edison's chief sidekick and confidant. On thesecond floor of the laboratory, Fred Ott and his precisionIll- 4lathe were only a few steps away from Edison's own room. FredOtt worked with W.K.L. Dickson on the development of the motion
picture camera and has gained immortality as the first face on
film. His status in the laboratory organization can be judged
from the famous picture of the group of workers around theimproved phonograph taken in the summer of 1888. (See
Illustration 3-1, #6164) Ott sits at Edison's right hand, andimmediately behind the inventor are Batchelor and John Ott.
Many of the new employees were college graduates. Edison
was very proud of his college trained experimenters who hadstrong math and science skills. He had first employed these men
during the electric lighting era, and many more were hired towork in the new laboratory at West Orange as Edison graduallyraised the skill level of his laboratory work force. Much has
been made of Edison's anti-intellectualism and his disdain for
theorectical science, yet this did not prevent him from
employing the products of universities and technical schools. A
self taught chemist, Edison probably thought that a college
education was overrated. His comments on the career plans of
Mr. G.C. Yee, a chemical experimenter in the lab in 1920,
reveal this viewpoint: "I cannot understand why he wants toattend college as I find he is really a fine chemist.
Edison's basic objection to employing academics was that they
were not practical men and that he was in the business ofmaking practical innovations.
Many of the formally trained employees at West Orange hadIllustration 3-1
Group Around 1888 PhonographI ll-

5

received their education overseas. Edison had made a practiceof hiring foreigners while operating machine shops in Newark
because these men were highly skilled and did not expect highwages. The majority of the international labor force at West
Orange came from Germany and England. The large German
communities in Newark and New York contained skilled workmen
and college trained professionals, and the number of Germannames on the payroll testifies to their employment at the newlab. The best traditions of German engineering and culture weremaintained at the lab by men like Theodore Wangemann, a skilled
pianist who took charge of the experiments on phonographrecording. The lab was usually in need of trained chemists andwould invariably hire a "good chemist" if one could be found.
Several learned German chemists (called "professor" by the restof the experimental staff) were much in evidence at the lab inits early days, among them were Erwin Von Wilmowski, Dr. Braun,
Dr. Franz Schulzeberge and Dr. Wuntz. When Edison became
frustrated with his chemists's lack of results, he sometimes
swore that he would never again employ foreign chemists; but
the lack of American-born chemists prevented him from carryingout this threat.
The English educational system also produced skilled men
who worked as experimenters, and chief among them was Arthur
Kennelly. Kennelly had also received practical experience
working for the English Society of Telegraphers and hisscientific talents soon made him chief electrician at WestIll- 6

Orange. He was considered to be the most gifted mathematician
at the lab and went on to enjoy a distinguished career as aprofessional engineer and academic.

The factories of Britain

supplied many skilled machinists to the Edison enterprise, but
of more importance were the managers and accountants who ran"the workshop of the world." Edison used several managers ofEnglish descent, including Samuel Insull, Alfred Tate, Hamilton
Miller, and Charles Batchelor.
A large proportion of the formally trained employees atthe lab were foreign-born and educated, yet there were a
growing number of American college graduates working there.
Rutgers College in New Brunswick provided many lab workers:
four in the early days according to David Trumbull Marshall, achemist who worked in the laboratory at that time.-* Reginald
Fessenden and Marshall were typical of the American
experimenters— they were well educated, with some experience
working in industry or higher education. They were young(mostly in mid-twenties when they came to the lab),
upwardly-mobile professionals.
Many of the experimenters at the lab served theirapprenticeship in the Edison electrical companies. The Edison
electric light empire naturally provided an ideal pool oftalent to be drawn upon, not only for experimenters but also
for the experienced administrators Edison needed at West
Orange. The Machine and Lamp Works provided the training
grounds in the basic engineering skills which were thenIll- 7

perfected at the Edison laboratory.^ The Edison Machine Works
kept some of their men at the lab to work on projects in which
they were interested, and they paid the men's wages. The other
Edison electrical companies carried on the same practice,drawing on the laboratory's position as a source of higher
education in the Edison enterprise.
Edison's labor force also included administrators andclerks, notwithstanding his well publicized disdain for officework. In fact, he was a stickler for accurate record keeping,and determined to find the costs of experimentation. These wereno mere academic pursuits. The requirements of patent law madea daily record of experiments a neccessity and financial
backers required breakdowns of experimental costs. In the olddays at Newark and Menlo Park, the administration of thelaboratory had been carried out by Edison's personal secretary
who doubled as bookkeeper, chief clerk, and general assistant.
Samuel Insull had defined the position of private secretary to
Edison and made him a very important person in the hierarchy ofthe laboratory. At West Orange, Edison employed secretaries who
not only carried out bookkeeping duties, but also had power ofattorney to deal with financial affairs. Insull was succeeded
as secretary by a protege, Alfred O.Tate, who became
indispensable to Edison as a business manager and personalsecretary. As well as dealing with all company business, Tatealso handled Edison's voluminous correspondence and his family
affairs. The sheer volume of the work done at West Orange andIll- 8the growing complexity of Edison's personal finances led to anincrease in Tate's staff to include a stenographer (Thomas
Maguire), and a number of boys.
Like every other businessman of his times, Edison usedchild labor in his laboratories. Much of the chaotic atmosphereof the lab was provided by the many youths who worked there.
They performed a variety of very important functions: they did
the fetch-and-carry work, the dirty menial tasks— such as
washing out experimental apparatus— and they operated as theeyes and ears of the lab, carrying messages and materials
around. They were dispatched to obtain everything fromnewspapers to supplies. They guarded the main gate and helped
administer the store rooms. Boys even carried out semi-skilled
clerical work, such as copying letters, typing, and assistingwith the bookkeeping.^ Working conditions were certainly better
than in tanning, mining and metallurgy. Whatever the fairnessof their employ, the children were a vital part of the lab's
operations and communications. They were were often called
lazy, difficult, and boisterous by other workers, but the lab
could not have functioned without them.

Ill- 9MANAGING THE WEST ORANGE WORK FORCE.

Edison was not a newcomer to managing a large labor force
for he had operated large factories in Newark in the 1870s. The
telegraph industry gave him indispensable experience in runninga manufacturing operation, and as he reminded one of his
financial backers "You are aware from your long acquaintancewith me...that the works which I control are well managed...I
know how a shop should be run & also how to select men to
manage them." He found "honest, young, ambitious" men, blended
their skills in his team approach to innovation, and thendelegated administrative power to them in the new industries heC.

created.

By the time he moved to West Orange, Edison had

proved that he could pick good men to work with him. SamuelInsull, Charles Batchelor, and Alfred Tate fully justified the"old man's" faith in them. All were more than capable managers
who would have been an asset to any industrial enterprise. The
London Electrician respected his choices, commenting "We havealways been sure that his business agents were equal if notsuperior to him in ingenuity." ^Edison developed a team approach to innovation which
exploited the diverse skills of his work force. The success of
his method was based on an ability to frame the problem andthen pick the right man for the job. Edison broke eachexperimental project down into its component parts and allottedIII-10teams of men to each part. He often divided an experimental
project into chemical, electrical, and mechanical problems andalloted a specialist to each. He gave each experimenter a brief
overview of the problem and some broad instructions. All theworkers at West Orange knew that the "old man" could assign
three weeks of work in three minutes! In many cases his
personal instructions would be supplemented with a written
document (sometimes a scrap of paper and sometimes in a
notebook) which listed experiments to be carried out. Thissystem was designed to work with all Edison's muckers, who had
different skills and experiences: the written list provided thebasic work plan, but it was constantly being changed andsupplemented through Edison's personal contact with his
workers.
Edison usually gave a task to an experimenter andprovided him with an assistant, while the laboratory supplied
the logistical support and information to do the job. The
machinists, who could be called in from the machine shops,
would divide their time between experimental groups, movingfrom team to team as required. The chief experimenter ran thegroup with the minimum of interference from Edison. He told
Bergmann: "the way to do it is to organize a gang of one goodexperimenter and two or three assistants, appropriate adefinite sum yearly to keep it going...have every patent sentQ

to them and let them experiment continuously."

This is a

succinct summation of the Edison method. It shows his relianceIII-llon information gathering and his concern with coveringexperimental costs.
Edison would regularly tour the lab, stopping in eachroom to check on his experimenter's progress. He used thistechnique in Menlo Park: each afternoon he would tour thelaboratory going to each man at the workbench, questioning him
Qabout what he had done and deciding what to do next. Although
he was easily distracted and often spent too much time on someprojects, Edison's informal approach was generally effective;
it kept him in close touch with his workers and their projects,
and it produced a large number of experiments. Edison knew what
was going on in the laboratory. An extremely observant man withan excellent memory, he never lost track of an experimental
project and could be counted on to remember previous
experiments that might provide useful information.
Edison gave his muckers a great deal of freedom of action
in pursuing their experimental projects; in many cases heguided their research rather than told them exactly what to do.
When Marshall once asked him what to try next, Edison replied:"Don't ask me. If I knew I would try it myself."^ Yet if a
researcher was genuinely stymied by a problem, Edison could be
relied upon to suggest an experiment or new approach. Whenthings were not going right, and the results were notforthcoming, Edison often chose a completely different
approach. The experimenters agreed that their boss could always
think of many different ways of doing things, and one ofIII-12

Edison's great strengths in the laboratory was his ability to
see a problem from many different sides. In his efforts toimprove the power source of the phonograph, for example, hedetailed one man to redesign the motor, another to get astronger charge from the battery, and another to work on the
bearings to reduce friction. Edison's inventive mind could
often see new approaches to old problems. His associates notedthat he had a knack of getting to the important issue of anexperimental project by merely asking questions and from hisquestions would emerge a new direction. In some cases, Edison
would frame an experimenter's work plan by merely giving him alist of questions.
Normal operating procedure at West Orange was for Edison
to switch his employees from job to job, expecting them to not
only to pick up the line of experiments, but also to brief
their replacements. The high morale of the labor force was animportant part of their flexibility, for as Marshall noted "wewere all interested in what we were doing and what the others
were doing. "■*■ One major advantage of the lab's physicalstructure was that it enabled excellent communication between
workers, especially on the second floor of the main building
where the experimental rooms were grouped together. Edison
encouraged comunication between teams; when a particularexperiment went well, he instructed the experimenter "thisanswer is so good that I wish you would expand it a little, as
I want to pass it along to the other boys."^ The physicalIII-13

plant had been designed to be flexible. Rooms could be quickly
reorganized and fitted up, yet much of the flexibility of theoperation depended on how quickly his men changed from job tojob.
When Edison recognized a promising line of investigation,or if he had to mount a rush job, he would quickly marshall his
troops, shifting men from other projects, forming larger teams(but always keeping one leader), and drawing on the large laborpool in the machine shops. A payroll for the machine shop in
1889 bears Edison's notation "give me one (man) for...." ^Thewide range of skills of his labor force, combined with theloose organization, allowed Edison maximum flexibility toutilize labor as the need arose. This was the key to his
strategy of flexibility and speed. He could quickly mass his
men into task forces when a problem needed solution or apromising line of research was identified. When faced with"bugs" in the storage battery, Edison rapidly fitted up tworooms in the lab and put 12 testers to work there "night andday."15

Edison drove his men hard and believed in making themwork as hard, and as long, as he did. He led by example. He
loved his work and was happiest at the experimental table. He
was enthusiastically involved in every major experimental
project in the laboratory and carried out numerous experiments
himself. Edison's long hours and buoyant personality could notIll- 14

have failed to motivate his staff. His high level of enthusiasm
was transferred to his workers, who would also decline sleep
when a project got to a critical point "and enthusiasm ran
16high."
Working all night at the lab was not unusual; Edison
certainly expected it of his experimental staff. His success as
an inventor was partly the result of his ability to get the
maximum effort from his work force, for as he commented: "Thereal measure of success is the number of experiments that canbe crowded into twenty-four hours." 1 7
Edison was a very demanding employer who did not shrink
from telling his men that they were lazy, insisting they workthroughout the night. The hours of storytelling provided some
distraction from the hours of tedious work, yet it was theattractive side of a personality that could also be hostile andunyielding. He liked to keep his experimenters under constantstress, submerging them with work and criticizing theirresults. When he wanted work done, it had to be done
immediately— "on the jump"— or there would be trouble. Some ofhis employees could not stand his dictatorial nature and biting
tongue, and at least one of them quit on the spot afterenduring his relentless verbal hazing. Working for Edison was
not an easy task and he once noted that an employee's departurewas "due perhaps to the conditions here, which are rather
exacting."

The muckers were often set impossible goals andwere always working to a demanding timetable. Some of themsuffered nervous breakdowns, others left in disgust.

Ill- 15

Edison could be a charming man, and he knew how to use
his great personal charisma, especially on newsmen and venture
capitalists. On the other hand, he was feared when he lost his
temper, and his men knew that he "could wither one with his
biting sarcasm or ridicule one into e x t i n c t i o n . E d i s o n let
his men know when he was pleased or displeased with their work,and at any time in the lab some teams were in Edison's
displeasure while some enjoyed his favor. One member of the lab
wrote that some teams were "on the ragged edge" and some were"the favorites." 20 The men all knew the score and strived to bein the enviable position of Edison's favorite experimenter,
especially when displeasure might lead to dismissal. Edison
wanted his experimental teams to be in competition with one
another, believing that this would motivate them to greater
efforts. At one point he reviewed the work on a project andnoted that "there is great rivalry, which seems to be a goodthing all around."

The great competition between

experimenters at the lab, and their powerful ambitions, often
led to feuds between them.
The lab presented a disorganized exterior to the casual
visitor, who usually came away impresssed with the democratic
work style and the lack of formality. Yet there was a hierachy
at the laboratory, and it did motivate and mould the workforce. At the top of the hierachy stood Edison and the pantheonof "the boys"— a position here could lead to fame and fortune.
The lab was full of ambitious young men who saw their future inIll- 16

Edison. Edison commented on the "men around me" that "its not
the money they want, but a chance for their ambition towork."

Success meant more responsibilities and bigger

challenges. As an experimenter moved up the ladder he could
expect larger rewards and bigger projects. For thoseexperimenters who could stand the rigorous work schedule andsurvive Edison's cajoling, teasing, and practical jokes, workat West Orange was exciting and rewarding. Those who pleased
the "old man" were quickly promoted and given more
responsibility. The West Orange laboratory had a complex wage
structure, increases coming with increased skill andresponsibility. In a memo written to Batchelor in 1888, Edisonlisted some workers and instructed that their wages be
increased because "these are good men." 23 Included in this listof fast-rising Edison employees were Fred Ott and Jonas
Aylsworth— two increasingly important figures in the operationsof the lab.
Edison's own life reflected the American belief that hard
work and initiative could take a man from rags to riches andthe democratic organization of his laboratory permitted workers
to rise from being common laborers to chief engineer. Fred
Devonald, newly arrived in the U.S. from Wales, took his firstjob as a laborer at the West Orange lab in 1888. By 1900 he wasin charge of engineering there. Some of the unruly youths who
haunted the lab went on to have distinguished careers in the
Edison enterprise. Fred Ott was 14 when he joined Edison.

Ill- 17

Walter Miller entered the lab as a youth when it opened and hebecame the expert on phonograph recording techniques, rising to
the enviable position of being one of the "boys."
Edison judged, and paid, his men according to theirresults and one mistake was enough for instant dismissal.
Edison was particularly vindictive toward those men who had
failed him, sometimes calling them dumbheads and idiots. Hiscomment about one manager shows a sarcastic tone: "a man who
can do this could not manage a water closet." One employee
concluded: "Some of the men liked him. Many of them feared him.
A few even disliked him."^ On the other hand, Edison's
informal style, his egalitarian nature, and his comradeshipendeared him to many of his workers.
The West Orange lab was a commercial organization thatwas dedicated to the goal of continual, profitable innovation.
When a line of research did not meet with success or the
profitability of the final product came into doubt, Edison did
not hesitate to close it and discharge the workers. In 1889
Edison terminated a project because he thought its work on
finding new insulating materials was not showing results. Someof the team were transferred to ore milling work, and some left
the lab permanently, including Dr. Wuntz and Fessenden.
Fessenden received a good recommendation as a chemical
experimenter and Edison explained his leaving because "his lineof work has come to an end." On the other hand, Edison
concluded that Wuntz was unsuitable for the lab because "I

Ill- 18

can't make his work pay me.”
Edison was notorious for paying his men the lowest
possible wages. There can be no doubt that he capitalized on
his fame and exploited the prestige of the West Orange
laboratory. He knew that working for him was considered an
opportunity and an honor and so he paid accordingly. His
practice of using foreign workers has been interpreted as partof his policy to pay low wages. Edison was concerned withkeeping labor costs as low as possible and getting the most outof his laboratory employees. He wrote in 1917: "the men I use
receive only ordinary workmen's salaries," although he expected
them to work harder than the ordinary worker. 2 6
The wage sheets for 1890 show a wide range of different
wage rates within specializations, for example weekly wages forexperimenters range from $7 to $30. The muckers were paid by
the week and Edison was determined to get the most out of themeven if it meant working all night. Although the leading
experimenters earned, on average, more than the skilledmachinists, there were still plenty of the latter who earned
more than experimenters by putting in long hours. The wage ofthe machinists was set from 20 to 45 cents an hour depending on
their skill. Edison also continued the old machine shop
practice of piecework and subcontracting with machinists. It
was possible for skilled machinists to earn more than $20 aweek— this was more than Aylsworth or Walter Miller received
for their experimental work on wax compounds and recording. The

Ill- 19

blacksmith and draftsman each earned more than Fessenden, who
was a trained experimenter with a broad range of experience.
Craft skills were still in demand at West Orange in 1890 andwere well rewarded. 27
Edison was well aware that the payroll constituted thebulk of the cost of running the lab. The staff of the machine
shops was constantly being trimmed and the number of workers
changed each week as Edison and his managers strove to keep thework force lean. The Edison industries acquired a reputation of
firing workmen when economic conditions turned bad, and at thelower skilled levels of the work force there is a great deal ofturnover indicated in the wage records. Yet at the other end of
the skill ladder, some experimenters and skilled machinists
remained with Edison for long periods of time. Long and closefriends like Fred Ott were given many benefits, including his
house payments, and were supported by the company when they
were old and infirm.
The one thing that motivated the muckers to work andscheme their way up to the enviable status of becoming one ofthe "boys" was the chance to profit from an invention. Edison
often shared the profits with those employees who were
especially useful and who had demonstrated their loyalty tohim. During the electric light period, Edison said that heintended to pay back the "boys" who helped him. This might bein the form of royalties or a percentage on an extremely
profitable invention, or a share in one of Edison's

I ll-

20

manufacturing or marketing enterprises. Men like Batchelor were
amply rewarded with stock, royalties, and a share of the
profits from manufacturing. Samuel Insull used his connection
with Edison to rise to power and wealth in the electricalutility industry. Some of the "boys" were appointed to theboards of Edison companies and enjoyed several salaries, others
were given lucrative concessions to market new inventions.
Working at the West Orange lab was the basic trainingthat many captains of industry, engineers, and academics
enjoyed in the formative days of their careers. Some of
Edison's workers went on to become industrialists and inventors
in their own right. Sigmund Bergmann, for example, used thefortune he amassed in manufacturing Edison equipment to create
an industrial empire in Germany. Many remembered their life andwork at the West Orange laboratory fondly, claiming that Edisontaught them how to experiment and innovate. As Kennelly noted
years after leaving the lab "The privilege which I had of being
with this great man for six years was the greatest inspirationof my life."29

Ill- 21ENDNOTES FOR CHAPTER THREE.
1) TAE annotation on letter from U. of Illinois, 12 Feb 1920, D
box2) C. Withington, Interview with A. E. Kennelly, 19 May
19??— Edison Pioneers, Kennelly folder.
3) David Trumbull Marshall, Recollections of Edison (Boston:Christopher, N. D. ),p. 94.
4) Bergmann to TAE, 3 April 1888, 1888 Phono Gen J-A; Kruesi to
Batchelor, Oct 30 1890, 1889 Electric Light (El It), Ed MachineWks.
5) Macguire to Tate, 19 Nov 1888, 1888 V.0. Lab; Tate memo July 1
1889, 1889 ¥0 Lab general.
6) TAE to J Hood Wright, Nov 1887, N871115; Edison’s comment(about A.0. Tate) is in TAE to Batchelor, 6 April 1887, ¥0 Lab.
7) The Electrician. XXI, 20 July 1888, 330.
8) TAE to Bergmann, Dec 14 1910, LB 101208.
9) F.R. Welles to Dr Jewett, 17 Feb 1932, D10 Telephone.
10) Phonogram, Vol III #2, June 189311) Marshall, p 61
12) Ibid., p. 59.
13) Charles Edgar, "An Appreciation of Mr Edison, Science. Jan 15
1932 vl 75, p. 61.
14) 1889 ¥.0. Lab, employees, machine shop.
15) TAE to Bergmann, 29 Nov 1904, LB 040727, p. 169.
16) Marshall p. 89.
17) "Edison-Organizer or Genius” by Maurice Holland, National
Research Council.
18) TAE to Tate, 1888, Electricity, Gen 1 of 2; N 281101; TAE to
F. Applegate, 26 Dec 1916, LB 160913, p. 606.
19) Marshall, p. 57.

20) Frank to Meadowcroft,21) TAE to Bergmann,

10 Aug 1922, D box bio M.

11 Jan 1905,

1905 Storage Battery.

22) TAE to Vi Hard, "Mr Edison’s Reply to T-H" 23 March 1889,
Vi H a r d Ms 78 Box 63.
23) TAE to Batchelor,

May 1888,

1888 ¥.0.

Lab General.

24) Recollections of Richard G Berger, Beacon Herald. 30 Aug
1937.
25) Edison to Tate, 21 March 1889,

1889 V. 0. Lab, employees.

26) TAE to M D Baker, 30 Aug 1917, laval Consulting Board records(NCB) box 21, Experiments.
27) Some of the few surviving wage records for the laboratory(not the machine shop) are in 1890 Doc file, laboratory payroll.
28) Randolph to TAE, 13 Aug 1895, 1895 ¥.0. Lab Employees; TAE
annotation on letter of 4 Dec 1917: "John Ott is to be paid under
any circumstances, he is in for life," D box bio 029) Interview with A.Kennelly.
file.

by C. ¥ithington,

Edison pioneers

IV- 1CHAPTER FOUR
THE PHONOGRAPH
A CASE STUDY OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

The phonograph played an important part in Edison's
financial plans for the laboratory; it was to be the first
product to come out of the new lab and an immediate source of
operating funds. Edison was depending on the rapid introductionof his improved phonograph to replenish his treasury. The first
great test of Edison's business strategy for his West Orange
laboratory was therefore the phonograph. Edison had to mount a
massive research and development program to bring a "perfected"
phonograph to market. The phonograph might have been Edison's"baby"— his favorite invention— but it proved to be atemperamental and unresponsive machine that stoutly resisted
perfection! The phonograph project required all the speed,
flexibility, and control Edison could muster and it strainedeven the large-scale facilities of West Orange. Edison spentyears of his time and a considerable part of his fortune in his
attempts to introduce a commercial phonograph.
The 1877 tinfoil phonograph was no more than ademonstration model of the idea, a scientific curiosity or anamusing toy as Scientific American had noted.^ It was not aIV- 2commercial product. Edison recalled that only a small number of
tinfoil machines were actually manufactured (many in the shopsof his associate Sigmund Bergmann), and that "no commercial
2
instrument was made."
The "curiosity" market for thephonograph was quickly satisfied and the tinfoil, and thecompany formed to exploit it, languished while Edison worked on
his incandescent lighting system. He believed that thephonograph idea could be turned into a successful product andreturned to this problem after his electrical work wascomplete, giving it his close attention during 1886 when hetoyed with several different designs for a new machine. The
initial experiments were carried out in the temporary
laboratory in the Lamp Works. The major problem was the powersource; the tinfoil phonograph was hand-cranked and required asteady, even turning motion to produce a recognizable sound.
Another source of power had to be found before the phonograph
was a commercial product.
Edison's work on improving the phonograph picked up
momentum when he realized that he faced competition in thisfield. Chichester Bell and Charles Tainter were working on the
Edison tinfoil machine in the Volta Associates laboratory inWashington. They improved it by substituting wax for the
tinfoil on the cylinder. This made the machine more practicalbecause the wax covering of the paper cylinder was more durable
than tinfoil and lasted longer. In 1885 Edison's English
patents on the phonograph lapsed, leaving the field wide openIV- 3on both sides of the Atlantic. They filed for several patents
in 1885 and formed the Volta Graphophone Company the following
year. They had the financial support of Sigmund Bergmann and he
manufactured several of their graphophones. Bell and Tainterexhibited their machine in 1886 and this brought them to theattention of the press and a showdown with Edison.
Representatives of Bell and Tainter visited Edison at his
temporary laboratory and suggested that both parties cometogether to develop and manufacture an improved phonograph.
Edison was offered a very generous financial arrangement: allexperimental costs paid for by the new company, and all capitalrequirements to manufacture the machines to be met, in returnfor a half share in the new enterprise. Normally, Edison would
have jumped at such a proposition, yet he would have none ofit? his competitive instincts were aroused and he feared that
his rivals were going "to deprive me of the honor of the.

invention."

3

Edison could not be persuaded to come to someaccommodation with Bell and Tainter, whom he referred to as"pirates", because he was planning the construction of theultimate competitive weapon— the West Orange laboratory.
Although Bell and Tainter had a considerable lead in developing
a commercial phonograph, Edison refused to work with them,claiming in November 1887: "I have assumed all along that thebusiness was open (to competition), and that with my experienceand facilities I should have an advantage in competition." ^Edison had originally imagined several uses for theIV- 4phonograph: it could be used in schools, courtrooms, andbusiness offices to record and reproduce the human voice. The
Graphophone Company directed their machine at the business user
and Edison followed suit. His strategy was to introduce theimproved phonograph as a business machine to be used forcorrespondence. He had considerable experience in designingbusiness machines: the telephone, typewriter, stock ticker, andelectric pen (mimeograph) had all been put to good use in
American offices, and he expected that the phonograph would
replace the stenographer and make the businessman moreproductive. His business connections, including A.B. Dick, had
shown interest in the phonograph in 1887 and were eager to see
the new machine as soon as it was completed. Edison was
confident that it would become commonplace mthe office.

5

Edison expected that the improved phonograph would be as
easy to use as the telephone and typewriter. Leaving aside theproblems of manufacture and marketing, the conversion from toy
to commercial machine involved fundamental changes in the meansof power, material of cylinder, and method of reproduction. The
latter had to be loud and distinct if the phonograph was tohave a commercial market. The tinfoil itself was not apractical material for an office machine, being fragile anddifficult to handle, and Edison eventually replaced it with a
wax cylinder. The wax of the cylinder had to be hard enough tobear the groove yet soft enough to take the cut. These were theproblems that faced Edison and his staff in 1887.

IV- 5

Edison set out not only to perfect the phonograph, butalso to design it for mass production. This was consistent withhis strategy of controlling both the invention and manufactureof new products at West Orange. It was in the productionengineering of the new machine that Edison felt he had theadvantage over his rivals. He telegrammed his English
representative, Colonel George Gouraud, "Tainter not practicalgman; don't know how to make cheap." ° The phonograph was to be
the first high-tech product manufactured by Edison at his West
Orange facility, and he was confident that the large newlaboratory could solve all the problems encountered in bringing
the improved phonograph to market.
In the summer of 1887 he promised substantial
improvements on the original design and expected to put it on
the market "in a few months."

7

Assisted by Ezra Gilliland, who

had left his job at Bell Telephone's Mechanical Department,
Edison energetically experimented on the phonograph in the fallof 1887. He explained to Henry Villard that they should have
had the phonograph on the market before the end of the year,"but we saw so many things that could be changed to make it
more convenient to the customer" that its introduction was
delayed."8
Edison applied for a patent on his improved phonographshortly before he made the move to his new laboratory, and thephonograph work was quickly transferred from Harrison to West
Orange. The new phonograph unveiled at the laboratory inIV- 6

December 1887 drew heavily on several features patented for the
tinfoil machine. The cylinder was fitted onto one end of themain shaft, and at the other end a lead screw moved thetraveler arm which pushed the reproducer along the cylinder.
The reproducer and recorder diaphragms were mounted together inthe form of a pair of spectacles. A needle in the recorder cut
a groove into the soft wax cylinder and, after recording, thespectacle frame was then turned to bring the reproducer stylus
onto the surface of the cylinder. The fragile reproducer
consisted of a diaphragm made of gold beater's skin (or animal
membrane) which was connected to a curved steel wire serving as
the stylus. Central to the new design was an electric motor
which turned the main shaft by means of bevelled frictiongwheels.
Intensive research and development on the phonographbegan in the new laboratory in 1888 as Edison switched theresources of his lab into the phonograph. Much of the third
floor of the main building was taken up with the continuing
development of the phonograph: a newly hired chemist, Jonas W.
Aylsworth, worked on developing chemical substances for thecylinders; in an adjoining room an English experimenter called
Gladestone tried to improve the output of the battery;
Wangemann experimented on recording music at one end of thefloor, surrounded by a piano, several different phonographs,
and sometimes by a four piece orchestra; and Edison, assistedby the chemist Franz Schulzeberge, applied himself to theIV- 7problems of duplicating cylinders. Edison also grappled withthe problems of sound reproduction. Many different substanceswere tried for the wax cylinder, and new arrangements for therecorder/reproducer were ordered. Edison began his research on
the latter by testing many organic and inorganic materials forthe diaphragm, including ivory, horn, porcelain, rubber,shellac, sheet steel, and carbonized paper. He then looked
closely at the construction of the spectacle frame andattempted to improve the linkages between the needle and thediaphragm in order to increase the loudness of the
reproduction.

The R&D on the phonograph covered manydifferent disciplines— chemistry, physics, electricity, andacoustics— and was a true test of Edison's team approach. There
were many different problems to be solved and many of them
involved close cooperation between the experimental teams. By
the summer, Alfred 0. Tate (Edison's secretary) reported that
Edison was employing about 120 men and had 60 different
experiments going ^ ; the lab was working full out as Edison
concentrated on perfecting the phonograph while otherexperimenters maintained the effort in electricity and ore
milling.
Edison did not direct all his inventive effort into
perfecting the basic phonograph in 1888, but instead
diversified the research work to cover many commercial uses ofthe phonograph. He wrote to his lawyer, Richard N. Dyer, that
he had many other ideas worth patenting in addition to theIV- 8perfected phonograph: a toy phonograph for use in talking
dolls, coin-in-the-slot amusement phonographs, and improvements
in phonograms, clockwork and hand-turning phonographs. He also
experimented freely on the basic configuration of thephonograph, designing several disc phonographs including one
with an articulated recorder/reproducer assembly.

One of themost important experimental projects connected with thephonograph was begun in 1888 when Edison filed a caveat (apreliminary outline of an intended patent application) to cover
the duplication of cylinders. This involved covering a masterrecord with a conductive coating (gold leaf) and electroplating
it to form a matrix, which was then used to make copies.
The laboratory was not only used as the base for the R&D
effort; its growing fame generated publicity for thephonograph, and attracted venture capital to support theruinous cost of R&D. Potential investors and customers wereinvited to the lab, where the third floor had been turned into
an exhibition hall to demonstrate the phonograph. In the springof 1888 a group of prominent bankers and investors were invited
to the laboratory to see the "perfected" phonograph. The group
was led by Jesse Seligman, senior partner in the banking houseof J & W Seligman. Unfortunately, the phonograph refused towork for the distinguished guests and Edison lost a golden
opportunity to finance the development and manufacture of themachine.

Some time later a special model was constructed andthen demonstrated at the Seligman house, with better results.

IV- 9Financial salvation was finally found in the form ofJesse Lippincott, a venture capitalist with his eye on aphonograph monopoly. After purchasing the American Graphophone
Company (the successor of Bell and Tainter's Volta Company),
Lippincott set out to acquire the Edison Company, paying$500,000 for Edison's interest in September 1888. ^The latterurgently needed the capital supplied by Lippincott; the costsof developing the phonograph were growing rapidly, and by
September 1888 he estimated that he had $67,000 of his own
money in phonograph experiments.

Lippincott's neworganization was named the North American Phonograph Company
and its goal was to produce a commercial dictating machine tobe leased to businesses. It franchised local companies tomarket, lease, and service machines and alloted each company an
exclusive sales area. Each customer could chose between
Edison's phonograph and the graphophone which Taintermanufactured in a factory in Bridgeport, Conn. Edison must havebeen confident that he could remedy all the faults of his
existing machine because he began to prepare for mass
production in the summer of 1888. He had established a small
shop in Bloomfield in 1887, and although it was working at full
capacity during that summer, its production of component parts
could not support the ambitious plans of the North American
Company. Consequently, a larger facility was planned at West
Orange with a target output of 200 machines a day, made by 500
1
employees.

IV-10The Edison Phonograph Works was deliberately sited next
to the laboratory so that Edison could manage production. Herewas his strategy of control at work— Edison had only to stepoutside Building 5 and walk a few yards to be in the Works. He
intended to oversee all elements of its work and monitor every
aspect of manufacture. This was considered extremely important
to its success: Alfred Tate noted that all the manufacturing
operations had to be located as close to the lab as possible inorder to benefit from Edison's personal supervision. 17 While
the factories were being built, phonograph manufacture was donein the laboratory's machine shops which turned out small
batches of phonographs under contract to the North American
Phonograph Company. The manufacture and assembly of thedelicate diaphragms was also done in the precision machine shopof the lab, and this probably continued after the PhonographWorks took over full-scale production.
Edison planned a large output using interchangeableparts, and claimed that much of the estimated $1,000,000
expended on the Works went into special task machinery. The
account records of January 1889 show an outlay of around$250,000 to establish the Phonograph Works, including $65,000
on machinery and tools, and $20,000 on "special" phonographtools. Edison had always intended to manufacture phonographs
using interchangeable parts, stating in 1878 that "this machine
can only be built on the American principle ofinterchangeability of parts like a gun or sewing machine." TheIV-11

newspapers were told in 1888 that the proprietors "rely upon
their special methods of production rather than their patents;
they can manufacture much cheaper than any competitor."
Charles Batchelor had begun the enormous task of designing thetools at the temporary lab in Harrison, and throughout 1888 hejoined Edison in laying out the factory and training the men.
The design of tools and the perfection of commercial processes
was done in the laboratory; much of the machinery used to makephonographs and cylinders was set up1and first operated in thelaboratory, and then transferred to the Phonograph Works. ^The factory started to produce phonograph parts in the fall of1888, but by late November the superintendent estimated that,at best, daily output would reach only 10 per day. 20
The plan to standardize the parts of the phonograph not
only facilitated mass production but also permitted constantdevelopment of the design. Edison hoped that eachinterchangeable part could be taken out, improved, and put
back. He wanted a design based on discrete, replaceable
sub-assemblies "so that I can keep on improving."

This was awise move because most of 1888 was spent on constantly changing
the design of the phonograph. Edison kept hold of the prototype
and delayed delivering sub-assemblies to the Works while thelaboratory staff worked on eliminating "bugs"— the defects andminor design problems that caused malfunctions.

T

Illustration 4-1
1888 Phonograph in Use

IV-12

PERFECTING THE PHONOGRAPH

In the summer of 1888 a now famous photograph of Edison
appeared in the press showing the exhausted inventor (in asomewhat Napoleonic pose) with the new phonograph.(Illus. 3-1,
#6164, Chapter Three) This device was the result of the firstexperimental campaign of the West Orange laboratory. Althoughintroduced as the "perfected phonograph," the machine was far
from perfect. Its design shows that Edison had considered thecommercial aspects of the phonograph for it now came in acompact form and was fully enclosed in a wooden box. The design
owed a lot to the telegraph equipment Edison had once
manufactured— its precise electro-mechanical works were mounted
on a metal casting that served as a base plate, easy to accessand adjust. The mechanism was more sturdy, and the motor andgovernor had been redesigned to provide constant speed. (Illus
4-1) Yet the right composition of the wax cylinder, as well as
the best arrangement of reproducer and recorder, still eluded
the experimenters at West Orange.
This first prototype of the "perfected" phonograph went
to England with Gouraud immediately after the photograph wastaken. This event should have marked the end of the phonographcampaign and the beginning of the ore milling venture, but
Edison made the ore milling syndicate wait while he continued

IV-13work on the phonograph. Tate assured them in September 1888that the machine was at last perfected and out of theinventor's hands, but in reality the phonograph still absorbed
his attention.

(Edison promised Lippincott that he would

devote more of his time to the phonograph in 1889.) The
reproduction of sound was his major concern— he aimed atclearer articulation, louder reproduction, and easier
manipulation of the spectacle frame. The expenditure on
development rose rapidly in the last half of 1888 as several
experimenters in the laboratory worked to eliminate the "bugs"in the phonograph. The wax composition of the cylinders was
hardened to improve recording and permit a finer cut. The motor
was redesigned to increase power while requiring less current.
Finally, the main shaft and the bearings were improved toeliminate the "wobble" that ruined reproduction. By October
Edison was sure that he had finally perfected the instrument
and wired Gouraud that he would "drop dead" when he saw the.
23
improvements that had been made.
Nevertheless, the frantic
activity continued into December and Edison was so overburdenedwith work that he had to suspend the exhibitions and interviewsin the laboratory which were vital for the marketing of themachine. In fact, the marketing went better than the"perfecting"; the lab was flooded with inquiries about thephonograph and the newspapers were full of articles about thewonderful new machine.
The extensive R&D work on the phonograph failed toIV-14

produce a commercial product in 1888; the other phonographproject of the Edison laboratory, the Talking Doll, was plagued
with design and production difficulties which delayed its
introduction. The toy doll was the first attempt to market thephonograph invention; experiments were begun at Menlo Park andcontinued at the West Orange laboratory as soon as it opened in
December 1887. ^(Illus 4-2, Doll Advert.) Charles Batchelor,the father of two girls, took a special interest in the doll
experiments, developing a small phonograph mechanism andfitting it into a doll that was less than two feet high. One
important design criterion for the doll was cost— as usual
Edison was eyeing a mass market— and an experimental project
was soon begun on a "smaller cheap doll phono". A group ofbusinessmen from Boston established the Edison Toy Doll Company
in 1889 to market the doll and support the cost of its
development. Edison and Batchelor received stock in the company
in return for their inventive efforts and the costs of theirexperiments were billed to the company in Boston. Edison
patented his first doll phonograph in the summer of 1889, but
it was not until the end of the year that the laboratory began
to design tools and prepare for manufacture. 25
While cautious minds might have had reservations about
the reliability of a small doll mechanism, Edison was confident
that he could produce a working doll phonograph and even madeambitious plans to manufacture 500 a day in the PhonographWorks. There was nothing wrong in the marketing strategy; theI l l u s t r a t i o n 4-2

The Talking DollIV-15talking doll proved to be a popular toy and orders soon
outstripped supply. The problem lay in the design of the small
phonograph movement inside the dolls. The fragile needle
assembly would not stay in the fine groove of the wax recordand consequently most of the dolls failed to work properly,
steadfastly refusing to talk for their new owners. One dealer
reported that 188 dolls were returned out of 200 sold. 26
Despite the strenuous efforts of the laboratory, the talking
doll could not be made to work. This was an important project
for Edison's manufacturing strategy for half the capacity of
the Phonograph Works was devoted to dolls by 1890. Yetcontinual failure in the engineering effort led to theabandonment of the venture by the end of the year, manufacture
ceased, and Edison dissassociated himself from the Talking Doll
Company.
The toy doll was too complex a device to ensure the levelof reliability required in a commercial product. Reliability
was also the chief problem with the business phonograph. The
feedback coming back to the laboratory indicated that thephonograph was still too delicate for office use; its operation
required a level of precision and manual dexterity that cameeasily to the hands of a trained telegrapher, but was usuallylacking in the average business. The recorder/reproducer
assembly had to be handled carefully and lowering it onto thecylinder needed a deft touch to avoid damaging both assemblyand cylinder. Frequently, a phonograph that worked perfectly inIV-16the factory would grind to a halt after a few days of operation
for the machine demanded continual adjustment or it would break
down. The phonograph mechanism turned out to be highly
sensitive to dirt, and it was quickly discovered that shavings
from the wax cylinder fell onto the machine and gummed up theworks. The machine could not absorb the shocks oftransportation and often broke down after being shipped.
Similar problems occurred with the toy doll mechanisms— thedolls would "talk" perfectly when tested in the laboratory but
would be out of order and useless by the time they got to thecustomer.
The laboratory staff worked feverishly through 1888 and1889 to remedy the growing list of operating problems with thephonograph. A member of an experimental team remembered thatthey worked "night and day" during this time. One documentshows that during one experimental campaign in 1888, over 40changes and improvements were carried out, ranging fromchanging the number of threads on the cylinder to moving thelocation of small screws; many of the small design changes madethe machine easier and cheaper to manufacture.

The laboratory

staff were finding out that mass production of a complex
product needed attention to detail. They were locked into acycle of innovation: product development, manufacture,marketing, feedback, and then more development— the phonographhad to be continually redesigned to eliminate its "bugs."
Edison acknowledged in May 1889 that there were stillIV-17

defects in his phonograph but they were being remedied "as fastas human flesh can stand it."

Many of the mechanical defectsof the machine had been eliminated, but there still remained
two more important problems to be solved: the power source andthe wax of the cylinder. The former produced a constant flow ofcomplaints; the battery and electric motor combination weretotally unsuitable for office use since the battery was
unreliable and expensive. One alternative to this format was anelectric motor powered by current from electric lighting
circuits. The major design consideration of this type of motor
was constant speed because the slightest variation in speed
distorted sound reproduction. This problem defied solution in
the 1880s. The laboratory staff developed several alternate
methods of running the machine, including spring motors, andamong the different designs actually manufactured in the 1890s
was a treadle-driven model and a water-powered phonograph. 29
As each power source alternative was tried and foundwanting, Edison intensified his efforts on the battery andelectric motor format. The primary battery then in use was anelectro-chemical cell which required replacement of thechemicals once the electricity was discharged. He had to get
more power from the primary batteries in use because theircharge ran down very quickly and presented the user with an
expensive and messy replacement process. This problem started
Edison on a series of researches which eventually led to thecreation of a new primary battery.

IV-18The wax cylinder was a critical part of the phonographand it caused many of the operating problems. One of the firstbusiness users of the perfected phonograph was Edison's
secretary Tate. He found that some of the chemicals in the wax
cylinder tarnished the metal stylus of the recorder andrendered the machine useless. 30 The composition of the wax was
the speciality of Dr. Jonas Aylsworth, an industrial chemist.
During 1888 Aylsworth labored on mixing, heating, and testing
hundreds of wax compounds. He tried every conceivablecombination of oils and fats to find a hard substance thatwould take and hold the impression from the phopnograph stylus.
The smallest imperfection or bubble in the compound— invisible
to the eye— caused a crackle that could be distinctly heard as
the record played.
As more phonographs were put to use, more "bugs" emerged
and even the brushes of the electric motor version had to beredesigned to avoid damage by "ignorant people" who turned thecylinder backwards. The number of adjustments of therecorder/reproducer assembly was reduced, yet the complaints
about the difficulties of operation continued.

No amount of

R&D in the West Orange laboratory could defuse the major
criticism of poor reproduction. One user described the
reproduction of the phonograph as "but a parody of the humanvoice" that required "careful adjustment by a practised hand"to be understood.

Each subsequent model of the phonograph had

better reproduction and was more rugged. It was slowly gainingIV-19acceptance in business offices, yet not enough to warrant thelarge-scale production that Edison planned in 1887. Full scale
production of machines did not begin until the spring of 1889
and by June only 1200 had been completed. In August 1889 thePhonograph Works produced 708 machines, and received orders for
only 217 phonographs. During the sales period of December, 991
oophonographs were ordered and 753 were made.
The Works
average daily output was probably less than 50— much less thanthe original production target of 200 a day!
Edison had been highly optimistic in his plans to set up
mass production of phonographs at West Orange. The "Americansystem" of manufacture with interchangeable parts was easier
said than done. Edison admitted later that "so calledinterchangeable parts have to be adjusted in place." ^It wasnaive to even consider mass production when the prototype wasbeing continually redesigned. Mass production at West Orange
turned into a continual process of adjustment in manufacture.
The laboratory served as the conduit for information about
production (and the product) and it made the required changes
in the design of the product and the process of manufacturing
it. The laboratory staff were charged with productionengineering. In 1889, Batchelor and J.E. English, the Works
manager, labored to improve production methods: changing
operations, laying out the machines in a more logical sequence,and redesigning tools. An essential part of organizing
production was hiring and training the right personnel for theIV-20job, from tool-maker to factory manager. The phonograph was acomplicated product and it took a long time to train the workforce; many of the delays were caused by "breaking in" newmen.^^The laboratory provided the testing that was essential tomaintain quality. The sub-assemblies and completed units werechecked on the third floor of the laboratory by skilled staff
who knew the standard that Edison wanted for reproduction. Even
when inspectors were employed in the Works, it was the lab
staff who had the last word on the sound of the machines. The
increased attention given to quality control was considered to
be well worth the time and expense; as Tate wrote to Edison in
1892: "I am satisfied that had you been less rigid in yourmethods of inspecting phonograph parts, the North American
Company would have big claims on us today." These efforts
nevertheless failed to prevent some costly recalls ofphonographs back to West Orange. 36
Although sales of business machines were very
disappointing, a growing demand for amusement phonographs kept
Edison's hopes, and the finances of the North American
Phonograph Company, alive. The entertainment value of thephonograph had been first demonstrated by the showmen who
attracted crowds to listen to the machine and pay for theprivilege. Penny arcades were set up by small businessmen tosell this form of entertainment on a larger scale. Edison
responded to this market by developing a coin-operated machineIV-21

which was soon manufactured at West Orange. (Illus. 4-3, #9218)
The coin-in-the slot phonograph was highly successful: it
attracted attention, increased user familiarity with themachine, and maintained a steady level of sales which provided
much needed work for the laboratory.
Edison's commitment to the single-user business market inhis 1887-1889 patents is shown in his emphasis on speaking andlistening tubes rather than horns which provided a means of
acoustic amplification.

Yet as soon as the feedback from thelocal companies indicated that there was a market for anamusement phonograph, Edison began to consider the design of aphonograph for entertainment use in the home. This included
designing a wooden cabinet for the machine and developing arecorder/reproducer assembly suitable for music. The work on
the latter was a vital part of the evolution of an amusement
phonograph. Edison applied for a patent in November 1889 which
incorporated many of the improvements made during that busy
year. The spectacle with two diaphragms was replaced by asingle dual purpose recorder/reproducer. It also featured an
improved start/stop control and shaver mechanism which removed
the groove from the cylinder, enabling more than one recording
to be made. The late 1889 model phonograph had one holder to be
used for either the reproducer or recorder instead of thespectacle arrangement. Now the laboratory staff could design
reproducers and recorders of different weight which gave them
the flexibility to improve the reproducer. The reproduction ofIllustration 4-3

Phonograph ManufactureIV-22music (rather than the voice alone) demanded more sensitivity
and more volume from the diaphragm. These were conflicting
goals while the spectacle format was used with the soft soap
wax cylinders— the heavier the weight of the reproducer thegreater the volume, but heavier tracking pressure marredfidelty and damaged the wax surface. Moving to a separate
device for recording and reproducing functions opened the way
for better sound recreation. 38
The musical phonograph was not only a different machinefrom the business phonograph, it also needed a supply of
prerecorded cylinders to augment the musical recordings made in
the home. To provide these recordings, part of the top floor of
the laboratory was converted into a recording studio. The
functions of this "Music Room" ranged from experiments onrecording techniques to providing musical cylinders to theNorth American Phonograph Company. (Illus 4-4, Music Room,
29.430, #7058.) These would then be sold to businessmen who
were using the phonographs in arcades. A cheap method of
duplicating these recordings had to be found before theamusement phonograph had a commercial future. The only way to
duplicate recordings on cylinders was either to make the artist
repeat the performance several times or copy the cut on thecylinder by a pantograph process. These two options were
expensive, time consuming, and produced poor quality
recordings. Edison recognized the great profit opportunity inmass producing recorded cylinders and set about finding a cheap

J

Illustration 4-4
The Music Room

IV-23

method of making duplicates.
The development of a commercial phonograph technology had
been an expensive and time consuming task and it had notachieved the success that Edison had forecast in 1887. His planto perfect the instrument and then move into mass production in
the space of a year was wildly unrealistic. Even today, 12months to equip a new factory and start up production would beconsidered incredibly fast. Edison wanted his laboratory toinnovate with speed and flexibilty and it had done so, but the
sheer number of problems in developing the phonograph had
swamped its resources. "The amount of work to get phono out has
been stupendous" Edison wrote in May 1889

, and it wasreflected in the enormous number of phonograph patents heobtained: 31 in 1888, 22 in 1889, and 22 in 1890. The enormous
cost of R&D had not produced a commercial product and hadruined Edison's plans to industrialize the Orange Valley. The
business phonograph had failed to become a staple in every
American office, as Edison had hoped in 1886. The failure of
perfecting the phonograph forced the West Orange laboratory
into more profitable fields.

IV-24EHDHOTES FOE CHAPTEE FOUE
1) ’’The Hew Edison Phonograph,” Scientific American LVII (Dec
31 1887), p. 415.
2) TAE to (EHJ) handwritten memo undated, 1888 Phono General.
3) Ibid. & Tate, Edison’s Open Door, p. 135-7.
4) TAE to (Gouraud?), 22 Hov 1887, 1887 Phono General.
5) A.B. Dick to TAE, 23 July 1887, Phono Gen; Scientific
American LVII <29 Oct 1887), 273.
6) TAE to Gouraud, 1 October 1888, 1888 Phono General.
7) TAE to G.H. Gould, LB 870621, p. 24, 21 July 1887.
8) TAE to Villard, 19 Jan 1888, Villard Papers, Harvard
Business School, MS 78, box 63.
9) Scientific American LVII <31 Dec 1887), 422; patent analysis
by Mark E. Ham, ’’Edison and the Phonograph,” 19 May 1986.
10) Lab notebook H 880601.1.
11) Tate to Mack, 1888 Electric Light General, July 1888 .
12) List of experiments, 1888 Phono General May-June; Drawingof ’’plate phono,” 1 Oct 1888, H88001.
13) Tate, Open Door, pp 152-156.
14) Agreements in 1888 Phono agreements, 1888 Phono general;
Edison had attempted to revive the old phonograph company byoffering to exchange one third of the stock of a new company
for the interest of the old shareholders. They refused andEdison formed the new Edison Phonograph Company without them in
December 1887. The right to manufacture phonographs was given
to the Edison Phonograph Works.
15) Gilliland extracted a large commission out of Lippincott on
the understanding that Gilliland would sell Edison’s interest
to Lippincott for half its worth. Once he got the money from
Lippincott, Gilliland then fled the country. This story is told
in Tate, Conot, and Josephson. Edison’s faith in the ’’boys” wasshaken, see TAE to <E.H.Johnson) handwritten memo undated, 1888
Phono General.
16) TAE to A. Lawson, 22 May 1888, 1888 Phono Gen May to June.

17) Tate to A Wright, Feb 16 1888, Phono Gen Jan to Apr.
18) Account sheet, 1 Jan 1889, 1889 Phono General; TAE to G.S.
Notage on 23 Mar 1878: ."Cited in D. Hounshell, "From theAmerican System to Mass Production (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins,
1984), p. 333; London Daily Telegraph. 9 Mov 1888, 1888 Phono
Gen.
19) Tate to Lippincott, 2 Nov 1888, LB 870621, p. 394.
20) F.W. Toppan to Lippincott, 24 Oct 1888, 1888 Phono
General.
21) TAE to G. Gouraud, 30 May 1889, LB 890521, p. 170.
22) Tate to Dyer, 7 Sept 1888, Phono Gen23) TAE to Gouraud, 1 Oct 1888, Phono Gen.
24) List of experiments dated 30 Dec 1887, 1887 Phono Gen.
25) TAE to P.S. Dyer, 17 May 1889, LB 890408, pp. 434-5.
26) "A boom that collapsed," Philadelphia Times. 2 Jan 1891,
1891 Phono, Talking doll.
27) Louis Glass to TAE, 6 July 1910, 1910 Personal friends;"Mew Model" List, 1888 Phono Gen.
28) TAE to Batchelor, 7 May 1889, LB 890408, p. 325.
29) Phonogram. V2 # 12, Dec 1892, p.274.
30) Tate, Open Door, pp. 161-162; N 880823, Aylsworth*s
notebook. The composition of the wax cylinders was based on a
mixture of stearic acid and its salt, sodium stearate, which isused in soaps. The acid in the compound reacted with the metalof the stylus to create the oxidization problem referred to by
Tate. A further problem was cracking caused by low
temperatures. Byron Vanderbilt, Edison the Chemist (Washington,
D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1971), pp. 121-124.
31) Caveat for improvements in phonographs, 21 July 1890, 1890
Phono, caveats; J.A. Beecher to TAE, Nov 1 1889, Phono General;
Electrical World. 28 Sept 1889.
32) T.C. Hepworth "The Phonograph," in The Technical Educator.
1890, 154-156
33) Batchelor Diary, 1337 p.582.

i y-26

34) Scientific American. LXII <26 April 1890), 263; Annot on G
Morrison to TAE, 1 July 1895. phono Ed United Co .
35) Scientific American, LXII <26 April 1890), 263; Tate to
Lippincott, 17 Mov 1888, LB 870621, p. 394.
36) Tate to TAE, 29 July 1892, 1892 ¥0 Lab Business Conditions;Tate, Open door, pp. 247-248.
37) Mark Ham, "Edison and the Phonograph," p. 17.
38) Edison’s handwritten notes on phonograph development foundin U 880103 and dated from 1890, 1890 Phonograph.
39) TAE to Batchelor, 7 May 1889 LB 890408, p. 325.

V- 1

CHAPTER FIVE
"A POWERFUL INCENTIVE"EDISON'S LABORATORY AND THE ELECTRICAL INDUSTRY

The great experimental campaigns to perfect thephonograph went unnoticed as the public continued to associate
Edison's laboratory with electricity. Edison's fortune, and his
financial future, were dependent on the success of thephonograph but it was electricity which kept the laboratory in
the public eye. A period of intense competition and rapid
growth focused attention on the most dynamic new industry of
the Second Industrial Revolution. Edison once said that heneeded an incentive to invent: in 1887 he had the opportunity
to pit his inventive powers, and his great new laboratory, withthe best of his contemporaries.(Illus 5-1, Edison laboratory in
the 1890s.)
The Edison electrical companies made the most of their
special relationship with Edison and the prestige of thelargest industrial research center in the United States. The
Edison Electric Light Company naturally stressed thetechnological advantage it possessed in Edison and hislaboratory, and used it as a selling point to market its
franchises. Deputations from potential customers were given a

Illustration 5-1
The Laboratory in the 1890s

V- 2tour of the facilities "for the sole purpose of impressing uponthem that whatever improvements are made in the Edison systemthat their company will receive them at any future time." ^ Its
successor, the Edison General Electric Company, also emphasized
the importance of the technological resources it possessed. Its
prospectus of 1889 stressed the links between Edison'slaboratory and the technical staff of the Siemens & Halske
Company (the holders of Edison lighting patents in Germany),
and claimed that "the regular exchange of laboratory andmanufacturing experience" gave the new company "a vastadvantage not heretofore possessed."

The West Orange

laboratory stood at the center of a technology that had spreadout on both sides of the Atlantic.
Edison's electrical research at West Orange had two basic
goals: improvement of the system through research anddevelopment, and engineering aimed at lowering the costs ofgenerating electricity. Edison dreamed of a time when electric
lighting would be universally used and knew that the price ofthe light had to come down before it appealed to mass markets.
Edison had no illusions about the competitive nature of theelectrical industry and saw increased economy as the means todominate the market. In a letter to a central station manager,
Edison elaborated his mission of cutting the costs of electric
lighting:
Try everything you can towards economy. No one issafe in this cold commercial world that can't produce
as low as his greatest competitor. No matter how muchmoney you are making never for an instant let up on

V- 3

• •
3
economizing.
Guided by this philosophy, Edison wanted his laboratory
to be the driving force in reducing the costs in the electricalindustry. This role was reaffirmed by the laboratory contractof 1889 with the Edison General Electric Company: "thegen(era)l company recognizes the importance of further
perfecting and cheapening the manufacture, installation,
maintenance of the electric light system." ^Edison's system thinking was probably always centered on
improving the bulb— making it burn brighter and last longer.
The results achieved along these lines by the lab illustrate
the importance of its work to the Edison Illuminatingcompanies. The bulbs manufactured by the Edison Lamp Workscsuffered from poor reliability and a short life. One of the
major problems was the blackening of the inside of the bulb by
a carbon deposit which led to a loss of candle power. Edison
had come upon the "Edison Effect" while working on thisproblem, and his discovery of this phenomenon earned him thetitle of "Father of the Electronics Industry." Yet he had
little time to investigate the potential of the "Edison Effect"
because he was continually at work on the incandescent lamp. In
1886 he produced an improved lamp with a high resistancefilament that saved on the copper content of the conductors andlowered the output load of the central stations. This small
improvement was instrumental in lower production costs, lower
prices, greater sales volume, and more profits. When the newV- 4bulb was incorporated into the larger lighting systems it wasCestimated to increase return on capital from 18.6% to 34.6%.
Several pages of computations in Edison's hand reveal his
strategy of increasing output and continually cutting unit
costs of each incandescent lamp.

Here was the mind of thefactory manager at work.
The market for lamps was extremely crowded and the highprice of the Edison lamp was a disadvantage in making sales.
Continual decrease in price and improvement in performance wastherefore necessary to stay competitive with the many cheaper
lamps on the market. Edison made this a priority of his West
Orange laboratory. Edison's commitment to lowering the cost of
making bulbs covered manufacture as well as design. He gave
this problem a great deal of attention at the Harrison Works ofthe Edison Lamp company before he moved his experimental baseto West Orange and continued work there. One of the first jobs
he gave to Fred Ott in the new laboratory was to construct a
machine to test the carbonizing properties of several hundred
substances at once.

Q

Edison developed a method of mass

producing filaments by squirting cellulose through a die "likemacaroni," and applied for a patent in 1888.

Q

He believed that he had a real talent to find ways of
cutting costs and no part of the system was too small to merit
the great man's attention. In 1889 he asked to be sent rejectlamps from the factory because, "I want to experiment to see
how money can be saved" by lowering the number of rejectedV- 5

l a m p s . T h e Edison lighting companies continually asked theparent organization for a cheaper lamp with better performance.
Their complaints and pleas for more innovation were referred to
the laboratory. One important line of experiments was basic
research on new materials for filaments and new types of lamps.
Edison had begun research on fluorescent lamps as early as
1888, experimenting with layers of fluorescent substances inhigh vacuums. ^The development of the incandescent bulb wasan important part of the laboratory's electrical work and it
continued into the twentieth century.
Edison's financial interest in electrical manufacturing
was an additional motivation to experiment on lowering the costof production. The business of the electrical equipment
suppliers began to increase rapidly in the late 1880s andtherefore each cost reduction was multiplied by the growing
output of the manufacturing shops. The Edison Pearl Street
system had been in operation for five years when the West
Orange laboratory opened. When he began to design the system in
1881, Edison was more concerned with trying to make it work
rather than economize on the manufacture of its component
parts. The operational experience gained in operating the firstpioneer central stations (based on the Pearl Street station),
coupled with the rapid advance of electrical knowledge, offered
many opportunities to improve the first generation ofelectrical supply systems. The second wave of electricalengineering, which began at the West Orange laboratory,V- 6concentrated on redesigning each component part of this system,from socket to central station generator, for greater
efficiency and economy. Edison confided to Henry Villard in1889 that the price of "all electric lighting machinery isentirely too high now." 12 The West Orange facility was todevelop cheaper and more efficient technology to enable thesupply systems to move into the next stage of electricaldevelopments mass distribution of very cheap electricity.
The growing competition in electric lighting was reason
enough to concentrate on reducing the costs of generation. The
new entrants in the electrical industry had made the central
station business much more competitive; in the beginning there
had only been the Edison system, but by 1888 there were several
other systems available. Edison had begun work on an entirely
new design of a central station dynamo to reduce its production
costs and therefore lower its price. In 1888 much more was
known about the properties of electromagnetic circuits and thisnew knowledge enabled electrical engineers to break away fromthe basic Edison design of two magnetic poles and develop
bigger, and better, electrical generators. The large size ofthe dynamo meant that R&D and testing had to be carried out ona large scale and this greatly added to the cost of developingit: "This was a very difficult problem but owing to the greatcompetition it was thought necessary to meet the same." 13
The Edison electric light companies had progressed fromlearning how to operate the system to increasing the size ofV- 7

their installations to take advantage of the economies ofscale. They had used the technology developed at the PearlStreet station to establish utility companies. This system had
proved its technological feasibility but not its commercial
worth; a return on the large initial investment could only comewith increased revenues— the profits lay in extending thesystem to serve more customers. The Edison Illuminating Company
of New York was typical of the Edison companies— in 1886 it was
enjoying a steady increase in earnings but saw its future insupplying more customers with power and light. The company was
inundated with requests for service from customers uptown (fromthe Pearl Street station), but was unable to supply current tomeet demand. This was a barrier to the growth of both theIlluminating Company and the electrical manufacturers; thedemand for lamps, motors, and fittings would not begin until
14
electricity was available uptown.
The West Orange laboratory developed the technology tomake this important transition from experimental prototype to a
fully developed commercial system. Although the new central
station dynamo had initially been designed to reduce
manufacturing costs, it soon filled the need to equip thesecond wave of larger central stations, which aimed at muchgreater output for many more customers. Larger prime movers
were being introduced into power stations and the newmultipolar dynamo was found to have twice as much output perpound weight than any other comparable dynamo. 15 This very

V- 8expensive research project had produced a vital part of thelarger supply systems of the 1890s.
Most attention was on the production of electricity andit was not until the end of the 1880s that the importance ofelectrical measurement was appreciated. Precise electricalmeasurement was the starting point of the new art of creating a
profitable load and controlling costs of generating
electricity. This was the priority of Edison central stationsin the 1880s. When a committee met to discuss some generalengineering problems confronting the Edison companies in 1888,
the first three items on the agenda were pressure meters,
feeded equalizers (in distribution systems), and ampere meters.
16
The electric lighting industry urgently required bettermeasuring instruments to monitor output and Edison's laboratory
quickly produced an improved pressure meter for central stationuse. The staff of the galvanometer room (Building 1)
continually monitored the performance of measuring equipmentused in Edison central stations and led the way intechnological development of electricity measurement.(Illus
5-2, Galvanometer Room by Dickson.)At the user's end of the system, the electric meter was
subject to numerous complaints about its poor accuracy andfrequent breakdowns. Edison had first designed anelectrochemical meter to be used in his electric lighting
system. This probably worked well enough in the laboratory, but
proved to be ineffectual under normal operating conditions— itIllustration 5-2
The Galvanometer RoomV- 9

was cumbersome, expensive to maintain, and often highly
inaccurate. 17 The electric meter can hardly have been a major
consideration in the overall design of an electrical system,
but when the Edison companies set about selling electricity fora profit they found that an easily maintained, accurate meter
was vital.
The growth of new electrical knowledge, especially inelectromagnetism, offered new solutions to the problems of
measuring electrical energy. Advances in the manufacture ofsmall springs and magnetic materials made an electromagnetic
meter possible in the late 1880s. A great many experiments onmetering electricity were carried out at the West Orange lab by
Edison and the chief electrician, Arthur Kennelly. They
produced several new designs which were patented andintroduced, including weight-and-beam and electromagnetic
meters. The Edison laboratory was soon involved in a race tointroduce a new electromagnetic meter before its rivals in theelectric lighting industry, who had also appreciated the valueof an improved meter. The Thomson-Houston Company, a major
competitor to the Edison companies, had produced a successful
meter in 1889 and the West Orange lab spent 1890 racing tobring out Edison's mechanical meter before the Thomson-Houston
meter achieved widespread adoption within the Edison system.1®
The lab continued to work on meters until well into thetwentieth century, and Edison and his staff gained many more
patents for electric meters. 19

V-10

The main technological problem to be solved before thesecond generation of electrical technology could begin was thecost of the supply network. Consequently, one of the mostimportant, and pressing, R&D campaigns of the West Orange
laboratory was directed at lowering the costs of distributing
electricity over larger areas. A note from Edison to Edward H.
Johnson (President of the Edison Electric Light Company) in
November 1887 shows that the earliest electrical concern of the
new laboratory was the development of technology "useful forbringing m

power at a distance."

The Pearl Street system of1882 had been based on low voltage direct current which gave it
a supply radius of a few square miles around the central
station. The short supply area was appropriate for a pilot
system where corrections and repairs had to be carried out
continually, but as the popularity of electricity grew, thesmall supply radius became a liability. The problem with low
voltage direct current was that the size of the copper
conductor had to be increased with the supply distance. Thevery high price of copper made the Edison system uneconomical
over a supply area greater than two square miles, and thisprevented the growth of the system.
The very sharp increase in the price of copper had notgone unnoticed by Edison, nor had the commercial potential of
expanding the distribution area. His electrical experiments at
West Orange were therefore primarily directed at increasing theefficiency of the lighting system and decreasing the costs of

v-ll

distributing electricity over wide areas. He had specificallydesigned the three-wire system to meet these two criteria in
1883 and went on to design more economical systems using morewires. Another solution to the long-distance problem was his"municipal" lighting system, which used higher voltages toserve large areas. Its important features included a highvoltage (200v) lamp, and a cut-out device that would maintaincurrent if one of the lamps blew. x
Edison and his staff examined all possible solutions to
the long-distance transmission problem, taking an earlyinterest in alternating current (a/c). This was one of the very
first experimental projects undertaken when the lab opened forbusiness in 1887. This form of electrical energy had theadvantage of being easily transformed from low to high voltages
which could be transmitted over long distances much more
economically than direct current. After transmission,
alternating current could be transformed down at the point ofuse. Edison developed his own alternating current system andapplied for a patent for this "system of electrical
distribution" in December 1886. The purpose of the invention
was to economically transmit electricity over long distances.
It employed high voltage current which was transformed down by
motor generators and rotating transformers to produce low
22voltage electricity for business or home use.
The first
commercial use of alternating current took place in Europe andEdison was able to use his overseas contacts to get an initial

V-12

evaluation of the new technology. The Siemens & Halske Company
sent a detailed report on alternating current technology to
Edison in 1886 which outlined the progress of the newtechnology in Europe.

OO

The Edison Electric Light Company went

on to buy an option on the alternating current transformer
system of Zipernowski, Blathy, and Deri (ZBD), which had
achieved success in Europe. This and other alternating current
technology was examined at the West Orange laboratory.
As as practical inventor, Edison was concerned with theloss of efficiency in alternating current transformers. As abusinessman, the lack of an a/c motor and meter in the late
1880s made its commercial value slight. The meter wasindispensable in estimating costs and constructing a profitableload for central stations. Edison was firmly convinced of its
importance in the system and improvement of the meter was amajor research project. The lack of an alternating current
motor was an even greater disadvantage; Edison considered thatthe motor load was the essential part of a profitable central
station operation. He decided to build the first central
station in a commercial district in downtown Manhattan (insteadof the more thickly populated uptown), because he expected thatelectric lighting could not beat the competition of gas "buthoped to meet it by selling power.
Edison criticized the high voltage alternating current
technology he saw in the late 1880s on the grounds of its
complexity, unreliability, and threat to public safety. He told

V-13

his friend and financier, Henry Villard, that it was "not worth
the attention of practical men"— meaning that it had nocommercial potential.

Edison believed that the large scaleof alternating current systems would cost too much money toconstruct and that interest charges on the investment would
eliminate any operating profit. His evaluation of allelectrical systems was based primarily on commercial
considerations— the best designed central station system was
the one that returned the highest profits to the smallest.
possibleinvestment. 29 This viewpoint was shared by thecapitalists running the electrical utility industry.

V-14

THE LEADENED COLLAR

The increasing scale of electrical technology demanded
better organized companies to finance and administer it. As
Chandler noted in The Visible Handy large supply and traction
schemes led to the evolution of business organizations with theoperational and financial resources to run them. 2 6 The
electrical companies that Edison founded in the early 1880s
grew into structured organizations run by professional
managers. Their relationship with the West Orange laboratory
had to change when a more formal management style clashed with
Edison's informal leadership.
The Edison lighting companies were growing ever larger,
and assuming more financial obligations, as they encouraged aforced growth of the lighting industry. Every city and town in
America wanted the electric light and private companies were
only too happy to oblige. The manufacturing "shops" were hardpressed to keep pace with the explosive growth of theelectrical supply industry. While the Edison companies were
controlled by the "old man" and their management was carriedout by "the boys," there was little that Edison could not do;
but as these companies grew their management had to take aharder line to Edison's activities, especially his billing
practices for expensive R&D projects.

V-15

In the 1870s, Edison's abuse of bookkeeping formalities
enraged his suppliers and frustrated his customers; in the
1880s it alienated his old comrades who were now running theelectrical companies. (See Sidebar EDISON'S FINANCES AND THE
ELECTRICAL INDUSTRY.) These managers, who had once beencolleagues of Edison, were now responsible for large operations
and had to exercise the financial restraint that was alien to"the old man." Samuel Insull had once been the man who had
devised stratagems to raise cash for Edison, but in 1888 hefound himself managing the Edison Machine Works and constantly
frustrated at Edison's financial ploys. Insull found out thatthe lab was charging its supplies to the Machine Works. He
complained to Edison that "we are constantly being asked to pay
bills of the laboratory." 27 Insull knew that the ruinously
expensive phonograph venture was eroding Edison's credit
standing and making it harder for all the Edison companies toborrow money. The companies bearing Edison's name were
irreversibly identified with him and his financial dealings
were giving all of them a bad name.
On the other hand, Edison wanted to be free from businessworries in order to concentrate on his experiments. He often
pushed an experimental campaign forward regardless of cost whenmore cautious minds found the expense hard to justify. Edison
was riding the crest of the wave in the electrical industry andhe was driven forward by his vision of an electrically run
world of the future. He was in a brave mood andV-16

enthusiastically supported expensive projects such as thesearch for new filaments. Edison's agents were scouring theglobe for exotic materials while managers in New Jersey werecounting the cost— over $100,000 for each sample filament. His
secretary warned that "It made no difference to him what thecost might be when he had an objective in view." 2fi
The companies wanted to integrate Edison's R&D into theirbusiness strategies, rather than have Edison's technologicalchoices decide their future. They wanted to be convinced of thepotential return on R&D expenditure. Their attitude to research
was expressed thus: "Before authorizing any expenditure...thefirst and most important question they will want determined is... the nature and extent of the advantages to be derived tothis Company? and to whom will the resultant benefits accrue?
29
These were valid questions to ask before beginning anexperimental project. The development of insulating materials
provides an example of the growing tension between Edison andhis customers in the electrical industry. (See Sidebar THE
INSULATION PROJECT)
The management of the Edison lighting companies believedthat research and development was certainly important, but it
had to be placed within the constraints of time and money.
Nobody challenged the purpose, or the validity, of thelaboratory's work— managers merely wanted prompt and accurate
information about its cost and the opportunity to veto a
project that was running over budget. The Edison companies wereV-17

wary of the ambitious experimental projects springing into
Edison's mind. The companies remembered the astronomical costsof developing the first electrical systems and they wanted toknow exactly how much it was going to cost before they
committed themselves to an experimental campaign.
Finance of R&D became an issue because Edison and theelectrical companies were both running short of cash. Edison
had put all his money into perfecting the phonograph. The
individual Edison Illuminating companies did not have the money
to buy the lighting system outright, and consequently the
Edison Electric Light Company, and the various manufacturing
companies, often had to accept stock in payment for equipment
and patent rights. Pushing the system depended as much on thecredit arrangements as on the technology, and only thefinancially strong could successfully market a lighting systemin the 1880s. The financial burden of introducing the Edisonlighting system had left the companies heavily in debt. They
were dangerously overextended and increasingly vulnerable toshifts in money markets. When their finances were underpressure they immediately cut back on R&D expenditure. A
financial crisis hit them in the winter of 1888/1889 and theyrecalled many of their employees from the West Orange
laboratory, closing down several experimental projects. 30
Edison had little respect for the management of the
Edison companies, claiming that "All these people areamateurs." He resented their caution, which he argued was aV-18"leadened collar" that prevented him from quickly developing
new electrical technology. Edison complained to Villard that"with the leadened collar of the Edison Electric Light Company
around me, I have never been able to show what can be done." 31
He came to believe that the companies had reneged on his
initial plan to make the West Orange laboratory the spearheadof electrical development in the 1880s. He told Villard that"the Genl Co were morally bound to take advantage of the costly
facilities erected primarily for the purpose (of R&D into the
Edison lighting system)...they did not do so." Edison
maintained that he had to fight the battles of the lighting
companies with money from his own pocket, telling Villard that
half the cost of meeting the technologial challenge of thecompetition could not be billed to the Edison lighting
companies. He criticized the directors of the Edison ElectricLight Company for their unwillingness to use the competitive
tool he had constructed for them at West Orange, and blamed
them for the gains of the competition. 32
The managers criticized by Edison had no easy task.
Competition in the electrical industry was ferocious andgetting worse. What Edison saw as lack of vision and courage,
they saw as rational decisions about available resources.
Managers had to weigh the cost of R&D against the immediatedemands of keeping the system running. They were the ones who
had to integrate the work of engineering into their broad
strategies of overcoming the competing companies. The Edison

V-19

enterprise was forced to become more efficient to meetcompetition and one area of improvement was the engineering
effort. The rapid expansion of the industry had led to thecreation of separate engineering departments in illuminatingcompanies and electrical manufacturers. The duplication ofengineering services on each level of the organization waswasteful and the management soon moved to rationalize theengineering effort in the Edison enterprise. In 1888 the Edison
Electric Light Company formed a Standardization Bureau tooversee the standardization of each component part of the
Edison electric lighting system. This involved close
supervision of the many engineering and test departments thatwere all working individually on electrical problems. Six
months of operations brought such bad feeling between the
Bureau and the engineering departments that the demarcationlines between them had to be redefined— the Bureau gaining thepower to initiate and implement all engineering changes.
The Bureau also carried out many functions that hadoriginated with Edison's laboratory, such as gathering anddissemination of operating experience and technicalinformation, acting as a receptacle for complaints about thesystem, and making sure all engineering changes were carriedout by the manufacturers. The central role of the West Orange
laboratory in this reorganization remained unchanged: it was toproduce innovations when "entirely new forms are required which
the factories are not prepared to originate." 34 Each part ofV-20

the Edison organization had its part in the struggle: theEdison Illuminating Companies redoubled their efforts in themarketplace, the Edison Electric Light Company used its patents
to harass the competition in the courts, and the West Orange
laboratory developed new technology needed to compete in a
crowded market. Edison assumed the symbolic leadership of theseforces and his laboratory stood at the center of the struggle.
The main competitive threat to the Edison enterprise camefrom alternating current systems which could reach customers
that the direct current systems could not. Competitors such as
the Westinghouse Company combined alternating current
distribution networks with direct current lighting systems toprovide larger, and probably more economical, systems. By theend of the 1880s alternating current had assumed the mantle ofelectrical supply technology of the future, but Edison opposed
it for economic and safety reasons and tried to prevent its
continued diffusion in the United States. Like many of thegreat engineer-inventors before him, Edison took a personal
responsibility for the safety and efficiency of the technology
he introduced. His risk assessment of alternating current was
unfavorable. He believed it was too dangerous to be usedcommercially because the high voltages of the distribution
networks would kill anyone coming into contact with it.
The issue of safety had first been brought up in thebattle between gas and electric lighting and it remained apriority of Edison. As an electrical pioneer, he realized that

V-21

public confidence was vital for the successful introduction ofa new technology. Edison believed that the supplier ofelectrical technology should have faith in his equipment and in
the future of public lighting. This had been the original
reason why the electrical manufacturers accepted stock in thelighting companies; it brought about a union of interest
between manufacturer and supplier. Edison, and his laboratory,stood behind the equipment bearing his name. His electricallighting system was marketed on the basis of its safety andreliability.
Apart from the commercial challenge of alternating
current, Edison had his own reputation at stake in theelectrification of America. His name had become associated withhigh technology and practical engineering. His reputation, andthe wide appeal of his name, was a asset of great value. It wasa boon in marketing new technology, standing for solid,
reliable products that the public could trust. Edison's namegave the competitive advantage to the companies marketing his
lighting systems; no other person was as closely associatedwith electricity in the public mind. Edison had ethical andcommercial reasons for opposing dangerous technology, fearingthat any electrical accident would reflect back on him and thecompanies that bore his name.
The many fires and deaths caused by arc lights in the1870s were an indication of the special risks of electricalsystems, and it was at this time that Edison began his lifetime

V-22

opposition to high voltages. He knew that the notoriously poor
workmanship of the electrical contractors, compounded with wear
and tear on electrical components, created hazards with eventhe safest system. His early experiences in introducing
electricity made him sensitive to the public's apprehensions of
the danger of new lighting technology. Mindful that regulationof the electrial supply industry was on the horizon, Edison
maintained safety as a priority in the development of lighting
apparatus. He saw, correctly, that safety issues would quickly
attract the attention of legislators and lead to the stringent
regulation that would hamstring the American industry, as theElectric Lighting Act had done to the British.^®
As Edison considered public support for new technology
essential, his lab carried out research and development to
reduce the risks of electricity. This involved making
electrical installations safer by adding cut-outs and fuses tominimize the damage done by short circuits. Fire was an everpresent risk with electricity— consuming the Pearl Street andseveral other central stations— and the lab worked to develop
fireproof materials for central stations and insulation forwires and cables.

Safety was a major engineering criterion atWest Orange, and it often determined the direction of research.
The decision to develop a traction system with a third rail
instead of an overhead pickup was motivated by Edison's fear of
accidents with the latter system. He expected that regulation
would soon prohibit the overhead wires from all electricalV-23

installations and therefore the only feasible traction system
would pick up low voltage current from a third rail. 38 Much ofthis kind of work was initiated and financed by Edison
personally.
The intensive investigation of all new alternating
current equipment carried out by the laboratory staff did
little to assuage Edison's fears about the danger of highvoltage currents. He maintained an unrelenting opposition to
a/c, insisting that the Edison Electric Light Company drop its
option on the ZBD patents— the easiest access to alternating
current technology.

The Westinghouse Company had no suchreservations about the danger of high voltage current and began
to market a/c equipment vigorously in 1888. This company, alongwith the Thomson-Houston Company, were the major rivals to
Edison in the electric lighting field. Westinghouse used the
Sawyer-Mann lighting patents to challenge the Edison monopolyof incandescent lighting and the two companies were locked in a
bitter struggle for the new lighting markets opening up in thelate 1880s.
Alternating current was the most dangerous electrical
technology of its time not only because of the high voltages
used but also because it greatly increased the size ofelectrical systems. As the systems got larger, more people wereat risk and magnitude of a potential accident increased. Thereis little doubt that, at the time of its introduction, the a/c
system produced by Westinghouse was complex, experimental, andV-24

dangerous. Edison anticipated dire results from its hurried
introduction:
Just as certain as death Westinghouse will kill acustomer within six months after he puts in a system of any
size. He has got a new thing and it will take a great deal ofexperimenting to get it working practically. It will never befree of danger. 9
The great fear of the Edison interests was that a majordisaster involving alternating current would harm the whole
electrical industry and produce a backlash of legislation andfear that would hinder, or even stop, the spread of electrical
technology. The immediate task of the Edison enterprise was todistance itself from the alternating current technology, andthe companies marketing it, and educate the public about its
dangers. Here the Edison laboratory played its major role. It
stood behind the claim that Edison's was the "safest, mostconvenient, most efficient" lighting system, and "the only one
that is not absolutely injurious to the health of the peopleusing it." 40

V-25

EDISON'S LABORATORY AND THE BATTLE OF THE SYSTEMS

Edison was dismayed with the many new entrants in theelectrical industry and feared a price war between competing
electrical manufacturers. The greatest threat came from theWestinghouse and Thomson-Houston companies who both had
alternating current systems on the market. It soon became
evident at the headquarters of the Edison Electric Light
Company that the opposition was prepared to sell electricity ata loss to win lighting contracts; many of the Edison
franchisees reported back to the parent company thatWestinghouse agents were pricing their current well below cost
and these "ridiculously low prices" were winning customers fromthe Edison companies.^

Westinghouse claimed that its system

had a lower first cost than Edison's, and this brought anoutraged response from the latter, who had carried out adetailed costing of the Westinghouse system. The two parent
companies fought a war of words, each attempting to promote its
own system and discredit the competition. The Edison ElectricLight Company under the presidency of Edward H. Johnson madeevery effort to refute the "extravagant and fictitious" claims
made by Westinghouse. Johnson went into battle under the bannerof "Patents, Investment, Futility of Guarantees, Danger and
Moral"— stressing the strong patent position of Edison and thehigher standards of his engineering.^ (Illus 5-3, advertisingIllust r a t i o n 5-3

lb« Edison Incandescent Lamp Figures tor the United States alone now aggregate Afore than

1,000 INSTALLATIONS, 100,000 HORSE-POWER, 1,000,000 LAMPS, AND $20,000,000 CAPITAL.
'

IS ■

J

’

Vr /

’ THIS COMPANY IS THE OWNER OF THE INVENTIONS AND PATENTS OFîjTHOMAS: A L V A

EDISOIiKSi3:• 'ttWhich Patents nhsolntcly control tills T H J E O N LY permanently Establishedand. commercially Successful,-

METHOD 0 7 GENERAL ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTION,6 t,v

As «ridane» of the growth sad pm »at prosperity of the Sditoti System attention it eaUed io the character and eoope of a few of the Stations now in operation andunder construction.
.4

NEW YORK CO.: Capital, $ 2 ,5 0 0 ,0 0 0 ,4 Stations; Capacity, ,150,000 BOSTON CO.: Capital, $ 65 0,50 0,2 Stations; Capacity, 50,000 Lamps.
PHILADELPHIA CO.: Capital, $ 1,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 ,1 Station: Capacity;50,000
Lamps, 'ila m p s ." ;CHICAGO CO.: Capital, $ 75 0 ,0 0 0 ,1 Station; Capacity, 40,000 lamps.

I
It is significant to note the fact that the Edison Company has during the. past year enlisted' an f
amount of capital and put under construction a station capacity far in excess of the aggregate3
Incandescent work of all other companies combined. Nothing could more forcibly; emphaY--|size andattest the accepted valueof the Edison Central Station Industry as an investm ent!;#^
'V.v-

w

r it ef o r

p a m p h l e t

o n

t h e

f iv eh e a d s

PATENTS, INVESTMENT, FUTILITY OF GUARANTEES, DANGER ANU MURAL.

F o r I n fo rm a tio n r e la t iv e t o C e n tr a l S ta tio n B m l a e n a p p ly tu th ei

. A n d f o r I n fo r m a tio n r e la t iv e t o l» o la ted P la n t» a p p lj t o t h e .

ÌD1S0N ELECTRIC-LIGHT COMPANY 18 Broad Slfeet, New York, EDISON" UNITED . MFG. COMPANY, 65 Fifth- Avenue,. New.. York.

‘

V-26

material.) Edison, who loved a fight and considered theWestinghouse Company to be "the enemy," enthusiastically joined
the fray.
The propaganda war was the essential part of the "battleof the systems," a colorful episode in the early years ofelectricity that had a lasting impact on the development of thetechnology and the industry. It was fought between the
proponents of two competing systems of electrical supply: theEdison low voltage direct current (d/c) and the high voltage
alternating current (a/c) marketed by Westinghouse. The long
distance transmission capabilities of high voltage current gave
Westinghouse the edge in the war of words, because they could
claim to be able to reach any customer. Edison and his company
believed that Westinghouse was being reckless in pushing asystem that was technologically and economically unsound. They
feared that the opposition would win the propaganda war andWestinghouse's "army" of sales people would overcome a safer
and more efficient system. Their response was to discredit theclaims made by Westinghouse. Edison only wanted the public toknow the difference between a/c and d/c, and set out to provethat the "shyster" Westinghouse was in fact marketing an unsafe
technology. 43 The series of experiments that achieved this goal
became one of the best known episodes in the "battle of thesystems" and put the West Orange laboratory on center stage inthis drama.
The laboratory had begun experiments into the effects ofV-27

electricity on the human body as early as 1887. This was donewith a practical purpose; Edison wanted to know more about thisphenomenon to better safeguard the lives of the men working in
the electrical industry. 44 Edison did not originate theinvestigation into the killing powers of alternating current,
he was drawn into it by the work of a New York state commission
investigating humane methods of capital punishment. In December
1887 the commission polled the leading figures in theelectrical world on this issue and Edison was one of the
respondents. According the Arthur Kennelly, the chief
electrician at the laboratory and the leader of the teaminvestigating the effects of electricity, they had not
distinguished between the two types of current in theirexperiments up to this point. A reporter from the New York
Herald asked the questions which set a new direction ofexperiments in motion and Edison asked Kennelly to find out how
much alternating current would kill a dog.^
Edison was not the only one interested in the effect ofelectricity on the human body. The therapeutic use ofelectricity had begun well before Edison invented theincandescent bulb and its popularity grew steadily aselectricity became more available. Among the people carryingout research in this area was Harold P. Brown, a self-styled
consulting engineer and a rabid opponent of Westinghouse's
alternating current system. Brown had no connection with the
Edison enterprise other than his employment by an electric penV-28

company in Chicago. In the spring of 1888 Brown began a
publicity campaign to draw attention to the "large number ofdeaths caused by careless methods...on the part of manyelectric lighting companies." Harold P. Brown's "movement infavor of greater care for public safety" was aimed directly atalternating current.^® He was steered towards Edison by F.S.
Hastings, the secretary of the Edison Electric Light Company.
It was Hastings who mobilized the facilities of Edison'slaboratory for Brown and his colleague Dr Petersen, a nerve
specialist from Vanderbilt Hospital. Brown and Petersen
electrocuted animals at the West Orange laboratory and at a
public exhibition at Columbia College in July 1888 todemonstrate the dangers of alternating current. ^ Equipmentfrom the laboratory was used at the Columbia exhibition and at
subsequent demonstrations. More electrocution experiments wereorganized by Hastings in the fall and winter of 1888.
Kennelly reported that the experiments were done in ahurry, with makeshift equipment, and the whole process normallytaking up less than an hour. The experiments were carried out
at night to prevent the curious public from attending and tospare Kennelly's valuable time, which during the day was taken
up with more important work on batteries, motors, lighting,meters, insulation, and dynamos.

The climax to this series ofexperiments came on December 5 1888, when several large animals
were dispatched by Brown in the dynamo room in the lab. A
Siemens alternator was used to generate the current andV-29

electrodes were attached to the feet of the unfortunate
animals. The Edison Electric Light Company covered the costs ofthese gruesome experiments, which were billed by the lab as"made for Mr. Hastings" with "full reports... made to the„49
Company."

Edison's purpose in sponsoring these experiments, in theview of Kennelly, was merely to demonstrate that alternating
current could kill. Edison forbade any public comment by thelaboratory staff on the grisly events of the fall of 1888. The
results of the experiments would speak for themselves. Kennelly
insisted that there was no bias in the experiments and his
notebooks testify to the scientific method used and theaccuracy of the recording of results.50 Kennelly could not makethe claim that the Edison Electric Light Company was adisinterested third party for they organized, administered, andpaid for the experiments. Hastings' correspondence shows thatthe company was very interested in the outcome of theexperiments and considered them to be "of very great
importance."51
As chief electrician of the West Orange laboratory,
Kennelly also played a leading part in another campaign in the"battle of the systems." The account records of the laboratory
show that from 1888 to 1892 a wide range of experiments wasdone in the areas of alternating current equipment, highvoltage direct current technology, and devices like rotary
convertors to join the two types of current in one system.

V-30

Edison's laboratory was leading a three-pronged attack on
Westinghouse: development of high voltage d/c, development of acompeting a/c system, and a campaign to discredit the "deathcurrent" of Westinghouse. Edison might not have had themathematical education to understand the complexities ofalternating current and this could have deterred him fromworking with it, as some of his biographers have argued. Yet he
did have an aptitude for mathematics and the alternating
current technology of the 1880s was far from scientificallycomplex. Moreover, his laboratory had all the apparatus andtrained staff to develop alternating current equipment.
Kennelly, for example, was a highly competent electricalengineer who went on to teach the subject and make several
important contributions to high voltage technology.
The tempo of research into alternating current at theWest Orange laboratory quickened as the competition with
Westinghouse grew more intense. In 1889 the Edison franchisees
were calling out for the technology to meet the threat from
Westinghouse and Edison was told that "the call for some sortof direct current transformer is getting louder and louder
every day."

Later that year the annual meeting of the Edison

utility companies ended with an appeal for a high voltage
system. The development of a high voltage direct current system(the municipal system) was underway at the laboratory at thistime and Edison was reported to be "not only willing but
anxious that something should be done as to an arc light as

V-31

CO
well as an alternating current system."(Ulus 5-4, theEdison municipal system, 18.100, #6611) The laboratory wascarrying out its appointed mission to provide the newtechnology needed by the Edison electric utility companies.
Both Edison and the parent company promised thefranchisees that high voltage a/c and d/c systems would beavailable to them by the end of 1889. This development program
was plagued with delays caused by poor liaison between the
different parts of the Edison lighting empire. At the very time
when the "battle of the systems" reached a climax, the whole
structure of organization was radically changed. The highly
competitive environment that had helped create the "battle ofthe systems" also led to changes in the structure of theelectrical industry. The many companies formed by Edison to
exploit his inventions were gradually consolidated into larger
business organizations that were better equipped to compete.
The formation of Edison General Electric (EGE) in 1889
amalgamated the Edison Electric Light Company with the various
manufacturing companies. It was done with an eye on
Westinghouse. Edward H. Johnson believed that at last the
Edison enterprise had the financial strength to meet thecompetitive challenge and excitedly predicted "goodbye
Westinghouse!
The leadership of the new company was conservative anddetermined to control rising costs. One advantage ofconsolidating several Edison companies into one large

I l l u s t r a t i o n 5-4

The Edison Municipal SystemV-32

organization was better control of expenditure. The managementof Edison General Electric quickly moved to reduce costs,
including the costs of research and development. EGE was now
the major contractor for the services of the laboratory. (SeeSidebar) Research was to be carried out under contract andbills had to be presented promptly for payment. The company
reserved the right to dispute bills and refuse to pay for
research they had not commissioned. The "leadened collar" wasbeing pulled tighter and Edison came to the conclusion that thefinancial and technological conservatism of EGE cramped his
inventive style.
Edison's growing dissatisfaction with the management of
EGE was centered on their inability, or refusal, to introduce
his improved technology of the second generation of electric
lighting. He noted caustically in 1890 that the "gen(era)lcompany" (EGE) asked for a system that could compete with
Westinghouse "in our small town business," but they did not
employ his 5-wire system because "they were unwilling— although
the system was a success— to enter into the competition whenusing so many wires."

Edison criticized the company for notenergetically introducing his high voltage direct current
system. They were afraid of the hazards of high voltage
currents and thought it was too risky to introduce it to theutility companies. When EGE finally offered an a/c high voltage
system to its franchisees, it did so with a caveat that thetechnology was "dangerous and inefficient at best, butV-33

procurable on demand." 57 The management of EGE shared some of
Edison's fears about the dangers of high voltage technology,
but as businessmen they had to have it available if theircustomers wanted it.
The delays in the production of this equipment havereinforced the view that Edison and his laboratory did not havethe inclination or ability to work with high voltage
technology. Harold Passer, the great historian of theelectrical industry, concluded: "In 1879, Edison was a braveand courageous inventor, in 1889 he was a cautious andconservative defender of the status quo."

Edison's emphasis

on practicality and profit obviously swayed him towards thehigh voltage direct current solution, but this did not stop himfrom exploring all avenues of long distance distribution. The
goal of the West Orange laboratory's work in electricity was toperfect and cheapen the system, and this involved solving thelong distance transmission problem, but by 1889 Edison nolonger had the freedom of action to be the courageous andpioneering inventor he had been in 1879. The manufacture,
installation, and maintenance of the system was in other hands:
Edison and his laboratory now carried out researchcommissioned, and controlled, by the managers of the Edisoncompanies.
In 1887 the West Orange laboratory had been the focal
point of Edison's electrical empire. He had the power to decideon experimental projects and to suppress technologies that heV-34

did not like, such as the ZBD a/c system. Two years later thelaboratory was just one part of a large organization and muchof its electrical work was done as commissioned experiments:
Edison no longer had the power to set the direction of R&D forthe companies that bore his name. They did not want to bear thecosts of a major assault on the long distance transmission
problem and Edison knew this. He thrived on competition andprobably would have given his all in the fight against
Westinghouse if he had the full resources EGE behind him. But
this he did not have. The "leadened collar" of EGE prevented
Edison from fully committing his laboratory to the "battle ofthe systems."
The new business organizations in the electrical industry
wanted to control the pace and direction of R&D. The engineers
and scientists they hired were tools of corporate policy who
had to follow orders. 59 The Edison companies were a little
wary of the great independent laboratory in their midst. Edison
had enormous prestige in the organization, but hisgoals— especially his technological preferences— were notnecessarily those of the organization. The formation of Edison
General Electric was the first step in a gradual consolidationof the electrical industry that reflected a general trend in
American business. This was the era of "big business" and the"trust." The intense competition in the electrical industry was
not good for profits. The policies of managers and financiersin the industry were aimed at replacing competition with

V-35

agreements and pre-monopoly practices such as price fixing andpatent pools. Edison was opposed to this movement because hebelieved that technological leadership was the way to dominate
markets and make money. He had to be motivated by technologicalcompetition arguing that "I can only invent under a powerfulincentive. No competition means no invention."^ Once theindustry and its technology had matured, Edison and theelectrical companies had to go their different ways.

1

SIDEBAR 5-1
THE INSULATION PROJECT

The development of better insulating material illustrates
the problems emerging between laboratory and electricalcompanies. Insulation of the copper wires conducting theelectricity was an unglamorous, but vital part of thesystem— its performance under difficult operating conditions
helped determine the reliability and economy of the system.
Edison had chosen to place the distribution system underground,and although this greatly reduced the risk of accident, it
increased costs and made a vital part of the system vulnerable
to the action of corrosion and decay.
The first electrical wires went uninsulated; they were
simply attached to wooden carriers or even to gas fittings! The
underground mains of the Pearl Street system employed anasphalt-linseed oil-paraffin wax-beeswax compound. This was
pumped into a metal pipe containing the rope-covered copper
conductors. Conductors inside houses and offices were covered
with either paper, cotton, shellac, rosin, or parafin wax.^ The
electrical lighting companies experienced many problems withinsulation of wires, both above and below ground, and needed abetter insulating material. John Kruesi of the Edison MachineWorks commissioned the development work, asking Edison in
August 1887 to find an insulation that was waterproof, fire2

retardant, and flexible. This was no easy task. Edison
responded by assuring Kruesi that the problem would be solvedin the new West Orange laboratory, which had facilities "to.
2settle anything m a short time."
This search proved to be long and difficult. Numerous
materials were tried but few could successfully fit all threecriteria. The longer the search for a better insulation wenton, the more it stressed the working relationship between
laboratory and Machine Works. Edison owned 90% of the stock of
the Edison Machine Works, but his friend and associate, SamuelInsull, had to insist on prompt and accurate billing forexperiments carried out by the laboratory. Insull knew all the"old man's" financial ploys, having devised many of them while
he was Edison's secretary. He knew that the accounting
techniques used at West Orange favored Edison, and that thelonger the delay in billing, the more likelihood of Edison
adding other (non-related) experiments to the bill. Insull
complained about the high prices used in billing, which wereabout twice the normal cost for materials, and commented that"some of the charges are simply outrageous."In order toreduce the costs to the Machine Works, Insull asked the lab toreturn all scrap to the Works. He also insisted on bills being
presented promptly and at regular periods, and argued that noother concern in the United States would "dare" to do businessin this manner. ^The development of new insulation involved close3

cooperation between the lab and the Machine Works. Once a newmaterial was developed in the lab, it was coated onto wires atthe Works and then tested under operational conditions. The
results then had to be sent to the lab for another round ofexperimentation. The Works wanted this project finished in the
shortest possible time, but the laboratory did not share thisconcern for haste and there were many delays.
The frustration of the Works is evident in Insull's
complaint to Edison: "we have spent a great deal of money on
experimental work on insulation and we ought to be getting someC
result out of it." The essence of the problem was that there
was no union of interest between the lab and the Works. The
former acted like an independent laboratory despite efforts to
produce a more "businesslike" approach to contract research. As
Edison's laboratory it was not going to be dictated to by agroup of Works engineers and ignorant businessmen.

NOTES
1) Vanderbilt, Edison the Chemist, pp. 78-81.
2) J Kruesi to TAE, 24 Aug 1887, Kruesi Collection, E 6192
3) Insull to Tate, 5 July 1888, 1888 Electricity.
4) Insull to Tate, 28 June 1888, ibid.
5) Insull to TAE, 2 May 1888, ibid.

1

SIDEBAR 5-2
EDISON'S FINANCES AND THE ELECTRICAL INDUSTRY
Although the experimental facilities at West Orange weresecond to none, the accounting system left much to be desired.
Edison's low opinion of the profession of accounting has become
part of his myth, but he was very interested in calculating andrecording the exact costs of R&D. He was less concerned withthe formalities of bookkeeping— statements and billing.'*' Edisondeveloped his method of costing and billing for experiments
while he was at Newark. The procedure was to enter into acontract for experimental services, carry out experiments, costthem, and finally bill them to the appropriate company. The
costing and billing normally took place well after Edison had
carried out the experiments. The practice of Edison's
bookkeepers was to make up a list of all experiments carriedout over a fixed time period, and then Edison, or an assistant,would indicate to whom the experiment should be billed. This
practice suited Edison's freewheeling style of invention andreflected the bookkeeping heritage brought with him from Newark
and Menlo Park.
Edison preferrred experimenting to accounting and often
left the task of covering all the experimental costs of the lab
until money was badly needed. Then he would sit down with his
secretary and go through shop orders, deciding who should bebilled for experimental work. The lab still billed well after

the experiments had been done, and sometimes supplementarybills would be made up at the end of the accounting year. In
this case, the unfortunate customer would suddenly be presented
with a very large bill for experiments done many months, or
years, before!
The key to financing the laboratory was to overcharge
regular customers and use the surplus to pay for generalexperimenting. Edison's customers often complained about thehigh price of R&D carried out by the West Orange laboratory.
The companies who hired the lab's services were often charged
the full price of supplies and equipment that had a longpotential life at the laboratory. Edison often used thecompanies' money for research in his own interests. Edison's
chronic lack of cash in the early years of the lab made him
exploit every opportunity to bill now and pay later. He
certainly was not a poor man, but he resisted liquidating his
investments in electrical companies and railroad bonds to pay
the daily expenses of the lab, preferring to extract all the
cash he could from contract research.
In the "old days" at Newark and Menlo Park, the costs of
R&D were determined by experimenters and analysed by venture
capitalists. But by the time the West Orange laboratory was inoperation, the astounding growth of the electrical industry had
created better organized business units; the costs and benefitsof research were now being studied by accountants and business
managers. Mindful of the escalating costs of research, these3

men wanted more information about costs, and prompt billing.
The means to bring order to Edison's billing practices
was evident in the headquarters of the Electric Light Company;
they would place the laboratory within the bureaucratic
structure and control it with paper. In 1888 Edison proposedthat the Edison Electric Light Company pay him a weekly stipend
to cover the costs of experiments done on their behalf before aformal bill could be prepared. This was, no doubt, precipitatedby Edison's serious cash flow problems at the lab, but theElectric Light Company had no intention of giving Edison carte
blanche to carry out research. They put so many conditions on
weekly payments that Edison gave up in disgust and swore that
he would never ask the company for any more money to supportO
the laboratory. He didn't mean this. He needed the company andthey needed him.
A strong bond existed between the electrical companies
and the West Orange laboratory, which had a symbiotic
relationship with the rest of the organization. The various
Edison companies had installed their own men at the lab tocarry out testing or research into their products. The Edison
Lamp Company, for example, paid the salaries of the team whotested incandescent lamps in Building 1, and the Edison MachineWorks paid the wages of some of the experimenters working on
insulation. As a repository of technical information andexperience, the lab served all parts of the electrical empire.
Free advice and consulting was dispensed to both Edison

4Electric Light Company and humble local lighting company.
Company and laboratory were bonded togther by Edison's patents
and the potential of his laboratory to produce revolutionary
new technology.
In 1888 an attempt was made to rationalize all
engineering work in the creation of a Standardization Bureau.
The Bureau was soon given more control over the West Orange
Laboratory's work. In the beginning of 1889 an agreement wasreached between the lab and the Electric Light Company whichgave the Bureau the right to approve all bills rendered by thelab for experimental work. The lab had to present a bill during
the first ten days of the month following the month when the
research was contracted or approval was not to be given. In
reminding the Edison laboratory of their obligations, W.J.
Jencks, the director of the Bureau, noted that "we are also
doing this work under the limitation of expense; and in orderto know how much further we can go in this matter, it is3
necessary to get your bills to date."
The development of a more formal relationship between
laboratory and companies deprived the latter of many services
that had once come free. The lab still carried out consulting
and advising to these companies, yet it was extremely expensive
to send a valuable experimenter to work in the field and Edisonsoon tried to avoid this. He noted later that he was unable torecover these costs from the individual lighting companies. The
practice of placing company men at the laboratory appears to5have died out by 1890.
The formation of EGE in 1889 drastically changed Edison's
finances. The rush to establish electric utility companies had
produced a buoyant market for electrical goods and his
manufacturing shops enjoyed rapid growth and impressive
profits, returning 18% on the initial investment in 1888.
Edison had invested these profits, and much of his personal
fortune, in the laboratory and did not have the capital tosupport the expansion of manufacturing facilities. When Henry
Villard approached Edison with his idea to incorporate
manufacturing shops into a larger organization (EGE), Edison
agreed, thinking that "it was better to be safe than sorry."

4

The sale of these interests to Villard brought Edison badly
needed funds and relieved him of the burden of financing the
growth of the electrical manufacturing industry, yet it cost
him a considerable part of his income because these profitable
operations were now part of EGE. Furthermore, the shops were
important customers for the laboratory and now Edison became
dependent on EGE for a large part of his research business.

NOTES
1) Tate Open Door, pp. 141-142.
2) Edison annotation on Johnson to TAE, 21 Feb 1889,
electricity.
3) W.J. Jencks to Lab, 10 July 1889, electricity.
4) Meadowcroft, fol 3, 52.

HOTES FOR CHAPTER FIVE.
1) C.E. Chinnock to TAE, 17 April 1888, Electric light.
2) 1889 EGE prospectus.
3) Meadowcroft box #84, 10 May 1895.
4) 1889 Electric Light, EGE.
5) F. Upton to TAE, 26 April 1889, Elec Light.
6) J.H. Vail to Edison, 28 Dec 1886, Electricity.
7) Lab notebook H 880001.
8) E.H. Johnson to TAE 10 June 1889, Electricity, says "theboard considers you the umpire in all such matters.”9) N 880315.2.
10) TAE to Lamp Works, 18 June 1890, Elec Light.
11) F. Upton to TAE, 20 April 1889, Elec Light.
12) Edison memo to Villard 23 March 1889, Villard collection,
Harvard Business School, MS 78, box 63.
13) Explanation of Experiments, 14 May 1890, Lab experiments.
14) Edison Electric Illuminating Co. of Hew York, Annual report
1886, Electricity.
15) Explanation of Experiments, 14 May 1890, Lab experiments.
16) W.J. Jencks to TAE, 12 May 1888, Electricity, Edison
Electric Light Company <EELCo).
17) The Pearl Street operation provides us with the firstexamples of disputes between a utility company and its
customers, see Francis Jehl, Menlo Park Reminscences (Dearborn,Mich.: Edison Institute, 1941), III, 1085-1086.
18) EGE to TAE, 11 Dec 1890, Electricity, EGE.
19) In 1900 Edison received patents on several meter designs,
including balance-beam, electromagmetic, and electrochemical.
Electric Light-Meter.
20) 1887 Electricity, general.

V21) The work on the municipal lamp had begun in 1888, when
Edison had his laboratory at the Lamp factory, J.H. Vail to
TAE, 22 May 1886, Elec Light.
22) Patent # 369,439 patented 6 Sept 1887.
23) Siemens & Halske Report of November 1886, Elec light.
24) E.H. Johnson Letter, undated 1888 Phono general.
25) TAE to Vi Hard, 24 Feb 1891, Vi H a r d papers, HBS, fol 475,
63.
26) A. E. Chandler, The Visible Hand (Cambridge: Harvard Univ
Press, 1978), p. 194.
27) S. Insull to TAE, 6 April 1888, 1888, Laboratory Bills.
28) Tate, Open Door, p. 128.
29) Upton to TAE, 1 Aug 1889, Elec Light, filament.
30) R. Fessenden, ’’The Inventions of R. A. Fessenden’’ Radio
News, 1925, Part VIII.
31) TAE To Villard, 23 March 1889, Villard collection HBS MS
78, box 63.
32) TAE to Villard, 8 Feb 1890, Villard Papers, HBS, fol 473.
34) E.H. Johnson to TAE, 1 June 1889, Electricity.
35) Thomas A Edison, ’’The Dangers of Electric Lighting," North
American Review. LXLIX (Nov, 1889), 625-634.
36) The Electric Lighting Act had placed all public supply inEngland under the Board of Trade. Each local authority had vetopower over lighting projects and the companies were subjected
to vigorous regulation of every aspect of their operations. In
comparison with the great increase in electricity supply in the
United States, England was lagging behind. Many blamed this lag
on regulation. See A.J. Millard, A Technological Lag (New York:
Garland, 1987).
37) TAE to Insull, 3 May 1888, LB 970929, p. 254.
38) "Plans of the Vizard," newsclipping, in 1891 Electric
Railroad folder.
39) Cited in Josephson, p. 346.

V40) Advertising material in 1888 Electricity folders.
41) Letter from Mew Orleans Edison Company, 12 May 1887, 1887
Electric Light.
42) ’’Confidential Sheet for Agents,” 1888 Electric Light;
Electrical Vorld. XI (February, 1888), XVII. Advertisingmaterials, 1888 Electric Light.
43) Eaton to TAE, 7 Oct 1889, 1889 Electric Light.
44) TAE to H. Bergh, 13 July 1888, LB 870929, p. 273.
45) Kennelly’s record of the battle are to be found in a seriesof note and letter books called the Kennelly Reports, inletterbook LB 870929, and his evidence to the hearing on theelectrocution of William Kemmler, Mew York State Court ofAppeals, 1847-1911, DCCCXCIII (Buffalo, Mew York, 1890), Voi.
2.

46) Circular letter of H.P. Brown, 1888 Electricity.
47) Kennelly to F.S. Hastings, 25 Feb 1889, Kennelly Reports,
06/07/88, p. 350.
48) Ibid.
49) LB 900412, p. 190.
50) See Kennelly Reports for 1888.
51) Hastings to Kennelly, 20 Mov 1888, 1888 Electricity.
52) Letter of 22 April 1889, 1889 Electricity.
53) Insull to A. Tate, 17 June 1889, 1889 Electricity.
54) Johnson to TAE, 22 August 1888, 1888 E.H. Johnson.
56) ’’Explanation of Experiments,” 1890 Laboratory.
57) Report of Annual Meeting of Edison Illuminating Companies
in Electrical World, XIV (Aug, 1889), 136.
58) Harold Passer, The Electrical Manufacturers (Cambridge:
Harvard Univeristy Press, 1953), p. 174.
59) "Mr. Edison’s reply to Thomson-Houston Memo,” 1 April 1889,
Vi H a r d Papers, MS 78, box 63, 472.

VI-

1

CHAPTER SIX
THE FRESH PULL: DIVERSIFICATION IN THE 1890S

The first anniversary of the laboratory marked a period
of intense experimental activity. Edison's ambitious plans had
led to an overflow of work, and several important experimental
campaigns were in progress by the winter of 1888/1889. The workon long distance transmission systems was sandwiched between
the efforts to perfect the phonograph and the development of amagnetic ore separation technology. Edison had told his
financial backers, and an expectant public, that the phonographwas "perfected" in 1888. Nothing was further from the truth;
while Harold Brown conducted his notorious electrocution
experiments in the fall of 1888, Edison was shifting his
research effort from electricity to the phonograph. By the endof the year expenditure on phonograph experiments had hit apeak as great efforts were made by the laboratory staff toeliminate the "bugs" in the machine.^With his time fully occupied at the laboratory, Edison
let Edison General Electric determine the pace of alternating
current development. The new formal relationship between
Company and laboratory aggravated the logistical problems of
producing new designs at West Orange, supervising the work from
Company headquarters in New York, and testing the equipment at

VI-

2

the Schenectady machine works. Edison was trying to do too manythings at once and his work suffered from the usual delays. His
eagerness to design a new a/c high voltage system played a partin delaying its production because all other work on it was
stopped while the "old man" finished the drawings.

2

The problems of coordinating the research effort at West
Orange and the manufacturing at Schenectady proved the wisdomof setting up Edison's own manufacturing facilities next to hislaboratory. All the projects which involved cooperation between
the laboratory and machine works suffered from long delays.
Even the high voltage municipal lamp, an invention which Edison
favored and one which he had repeatedly promised to theutilities, was not delivered on time.

The Edison General

Electric Company was unconcerned with the delays in developing
high voltage technology because it wanted to avoid expensive
investments in new systems, especially those which madeexisting inventory obsolete. The impending union with
Thomson-Houston removed the need to bring out an a/c systembecause Thomson-Houston already had a proven one on the market.
Amalgamation and agreement had replaced competition and strife
in the electrical industry.
When Edison General Electric finally prepared to
introduce an alternating current system in 1890, Insull advised
Edison that they should withdraw from the "battle of the4systems" before this was done. Although development work on
this system was carried out at the West Orange laboratory and aVI- 3small test installation made, it was never formally introducedby EGE. For his part, Edison was still ready to develop the newtechnology needed to meet the competition. In the beginning of
1889, he thought the phonograph campaign was coming to an end
and told his associates that as soon as he finished with thephonograph he would take a "fresh pull" at electricity.^
The new campaign in electricity was hampered by several
new developments at the laboratory: more problems with thephonograph, the beginning of motion picture experiments, and arealization that ore separation might bring fabulous profits.
Edison's fascination with ore milling began to dominate his
affairs in 1889 as he shifted his attention and money to ore
separation experiments. The laboratory was carrying over 70
experimental projects on its books at this point and the "oldman's" time was spread thinly over many different experiments.
His secretary thought that Edison had taken on too much: "Ioften have wondered if Edison might not have accomplished more
if he had attempted less." ®
In the middle of the crowded summer of 1889 Edison left
the laboratory for Europe. He had promised his wife a European
vacation and he also planned to visit the Paris Exposition
where he had a large display. That he should take a trip to
Europe in the middle of several important experimental projects
is a measure of his confidence in his staff. The phonograph,alternating current, and ore milling experiments had allreached critical points. While Edison was feted in Europe his

VI- 4laboratory staff strived to bring these projects to successful
conclusions. Edison had set up a management system at his West
Orange laboratory and his departure in the middle of 1889 was areal test of its efficiency and stability. One of the office
staff noted that everything went on in a "hum drum kind of way"while the "old man" was absent, each experimenter with hisallotted task and Edison's lieutenants sending regular reports
to the boss.

Although it needed Edison's mercurial presence togalvanize the lab into action, the facility could, and did,function successfully without him.
Charles Batchelor was in charge of the lab in Edison'sabsence. He supervised research, made all the businessdecisions, and managed the Edison Phonograph Works. Batchelor
personified the duality of manager and experimenter that Edison
required from his chief lieutenants. He took an active part inexperiments on ore milling, phonographs, and kinetoscopes,
working on them simultaneously as his notebooks show. He
supervised the experimenters at work in Building 5 on various
aspects of the phonograph. Their goal was to put an improved
model into mass production by the beginning of the Christmas
sales season. Batchelor reported to Edison that progress was
being made on the toy doll and long playing phonograph. He
assured Edison that production of wax cylinders was underway at
a new building in the Phonograph Works. The manufacture ofprimary batteries was also going very well, and Batchelor had
Qplans to sell the surplus to outside customers.

VI- 5In Building 1, Arthur Kennelly led the development workon an alternating current machine and the high voltage
municipal system. Both were eagerly awaited by the Edison
Machine Works and the utility companies. Work continued on the
Edison traction system with Batchelor supervising experiments
on a car brake and motor. Reginald Fessenden directed a team ofexperimenters in the chemical lab (Building 2) in the search
for a better insulation material for electric wires. Finally,
W.K.L. Dickson supervised research into magnetic separation in
Building 4 in which he had installed several ore separators.
Dickson divided his time between Building 4 and thephotographic room in the main laboratory building where hecarried out the historic development of the motion picture
camera. With Edison in Paris, he persuaded Batchelor to erect a
new building designed for the motion picture work and a
two-storey photographic studio was quickly erected adjacent to
Building 4. This was one of many new structures added to thelaboratory complex. The lean-tos, shacks, and other temporary
buildings, each designed to suit an experimental project,9
formed a congested "suburb" around the laboratory.
Europe's technological elite met at Paris, in the shadowof the newly constructed Eiffel Tower, to celebrate the wonders
of industrial technology. The Paris Exposition was a tribute to
the technological advancements of the Second Industrial
Revolution, its Eiffel Tower a symbol of the confidence andpower of the machine age.

VI- 6The exhibit for the Paris Exposition was a major project
for the laboratory. Work began in December 1888 on the designof the display and construction was done in the machine shops
and Phonograph Works. It was then crated up and shipped toEurope, accompanied by some of Edison's laboratory staff under
the leadership of William Hammer who had successfully installed
Edison displays at previous exhibitions. Edison's electricity
display was one of the centerpieces of the exhibition. Itfeatured thousands of electric light bulbs, a complete electric
power station, and numerous electric signs and displays. The
Edison exhibit at the Paris Exposition illustrated the wide
range of experimental activities carried out in his laboratory
at West Orange, and it took up a whole acre of fair grounds.
(Illus 6-1, Edison exhibit at Paris Exhibition, 18.100 # 6612.)
In addition to the electrical, phonograph, and ore milling
displays, Edison showed many different types of telegraphapparatus and some unique inventions like the Edison-Sims
torpedo and the pyro-magnetic generator.^®
Edison's enthusiastic reception in Paris underlined his
international status as a great inventor. A constant flow ofvisitors arrived at his suite in the Hotel du Rhin. He washonored by many professional and scientific groups, andthroughout his trip was able to gather information that had
relevance to the work being done at West Orange. The French
Academy of Sciences gave him a warm welcome and such was
Edison's delight at this reception that he promised them allIllustration 6-1
Edison Exhibit at Paris Exposition

VI- 7phonographs 1 Wherever he went, Edison exchanged information
with the European scientific community and often got an
opportunity to see the latest advances in important
technologies. At a dinner to honor the fiftieth anniversary ofDaguerre, he talked with Etienne Marey who had considerable
experience in photographing motion. Edison's visit to Marey's
laboratory in Paris was an turning point in the development of
motion pictures."^ (See kinetoscope section.)
Edison made several business deals while in Europe,
notably the purchase of the Lalande battery rights which
provided his phonograph with a reliable source of electricity
and was the beginning of an important business for him. The
collection of scientific information from all parts of theworld was the foundation of Edison's method of innovation atWest Orange. The 1889 exhibition had attracted many companies
to Paris and no doubt Edison gathered information on thecompetition as assiduously as he collected foreign technicaljournals.
His business activities during this trip illustrate theinternational nature of the Edison enterprise. The incandescentbulb had achieved successful diffusion throughout Europe andmany countries had Edison lighting systems in operation. Edison
visited some of the leading central stations in Europe and wasgiven a tour of the great Siemens Works in Berlin where Edisonlighting equipment was made. There was a strong link between
Edison's work in the United States and the development ofVI- 8electrical technology in Germany. Edison had hired many Germanscientists and engineers, some of whom had gone on, like Johann
Schuckert and Sigmund Bergmann, to build electricalmanufacturing concerns in Germany. Edison had many friends andbusiness connections in central Europe and used these tomonitor the development of new technology. The German
industrial laboratories, supported by the best technicaleducation system in the world, were responsible for many
important advances in electrical technology and it was Edison's
policy to keep abreast of their work, exchanging informationand new ideas for electrical equipment, especially in the areaof incandescent lamps.
Edison also took time to promote his phonograph, which
was a very popular part of the Edison exhibit at Paris, drawing
the largest number of visitors after the Eiffel Tower. Foreigninterest in his machine was at a high point and several
companies had been created to sell the phonograph in Europe.
Payments for the right to be agents for Edison phonographs andorders for machines made European customers the largest market
for machines in the early 1890's. The English phonographbusiness was in the hands of George Gouraud who had been an
agent for Edison in the 1870s. Gouraud's order for 1000
machines was the largest single order placed for phonographs at
the West Orange Works.
Edison's strategy for foreign markets had always been toquickly sell the marketing rights to groups of foreignVI- 9investors. He made the machine and then exported it to themarketing organization overseas. In the case of the electric
light, the original generating equipment for the first European
installations had been part of the Edison exhibit at the Paris
exhibition of 1881. In a new strategy to control manufacture,
Edison considered setting up plants in Europe, making his
enterprise truly multinational. He planned to acquire a factoryin Belgium to make his toy doll and use this facility as thebase to distribute dolls on the Continent. 12 This project wasnever realized, but in later years he made agreements with his
friend Bergmann to manufacture Edison storage batteries in
Europe. Edison's motion picture and phonograph businesses werealso multinational with the international interchange of money,
machines, records, and talent. Many Edison movies and records
were made in Europe and then exported to the United States. The
West Orange laboratory was at the center of an international
business enterprise in the 1890s.

VI-10

THE LABORATORY IN THE 189OS

On his return to West Orange, Edison was greeted withgood news about the experiments in hand: Dickson had madesignificant progress with the kinetoscope, and the pilot ore
separation plants showed promising results. Progress in thephonograph experiments came at a good time; Edison returned
from Europe impressed by the appeal of his phonograph and eager
to perfect it. He had seen enough evidence to think that thisproduct had a commercial future. The input from the North
American Phonograph Company reinforced his decision to develop
a smaller machine with better reproduction. Edison had also
committed his laboratory to an experimental project toduplicate prerecorded cylinders— the vital part of an amusement
phonograph business. In the meantime the business of selling
phonographs as business machines was declining rapidly. The
great problem facing Edison was paying for all his experimental
projects. The 1890s were years of financial hardship for his
enterprise. The long campaign to perfect the phonograph had
almost exhausted his financial resources and there was little
hope that more money could be raised in Lippincott's North
American Company.
Edison's stake in the phonograph was a large one, larger
than Lippincott's he would later claim, and he was bound toVI-11several expensive experimental projects. By his own estimation,
he had invested $540,000 into the phonograph business by 1891.
The North American company marketed both Edison's phonographand Tainter's graphophone. Edison thought that his machine wasbetter built than the graphophone and he knew it was more
popular with the customers. Unhappy that the graphophoneinterests received a royalty on every phonograph sold, Edisonsoon began to feel that he got the worse part of the bargain.
The financial weakness of the North American Phonograph Company
meant that it could not support all the R&D effort carried out
on the phonograph at the lab. It was, he felt, only a matter oftime before the phonograph became a major product like theelectric light and he had no intention of sharing this gold
mine with the graphophone interest. He therefore began tomanoeuvre himself away from the Lippincott organization while
doing the research that would produce a successful product for
the amusement market in the future.
In 1890 he instructed the Works to complete all machinesordered under the contract to both the North American and theToy Phonograph Companies, "leaving nothing in the Works thathas not been charged according to contract." Edison ordered theworkforce to be cut back by the end of the year; only work on
coin-in-the-slot machine and ore milling was to be continued.
^(Illus 6-2, Men working on phonographs, 29.401, # 5955)
Edison had to conserve his resources. His grand plan forthe laboratory was based on the idea of a diversified operation

VI-12

with several research and manufacturing operations running at
the same time. Some projects would be practical campaigns,
based on identified problems with known goals, and others would
be more speculative basic research with no clearly defined
objectives. Edison's strategy was to spread his money andexperiments over a group of projects and use the profits of one
to finance the development of another. Yet in order to financethe manufacturing as well as the R&D on the phonograph and ore
separation, Edison had to cut back on some of the more
speculative efforts underway. Work was ended on the cotton
picker and the hearing aid. The pyro-magnetic generator wasabandoned. Edison still maintained long-term speculative
experiments for his own personal interest; including
experiments in etheric force and other electromagnetic
phenomena that had been suggested by his study of the "Edison
Effect." Yet these type of experiments became rarer as the
1890s progressed; there was no longer the time or money to finda substitute for ivory, rubber, silk, or mother of pearl.^
The Edison enterprise began the 1890s on the foundationof three main businesses: phonographs, ore separation, andelectrical products. The research effort was concentrated into
these three basic areas, as Table 1 illustrates:

VI-13

TABLE ONEWest Orange Laboratory 1890.
Estimated Cost of Experiments

BILLED TO

Edison General Electric$17,045

Edison & Villard$19,225

Phonograph Companies$20,984

Ore Milling Companies$21,465

Electrical experiments accounted for the largest
expenditures on research. EGE commissioned many experimental
projects in electricity, and Edison and Villard supported thecosts of the remainder. The newly-installed management of EGE
began on a cautious note, looking very carefully into the costsof experiments before they committed themselves to research atWest Orange. The new company had gathered an impressive rangeof patents and now they had the power to choose from several
different technological solutions to the same problem. Such was
the case with electric traction. See Sidebar 6-1, ELECTRIC
TRACTION AT THE LABORATORYVI-14

The ties between the West Orange laboratory and theelectrical industry were not broken in the 1890s, in fact they
grew even stronger. A new contract was made in 1890 in which
EGE supported the costs of half of Edison's experimental time
for the next five years. Three quarters of the laboratory's
work time was to be devoted to electrical development and thecompany agreed to bear the expenses of this work up to a weekly
limit of $1200. The annual report of EGE justified this expense
by pointing out the great value of Edison's experiments on
reducing the costs of incandescent lamps. It concluded: "inview of the value of Mr Edison's services, the Company has a
new contract with him, under which he devotes a greater part ofhis services to the Company." 1 5
The new contract stipulated that "the facilities of his(Edison's) laboratory are at the disposal of the company." Thelab carried out work under contract for EGE on alternating
current equipment, transformers, meters, motors, testing
instruments, and arc lights. The most important work done for
EGE at the laboratory was on the incandescent bulb. The court's
decision of 1889 had confirmed Edison as the inventor of theelectric light and Edison General Electric wanted the world toknow that they had his patents and genius at their disposal.
Edison's room 12 on the second floor of the laboratory was
fitted out to work on filaments and nearby were theglassblower's room and the vacuum pump room which took theirpower from the overhead shaft running from the precisionVI-15

machine shop. His special expertise in the manufacture ofincandescent lamps was a valuable asset to the company. In 1891
and 1892 he was called in to reorganize production at the Lamp
Works, spending more than 500 hours getting the Works "out ofthe difficulties caused by failure of the employees to do theirduties." ^The laboratory remained an important resource for the
local Edison lighting companies who were pursuing a policy of
expansion in the 1890s. Much of the planning for these larger
systems was done by Edison's staff at West Orange, and in somecases Edison himself worked on designing larger central
stations and distribution systems. The Chicago Edison system,
under the direction of F.S. Gorton, quickly ran out of capacity
to meet demand and Gorton was impatient to extend service.
Edison and Kennelly devised a distribution system for all ofChicago, employing high voltage direct current and themunicipal lamp which operated on 200 volts. Edison wrote to
Gorton: "We...are planning for the future so that what we do
put m

will match the extended system 10 years from now." 17
Although Edison could hardly have been pleased that his

name was dropped from General Electric when it was formed in
1892, he did not sever relations with the company, as some haveclaimed. His secretary, Tate, stressed Edison's annoyance atthe loss of his name from the industry he created, but theinventor was probably more upset at the high valuation put on
the assets of Thomson-Houston in the terms of the amalgamation.

VI-16

As expected, Henry Villard had watered the stock of the smallerThomson-Houston Company to bring it up to par with that of EGE
before the consolidation.

The formation of GE is often

interpreted as a watershed in Edison's association withelectricity. The press saw it as the "trust" versus the lone
inventor, with the latter "frozen out" of the industry he hadcreated. 19 Yet Edison had no reason to maintain an interest inelectrical supply and manufacture. His whole purpose infounding the West Orange laboratory was to be able to move outof highly competitive markets into more profitable areas.
Edison wanted to make money by innovating and saw few prospects
in the reorganized electrical industry; it was too big and toocompetitive.
Whatever the personal differences between inventor andcompany, and precarious financial situation of GE, the Company
paid handsomely for Edison's time in connection with lamp
research and manufacture. Edison's laboratory was fitted into
GE's corporate strategies. The search for the cheap, highperformance electric lamp did not die in 1892 but went on withmore financial support than ever. Over the five years from 1890
to 1895 EGE, and its successor GE, paid the laboratory over
$121,000 for its work on improving and developing electricalequipment. This work formed the largest single project for the
Edison laboratory in the early 1890s. 20
The formation of General Electric in 1892 did not bringan end to the R&D on alternating currents at the lab, whereVI-17

work continued on transformers, alternators, rotary converters,
rectifiers, and a/c meters. Despite the estrangement over theformation of General Electric, the electrical industry
maintained its position as the single largest customer of thelaboratory. In terms of the money spent on research, the West
Orange laboratory was still primarily an electrical laboratory
in the 1890s. Electricity was the important thread that ran
through all the experimental projects— electromedicine,phonograph, kinetoscope, and ore milling. Of all the electrical
technology that passed over the experimental tables at West
Orange, Edison chose to develop the small electric motor,
beginning on the design of a 1/2 h.p. motor. The electric motor
played the major role in Edison's conception of a commercial
electrical supply system, providing the profits that were notin lighting. The history of the utility industry in the 1890s
proved him right: the motor load was responsible for improving
the load factors of central stations and saved many fromextinction.
The West Orange laboratory had attended to the design of
all sizes of electric motors, from the large traction models instreetcars to the smaller motors used to power consumer
durables. Edison had little success with traction motors and hecould not afford the costs of developing such large-scale
electrical systems. Only the fully-integrated "trusts," like
General Electric could manage that. The small motor, on theother hand, was cheap and easy to produce and had a wide arrayVI-18of uses: this was the kind of electrical technology that Edison
wanted to develop. The fan motor was the first of a long lineof motorized products to be manufactured at the West Orange
complex. Edison set up the Edison Manufacturing Company to
manufacture his electric fan kit and it later added a line ofelectromedical equipment. These two products were the result of
the West Orange laboratory's work in electricity, offering avivid contrast to the products that were developed at Menlo
Park.
While the daily work of the laboratory was dominated byelectricity, Edison's personal attention was directed to theore milling project on which his own personal fortune rode; heclaimed to have put every cent he had in it. When shortages ofmoney brought work at the mines to a halt, Edison returned to
the laboratory to generate more funds in the electrical,
phonograph or kinetoscope work: "I have no money...but am backin the lab making it" was the policy of diversification at work.

mthe 1890s.

21

Edison was confident that he could quickly turnexperiments at the laboratory into ready cash, picking the mostpromising, perfecting it, and then selling it quickly. The
Phonograph Works gave him independence from venture capitalists
and provided the means to generate income from manufacturing.
In this way it could support the costs of long-term
experimental projects that offered profits in the future, in
addition to covering the ruinous expenses of "pioneering" amajor project like ore milling.

1

SIDEBAR:ELECTRIC TRACTION.

The first commercial traction system was the work of
Frank Sprague, an ex-Edison employee who successfullyengineered the pilot system at Richmond, Virginia. He hadformed a company with E.H. Johnson to promote his electricmotors which were also used to power elevators. Edison had his
own motors and he was most upset at Johnson's support ofSprague, which he considered treachery. EGE acquired theSprague company and developed his overhead pickup system, while
Edison concentrated on the use of a third rail to deliver thecurrent to the cars. EGE were reluctant to support twocompeting traction systems and therefore Edison turned to Henry
Villard for financial support. They embarked on an ambitious
project to develop a direct current traction scheme and built atest track that went from the West Orange laboratory to thestreet car line running along Main Street. The track was about
a quarter of a mile long and dotted with transformers which
reduced the 1000 volt transmission to a safe 20 volts for thelive third rail.'*' The problems with using such low voltage wasto ensure a clean pickup from the third rail and obtainsufficient torque from the motors. The experimental results
were not promising because mud or moisture on the pickups could
easily cut off the power. Edison worked through 1890 on thisproblem without achieving success and finally shelved the

2.
jproject.
Ironically, the policy of R&D for hire led to thelaboratory improving the Sprague motor for EGE while
experiments were being undertaken to produce a competing Edison
system! The Sprague street car motor had been the starting
point of Edison's researches into a new motor. Its uniqueconstruction put the motor on the driving axle of the vehicle,
and used gearing to keep the armature far away from the motor.
This design was compact and resistant to the dust and dirt thatwas the bane of the traction motor designer.

From 1889 to1890 the laboratory examined and improved the Sprague motor
under contract to EGE, altering the design and revising themethod of its manufacture. This work also had spill-overs ingeneral dynamo construction and manufacture. * EGE even took up
Edison's diverse research into traction after he had given up
on his low voltage system. They signed a new accord in 1890.
Traction motors were designed at the laboratory and then built
at the Schenectady Machine Works which had the large scale
facilities to work on this technology, including an indoor test
track. Edison and Kennelly often travelled to Schenectady towork on traction and high voltage distribution systems.

C

TRACTION NOTES.
1) Electrical World, Jan 1892, XLX, p. 2;
2) Orange Chronicle, Nov & Dec 1889, May 1890, 1889 electricrailroad.

33) Percy Dunsheath, A History of Electrical Power Engineering(Cambridge: MIT, 1962), p. 184.
4) LB 041289, pl93, 25 April 1890.
5) B.E. Morrow to C. Wilson, 13 Mar 1918, TAE inc
organization.

VI-19EDISON'S FOLLY:THE ORE MILLING VENTURE

The appeal of ore milling to Edison was its profit. He
prided himself of the practicality of his innovations and in1892 he claimed that ore milling was the most "commercial"thing he had ever done. The magnetic separation of ores had
been one of the many experimental programs undertaken by thelab in its first decade. By 1889 Edison realized that it had
the potential to become a revolutionary technology that could
transform the production of iron and steel, one of America's
major industries. What started as one more promisingexperimental result turned into a massive effort to reorient
the slow westward shift of the iron and steel industry andrevitalize Eastern blast furnaces, which were in steady decline
because of the exhaustion of iron ores in the Northeastern
corridor. Shortage of ore had forced iron masters to importiron ore from Cuba and Spain. New Jersey still had large
deposits of low grade ore, and Edison thought his separatingmachines could make a paying proposition out of these deadmines, reversing the westward migration of steel mills andgiving him a profitable monopoly of a major source of ore. His
ore milling company would be his "Standard Oil"— a large,
highly efficient operation with few competitors and incredible
profits. At the height of the project he envisaged running 8
large mills in New Jersey with a total yearly output of over

VI-20$10,000,000 worth of ore, bringing an annual profit of$3,000,000.22
New Jersey's iron making industry had begun in colonial
times, when the large deposits of magnetite iron ore in thenorth of the state attracted miners.

Edison's experiments inmagnetic separation of ores had been started at Menlo Park andthis led to Edison's first patents in this technology in 1880.
His basic idea was to use a powerful electromagnet to pull ironparticles from a falling stream of ore. It was simple andinexpensive and it appealed to him. Experiments continued at
the Harrison lab and the new metallurgical building set up at
West Orange. The project developed along familiar lines:
research led to the granting of patents, a model separator wasconstructed, and attempts were made to sell the Edison ore
separators to mines. The mine owners were a conservative groupand this strategy failed. Edison then moved forward into
establishing companies to run mines using his extracting andprocessing equipment. This was something he had done many times
before.
Edison's agents were ordered to scour the country fordeposits of iron ore, gold, and other precious metals that
could be separated by his process. Ideal sites for magnetic
separation were found in the ore mines of New Jersey and
Pennsylvania that were exhausted of high grade ore. A pilot
plant was established at Bechtelville, Pennsylvania in mid 1889
and from the first operations of this plant Edison wasVI-21convinced that he could make enormous profits in processing low
grade ore. Those close to him noted that he had become.
24"intoxicated" with the profit potential of ore milling.
The
comparative advantage of a laboratory built for flexibility andspeed was that it could move quickly into profitable new
ventures as soon as they were identified, and in 1889 Edisonshifted his resources into ore milling. The historian Harold
Passer's description of Edison as a "conservative defender ofthe status quo" does not fit his activities during the 1890s?
instead we see a courageous inventor and reckless industrialist
who went against the conventional wisdom of the iron industry
and poured money "like water" into a revolutionary
technology. 25

Edison was not the only entrepreneur-inventor trying tomagnetically separate iron from low grade ore for there wereseveral other devices in the experimental or pilot projectstage. The originality of Edison's idea was the sheer scale inwhich he intended to extract usable iron out of the ore and his
grandiose plan to revolutionize the entire iron and steel
industry with it. He argued that mining profits came not fromthe richness of the ore (the prevailing business strategy ofthe mining industry), but from the highly efficient processingof great amounts of ore. No one thought that very low grade ore(20% magnetite content of the ore) could be economicallyprocessed. Edison believed that the economies of large scaleVI-22

processing could make it a paying proposition. His ore milling
technology was striking in its originality; the editors of Iron
Age concluded: "he sweeps aside accepted practice in thisparticular field and attains results not hitherto approached.
He pursues methods in ore dressing at which those who are
9 ctrained may well stand aghast."
Edison could embark on an original technological pathbecause he had the resources of the West Orange complex behindhim. Conventional ore crushing and grading equipment was notlarge enough for Edison's ambitious plans; his ore separation
plants were custom built to his own design. He had the greatest
laboratory in the world to devise and test new ideas. Nearby
was the Phonograph Works that could manufacture the massive ore
crushing machines. Edison's plans for magnetic ore separation
were based widespread use of electric power and automatic
machinery— the ore was not going to touch human hands fromextraction to final loading— and the only way he could do thiswas with his own plant. The specialized equipment was designed
and manufactured at West Orange, even down to the telephone
communication system which was essential to manage thisgigantic operation. ' Edison planned to use his laboratory toturn iron mining into a high-tech industry, embarrassing theconservative mine owners and taking their profits.
The most promising vein of low-grade magnetite was foundat Ogdensburg in northern New Jersey where abandoned mines
dotted the sides of the Musconetcong Mountain. In 1889 Edison

VI-23bought a mine at Ogden and began to equip it with his ore
separation machinery. The Bechtelville and Ogden operations
were set up as a pilot plants of a technology that would prove
its worth to the mining industry in exactly the same way that
the Pearl Street central station had shown the viability of the
Edison electric lighting system. He naturally needed financial
support for the project and tried to attract groups ofinvestors into it. It was only when all these efforts failed
that Edison took over the ore milling operation himself. He
decided that it was a waste of time persuading mine owners to
adopt the new technology. Instead he was going to run the mines
himself and then negotiate with the mine owners, from a
position of strength, once his method had been provensuccessful. He moved from selling separators to going directly
into the mining and concentrating business. 28
Everything connected with the ore milling project was
massive, from the size of the machinery to the amount of ore
processed each day. The ore seams at Ogden ran in a straightline so Edison used giant earth movers to cut open a huge strip
mine in the side of the mountain, creating an enormous
artificial canyon. Edison bought large steam shovels (one was
the largest in America) and several travelling cranes to carryout this work. After the ground was torn apart, the huge chunksof rock were removed and carried on railroad skips to the large
rock crushing machines where they were broken up into
successively smaller lumps. The job of breaking up the rocksVI-24was done by giant cornish rolls which crushed the rocks as theyfell between them. These machines were designed at the West
Orange laboratory and were probably the largest ever built,
each weighing thirty-five tons. The rock passed through several
sets of rolls until it was graded finely enough to be dried andthen taken to the separation phase. Here it was passed through
Edison's "three high" rolls which produced a finer powder outof the crushed ore which could then be separated by hundreds ofsuccessively more powerful magnets. (See Sidebar on "Edison and
the Boys at Work.")
This operation is a fine example of the nineteenth
century confidence in economies of scale. Edison thought hecould produce ore cheaper by processing more of it. Similarly,
Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick were confident that their giant
steel works (another trademark of the Second Industrial
Revolution) would drive down costs by integrating all steps ofsteel manufacture into one large organization. Carnegie's
strategy was based on the proximity of the ore beds to his
mills on the Great Lakes. He expected to cut costs by
exploiting the rich ores of the newly discovered Mesabi rangeof Minnesota. On the other hand, Edison confidently expectedthat he could deliver ore to the eastern blast furnaces cheaper
than ore from the midwest, and that the low price of his output
would enable the eastern furnaces to compete with Carnegie's
steel mills.
The great work of building the Ogden plant continued

VI-25through 1890 and 1891. It was completed at the end of 1891 andthe first order for iron ore was started. Edison now began to
devote more and more of his time to the work at Ogden, which
demanded his personal attention. He spent most of the week atthe mill, returning to West Orange on Saturday and spending
Monday at the lab, reviewing the weeks's experimental work,
before returning to Ogden. Edison was an absentee manager ofthe laboratory which had to run without his daily direction.
His absence from the experimental rooms of West Orange sharply
cut back his output of inventions. A decade which started withan average of over 30 patents a year ended at a much lower
level; no patents obtained in 1894 and 1895 and only one for
1896.
The first year of operations at the mine produced few
results for the engineering problems of running the giantrollers overcame the workers at Ogden. The machines continuallybroke down under the tremendous strain of crushing rocks. The
cost of failure was high; Insull calculated that the ore
milling venture was running a loss of $6000 a week in thesummer of 1891! 29 Convinced that the engineering problems could
be solved at Ogden, and confident that if this could be done
the project would eventually be successful, he was determined
to get the ore mill working whatever the cost. This project
reveals Edison's unswerving faith in the technologicalsolution. In 1892 he admitted that the ore milling process "isquite a problem" but optimistically thought that "when we getVI-26mworking order we shall easily solve it." 30
Once again, Edison had underestimated the number oftechnical problems to be solved. His attention was initially on
the output of ore, but he soon had to come to grips withproblems inside the blast furnace. The iron masters were nothappy using powdered ore and it did not perform satisfactorily
in their furnaces. The resources of the laboratory were applied
to a process to mould the ore into briquettes. This improved
the handling characteristics of the ore but did nothing tocontrol its high phosphorus content— a major disadvantage inthe market place. Edison was so absorbed in these engineering
problems that he gradually lost sight of the economic
parameters of the ore milling project. It had ceased to be abusiness venture and had become a technical challenge.
The financial strain of enlarging the Ogden works meantthat Edison had to cut back expenditure at West Orange. He
instructed his managers to reduce the labor force and obtainoutside work for the Edison Phonograph Works to keep themachines running. The Bates numbering machine company waspurchased and production was begun in 1892. The Bates numbering
stamp was an ideal product for the Works, which was fully
equipped for high precision manufacture. The great experiencein producing small electrical equipment was also an asset for
the Works, and much of 1892 was taken up in trying to win alarge contract from the Thomson-Houston company to manufacturesmall motors. These fan motors had been designed at theVI-27laboratory and the Works contained all the machinery needed to
manufacture them. This was an important contract for the West
Orange complex. 31 The amalgamation of Thomson-Houston into GE
brought Edison's hopes to manufacture electric motors to anend, but the Works continued to manufacture meters andinstruments for GE.
At the end of 1892 Edison was back at Ogden, installingbigger and better equipment and confidently looking forward tosuccess and great profits. His plan was formulated on the rapid
conquest of the engineering problems and a great increase inscale. The cost of installing colossal machines was immense andEdison could only afford it by a gradual liquidation of his
stock in GE. This was done because he needed money quickly andnot because he was peeved over the formation of General
Electric. The large investment in the Ogden operation wasconsistent with his strategy of becoming a manufacturer and nota response to the consolidation of the electrical industry that
excluded him. Edison had few regrets in leaving this industry;
the intense competition discouraged him and he expected few
profits in such an environment. 32
The 1893 depression hit the electrical industry very
hard, it was "perfectly dead" according to Tate. While theelectrical industry floundered, Edison was comforted by themoney he was going to make in ore milling. He felt that thisbusiness would generate profits that "will outrank theincandescent lamp as a commercial venture".

He had lost

VI-28control of the direction of electrical technology and he madethat loss up by dominating all aspects of his ore milling
venture. He told reporters that "in my future campaigns I
expect to control absolutely such inventions as I shall make.
Whatever the profits are I shall control them." This was aprophetic remark in view of his emerging business strategies.
34
The panic of 1893 that devastated the electrical industry
also damaged the Edison enterprise, cutting back demand forphonographs and reducing the price of iron ore. Edison's
calculations for profit in ore milling were based on a price of$6.00 per ton for midwestern ore. As the price of Minnesota ore
dropped below $3.00 a ton, the chances of a successful
conclusion to the ore milling venture grew more distant.
Undaunted, Edison continued to rebuild the Ogden operation, at
the cost of his holdings in the electrical industry. Meanwhile
the Mesabi ranges could provide the cheap ore needed inCarnegie's furnaces: in 1893 600,000 tons were shipped, by 1894
the figure was 2,000,000. ^The failure of the ore millingbusiness intensified the depression at West Orange. The policyof cutting back the costs of running the Edison complex
continued and many old hands were let go, further reducing thework force of the laboratory. By 1894 Edison was carefully
conserving his finances, keeping his reserves for the main
businesses, and preparing for another test run at Ogden in thespring of 1895.^

VI-29The shortage of money forced Edison to return to thelaboratory. The policy of diversification gave him the means to
overcome the disastrous losses in ore milling. The essence of
this idea was to move from one experimental area to another inthe hunt for the elusive breakthrough, the highly profitable
new idea that could refill Edison's treasury. It relied on
several experimental projects running simultaneously togenerate at least one commercial success. The experiments
underway at the laboratory gave him another chance to recover
the fortune expended on "Edison's folly" (as the Press calledit) at Ogden. The development work on the kinetoscope hadreached a such a point in 1894.

1

SIDEBAR 6-2
EDISON AND THE "BOYS" AT WORK

Although his public image colors Edison as a recluse, a"wizard" alone in a laboratory, he enjoyed the outdoor life.
Edison continued the ore milling project well after it waspractical because the work gave him so much pleasure. He had
often used prospecting trips as a vacation from the pressuresof the laboratory, and the remote mountains of New Jersey
provided the opportunity to mix business and pleasure. To a man
fascinated with machines, the plant at Ogden was a paradise.
Edison loved to watch the great shovels and cranes at work andfelt at home in the uproar of the mine:
On all sides the roar and whistle of machinery, thewhir of conveyors and the choking white dust...Big
wheels revolve in the engine house...little narrowgauge locomotives puff their way in and out between
the buildings...with shrieking and whistling wheel
and brakes.
The scale of the operation also had great appeal: Edison
erected scores of buildings at Ogden and soon created anindustrial complex where hundreds of men worked. A post office
was built and the name of the community was changed to"Edison." He revelled in the primitive life at the mine and themasculine world of the miners and mountainmen in the remote
Jersey highlands. The spartan existence also invigorated

2Charles Batchelor who joined Edison at the mine. Talking withthe men all night, sleeping on floors, clambering in and out of
the giant machinery, and surrounded by dirt and equipment,
Edison was in his element. He wrote to Kruesi: "come with Batch
and I into the mining business where you may be dirty but very
9
happy." Edison had by now given up on making the ore milling
project a joint venture with investors or mill owners,
intending to run the operation with his own funds. He told thePress that the profits were not going to be shared with outsideoparties, "except the boys here who own the thing with me."At Ogden Edison was able to recreate the close-knit
comradeship of Menlo Park, where he and the "boys" had eaten,
slept, and worked together. He brought several "muckers" withhim from West Orange and worked closely with an assistant,
Walter Mallory. After dinner at the mine, Edison would lead a
discussion of the experimental and engineering work on hand.
This was called "going to school," and every man was expected
to talk about the areas he was involved in. The "old man":loved to nag his men, haze them with questions, justto see if they knew what they were doing.
When they were not hard at work, Edison and the "boys" occupied
themselves with practical jokes, cockfights, rattlesnake fights
and boxing matches.^ For Edison, this was the life!
The great works at Ogden attracted many men looking forwork and a chance to make money. One of them was Thomas
Robbins, a rubber-goods salesman. Working with Edison, he built
rubber conveyor belts to move the ore through the processing

3stages. Conveyance was one of the important engineering
problems to be solved because it offered the greatest
opportunity to decrease the cost of the operation. The rubber
belts ran on rollers which were specially designed to resist
dust and dirt. This automatic and self-lubricating system
anticipating the assembly line of the twentieth century. Henry
Ford later claimed that it was Edison's example at Ogden thatinspired him to devise his assembly line for the Model T.

ENDNOTES
1) T. A. Robbins reminiscence, quoted in M. Josephson, p. 368.
2) TAE to Kruesi, ND, Kruesi file3) Scientific American, voi 66, 2 April 1892, p. 216.
4) Recollections of Dan Smith and Benny Odel, in Mary Childs
Nerney's notes, N 281101.
5) H. Ford and S.G. Crowther, "Edison as I Knew Him," quoted in
Josephson, p. 378.

The K inetoseopeVI-30

MOVING PICTURES

The development of the motion picture is perhaps Edison's
greatest inventive achievement at the West Orange laboratory.
The motion picture— one of the most influential art forms ofthe twentieth century— began as a simple peep-hole machine
which treated the viewer to a few seconds of silent moving
pictures. The kinetoscope heralded a new era in massentertainment and was the vanguard of a great new industry. Its
development at West Orange is a revealing example of thecharacter of work at the laboratory. The debate about the true
inventor of motion pictures is academic: very many men madecontributions to this technology within the fluid organizationand cooperation of Edison's laboratory.
This was a team project carried out by several
experimenters largely in Edison's absence and squeezed into ademanding schedule of many other duties. The basic team of one
experimenter and an assistant was supplemented by mechanics
from the machine shops, pattern makers and carpenters from
Building 3, and muckers from the labor pool. Although theoriginal idea was Edison's, the successful development of the
kinetoscope was more a reflection of the skills of his
experimenters and his ability to pick the right men for thejob. The work on the kinetoscope shows the flexibility of
Edison's workers who had to distribute their time over several

V I - 31

different projects. Even the chief experimenter, W.K.L.
Dickson, could not devote himself entirely to the project; aschief of the metallurgical laboratory in Building 4 he had to
divide his time between ore milling and motion pictures.
The project that Edison turned over to Dickson in 1889
had begun as an adjunct to the phonograph. It was one of his"stunts"— an idea for an invention, a dream with a hint ofpracticality. Edison thought it might be possible to "devise an
instrument that should do for the eye what the phonograph does
for the ear." 37 This idea had come to him during the work ofperfecting the phonograph. It brought together a store ofexperience in one technology and an interest in another;photography intrigued Edison and he had acquired equipment andplates before the move to West Orange. At the temporary lab atHarrison he had discussed his ideas for the possible uses ofphotography with Dickson, a fervent amateur photographer.
Several experiments using photography had been undertaken at
the Harrison laboratory, including an attempt to produce a
photographic image of sound by means of a reflecting discattached to a phonograph which projected the lines of soundwaves onto a long strip of paper. Once at the new lab, Edison
continued to think about photography; the shop order books forthe lab show that general photographic experiments were begun
shortly after the laboratory opened, probably in thephotographic studio installed on the second floor. In Decemberof 1887, he instructed John Ott to construct a shutter device

VI-32

which focused light on a chalk drum. This apparatus shows how
Edison used photographic techniques in his thinking about
recording and reproducing sounds on a revolving drum.

OQ

In his attempt to join sight and sound, Edison naturally
hoped to achieve visual reproduction in the same mechanicalform as he reproduced sound, using the phonograph analogy inhis first experimental apparatus. The revolving cylinder— arecuring motif in Edison's inventions— was often the format oftoys that gave the visual impression of movement, such as thezoetrope. This device was the work of English mathematician
W.G. Horner. It used the illusion of persistence ofvision— when the eye retains an image a short time after it has
disappeared. The zoetrope was comprised of a number of pictures
viewed through slots in a cylinder; as the cylinder was turned
the pictures appeared to move. Many other machines wereavailable that used moving pictures to give the illusion of
movement. Edison knew all about the zoetrope and had bought
several other similar toys. His first experiments at West
Orange were directed at finding a mechanical means to exploit
the persistence of vision phenomenon by moving images quickly
past the viewer's line of sight.
The rapid development of photography in the years after
the Civil War gave Edison encouragement and inspiration. He wasalways alert to opportunities presented by technologicaladvance and quick to exploit the work of others. The
photographer Eadweard Muybridge greatly impressed Edison andVI-33encouraged him to pursue the idea of moving pictures. In
February 1888 Muybridge visited the lab to demonstrate his
sequential photographs of animals in motion. Muybridge had
mounted these pictures on a zoetrope and successfully recreatedmovement. Later that year experiments were begun to duplicate
this approach in a phonograph format.

39

The early experiments consisted of laying microscopic
photographs on a cylinder, slightly larger than the tinfoil
phonograph but of the same general arrangement, which wereviewed through a microscope. Dickson described the first
apparatus as having the sound and picture cylinders running on
the same axis and powered by the same electric motor. The motor
came from the phonograph as did the general concept of thismachine: Edison tried the obvious answer to the problem ofsynchronizing sound and pictures first. The cylinder had tomove forward one frame for each exposure and then hold theimage steady for a fraction of a second in order for eye torecord the image. The problem with synchronizing sight andsound was that the former required intermittent motion while
the latter needed continuous motion. This mechanical problem
absorbed most of the attention of Edison and the experimental
team. They experimented with break wheels, tuning forks,
ratchets, and electromagnetic devices to achieve theintermittent rotary motion.
The first year of experimentation did not produce aworking machine, but the experimental team and the "old man"VI-34

were encouraged to think that images could be manipulated toshow movement. A caveat was filed in October for a "Moving
View" apparatus which could recreate things in motion. The
basis of this invention was the cylinder format in which therapid movement of many small photographs per second gave theillusion of movement. The series of pictures were photographedon the cylinder "in the same manner as sound is recorded on thephonograph."

The viewer looked through a microscope device

to see the moving pictures and listened to the accompanying
sound track through listening tubes attached to a phonograph.
Many problems had to be solved before a commercial machine
could be contemplated. The cylinder format had thedisadvantages of requiring a very small image (impractical withthe primitive film then available) and focusing on a curved
plane which produced images with a fuzzy surround. Little
progress had been made in achieving the intermittent motion
which was the vital mechanical element of the machine.
In 1889 the kinetograph experiments moved out of therealm of speculation. A shop order was opened for the projectin February 1889 and later that year a special studio wasconstructed next to Building 4. Dickson and an assistant, C.A.
Brown, also worked behind a locked door in room 5 of the mainlaboratory building. Brown was a mechanic who had worked withDickson in the ore milling lab in Building 4 and obtained
Edison's permission to join Dickson in the Photography Room. ^Dickson was later assisted by several other mechanics andVI-35experimenters, who joined the team when the need arose for
their skills. Throughout 1889 they worked on several machines
to take and show moving pictures. By the end of the year theirefforts had brought forward the critical breakthrough in thedevelopment of motion pictures: the use of a perforated film
strip in place of the pictures on a revolving drum.
Dickson soon found that the microscopic photographs
affixed to the drum were impracticable and began to increase
the size, and improve the definition, of the image. He moved
from fixing small photographs to coating the drum with gelatine
containing silver salts. The most important contribution to
Dickson's work at West Orange came from the manufacturers ofphotographic film: John Carbutt in Philadelphia, the Blair
Company of Boston, and the Eastman Company in Rochester, New
York. Here was the advantage of a wide information net that
could give the workers at West Orange the benefit oftechnological advances elsewhere. As soon as Dickson found out
about these strips of celluloid film coated with sensitive
emulsion, he obtained some samples from John Carbutt ofPhiladelphia. The thick sheets of film were cut into strips andthe top side of the strip was cut into the form of teeth which
engaged a ratchet. This moved the film steadily past the lens.
Celluloid film strip was also manufactured by Eastman's and thefirst order for this improved film was made by Dickson in
September 1889. From then onwards the development of film
technology was dependent on the film makers producing finerVI-36emulsion and faster film. It was only a short step to using afilm strip with perforated edges. The specifications for film
sent from West Orange defined the standard 35mm width of film
used today. z (Illus 6-3 series of film strips) Eastman's film
was thinner than Corbutt's and this permitted the developmentof a camera that worked with flexible film strip instead of
thick sheets. Edison had considered the use of a "long,tape-like sensitive film" in his early sketches of 1887, andwas able to exploit his telegraphic experience by considering
the use of rollers to move the film in the same way that tape
moved through an automatic telegraph.
The weight of the testimony given by Edison and thelaboratory employees involved in the invention points to thedevelopment of a film strip with perforated edges before thetrip to the Paris Exhibition. The film historian Gordon
Hendricks is skeptical of this claim, believing that it wasmade to improve Edison's patent position. Hendricks argues that
Edison got the idea for a perforated strip from the French
inventor Etienne Marey. Hendricks' persuasive version of theinvention hinges on Edison's trip to Paris where he saw thecontinuous film strip in Marey's laboratory. Edison is supposed
to have said, "I knew instantly that Marey had the right idea."
The vital development work was carried out on Edison's
return and resulted in another caveat of late 1889 which
defined the new format.
The development of film projection is also clouded inA A*,ftAaaFülÄC ^lu*.

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controversy. Many would deny Edison the priority of thisinvention but there can be little doubt that Edison saw thepossibilities of projecting an image and devoted experiments toit. His first caveat of October 1888 mentioned that "thepicture might be projected on a screen." Dickson claimed tohave shown Edison a projected moving image, accompanied bysound, as a welcome to the boss on his return from Paris in thefall of 1889. Dickson recalled that he led Edison to the newphotographic building and there the machine produced an imageof Dickson, four foot by five foot, while a phonograph played
the message: "Good Morning Mr. Edison, glad to see you back. I
hope that you are satisfied with the kineto-phonograph.
Dickson also experimented with a tachyscope which enabled him
to project images. His device was exhibited at the Lenox Lyceum
in 1890. Finally there is Edison's marginal note to Terry
Ramsaye's "A Million and One Nights:" "The facts are that
Dickson and I had a machine projecting on a screen 5 footsquare at the time we were making the kinetoscope."45
The development work on the kinetoscope continued through1890, aided by better film strip and mechanical improvements inthe machine. The laboratory's staff soon found that the thinner
celluloid film produced by the Blair Company was best suited tomoving pictures. New models were built that used 3/4- inch widefilms with 1/2-inch square images; Dickson was slowly working
toward best format for the film which combined the desirable
mechanical and photographic properties. The ore milling projectVI-38

had the highest priority, however, and there was to be no
patent application until 1891, when Edison filed a descriptionof two machines: the kinetoscope for viewing pictures and the
kinetograph for taking them.
The strip kinetograph used two electric motors, one todrive the shutter and the other to advance the strip by meansof perforations on each side of the strip. (Illus 6-4 strip
kinetograph, #6571) The film was held steady by teeth which
engaged the perforations while the exposure was made and thenmoved forward by an escapement mechanism for the next exposure.
The image had to be held steady for a fraction of a second or
the persistence of vision would not occur— all the viewer would
see was a blurred image. The rate of exposure could be taken as
high as forty per second and the strips were 20 to 50 feetlong.
The camera was conceived by Edison as the manufacturing
part of the system which produced the film product. It was a
totally different machine from the one people associate withthe motion picture camera. Housed in a large rectangular box,
it was intended to stay in the Works and produce the media forthe new form of entertainment introduced as the kinetoscope. It
was designed around the electric motor which powered the
shutter and moved the film rapidly past it. The shutter andmotor mechanism were assembled as one unit and positioned
directly behind the single lens. The box was attached to a castiron base (no doubt to dampen the vibration), and connected toIllustration 6 —4
Strip KinetographVI-39a source of electricity. The kinetograph was fitted with astart and stop switch and a counter that showed amount of film
used. The kinetograph was the truly original part of the motion
picture system because although many had devised viewing
machines, none had produced a camera like this before.(Illus
6-5, Dickson's drawing of kinetograph in operation.)A

special studio was built to make movies with the kinetograph.
(See Sidebar 6-3, "The Black Maria.")
Dickson had achieved some success in taking pictures
rapidly on the film strip, but there were still mechanicalproblems in the film feed mechanism which caused an unsteady,flickering image. The mechanics who worked with Dickson,
chiefly William Heise, Henry Kayser, and the Ott brothers, had
years of experience in the telegraph industry and were expert
at the mechanics of moving a tape rapidly and exactly past an
aperture. It was men like these who altered the feed to provide
a more positive movement that would not shift the film aroundat high speeds. The addition, and subsequent modification, of a
Geneva stop mechanism was a major step in developing a reliablecamera and projector. Another area in which the mechanics madean important contribution was the synchronization of film andshutter. The motion picture benefitted immeasurably from theexpertise gained in the telegraph and phonograph work.

Illustration 6-5iKinetograph in Black Maria(Drawing from Dickson's Century Magazine Article)

THE KINETOSCOPE

The kinetoscope was the first attempt to get the newtechnology into a form suitable for commercial exploitation. It
was designed as an arcade machine in which the customer paid tosee a film strip and it was closely modelled on thecoin-in-slot phonograph which was being developed at the sametime. The two machines were being worked on concurrently at thelab and in the Works. Both projects suffered from delays. The
kinetoscope was a pine box with a hole in the top for viewing.
The upper part of the box contained an electric motor, shutter,and incandescent lamp to illuminate the images. The lower partof the box held the 50 foot loop of film which was arranged
over rollers and then moved to the top of the machine forviewing. The electricity for the motor was provided by a
AQ
primary battery, just like the phonograph.
(Illus 6-2,
Kinetoscope # 7197)
The marketing of the kinetoscope also followed theexample of the phonograph. Edison's idea was to exploit thenovelty appeal of moving pictures and sell the kinetoscope toamusement parlors. This outlet had proved very successful forthe phonograph. There was obviously no market for moving
pictures at the time and Edison knew from the phonographexperience that selling the product as a novelty familiarized
the public with it while making profits. Kinetoscopes were soon

VI-41placed side by side with phonographs in amusement parlors andalso installed in departments stores, hotels, and bars.(See
Illus 6-6, Amusement Parlor, # 9218.)
The first entrepreneurs attracted to the kinetoscope camenaturally from the phonograph business. A.O. Tate joined with
Thomas Lombard of the North American Phonograph Company and
E.A. Benson of its Chicago franchisee to acquire Edison's
concession to market the kinetoscope. They saw the Columbian
Exposition in Chicago as an appropriate place to launch theinvention, but the Works could not supply the machines in time
for the exhibition in 1893.

49

The first machines were sent fromthe laboratory in April 1894. Edison had reserved his right tosell kinetoscopes overseas and this turned out to be a wise
move because Europe became an important market. A few months
after the first kinetoscopes left the Works for an amusement
parlor in Manhattan, 50 machines were sent to Europe. London,
Paris, Rome, and Copenhagen soon had their own kinetoscope
parlors. 50 Edison was sowing the seeds of another vibrantbusiness in the same way that he had founded the electric lightand phonograph industries in Europe.
His strategy for the United States was to use theKinetoscope Company to market as many machines as possible,
providing the income to support further development. He also
wanted the profits from making films and kept strictly to apolicy of controlling the movie camera, not letting it out of
the hands of the cameraman during film production. Edison

VI-42

wanted a monopoly of the film media and a captive market in thepeep show exhibitors who needed a constant supply of film. ^He developed the same strategy for cylinder records— hismoulding process would have given him a monopoly of the mass
production of records, had his patents been unheld. The
management of the motion picture project was governed bycommercial considerations; the laboratory was busy devising a
projector but Edison refused to introduce a model because hesaw that it would ruin the peep show trade.
The kinetoscope was an instant success; its appeal wasuniversal and it was a sight to see. Yet its novelty value wasshort-lived. Audiences began to dwindle in 1895 and one
entrepreneur admitted in May of that year that: "our candid
opinion is that the kinetoscope business will be a dead duck
after this season." 52 By the end of the year the Works were
only making a few kinetoscopes each month.
The kinetoscope did not have a long life but it wascertainly an eventful one. The machine brought a new art into
being and laid the foundations of a new industry. Although it
suffered from constant neglect, the motion picture project was
taken from an experimental device to a commercial product inabout five years (1889-1894). This was not as fast as some in
the Edison organization would have liked but it wasnevertheless a considerable achievement for the laboratory. It
was also an entirely new product for the Works; the labor had
to be trained and new equipment designed and installed. The

VI-43

rapid development of a new line of business, carried out
without a major hitch, proves that the West Orange workforce
did have the speed and flexibility Edison expected of them. The
kinetoscope provided plenty of value for the estimated $24,000
spent on experiments. As Gordon Hendricks has pointed out, the$7940 for machines and $369 for films paid to Edison by the
Kinetoscope Company might seem insignificant compared to costsof today's movies, but it caused no less excitement among theaudiences.

I l l u s t r a t i o n 6-7

The Black Maria1

SIDEBAR 6-3
THE BLACK MARIA

The fluid organization of the West Orange laboratory led
Edison's secretary into the business of exploiting the motion
picture. It was A.O. Tate who supervised the delivery of thefirst kinetoscopes to the Holland Brothers' parlor on Broadway
near 27th street. His description of the first night of the
kinetoscope gives an impression of its appeal and the profitsthat could be made with it:
I wish now that I had recorded the face of the person
to whom I sold the first ticket. I cannot recall evena face. I was kept too busy passing out tickets andtaking in money...If we had wanted to close the placeat six o'clock it would have been necessary to engage
a squad of policemen. We got no dinner. At one
o'clock in the morning I locked the door and we went
to an all-night restaurant to regale ourselves on
broiled lobsters, enriched by the sum of about one
hundred and twenty dollars.

$120 for one night's work was more than anyone made in amonth at the laboratory! The public soon tired of the samefilms strips and demand for fresh film subjects rapidly
outstripped supply. The technical limitations of the
kinetograph defined the form of the film and limited its
production. As the camera could only hold about 50 feet offilm, film subjects were fixed at around 35-40 seconds. The
camera was heavy and immobile and needed a solid platform towork on. A new building was therefore constructed in the

2grounds of the laboratory to make motion pictures. Although it
was described as a "revolving photographic building," it has
become famous under the nickname coined for it at the lab— "theBlack Maria." The building was about forty feet long and ten
feet wide. It was made of wood covered with black tar paper andit moved on a circular track to follow the movement of the sun.
Part of its roof could be opened to let in light. This was thefirst motion picture studio built expressely for this purpose,
replacing the film shed erected by Building 4. At one end of
the "Black Maria" was the room in which film was loaded in andout of the camera. A set of rails ran the length of thebuilding and the camera was run along this— achieving a steadypicture. (See Illus 6-7, 23440, # 6570) Its interior was madecompletely black to create high contrast, giving a sharp,
well-defined picture. The building cost $650 and earned its
place in film history.
The subjects filmed in the "Black Maria" came from thevaudeville: the dominant form of public entertainment at thetime and a favorite of Edison's. The vaudeville skit could
easily be transferred to a 35 second film and the proximity of
New York to the laboratory guaranteed a ready supply of talent.
During 1893 and 1894 a procession of vaudeville performers madetheir way from Manhattan to West Orange to perform in the"Black Maria": animal acts, dancing girls, strong men, andfamous figures such as Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill. Edison
took a personal interest in finding new talent; after a3

performance of the "Gaiety Girl" in New York, he went backstage and persuaded three of the ensemble to visit thelaboratory and dance before his camera.

2 For the mechanics andlaborers of the laboratory, who doubtless could not haveresisted the temptation to peek, this must have been a raretreatlENDNOTES
1) Tate, Open Door, pp. 285-287.
2) Ramseye, p.84; Hendricks "Kinetoscope Fall Motion Picture
Production," in Film Before Griffith, pp. 13-21.

V I -44

NOTES FOR CHAPTER SIX
1) Accounts from Billbooks, 1888-1889, ENHS.
2) EGE to TAE, 10 Oct 1890, 1890 Electricity, see alsoannotation and answer of 14 October 1890.
3) TAE to F. Gorton, 24 Sept 1890, 1890 Electric Light.
4) Insull to TAE, 17 Oct 1890, 1890 Electric Light.
5) TAE to Edison Edison Manufacturing Co, 11 Jan 1889, 1889
Edison Manufacturing Co.
6) Tate, Open Door, p. 141.
7) Maguire to Tate, 30 July 1889, WO Lab general.
8) Batchelor to TAE, 19 Aug 1889, 1889 Lab.
9) Dickson’s article in Century Magazine. V 48, June 1894.
10) Electrical World. V 14 (Sept 1889) 165-7; Josephson, p.
334.1
7
6
5
4
3
2
11) See Gordon Hendricks, The Edison Motion Picture Myth
(Berkeley: U of Calif Press, 1961), pp.82-83.
12) TAE to P.S. Dyer, 17 May 1889, LB 890408, pp. 434-5.
13) TAE to Edison Phonograph Works, 19 Nov 1890, Phono EPWks.
Edison also told the companies that they would now have toprovide their own recorded cylinders, TAE to EPW, 25 Jan 1890,
LB 900111, pp. 335-338. This move was in response to many
complaints about recordings from the companies. Edison had nointention of giving up the production of prerecorded cylinders,
but wanted the companies to appreciate the difficulties of
producing them. His secretary followed up Edison’s blunt
directive with a more diplomatic note which assured thecompanies that recording cylinders was not being discontinued
at the West Orange Laboratory.
14) Journal #5, p.147.
15) 2nd annual report of EGE, 31 Oct 1890, quoted in
Payson-Jones, p. 160; agreements are in D box D3, GE folder.
16) Bill book #9 , p. 489.
17) TAE to Gorton, Nov 10 1891, El It central stations.

18) Tate, Open door, pp. 260-285; Batchelor journal 1337, p.
132.
19) The Hew York Herald reported that Edison was frozen out of
the electrical trust, the Hew York Morning Post described theinventor as "worn out, shoulders drooped, hair grey” andspending more time at home! See 1892 Electric Light folders.
20) Accounts records in Billbook #13.
21) TAE to A Brady, 21 Dec 1898, LB 980131, p. 305.
22) Scientific American. V. 66:216, 2 April 1892.
23) Charles A Stansfield, Hew Jersey (Boulder Co.: Westview,1983), p. 36.
24) F Maguire to A Tate, 30 July 1889, Lab Work in progress.
25) This was Passer’s conclusion to the Battle of the Systems”
in The Electrical Manufacturers, p.174; Tate, Open Door.
26) Cited in Vanderbilt, Edison the Chemist, p.154.
27) Telephone, shop order # 540. 1891; description of ore
milling equipment in Iron Age. 59:1, 28 Oct 1897; see also W. B.
Carlson, ’’Edison in the Mountains,” History of Technology V.8(1983), 37-59.
28) Annotation on J Birkenbine to TAE, 13 July 1889, Oremilling.
29) Batchelor diaries, 1337 21 Jan 1891, p. 154.
30) Electrical World. XLV, Jan 1892.
31) Tae to C. Coffin, 9 May 1892, LB 920309, p. 440.
32) In an interview published in the Albany Herald. 3 Hov 1895
described the electrical industry as a "commissary of wolves”
and justified his departure from it because "there are too manyin it, it offers no inducements."
33) Tate to F Jehl, 11 Sept 1893, saying industry is "perfectly
dead,” LB 930805, p. 91; Scientific American V. 66:216, 2 April
1892.
34) Scientific American V. 69:25, July 8 1893.
35) Charles Hoffman, The Depression of the nineties: An
Economic History (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1970), p. 133.

V I -46

36) Tate to F Van Dyck, 21 Feb 1894, LB 930808, p.668; and Open
Door; TAE to A Elliot, 24 March 1894, LB 931030, p. 109; TAE to
E.H. Lewie, 15 March 1894, LB 931030, p. 98. Edison cleaned up
his affairs in 1894, withdrawing from many honorary posts andcutting back on his personal expenditures. The amount of work
done in the lab declined significantly during the 1893/1894
depression. During one month in 1894 (May), the labor cost forwork done on the phonograph was less than $100, Edison’s
personal experiments cost $460 and ore milling labor cost wasover $1000. Total cost of the months work was $2883, of which
GE paid $911. Billbook #12, p. 469. Research expenditure for1893 probably did not excede $25,000— much less than the$75,000-$80,000 p.a. range at the beginning of the decade.
37) Edison Caveats on motion pictures are in the appendix ofHendricks, Motion Picture Myth; Dickson’s article in Century
Magazine, V 48, June 1894.
38) Electrical World. V VII 6 Jan 1886, p. 26; experiments arein Notebook 871210.2.
39) ’’Some Facts relating to Moving Photography" By W. K. L.
Dickson, D Box D.
40) "A Brief Epitany (Sic— this could be "Epitamy") of all
Facts relating to ...Invention of the Kinetograph" by W. K. L.
Dickson, 21 April 1928, D 5 Motion picture; Edison caveat.
41) Brown’s testimony in Edison vs American Mutascope Co,
Complainants record, p. 143, LB 173.
42) The history of the celluloid film strip is told in Reese V
Jenkins, Images and Enterprise (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,
1975), chap 6. Eastman set up a laboratory in 1890, its purpose
was testing, (p. 147).
43) This recollection is from Albert Smith, 2 Reels and a Crank(New York: Doubleday, 1952), cited in Hendrick’s Motion Picture
Myth, p. 171.
44) Dickson’s version in his Century magazine article.
45) Terry Ramseye, A Million and One Nights (New York: Simonand Schuster, 1926), p. 68.
46) Patent # 589,168, filed 24 Aug 1891.
47) Description of kinetograph in Dickson Century Magazine, andDickson to Meadowcroft, 1 May 1921, Biog files.
48) Electrical Engineer, v 18, 7 nov 1894, p.377.

V I -47

49) Dyer to J Randolph, 1 Feb 1900, MP.
50) Shipments list, 1894 MP kinetoscope.
51) W Gilmore to TAE, 15 July 1895, 1895 Kinetophone.
52) Text of agreement Edison Manufacturing Co & Kinetoscope
Exhibiting Co, 10 Sept 1895, MP Kintoscope
53) Robert C Allen, "The Movies in Vaudeville,” in Tino Balio,ed., The American Film Industry (Madison, Wise.: U of Wisconsin
Press, 1985), p.60; G. Hendricks "The Kinetoscope" in John
Fell, Ed, Film before Griffith (Berkely: U of California Press,
1983), p. 20.

VII- 1CHAPTER SEVEN
R&D IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Edison had little time or sympathy for the decline of the
kinetoscope; the ore milling venture had reached a climax by1895 and all his energy was devoted to the mill at Ogden. He
had dug the largest hole in New Jersey and poured his fortune
into it, gambling millions of dollars on his process of
separating iron from low-grade ore. He admitted to the press
that "it will either work or bust," and unfortunately it
f a i l e d . H e was so involved with technical problems that thesignificance of the decline in price of Minnesota ore passed
him by: there was no point in competing with the giant steam
shovels that poured the Mesabi ore into waiting railroad cars.
Edison once said that "I always invent to obtain money to go on
inventing," and failure at Ogden brought him back again to thelaboratory to make money.

In October 1895 Edison wrote to F.

Fish, general counsel of General Electric: "I am getting close
to the end of my mill biz and will soon be able to come back towork." ^The work he referred to in his letter to Fish was not the
kinetoscope, in which he had taken only a small part, but theelectrical research of the lab, most of which was financed byVII- 2

GE. Getting back to work meant applying himself to the problemsof commutator design, producing new meters and measuring
instruments, and most of all, finding a better filament for theincandescent bulb. The central problem was to improve the poor
efficiency of a bulb that converted most of the current into
heat rather than light. The efficiency of the bulb had been
greatly improved since 1879 but there was still a long way togo. Edison could only have experimented on filaments in thewinter months when the Ogden mill was closed down, but he kept
up a stream of enthusiastic reports to General Electric. In
December of 1896 he wrote to Fish "I have reached a very
curious stage in the lamp filament work...evidently I have a4
perfect filament."
The new agreement signed with GE m 1896
gave Edison $1000 a month to pay for the experiments on
filaments and other electrical technology. There are few otherdetails extant of Edison's "perfect filament" and it probably
remained as an experimental proposition rather than a majorinnovation.
The amount of financial support from GE changed over time
as company and inventor negotiated the costs of theexperiments. Edison told GE in 1897 that "I hope to either
succeed in the filament or come to an understanding with you tocontinue." Edison did contine the work on incandescentfilaments and fluorescent lamps, with an average weekly
expenditure of around $250— a reduction on the level ofcexpenditure in the early part of the decade. The policy of theVII- 3

electrical manufacturers during the 1890s was to engage
individual inventors under contract to carry out research intheir area of expertise. Westinghouse supported William
Stanley's laboratory and GE retained Elihu Thomson as aconsultant, in addition to their contract with Edison. The
development of some revolutionary new lighting technologies inthe scientific laboratories of Germany helped change thisstrategy of research under contract. German scientists were
exploring the incandescent effect of certain ceramics andsearching for metallic filaments with a higher melting point
than carbon. Walter Nernst, a chemist, designed a lamp which
outperformed the Edison lamp. The threat of a completely newlamp with increased efficiency and brilliance forced GE into
action. Under constant pressure from Charles Steinmetz, themanagement of GE finally decided to establish a researchlaboratory to investigate new lighting technology. It would be
staffed by trained scientists. They were naturally concernedwith the cost of this kind of industrial research but
appreciated that failure to control the new metallic filamentglamps would be more expensive in the long run. While GE built
up their own laboratory at Schenectady in the first years of
the twentieth century, the support of Edison's laboratory
decreased to approximately $25 per week, which was no more thana token payment. The years of "research for hire" had come toan end.
The focus of GE's industrial research laboratory wasVII- 4

narrow; it looked into metallic filaments, mercury vapor lamps,
and the Nernst lamp. Steinmetz's original idea was toconcentrate on these critical areas and then carry out generalchemical research in any "spare time" that remained.

In

contrast, the Edison laboratory pursued a much wider range ofelectrical experiments, spanning electric light, power, storage
batteries, and measuring instruments. Edison also maintained aninterest in more exotic technologies, such as "etheric force"and the "Edison effect." These discoveries were closely
connected with his earlier experiments on the phenomenon of
induction. In the 1890s he carried out more experiments on
induction and on "etheric force," which he had discovered in
the 1870s. Edison hoped to that these phenomena might be usefulOin a system of wireless telegraphy. He did come close todeveloping a workable system, but a commercial product eluded
him. The answer to this problem, (and several others, including
the amplification of sound), was to be found in the "Edison
Effect" which had been discarded previously. The development of
wireless fell by the wayside as other projects— ore milling,phonographs and motion pictures— dominated the laboratory'stime in the 1890s.
Edison had some important electrical interests of his own
outside of the contractual work for GE. His laboratory had
worked on every aspect of the system but slowly Edison chose toconcentrate on some areas at the expense of others. The
development work on electric motors, for example, had paidVII- 5

dividends in the 1890s when many Edison products contained
small motors, such as drills, fans, kinetographs, kinetoscopes,
medical equipment, and phonographs. This work had all thecriteria of a successful project at Edison's laboratory: it was
relatively simple with clearcut engineering goals, it had many
applications, and it did not require great expenditure to test
and manufacture. Edison was able to exploit the economies ofscope in motor development by applying the laboratory's
expertise to many different products and problems: the learningby doing of years of research and engineering was easilytransferred. In the first decade of the West Orange laboratory,
Edison produced a stream of electrically driven machines andspent years trying to improve the regulation of speed. Thisknowledge was then applied to other projects. After the firstkinetoscopes had been introduced, one of the great difficulties
experienced was to maintain constant speed of the motor moving
the film through the machine. Consequently a shop order was
opened in September 1894 to build a new motor. This general
problem had been solved in the phonograph work; the new motor
was a "walk-over" for Edison's men and an important improvementin the machine.
There were always plenty of technical choices at handbecause Edison's fertile mind was continually coming up withnew ideas for experiments. The flood of new ideas that emerged
from the laboratory in the 1880s continued during the next
decade. Edison was interested in everything and theVII- 6laboratory's work in the nineteenth century is a testament tothe breadth of his imagination. For example, he was intriguedby flying machines. He had been experimenting in this generalarea since the lab opened. A shop order was started in 1892, amodel built, and Edison spoke enthusiastically about his
experiments to the Press. He had several ideas for poweredflight, including a disk of shutters which were moved up andQdown by a perpendicular piston. In trying to find a mechanicalduplicate of the flapping of a bird's wings, Edison was
following the path taken by many inventors of flying machines
and was destined for failure. The laboratory staff turned manyof these ideas into reality, producing experimental models andfactory prototypes in a short time.
The x-ray project shows that the laboratory had lost noneof the speed and flexibility that had characterized operationsin the 1880s. Wilhelm Roentgen discovered x-rays at the end of
1895. Edison claimed that he started experimenting on them only
10 hours after he saw the cable announcing Roentgen's
discovery. He assembled all the equipment he needed in the lab;
including the high vacuum tubes used to generate the rays. A
typical burst of activity in the laboratory, with Edison andhis team working night and day, duplicated Roentgen's
experiments and produced a working device in 12 days. This wascalled the fluoroscope. It consisted of a wooden box coatedwith photographic emulsion and a vacuum tube that produced the
x-ray. The object to be x-rayed was placed between the tube andVII- 7the box, and the x-ray picture was viewed through a peephole inthe box. Edison sent a working fluoroscope to Michael Pupin ofColumbia University at the end of March 1896, and by July had
completed a fluoroscope manufacturing plant at the lab.'*'®
Much of the work of the lab was of a more mundane nature.
Edison's men were generalists and had to be flexible enough tomeet the challenge of different types of work. Improving,altering, and repairing Edison products were all in a day'swork. Edison's men took a "hands-on approach" to the problems
that came up in manufacturing, altering and modifying machines
in the Works just like Edison had done in the 1880s. When theearly spring motors developed problems for example, the"chattering machines" were put right on the bench in the
Phonograph Works. Each product was built in many variations,such as the kinetograph. In 1899 for example, several new
devices were produced to take large format pictures of theKlondike.■*"■*■ The phonograph line was full of"one-offs"— specially modified machines to the uniquespecifications of the customer. These were designed in the lab
and then constructed in the Works.
Although the public's impression of the work of the West
Orange laboratory was conditioned by the image of the flash of
inspiration, it was, in fact, more like the 90% perspirationthat Edison liked to talk about. The successful experimental
project was more likely to be a long-term campaign withcarefully defined goals than a short burst of inventive

VII- 8activity. This was certainly the case with the development of a
successful phonograph product.

VII- 9

FINAL TRIUMPH OF THE PHONOGRAPH

After his European vacation in 1889, Edison went back to
the drawing board and tried again to turn his tinfoil idea into
a commercial machine. The 1890s were the real times of"perfecting the phonograph" for Edison turned the unreliable
and over-complicated machine of the 1880s into "a first class,plain, practical machine" with a mass market. ^Thedevelopment of a low-cost phonograph for amusement use had
begun in 1890 when Edison started work on several experimental
projects aimed at producing a phonograph that could recreate
the sound of music. The three main elements of this campaign,improving the wax compound, cheap duplicating of records, andmore realistic sound, were continued during the decade. The
West Orange laboratory had relinquished the production ofrecorded cylinders (handing this over to the Works), but
continued to investigate the mysteries of sound recording.
This work was carried out by Walter Miller, under
Edison's constant supervision. They examined the human ear todevelop analogies between it and the recording diaphragm. They
worked closely with experts on sound and hearing and madeseveral experimental machines that were used in medical
research.-1 They examined every aspect of sound to understandthe different frequencies and changing tones of recreatedVII-IO

music. The reproducer on earlier "perfected" phonographs had
been specifically designed to record the human voice for
dictation and was therefore unsuited to capture the tonal rangeof music. The goal of these years of research was a new
reproducer that could recreate music. It was reached when the"automatic" reproducer was introduced on the new models of1893. It had a glass diaphragm and a tiny sapphire ball served
as the stylus. The use of a hard, jeweled stylus instead of asliver of steel was a major innovation in phonographtechnology; it was less liable to catastrophic damage andallowed better tracking and improved response in the higher
frequencies.^
A harder stylus required a harder wax compound to standup to the sharper point and the heavier tracking pressure of
improved reproducers. The hardness of the wax was also a
critical element in capturing a wider range of frequencies,
especially the low, bass notes which cut a deeper groove in therecord. The steady progress in reproducers and recording
techniques in the 1890s made the work of Jonas Aylsworth
central to the Edison phonograph business, for any improvementin these areas had to be matched by better wax compounds— or
the benefits might be wasted. Aylsworth's research covered animmense range of organic and non organic substances, especiallywaxes and resins, in the search for the perfect compound forthe cylinder. The ideal substance did not only have to be very
hard, but also had to be easy to mould into cylinders.

VII-11

Aylsworth therefore had to work closely with Charles Wurth andhis duplicating team because each experimental project dependedon each other; new compounds acted differently in the
duplicating process and each compound performed differently inboth recording and reproduction. Here was a chemical challengethat Edison enthusiastically took up. He spent many hours in
the chemical lab in Building 2 working on this problem andenjoyed every minute of it.dllus 7-1, Edison in chemical lab,1908.) This area of research remained the vital part ofphonograph technology into the twentieth century. The major
development paths for phonograph technology— increased playing
time and more fidelity— were dependent on a harder wax of thecylinder.
While the basic research on the amusement phonograph wasundertaken at the laboratory, the business of the North
American Phonograph Company declined. In 1891 only 19
franchisees remained out of the original 33 and their future
looked bleak. There were only three companies with high sales
and good management, the Columbia, New England, and New York
Phonograph Companies. The mainstay of their business was thecontinued popularity of the coin-in-the-slot machines, whichwere normally converted Edison phonographs. 15 Lippincott's
death in 1891 produced a vacuum in the management of the North
American Company that Edison filled. He became president andmade Tate vice-president. His first policy was to dismantle thefranchise system and replace it by a national sales network.

Illustration 7-1
Edison in Chemical Laboratory

VII-12

The franchisees were to become sales agents and receive aroyalty on every phonograph sold in their areas. The switch toan amusement phonograph technology removed the need for themarketing system built for the business machine; the newamusement market could be reached directly and involved far
less sales support. Edison's goal was to sell phonographs
directly from the Phonograph Works to anyone who wanted to1market them.

C

Phonograph sales remained very low up to 1892 with mostsales in the coin-in-the-slot market. Edison energeticallypromoted this use by direct sales to saloons, hotels, andrestaurants. A typical Edison coin-in-the-slot machine cost$250 outright and could bring in up to $15 a day. Sales began
to increase in the latter part of 1892, moving from 20 to 90
machines a month sold.

In his original concept of aphonograph industry, Edison had expected profits to come fromthe sales of machines. His experience in the 1890s made him
consider the profit of monopolizing the production of
prerecorded cylinder records because demand for prerecorded
cylinders increased dramatically as the coin-in-the-slot
business expanded. Recording was becoming a lucrative operationthat would repay the time and trouble of recording withprofits— it was estimated that the New York Phonograph Company
spent $15,000 on records in the slow year of 1891. Edison had
always wanted to monopolize the business of duplicating records
but had let the local companies do their own recording because

VII-13

it was too time consuming to do it at his laboratory. In 1892
he moved to gain a monopoly of recording too; he had a large
investment in the technology of sound recording and his staff
at West Orange were the best in the business— here was anotherstore of knowledge in the laboratory that Edison wanted to
exploit.

Edison enlarged the duplicating department (formaking blank cylinders) established at Silver Lake and preparedfor mass production of records. In the meantime, the laborious
work of copying prerecorded records continued on the top floorof the laboratory. Production was low— only 160 a day in
1892— and would remain that way until Edison's engineers
perfected the duplicating process. 19
A commercial product was at last in sight by 1893 when
Edison exhibited both household and business phonographs. These
were called the "M" types and were a direct descendent of the"perfected" phonograph of 1888— the top works remained
essentially the same except for the new reproducer (Illus 7-2,
Edison with late model Phonograph, 14.655) These machines were
solid— weighing at least 50 lbs— and quite expensive, prices
ranging from $150 to $200.

Development work on several typesof phonographs continued at the laboratory while Edison
considered an appropriate marketing system for his newmachines. He planned to take full control over the North
American Company when he was sure that his laboratory had
developed an amusement phonograph with mass appeal. By 1894 hewas convinced that his new phonograph reproduced music "almost

Edison with PhonographVII-14perfectly" and confided to a business associate that this was
the machine that would popularize the amusement phonograph. ^1
He then made his move, instructing Tate to put the North
American Company into bankruptcy and arranging to sellphonographs directly from the factory, bypassing the local
companies. The National Phonograph Company was formed to manage
the nationwide system of phonograph dealers and only the
Columbia, New York, and New England Companies survived from theoriginal North American Company franchisees. The price ofdeveloping a commercial machine had been high, and the paymentsfrom the North American company had not covered the cost ofyears of experiments at West Orange.

p p

Edison now made sure hewould reap all the returns of his labors for he kept all
profits from the National Company. Once he gained control ofthe business, two new Edison phonographs were announced.
The first was an improved nickel-in-the-slot machine.
Based on the M mechanism, it was battery powered and came witha horn. The second new model was a machine designed solely toplay back Edison cylinder records. The phonograph was poweredby a spring motor and the distinctive governor assembly of theold models was replaced with a simple belt drive. The machine
was equiped with the Edison "automatic" reproducer and arecorder could be bought as an extra. Edison committed his
company to the policy of compatibility between old and newtechnologies and made sure that the new machine could play all
existing Edison records. A simple horn was attached to theVI I-15

reproducer to amplify the sound.
The spring motor phonograph had two main controls: astart-stop switch which activated the drive and a screw toretard or accelerate the speed of rotation. Edison had
successfully reoriented the existing technology towards theuser by simplifying the machine's operation, the user needed
only to place the diaphragm on the record. In this way heeliminated many of the operating problems which dogged thebusiness machine. There were still several adjusting screws on
the reproducer assembly which were essential for precise
reproduction. The spring motor machine was planned to retail at
about $40 (equal to one years lease of the old business.
23
machine) and was aimed at the mass market.
It was simple,
sturdy, and solid. The cost of manufacture had been reduced
significantly by using many components of the old M type,including the top plate and reproducer holder.
The new models of 1896 were not radically new machines.
They were not "inventions" and hardly justified the label of"innovations." Edison commented that the 1896 phonograph was
the result of design changes rather than any patentable
23
technology.
The all important musical reproducer had beendeveloped by 1893, and all that was left after this was toengineer a commercial machine to exploit the better fidelty
gained by improvements in the diaphragm and wax compound. The"perfected phonograph" was not the result of a flash of
inspiration but the endpoint of years of basic research inVII-16

sound and engineering new phonographs.
The latter was to become immensely important in the
Edison laboratory; an increasing level of competition in thephonograph business made production engineering work asimportant as basic research. The National Phonograph Company
was not alone in the phonograph industry. The Columbia
Phonograph Company had acquired the rights to manufacture
graphophones and placed a spring motor model on the market. In
Europe, cheap French and German machines were outselling thephonographs sent from the West Orange Works. The Edison spring
motor phonograph could not beat the competition in price andthe National Phonograph Company was therefore pressed to
re-engineer their new product into a cheaper, more competitivemachine.

The laboratory was put to work on reducing the sizeand cost of the spring motor phonograph and in two years
completed a smaller machine that was introduced as the "Home"
model. It was a more compact phonograph, with the same
reproducer and controls, but with a much smaller spring motor.
This greatly reduced the bulk of the Home model which wasapproximately half the weight of the earlier machine. It
retailed at $40 but still could not compete with the $25
Columbias. The Home phonograph, however, had Edison's name on
it and quickly became a best seller. It was a step closer to
Edison's goal of a phonograph in every home.
The success of the "Home" phonograph did not bring an end
to the R&D on the phonograph at the West Orange laboratory forVII-17

the picture at the end of the 1890s is of an enthusiastic
exploration of all aspects of the basic phonograph idea. Edisoneven resurrected the toy doll experiments now that he was freefrom the Toy Doll Company; the idea of a very small, cheap
phonograph mechanism still had an appeal to him. Much of theresearch effort on the phonograph was conditioned by theunexpected success of the kinetoscope. Edison now knew that his
promised system of talking pictures— his original intent in thefirst experiments— had a large potential audience. Much of theexperimental groundwork for sound motion pictures had been
already done. The experiments on increasing playing time andproducing a louder playback had payoffs in two markets; thesefeatures were desirable in an amusement phonograph andabsolutely essential in sound pictures. Edison's exploration of
the qualities of larger cylinders also promised solutions toseveral problems in different products. This experimental
direction was therefore accelerated in the late 1890s as Edison
anticipated returns in both talking pictures and long playing"concert" phonographs.

VII-18

COMPETITION IN THE MOTION PICTURE BUSINESSThe work of producing talking pictures had been shelvedin the early 1890s when Dickson and Edison finally realizedthat the problems involved in the synchronization of sight andsound were totally beyond their experimental resources. Edison
returned to the problem after Dickson's departure in 1894. The
next year Edison introduced the kinetophone. This was akinetoscope with a cylinder phonograph added to the basic
kinetoscope case. The viewer looked through the peep-hole tosee the image and listened to sound on eartubes. The films wereshot in the "Black Maria" using the kineotgraph linked to aphonograph fitted with a large horn to catch the sound. Thismachine was a stopgap novelty item based on the laboratory's
expertise in coin-in-the-slot machines; it is highly unlikelythat it successfully synchronized sound and image. 2 6
The kinetophone avoided all the important technicalproblems but did establish the design precedent of a selfcontained sight and sound system in one machine. Edison's goal
was to devise a product that could provide "honest workmen with.
27
grand opera at a price he can afford to pay."
The logicaldevelopment of the kinetophone was a machine that reproduced
the sight and sound of a live performance. Edison's ambitious
goal was well beyond the technological means at his disposal.

VII-19

The kinetophone had only limited commercial success and few
were made. It was soon eclipsed by a new technology in the
motion picture business.
Edison has been criticised for neglecting the developmentof film projection. Many writers on the history of motion
pictures portray him as uninterested in this technology andslow to develop a projector that he really didn't think had acommercial future. Edison did, in fact, successfully develop a
projector, but his top priority was the synchronization ofsound and image. This was a much harder technological problem
than projection, and one to which he was committed from thefirst days of research on the kinetoscope. His goals were much
more ambitious than the comparatively easy technical task of
projecting images, and his laboratory continued to chase theelusive goal of joining sight with sound.
Meanwhile, several other inventors, many of whom were inEurope, were concentrating on another aspect of motion picturetechnology— the projection of images. The transatlantic
information network that Edison had so successfully exploitedin the past now got the better of him. The kinetoscope had
stimulated interest in motion pictures and Edison's failure toobtain foreign patents for his motion picture inventions gave
European inventors a clear field to advance the technology. The
most revolutionary innovation came from the Lumiere brothers in
Lyons, France; their Cinematographe was portable and it could
be used as a camera and projector. Work on a combinedVI1-20

camera-projector was underway at West Orange, but the Lumierebrothers beat the Edison's laboratory to the marketplace. Theircamera was light, compact, and could be easily moved, setting
up many new possibilités for film subjects.
The introduction of the Lumiere camera in North America
gave entrepreneurs the technology to enter into film production
and ruined Edison's hope for a monopoly of films. The
availability of film cameras unleashed a wave ofcameramen/producers, some with imported cameras, some withcopies of Edison cameras, and some with machines of their own
invention. Many of the new entrants were men of mechanical bent
hoping to break into a growing business by working up their own
cameras in makeshift laboratories. If Edison had been borntwenty years later he would have been one of them. They camefrom all walks of life and had the same idea of making somemoney from the motion picture. A travelling showman called
William Selig saw the kinetoscope and was inspired to build his
own camera in his small workshop in Chicago. The arrival of
Lumiere machines in Chicago provided more ideas for Selig, andhe went on to produce a camera and a projecting machine. The
Selig Polyscope company was soon making films on location in
the back streets of Chicago and showing them in Vaudevillehouses.

Independent cameramen like William Paley, a recent

immigrant from England with his own camera, took theircumbersome machines on the road and made the short-lived,
flickering films which were the raw material of the newVI I-21

business.
The Latham brothers were typical of the "pirates" that
Edison now had to face. They were businessmen with considerable
vision who also produced some important technical innovations,with the help of William Laurie Dickson (who left Edison in1894). They developed a projecting device, called the
Pantopticon, in their laboratory in New York City and thenexhibited their boxing films with it in 1895. As soon as thisdevelopment was noticed at West Orange, Edison assigned Charles
Kayser to the task of designing a projector superior to theLathams'.

A much more dangerous competitor appeared in theform of the Biograph— the projection machine of the American
Mutoscope Company. Formed in 1895, this company had theservices of Dickson and its own laboratory, studio, andmanufacturing facilities. It originally marketed Dickson'sMutoscope— a peep show machine along the lines of the
kinetoscope— but quickly branched into projection. The Biographprojector was again the work of Dickson and its larger film
. a superior.
.
30
format gave it
image.
The proliferation of projection machines in the US forced
the Kinetoscope Company (managed Norman Raff and Frank Gammon)
into action to revive their flagging business. They saw the
future in projecting pictures and when they found a goodprojector, in the hands of Thomas Armat of Washington, theyquickly acquired it. In December 1895 Raff and Gammon brought
Armat's machine to the lab and Edison agreed to manufacture theVII-22

machine at the Works and have it sold as the Edison vitascope.
There was good business sense in this as the business community
had grown aware of the commercial potential of projection andwere waiting for an Edison projection machine. In a letter
written to Armat some time later, Edison acknowledged that theArmat machine was superior to the one Edison had at the time.
He stopped Kayser's work to build Armat's machine, which was.

ji

the first commercial projector on the American market.

The debut of the Edison/Armat projector was at Roster &Bial's music hall in New York City on April 23 1896. This was aturning point in the history of the motion picture; interest
was again at a high point and the motion picture had found amuch larger audience than the customers for peep shows. Visualnovelties were commonplace in vaudeville and the vitascope now
found a place on vaudeville programs all over the U.S.
Businessmen bought franchises from Raff & Gammon and took thevitascope on the road, spreading the fame of the moving picture
and attracting more entrepreneurs to the industry. The
newspapers, unconcerned with its true provenance, hailed
Edison's latest invention as another marvel of the West Orange
laboratory. The movies as mass entertainment had begun.
The popularity of the vitascope grew so quickly that
Edison had to take notice. While the founder busied himself
with planning spectacular train crashes to be filmed, theKinetoscope department of the Edison Manufacturing Company
struggled to meet orders for films. Despite having the largest

VII-23

production facilities in the industry, it could not keep up
with the demand for films and had to turn to independent
producers to supply them. William Paley, for example, was put
under contract to supply films for the Edison enterprise. The
impending Spanish-American War had caught the imagination of
the American public, with the help of strident nationalism of
the Hearst yellow press, and gave a considerable boost to themovie business. William Paley was sent to Cuba to make war
films for the Edison company who quickly copyrighted them andput them on the market. These films had instant appeal and wereshown continuously in theatres while the war was fought.
The motion picture camera changed politics as well asentertainment. America's "Manifest Destiny" was glorified onfilm, and Edison— like many of his generation— believed that
his country could take on and beat the rest of the world. The
great popularity of war films enabled many small producers togain a foothold in the industry, either by filming their own
subjects or illegally copying (duping) the Edison product. The
American Vitascope Company staged the Battle of Manila withmodel ships for their films of the war, advertising them as"original and exclusive war films." 32 For American Vitascopeand many other small producers and film exhibitors, like
William Selig in Chicago, war was good for business. The wave
of patriotism that swept the country helped increase thenumbers of film exhibitors at a rapid rate. All needed a goodprojector, and the West Orange industrial complex was ready toVII-24

meet this demand. Work on developing an improved projector was
carried out in the lab under a veil of great secrecy.
The new projector was the key to the transformation of anovelty to an important industry. This machine signalled
Edison's deepest involvement in the motion picture industry todate. In 1897 he introduced his own projector— the Edison
projecting kinetoscope which was an improved vitascope. An 1898
Model Edison Projecting Kinetoscope came complete for $100. It
could be used to project slides to keep the attention ofaudiences while the films were changed, and its advertising
maintained that the vibration problem, which "has been theprincipal defect in projecting machines," had been solved.
Edison's laboratory had improved the basic projecting machine,
made it easier to operate, and now it was on the market at acompetitive price. Terrye Ramsey remembered that anyone who
could turn a meat grinder could operate the machine.^ The
exhibitor could also purchase "Genuine Edison Films" which weresold by the foot. The ready availability and cheapness of the
Edison projector stimulated the motion picture industry as asmall investment was all that was needed to become an exhibitorof films. Small businessmen could offer a complete show to thetheatre manager: film, projection, and accompanying patter.
Two new industries were being created with the output of
the Edison Phonograph Works, providing many small businessmen
with the chance to make money with Edison products, and Edisonwith the profits from sales of equipment. The flood of cheap

VII-25phonographs, and the end of the franchise system, meant thatanyone could create a small business with a store front and a
few phonographs. Edison thought that the phonograph was thebest business proposition in the U.S. at the turn of the
century because it was easy to enter and profits were high,from $100 to $200 a week. ^The rapid growth of film exhibitors provided anotheropportunity for small businessman and a growing market for the
Edison Manufacturing Company. In exactly the same way as he had
bypassed the franchise holders of the North American PhonographCompany, he left Raff and Gammon high and dry and went into
direct sales. Edison intended to sell his projectors to any
showman and entreprenuer who could afford it. At the same time
he instituted an aggressive campaign to enforce his kinetographpatents and drive all competitors from the field. Edison aimed
to control the production of films and sell exhibitors the
projectors to show them. The income from film and projector
sales would go directly to him. This was an important step inthe creation of his own industrial empire. He now had controlof the ore milling and phonograph businesses and he owned thecompany which manufactured several of his inventions, including
motion picture cameras, projectors, and films.
The industrial empire had begun to spread out from theWest Orange complex. Edison had bought land at Silver Lake, New
Jersey as part of his Edison Industrial Works scheme of 1888.
When this plan came to nothing he built plants to produce

VII-26

chemicals for phonograph cylinders and Edison-Lalande primary
batteries. The growing emphasis on manufacturing made the
Edison Manufacturing Company an important part of Edison's
industrial empire. It realized his long term goal of a separateorganization devoted to manufacturing and marketing his
innovations, and it was completely under his control. Unlike
his earlier plans for a manufacturing operation, this company
was run by Edison without outside investors. Edison's plan togain full control of the Edison Phonograph Works was the lastlink in this strategy— the entire Edison manufacturing
operation would be in his hands. After years of trials andtribulations, he no longer had to please the investors andventure capitalists. He was now in command of his businessaffairs and would tend to look to banks for capital rather thanobtain it with joint-ventures with investors. The policy ofgaining control of manufacturing certainly paid off by the endof the century. The profits coming in from phonographs andmotion pictures offset the incredible losses of the ore milling
venture. A decade that started with the grand industrial
engineering of electric traction systems and ore separation
ended with the cheap phonograph and the moving picture, twounlikely products for Edison but welcome nevertheless.

VII-27

FORCES OF CHANGE IN THE WEST ORANGE LABORATORYThe great adventure of the nineteenth century ended with
one last effort to turn the Ogden mine into a paying
proposition. A slight rise in the price of midwestern ore
encouraged Edison to return to the mine in 1897. He spent mostof that year in Ogden, while William Gilmore ran the operation
36
at West Orange.
Edison was convinced that he had "almost
turned the corner" on the ore milling venture in 1898 and told
his business associates that the work was finished. But thecold winter of 1898/99 forced him to stop work and he returned
to West Orange, admitting defeat in private while maintaining a
brave front to his business associates. ' This was Edison's
greatest failure both financially and technologically; he had
been unable to produce cheap ore by his magnetic separation
process and had lost a fortune in ore milling. Andrew Carnegie
once said that "pioneering don't pay" and the ore separation
venture proved him to be right, at least in the iron ore
business. Edison's technical approach failed because it was
unreliable and too costly. On the other hand, Carnegie followed
the old fashioned wisdom of finding the cheapest source of raw
materials and locating the plant next to it. Carnegie had

VII-28

achieved what Edison had only dreamed about— the radical
reduction in the cost of producing a basic industrial good.
Undaunted by this colossal failure, Edison still
continued to promote his system and finance companies tomagnetically separate ore. He assigned his patents to a
European ore milling syndicate which hoped to make them asuccess in Norwegian mines. But just like at Ogden, the giant
undertaking at Dunderland ended in failure. After leaving Ogden
for good, Edison went back to the laboratory and looked forways of recouping his loses. His laboratory had developed
skills in several commercial technologies which Edison hoped to
exploit. He worked on the design of commercial crushing andscreening machines, and planned to sell them to coal mines,
cement manufacturers, and metal works.

Edison soon went into

the cement business for himself, using equipment designed in
his laboratory and experience gained in materials handling at
Ogden. His efforts to make the most of the failure in ore
milling illustrates the broad scope of his commercial outlook
and the laboratory's strong engineering skills. He even found a
use for the compressed air technology he developed to run his
giant rollers. The lab carried out experiments on reheating
compressed air and using it as a power source.
Had the mill at Ogden been a success, Edison's reputation
as an inventor would have been superceded by his fame as anindustrialist. His "rags to riches" story would have reached a
new plateau from the immense profits of providing a cheap raw

VII-29

material to one of America's greatest industries. The years of
the electric light would have paled against the wealth andpower of his ore milling business. The end of this dream might
have broken a lesser man, but Edison took the dissapointment
with his customary good humor; he had other irons in the fireand he was, as usual, full of ideas for new projects. The
failure at Ogden did not even tarnish his reputation— thevitascope had reaffirmed to the American public that Edison was
still the "Wizard" capable of producing amazing new inventions.
The air of failure that shrouded the ore milling venture
led to more cautious decision-making at West Orange at the endof the century, yet Edison's laboratory kept a much wider
technical horizon than the new industrial research laboratories
that were directed into proprietory technologies to achieve
corporate goals. Edison's experimenters had a much wider choiceof options to follow because they had covered so much ground inmany different areas. Edison treated the years of experiments
at the lab as investments in carefully chosen areas oftechnology, and any new experimental direction was determinedby the store of experience and expertise at the laboratory.
The development of an alkaline storage battery— Edison's
first experimental project of the twentieth century— was built
on the strong foundation of years of research onelectrochemical cells. The pressing requirement of a powersource for the phonograph led to experiments on both
non-rechargeable primary batteries and rechargeable storage

VII-30

batteries. These experiments began as soon as the laboratory
opened and were continued through the 1890s. The West Orange
laboratory staff had also considerable experience in theengineering of battery manufacture. The Edison Manufacturing
Company produced thousands of Edison-Lalande primary batteries
which were used to power phonographs, railway signals, andmedical equipment. Every effort had been made to economize andstreamline the production of cells at the Silver Lake complex.
The decision to find a better storage battery was not an
act of incautious haste as Edison rebounded from the ore
milling failure, but a rational decision based on the available
resources of the laboratory and the commercial potential of theinnovation. It did not begin with a unstructured search of
every possible electrochemical combination but with the usual
study of the technical literature.

Edison guided the project

along familiar lines and across familiar territory. He was notcharting new ground; he was convinced that an alternative tothe lead-acid cell did exist and could be found "if a realearnest hunt were made for it."^® The lab's staff wereknowledgeable about the chemical reactions in cells and all theequipment was at hand. (See Sidebar on "The Changing Research
Process at West Orange.")
From 1900 to 1909, Edison spent much of his time working
with chemists in the search for the ideal electrochemical
combination. Commercial considerations were uppermost in theseexperiments; as each electrochemical combination was tested,VI I-31

the experimenters also evaluated the cost and availability of
its raw materials. Two promising combinations— one using
cadmium and another employing cobalt— were rejected because
these metals were too expensive to use in quantity.^ Edisonknew well that the commercial success of his battery depended
on finding a cheap and efficient electrochemical reaction. He
also emphasized economical manufacturing techniques. While thechemical research progressed, Edison had his men design special-purpose machines for each step in battery production. This
work drew on his staff's experience in battery manufacture andore milling. Since the storage battery required both powdered
nickel oxide and ore, Edison's men were able to apply manytechniques used in handling and processing crushed ore. ^Withthis experience behind them, his staff were able to move thebattery rapidly from laboratory bench to factory floor,
providing the speed and flexibility demanded by the "old man."
Most of Edison's workers were expected to be able tocarry out both research and everyday engineering. A typicalreport by A.M. Kennedy, an experimenter assigned to the motion
picture product, covers work on a film splicing machine, film
cement, and methods of sealing film cans. He designed arheostat for kinetophone road shows, and a guide for lining up
the sprockets of the machine with the aperture. Kennedy's
experimental work for the same period included recording of
kinetophone subjects and changes in lighting to make thefigures stand out better in movies. He also inspected films.^

VII-32

The daily work of experimenters like Kennedy shows that little
had changed in the Edison laboratory from the 1880s. Yet a new
direction in labor policy had begin at the the turn of the
century when employees with specific skills and formal
education were sought instead of the generalists of thenineteenth century. The lab was moving away from hiring
generally trained experimenters towards professional engineers
with commercial experience.
A new generation of workers were beginning to make theirmark at West Orange, symbolizing the evolving functions of thelaboratory in the Edison enterprise. Although mechanics likethe Otts were still at Edison's side, providing a link ofcontinuity with the past, there were many new faces at the labin the late 1890s. The older generation of Edison associates
was spent and a new one emerging, very much different. The
ranks of the "boys" steadily diminished in the 1890s whenseveral muckers went their own way and left Edison's employ.
Edison had once commented that the "boys" worked with him forfame and fortune. Many of them saw their main chance in the
1890s and left the lab: Batchelor quietly disappeared from thescene and devoted himself to travel, looking after his health,and carefully tending his investments; Kennelly left to become
Professor of Electrical Engineering at Harvard. Samuel Insull
took a job a Chicago Edison and A.O. Tate resigned.
W.K.L. Dickson was a typical Edison employee of thenineteenth century— an ambitious young man of considerable

VII-33

skill as an inventor who hitched his star to Edison's. In 1894
he left the laboratory to join in the Latham Brothers. He took
his laboratory notebooks with him and provided the new company.
. motion.
with his considerable experienceinpictures. 44 Dickson
was not the only Edison employee to leave West Orange and takehis technological knowledge to a competing company; skilled men
could command high wages for their specialized knowledge andmany were hired away from West Orange.
In place of the independently minded men who blended
technical with entreprenuerial skills, Edison hired
professional engineers and promoted the faithful. Fred Devonald
had worked his way through the hierachy at West Orange and owed
everything to Edison. He was finally made chief engineer but
Devonald was only in nominal charge of the laboratory; Edison
made all the important decisions. During the 1890s Edison began
to make distinctions between technical considerations andbusiness decisions. The latter were taken out of the hands ofthe technical staff (who had once been forced to wear bothhats) and given to professional managers.
William Gilmore was brought in to manage the National
Phonograph and the Edison Manufacturing Companies in 1894. He
had been Insull's assistant at Schenectady and had beenschooled by the Insull in the intricacies of the "old man's"
business affairs. Edison put him in charge of his finances andtold him to make some order out of the diverse operations at
West Orange. Gilmore brought his great energy to bear on thisVII-34

problem and stamped his forceful manner on the management of
the Edison Manufacturing Company. Tate's place as Edison's
secretary was taken by Johnny Randolph, who had started as an
office boy in the 1880s. Although Gilmore, Randolph andDevonald wielded considerable power within the organization,
they were not given the same broad responsibilities as the old"boys" and they were constantly harried by the founder. They
were employees. When their usefulness was over they weredischarged.

1

SIDEBARTHE CHANGING RESEARCH PROCESS AT WEST ORANGE

Much has been written over the years about Edison's
method of invention. Most accounts have pointed out that Edison
began with a specific commercial goal in mind and that he had
his men conduct literature searches and market surveys. Somehistorians have claimed that Edison conceived and conducted his
research efforts in a rational and systematic manner whileothers have insisted that his approach was much more random,
shaped by inspiration and luck.^ The storage battery project
reveals that some of the elements of the rational Edisonian
methodology are true, but more importantly, it shows that his
approach evolved. In particular, as the size and cost of someof his projects increased, Edison was less inclined to rely ona handful of talented experimenters and instead chose toroutinize the research process. In the course of thisevolution, the West Orange lab moved gradually away from thefree-wheeling style of Menlo Park and began to resemble some ofthe other corporate research laboratories that appeared in theearly twentieth century.
Edison started his hunt for a new battery in 1898 notwith random experiments in the laboratory but with a thoroughsearch of the technical literature. Just as he had done during
the electric lighting campaign, Edison had his assistants pore2over scientific and engineering journals to collect information
about all types of batteries. At his insistence, his staff casta worldwide net, consulting not only American but also English,
French, and German sources. Through this search, Edison learned
that other inventors and scientists had identified alternatives
to the lead-acid battery and kept their work in mind as he
.
.
.
.
2
undertook his own investigations.
After searching the literature for about nine months,
Edison was ready to begin experimenting. In the spring of 1899,he assembled a research team by selecting men already at workat the lab and by hiring a new group of professional chemists
and engineers. Significantly, with its preponderance ofexperimenters trained in science, the storage battery project
differed from previous inventions in which Edison had used a
mixture of college men and mechanics. Consisting of about adozen experimenters, this team worked primarily in Building 2,
where each man was assigned a table. For his own experiments,
Edison set up a laboratory bench in the back room of Building
2. Large supplies of chemicals were purchased and stored in
Building 3 and on the third floor of Building 5.

3

Edison started this team off by having them investigate
the familiar electrochemical combination of the primary
battery. From there, Edison had his researchers vary one
component of the cell and conduct tests until they obtained
optimal results. Generally, Edison and his assistants tested
different materials for the components of the cell by packing

3the selected material into porous carbon electrodes which werethen placed in a test tube filled with the electrolyte, thus
forming a small battery.^ Following this strategy, Edison andhis staff investigated several different electrochemical
combinations from 1899 to 1904, and this research program is.

.

summarized mTable 1.

SThis table shows that in taking this time-consuming,
step-by-step approach to analyzing each component of thebattery, Edison was organizing his research in a new way. In
particular, he was dividing the project into a new set oftasks. Previously, Edison had used teams of experimenters to
pursue simultaneously several different solutions to atechnological challenge. For instance, with the electric light
project, Edison and his men moved easily from working on thelamp to the dynamo to the meter; he designed a coherent system,in part, because his team worked on all fronts at once.
Likewise with the phonograph in 1888 and 1889, Edison andhis experimenters did not systematically modify each component
in an orderly sequence but rather experimented simultaneouslywith record cylinders, recorders, reproducers, and duplicating
techniques.

7

In these projects, Edison allowed his

experimenters to pursue divergent solutions to different
aspects of the system, thus encouraging a range of creative
responses. Eventually, Edison gathered these different ideas
and shaped them into a coherent and successful invention.
In contrast to this free-wheeling and divergent approach,Table 1
Flow Chart of Edison's Researchon the Storage Battery, 1899-1909
Anode

Year

Electrolyte

Cathode

1899

1900

1901
(used
1903
1904
1905

1909

Richard H. Schallenberg, Botted Energy; Electrical Engineering and the Evolutionof Chemical Energy Storage. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society,1982), 355-366.

4

Edison organized the storage battery project as a convergent
set of tasks. Rather than turning several imaginative muckers
loose on the battery, he had his team thoroughly investigate
each component of the battery. To each experimenter Edison
assigned a specific material or arrangement, and theexperimenter then conducted a long series of standard
experiments until he secured the best possible results. Edison
reviewed the results of different chemists and chose thematerial for that particular component. Edison and his teamthen moved to the next component or problem and attacked it in
the same way. Proceeding in this manner, Edison thoroughly
investigated several electrochemical combinations anddetermined the one best suited to his purposes. Furthermore, he
was able to build on the results of one series of experiments,
and thus converge on an ideal design for his battery.
While this convergent approach produced highly reliable
results, it came at the price of requiring a huge number ofindividual experiments. According to one experimenter, theOstorage battery probably required over 50,000 experiments.

Yeteven more significantly, this approach indicates that Edison
had thoroughly routinized the innovation process. By breaking
down the research into a sequence of small, standardized
experiments, Edison had shifted the creative act away frommechanical ingenuity and careful observation to being based
more on persistence and careful record-keeping. Gone were thelast vestiges of the heroic myth of invention in which insight5

comes in a blinding flash; instead, results came by plodding
through innumerable experiments.
In shifting from a divergent to a convergent style ofresearch management, Edison's role within the laboratorychanged. While previously he had been just "one of the boys" or
the "head mucker," in the course of the storage battery
campaign he clearly became a manager of R&D. To be sure, Edison
performed his own experiments on the battery, but his majortask was to coordinate and manage the project. Like theprinicipal investigator of a modern research project, Edison
was responsible for monitoring each individual experimenter'sline of research, identifying general trends, and shiftingchemists to the most promising leads. He also regularlycompared the laboratory results with commercial considerations,watching for the right combination that could be put into
production quickly. In functioning as a manager, Edison altered
the character of the invention process at West Orange. No
longer was invention a mysterious, seat-of-the-pants
proposition; instead it was an orderly, painstaking process
which slowly but surely got results. In many ways, theconvergent approach was probably appropriate for the large
scale of West Orange since it permitted Edison to makeefficient use of his large staff and substantial facilities. Ina certain sense, the orderliness and routinization indicatethat Edison had rendered the invention process predictable andmanageable.

6

Significantly, as Edison grew older and "retired" from
actively managing the lab and his business enterprises, it was
the convergent approach that was institutionalized at the lab.
The chief engineer and other Edison executives increasingly
organized research along the lines of the storage battery
project. They hired additional scientists and engineers andassigned them to the tasks of testing the materials andcomponents of different Edison products. Because they wereconcerned primarily with maintaining the existing product lines
and the overall business organization, Edison managers
encouraged researchers to take the convergent approach andconcentrate on modest improvements.
In this way the West Orange laboratory came to resemble
the R&D labs established at other business firms. During the
1900s, General Electric, AT&T, and DuPont phased out individual
inventors and gradually replaced them with professional
scientists and engineers who took responsibility fortechnological innovation. Like the Edison organization, thesefirms had substantial administrative structures, establishedproduct lines, and sizable production facilities; while theyoften wanted new technology to maintain or expand market share,
these companies frequently wished to avoid inventions thatwould suddenly render them obsolete. As a result, the newly
hired researchers were often encouraged to work within existingproduct lines and modify products incrementally.

9

Given thisoutlook as well as the scientific training of many of the7researchers, it is not surprising that many R&D labs took up aconvergent research methodology, marked by numerous experiments
and small innovations, much like the style that evolved at West
Orange. Thus rather than being an unproductive anachronism
centered around an aging inventor, the West Orange laboratory
came to be very similar to the corporate labs, successful
because Edison developed a research style that madetechnological innovation a reliable component of businessstrategy.

ENDNOTES
1. Frank L. Dyer and T. Commerford Martin, Edison; His Life andInventions, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1910),
596-628; Thomas P. Hughes, "Edison's Method," in Technology at
the Turning Point, ed. W.B. Pickett (San Francisco; San
Francisco Press, 1977), 5-22
2. Schallenberg, Bottled Energy, p. 353.
3. Shop order 935 "Storage Battery (Personal TAE)," June 1899
in N871124; "Minutes of the Mucker Society of Thomas A. Edison
Laboratory at Orange, N.J.," Cat. 1269, 215-217; N020617.
4. N990606; TAE's sketch for caveat, 4 Apr 1900; Dyer & Martin,
556; N000123.5
76
5. In reviewing Table 1, it is important to note that thechemical research on the battery was enormously complex andbeyond the scope of this study. Those wishing to know thecomplete story of this chemical research should consult Richard
Schallenberg's fine study of the battery, Bottled Energy, pp.
355-364, for a thorough discussion of Edison's chemical
investigations with regard to the storage battery.
6. Friedel and Israel, Electric Light, pp. 3-88 and 119-145.
7. Mark E. Ham, "Edison and the Phonograph, 1877-1889," 10.

8

8. "Storage Battery Work," Meadowcroft Box 66.
9. Leonard S. Reich, The Making of American Industrial
Research.

ENDNOTES FOR CHAPTER SEVEN
1) Albany Herald. 3 Nov 1895.
2) Josephson p. 423.
3) Annot on Fish letter Oct 11 1895, 1895 Electricity.
4) TAE to F.P. Fish, 15 Dec 1896, LB 931030, p. 241.
5) TAE to F.P. Fish, 10 Feb 1897, LB 931030, p. 318; Ledger #7
provides details of GE* s payments, fluorescent lamp experiments
cost over $11,000 from 1896 to 1899, filament experiments costover $8,000 from 1897 to 1899.
6) See G. Wise, Willis Whitney, Chap 5.
7) Wise, p. 76.
8) Edison saw that the use of wireless communication would be
between ships at sea, Electrical World. XIV (sept,1889) 165; TAE
annotation on letter of 6 Feb 1893 in Tesla D, notes thatwireless communication ’’may be done someday. ”
9) Albany Telegraph. 13 nov 1895.
10) TAE to W Bowen, 16 April 1898, X-Ray; Annotation on letterfrom 0. Glasser to Meadowcroft, 9 Dec 1929; lab account books,
sub-ledger #6, p. 240.
11) Shop order # 777, a contract for the manufacture of themodels was given to one of the lab’s machinists.
12) Edison note to Ed United Co, June 16 1893, 1893 phono
foreign.
13) Tate to NY Phono Co, 1 June 1892, LB 920309, p. 579.
14) Frow and Selfi, Edison Cylinder Phonographs, p. 134
15) Read & Welch, Tinfoil to Stereo, p. 50.
16) TAE to Gouraud, 22 March 1892, LB 920304, p. 131.
17) Tate to Edison, record plant, 9 Jan 1893, 1893 phono.
18) Proposed letter to NE Phonograph Co, 1892 Phono; Tate to TAE,
13 Jan 1892, ibid.1
919) Tate to TAE, 19 Jan 1892, 1892 Phono, EPWks.

20> Frow & Self!, Cylinder Phonographe, p.19.
21) TAE to M Block, MD 1894 phono, Russia.
22) Edison claimed to have tens of thousands of invested inphonograph R&D in the 1890s which were called excessive in thevarious court cases fought over his phonograph business. In 1895
he claimed to have spent all the money he received from thephonograph companies on experiments and threw $45,000 of his own
money into the pot. Evidence in American Graphophone vs Edison
Phonograph Works, 25 April 1895, 1895, Phono Ed P Wks.
23) Read & Welch, Tinfoil to stereo, p. 63.
24) TAE to United Phono Co, 19 April 1897, LB 931031, p. 406.
25) German co to Ed United Phono Co 18 July 1896, Phono Forg
Germany; Minutes of MPC meeting 9 July 1896. MPC.
26) This machine can be seen in a short movie, Walter Cronkite in
The Twentieth Century series: "The Movies Learn to Speak.”27) St Louis Republican 3 July 1899, F Chrisman interview, 1899
Phono: "My kinetophone will provide "honest workmen with grandopera at a price he can afford to pay.”
28) Ramseye, Million and One Mights, chap 26.
29) F.R. Fulton, "The Machine," in Balio, American Film Industry,p. 39.
30) Ramsaye, Million and One Mights, chap 16.
31) Annotation on T Armât to TAE, 11 May 1922, biog file.
32) C. Musser, "American Vitagraph," in Fell, Film Before
Griffith, pp., 33-34.
33) Brochure for Edison projecting kinetoscope in primary
printed.
34) Ramseye, p. 328.
35) TAE to R Miller, 2 Dec 1897, LB 931031, p. 612.
36) J Randolph to J Haines, 29 Dec 1897, LB 931031, p. 626.
37) TAE to Walter Cutting, 26 Oct 1897, LB 931031, p. 567; TAE to
H. Dick, 12 Jan 1899, LB 980131, p. 319
38) Agreement with W S Pilling <& Crane) 1899, LB 980131,p.413.

V I 1-3739) Edison wanted to avoid the lead-iron combination because thepatents were held the Electric Storage Battery Company. He again
exploited the international information network by analyzing the
progress of the Swede, Waldemar Jungner, who was developing anickel-cadmium battery.
40) Dyer & Martin, Edison, p554.
41) Richard H Schallenberg, Bottled Energy: ElectricalEngineering and the Evolution of Chemical Energy Storage(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1982), 357-358,
362.
42) TAE to Dick, n.d., 1903 TAE handwriting; TAE to Herter, 19
July 1901; TAE notes, n.d. 1907 Storage battery experimental.
43) A Kennedy to Hutchison, 11 Mar 1914, Motion Picture.
44) Claims were made that Dickson took his notes with him when heleft during Edison vs American Mutascope trial, complainants
record legal box 173. Edison said that Dickson was guilty of’’double crossing me and selling me out to Latham for his own
benefit.” annotation on letter from T Armat, 11 May 1922, biog
files.

VIII- 1

CHAPTER EIGHTAN INDUSTRIAL EMPIRE

Edison and his managers had every reason to be optimistic
about the new century; the phonograph business had finallytaken off and they were in a strong position to dominate motion
pictures. The Edison Manufacturing Company was the foremost
manufacturer of films and projectors in Europe and the UnitedStates. ^ Edison now saw his 1893 motion picture invention in
the same class as his incandescent lamp. Taking a leaf out of
the book of the Edison Electric Light Company, theManufacturing Company energetically defended its patent rights.
A court decision in 1901 upheld Edison's original patents andput his Company in an unassailable position to control the
production of motion pictures; the patents could now be used todrive the competition from the field. "We have won" crowed the
Edison Manufacturing Company, convinced that only they had theright to manufacture films and cameras.

2

Edison had given the

public light, and now he was giving them entertainment; films
and music for the masses would surely be more profitable thanelectric light and much less trouble!
The explosive growth of the phonograph and motion
pictures at the turn of the century revived the West Orange
complex and encouraged Edison to pursue an ambitious policy of

VIII- 2

expansion. (Illus 8-1 ) The year 1900 began with a labor forceof 700 and by the end of the year Edison's secretary estimatedthat 1000 men were employed in the Works and 150 in thelaboratory— a significant increase over the work force of the
1890s 3The experimenters and machinists at West Orange were busy
with many different projects, ranging from a newelectromagnetic meter to developing an alkaline storage battery
to testing new kilns for manufacturing Portland cement. To
undertake these different projects, Edison and his men
reorganized several of the buildings at the laboratory andadded new ones. Building 4, which had been the site of the ore
milling research, was converted for experiments in duplicatingrecord cylinders. Building 2, the chemistry lab, became abeehive of activity with a dozen chemists assigned to finding alighter alternative to the lead-acid battery. Edison had
decided to apply his electrochemical expertise to the newly
developing automobile market. From 1895 onward, America enteredinto an automobile craze, with the popular press celebrating
every invention related to the automobile. Edison too was
fascinated by the potential of a self-propelled vehicle and as
early as 1896 he had the lab experiment with a motorized
tricycle. Believing that the future belonged to the electriccar, Edison set out to develop a battery for it that waslighter and more economical than the traditional lead-acidbattery. A garage was erected in the main laboratory yard to

I

Illustration 8-1
Vest Orange Complex around 1900
(Artist’s Impression)

VIII- 3

accomodate the growing number of vehicles used in battery
tests.^
Edison's great expectations for the storage battery
business were further reflected in a rush program of creating
new companies and building manufacturing facilities. The
chemical works at Silver Lake were enlarged and a smalllaboratory was established there for conducting research onprocessing the basic materials needed for the storage battery.
To assemble the battery, the Edison Storage Battery Company
C
acquired an old brass mill in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Thisbattery plant was only one addition to a growing industrial
empire which was spreading its operations far from West Orange.
Another far-flung enterprise was the Edison Portland Cement
Company, which Edison organized in order to exploit the
crushing machines and material-handling equipment he had
developed in the ore milling project. After acquiring
substantial deposits of limestone (the basic raw material forPortland Cement) in Western New Jersey, Edison had this company
build a huge processing plant in Stewartsville, New Jersey. The
scale and layout of this plant owed a great deal to Edison's
experience at Ogdensburg; it contained numerous automatic
machines and conveyor belts.
The demands of the motion picture business led to theenlargement of the manufacturing plant at West Orange, and theconstruction of special facilities outside the complex. The
increasing length of films and generally bigger film

VIII- 4

productions justified the construction of a studio on 21stStreet in New York, the artistic center of the country, to makefilms. In both the motion picture and phonograph businesses it
was found desirable to site studios close to the artistes andnot force them to come to West Orange to perform. The
laboratory played a critical part in the expansion of the
Edison enterprise: The center of this sprawling industrial
empire was the main laboratory building in the West Orange
complex. The laboratory staff were not solely concerned with
R&D; they planned the layout of new factories, designed themachinery, and often actually made equipment in the lab andthen installed it in place. They were particularly busy withthe job of creating the large scale facilities to produce
storage batteries.
The research orientation of the laboratory in the 1890s
was subtly changing to support of the manufacture of new
products. The history of the duplication project is theclearest example of this process. Begun in 1888, theexperiments had achieved success by 1891, when matrices wereused to make records. The process involved coating the masterwith graphite and then electroplating a thin layer of gold on
it. This matrix could be used to mould thousands of duplicates.
Tate naturally expected that this duplicating process would be7
quickly put into operation, but he was wrong.
Edison's staff,
especially Charles Wurth and his son Al, spent the next ten
years trying to get a better quality duplicate with less

VIII- 5

unwanted noise. Edison insisted on a perfect duplicated sound,free from distortion and surface noise. He thought that therecords made by other companies were low quality products withpoor fidelity, and planned to enter the business with asuperior record.
The Wurths' work on duplicating records could not remain
exclusively in this narrow field because the overall goal was abetter sounding duplicate. Charles Wurth subsequently spentmuch of his time experimenting in recording techniques and thedesign of recorders. In order for the masters to be improved,
the recording process also had to be improved. In addition to
the elimination of crackles, swishes and other surface noise,
Wurth, Miller, and Aylsworth devoted many hours in experiments
to get more volume from the playback. The West Orange
laboratory was at the leading edge of phonograph technology
because the layout of the laboratory, and the flexible
organization, facilitated the cooperative efforts of three
specialists in their respective fields.
As was customary in the Edison laboratory, the successful
conclusion of the experimental project was followed by further
experimentation to streamline the manufacture of the new
product. In 1899 the laboratory staff were successfully using
the matrices to make duplicates, but the work went on toQeliminate the bugs in the moulding of duplicates. It was not
until 1901 that the commercial production of records began. The
laboratory staff executed a shop order to double the capacity

VIII- 6of Wurth's trial plant and began to design the automatic
machinery for the duplicating facilities Edison planned.'*'®
In 1902 The Edison Phonograph Works made nine phonographmodels, their prices ranging from $10 to $100. ^Ten years

earlier Tate had seen that the business of selling machines was
based on the availability of reasonably priced records. 12 In1892 the records had been high priced and low quality. By 1902,
with phonograph sales soaring, the National Phonograph Company
could now deliver the right product at the right time. Output
of records was 25,000 a day in 1903 and rising rapidly. The
return on years of experiments in duplicating— carried out
without interruption since 1888 according to Edison— had now
paid off; the moulded cylinder records that sold for 50 cents,
TO

cost only 7 cents to make.
Edison's phonograph business had moved from amusement
parlors to the living rooms of average Americans. The first
decade of the twentieth century marked the transformation of anovelty into an article of mass consumption, and one part of adiversified business to the core industry of the Edisonenterprise. Phonograph sales in the 1890s started from aceiling of $25,000 per annum and reached a quarter of a million
dollars per annum by the end of the decade. Each year of thetwentieth century brought an increase in sales. Edison realized
the dream of one of his machines in every home, announcing that
"There is no family so poor that it cannot buy a talking,.
„14machine."VIII- 7

The success of the amusement phonograph encouraged Edison
to return to the idea of a phonograph for the business user. In
1903 he announced that a business machine, called the Edison
Commercial Phonograph, was being developed at the West Orange
laboratory. The years after 1890 had produced some important
technological advances in the phonograph and some of theseadvances, such as better arrangements of the controls, could beapplied to a phonograph for business use. The Edison businessphonograph was formally unveiled in 1905. It was basically amodified amusement phonograph, rather than a completely new
design, and still came in a handsome oak case.
The 1906 sales year broke all records for sales ofphonographs and recorded cylinders. The Edison Phonograph Works
was turning out 1000 machines and 100,000 cylinders every
twenty-four hours but this still was not enough to meet demand.
This explosive growth of the phonograph business made its
mark on the West Orange Complex which underwent a massive
expansion program. The many shacks, lean-tos and othertemporary structures— the architectural heritage of "researchfor hire" in the nineteenth century were swept aside andseveral new buildings were constructed from 1900 to 1906.
The first to be built were the facilities to produce
records. Extensions were added to the back and sides of the
Phonograph Works and a separate building to make records wasconstructed parallel to the laboratory on its North sideadjacent to the ends of the satellite buildings. It was 240

VIII- 8feet long and by 1906 five storeys high. Building 24 (as it wascalled), contained the equipment to mould the records and also
rooms for testing and experimenting. Edison could sometimes befound carrying out experiments in this building. A new front
facade was erected to the Phonograph Works, crossing the T of
the West end of the buildings. (See Illus 8-2, 10.380 # 9105.)
The power house was re-sited at the end of this new structure
which provided a massive concrete surround to the old wooden
phonograph works, greatly enlarging the floor space of theWorks and accomodating the growing work force which had swollen
to 4000 by 1908. At the same time the Phonograph Works wasenlarged, Edison began the construction of several large
factories to make storage batteries across from the laboratory
on Lakeside Avenue.
A new office building was completed in 1906. It stoodnext to the laboratory on Lakeside Avenue, an easy walk from
Edison's desk in the library. Four storeys high and 137 feetlong, the new building housed all the office workers of the
Edison companies. The National Phonograph Company was the core
Edison enterprise and it occupied most of the administrationbuilding. It handled the sales of phonograph products andcoordinated the flow of parts and materials through the
Phonograph Works. As the phonograph industry became morecompetitive, the National Company extended its control of the
Edison dealers, moving towards a policy of forcing them to sell
Edison products exclusively. The administration at West Orange

Illustration 8-2
The Administrative BuildingJ9

had to maintain both the morale and obedience of the Edison
dealers, and its policy of tight control became well-known in
the phonograph industry.
The introduction of new products led to the creation of
departments charged with administering sales. A commercial
department of the National Phonograph Company was set up tomarket the new business phonograph in 1905. Its manager was
Nelson Durand, an Edison employee since the 1880s who had
worked with Edison on filaments. Like many of the new corps of
middle managers, Durand had worked his way up the Edisonorganization. His new department began on a shoe string; it had
to use the system of dealers who sold and serviced the Edison
amusement phonograph, rather than go to the expense of
constructing a separate network. Durand was an energetic
promoter of the business phonograph, tirelessly organizing
exhibits and arranging demonstrations for potential users. Hisorganization grew rapidly from five people at his New York
office in 1906 to seventy-nine employees in nine sales areas by1907. 17
The small-scale administration of the nineteenth century
was changing into a large organization of specialized
departments. The Edison enterprise was moving from the personalendeavor of its founder to raise money for his laboratory to aorganization of professional managers running a business thatwas international in scope. The unprecedented growth of
Edison's phonograph business led to increases in the white10

collar work force at West Orange and the creation of
specialized departments. The advertising, accounting, legal andpurchasing departments administered a growing number oftransactions in the first decade of the twentieth century. Each
was run by a professional manager. The creation of specialized
functions in the organization had the wholehearted approval of
Edison, who viewed this as a more efficient way to do business.
He stressed the economy of centralizing all purchasing, forexample, into one centralized department that would administer
the needs of the Edison enterprise.
The legal department grew out of Edison's close relations
with his patent lawyers. It was devoted to obtaining anddefending Edison's patents and its work in the 1900s made it avital part of the organization. William Gilmore had initiatedthe "patent wars" in the motion picture business and thisdominated its affairs until the creation of the Motion Picture
Patents Company in 1908. Edison's strategy for this business
was for a monopoly based on his patents and the legal
department relentlessly harried the competition in the courts,
driving many of them from business. The patent position was
equally important in the phonograph business where several
crucial Edison patents were disputed. His failure to fully
protect his duplication and manufacture of records cost him
dearly in the twentieth century. The complex legal arrangementsof the companies formed to market phonographs in the nineteenth
century provided plenty of headaches for the legal department

11in the twentieth, keeping it busy with financial negotiations
and litigation.
The advertising department coordinated the promotion of
Edison products nationwide. Edison had been his own promoter in
the nineteenth century and had taken the work very seriously.
The laboratory still played a significant part in moulding the
public's impression of Edison and his work. In the twentiethcentury the Edison myth was promoted for the same ends but on amuch larger scale. The market for phonographs covered all
corners of the country and the National Phonograph Company
supported newspaper and magazine advertising on a national
basis. Marketing consumer durables brought Edison's name into
millions of households and the advertising department worked tokeep his name, picture, and signature in the public mind.
The growing size of the operation, the diversity of
products, and the sheer number of transactions carried out by
the Edison enterprises demanded a centralized administration of
bookkeeping and information gathering. The accounting
department labored in the herculean task of bringing all
bookkeeping functions under one organization, and providing theinformation needed to coordinate production and sales. This
department was to become vitally important as the hierarchy ofmanagers grew and made more decisions in the organization;
their need for information grew and so did the accounting
department. Yet in the prewar years the Edison organization
remained small-scale; the accounting department was centered on

12

the work of one man. Walter Eckert did practically all the workof producing balance sheets and statements. 18
The heads of the specialized departments formed a slim
layer of middle management in the Edison enterprise. Many ofthese men were to become central figures in the businessaffairs of the Edison companies in the twentieth century. Thesemen answered to Gilmore and sat on the committees which carriedout the administration of the National Phonograph Company. Theyand other middle managers naturally began to work together inrunning the business. As early as 1908, the professional
managers of the various Edison companies were coordinating
their actions into an organ of central control. An executive
committee was formed in 1908 to manage the business while
Gilmore was away. Each head of department was in attendance todeal with business that affected his department, and collective
decisions were made on important issues. 19

12

the work of one man. Walter Eckert did practically all the workof producing balance sheets and statements. 18
The heads of the specialized departments formed a slim
layer of middle management in the Edison enterprise. Many ofthese men were to become central figures in the businessaffairs of the Edison companies in the twentieth century. Thesemen answered to Gilmore and sat on the committess which carriedout the administration of the National Phonograph Company. Theyand other middle managers naturally began to work together inrunning the business. As early as 1908, the professional
managers of the various Edison companies were coordinating
their actions into an organ of central control. An executive
committee was formed in 1908 to manage the business while
Gilmore was away. Each head of department was in attendance todeal with business that affected his department, and collective
. .
.
.
19
decisionswere made on important
issues.

VIII-13

THE FORMATION OF TAE INCORPORATEDThere had been little planning in the assembly of
Edison's industrial empire. He pursued the policies ofdiversification and expansion without regard to the overall
development of the organization, forming new companies andbuilding factories as the need arose. Each new product led to a
new company and often to a new manufacturing facility. This was
the case with the storage battery and Portland Cement at theturn of the century. Edison also embraced the strategy ofintegration, acquiring the facilities to control each stage of
production. There were good technical reasons to control the
manufacture of chemicals, for example, because Edison's
operations in batteries and records required high quality
supplies.
Edison's strategy of vertical integration is wellillustrated by the storage battery project. In May 1901, as hesecured the first promising results in the laboratory, Edisonorganized the Edison Storage Battery Company which wascapitalized at $1 million. With this company in place, heestablished a battery assembly plant in Glen Ridge. To supply
high-quality raw materials for this factory, Edison integrated
backwards and established chemical processing facilities atSilver Lake for producing the powdered nickel and iron needed

VIII-14

for the battery's electrodes. Not satisfied with the available
sources of nickel, Edison took a further step backwards andinvestigated new sources for nickel. From 1901 to 1903, heundertook an extensive search for nickel mines, reminiscent of
the platinum searches of the electric light years and thesurvey of iron mines made during the ore milling venture.
Edison greatly enjoyed the excitement of prospecting for new
mineral deposits and he made several trips to the Sudbury
district of Ontario during the summers of 1902 and 1903. Edison
contemplated organizing his own company for mining andprocessing nickel ore in Sudbury, but he eventually decided
against it since he found it difficult to secure reliable
information about the character of the deposits. Consequently,
Edison found it easier and cheaper to purchase nickel fromestablished producers. 20
Just as he integrated backwards toward the sources andprocessing of the battery's inputs, so Edison also integrated
forward toward the marketplace. Edison took a keen interest in
marketing the battery, and he worked closely with his salesmen
and managers to plan advertising campaigns. Although his chiefgoal was to become the main supplier of batteries to theelectric vehicle industry, Edison also considered manufacturing
his own electric vehicle. Unsatisfied with the existing
electric automobiles, Edison set out to design his own car andconducted numerous experiments at West Orange to develop astronger chassis and improve the components of the automobile.

VIII-15

To help with this work, Edison encouraged John M. Lansden, Jr.
to develop a delivery wagon or truck and he put the lab's
machine shop at Lansden's disposal in December 1904. Lansden
subsequently organized the Lansden Motor Car Company and set up
a factory in Newark. After advancing money to Lansden forseveral years and seeing no improvement in the truck, Edisonpurchased Lansden's company in June 1908 for $35,000. Throughcloser supervision— particularly with the aid of Chief Engineer
Miller Reese Hutchison— Edison hoped that he could force
Lansden to improve his product, but he eventually concluded
that "Lansden has no ability as an experimenter & allowing him
to go ahead is throwing away money." 21 Disappointed, Edison
concluded that it was best to concentrate on the battery andlet others manufacture the vehicles. Although he was to learn
that there were limits to the strategy of vertical integration,
he nevertheless pursued the same policy with the phonograph andsecured much greater success. He acquired the companies
manufacturing the spring motor and eventually even controlled
the construction of the wooden cabinets.
The impressive growth of the Edison enterprise came as aresult of the phonograph boom at the turn of the century. The
optimism and confidence of 1900 was gone by 1910. A series ofdifficult technical problems in experimental projects, damaging
court decisions, and finally a depression in the core businessforced attention to the organization of the Edison enterprise.
In 1910 it was on the verge of a financial crisis. It was inVIII-16

this atmosphere that the policy of centralization was begun.
The laboratory too underwent the rationalization andclarification of mission that marked the transformation of the
Edison enterprise into a modern, multinational corporation.
Each of Edison's businesses suffered setbacks after the
optimistic beginning of the new century. The first
disappointment was in the motion picture business. By 1903 thebusiness was at a low point; the public were tiring of the same
film subjects— travelogues and topical films about natural
disasters and current events— and the costs of litigation kept
profits low. The efforts of the legal department could notprevent the activities of the many independent film makers andexhibitors who crowded into the field. Edison was still not
fully convinced that this business was not just a "fad" andGilmore recognized that it was now "a non-profitable field." 22
The same intense competition marked the cement business.
The Edison Portland cement Company had been successfully
started but overcapacity on the industry led to price cutting
which eliminated profits. The Company had begun with the goodidea of exploiting Edison's patents and ore milling machinery,
but it became a financial drain on the organization.
The storage battery project illustrated what could gowrong with an experimental campaign and the great risk of
introducing a new product. By 1903, Edison had decided to use
an electrochemical combination of nickel and iron with anelectrolyte of potassium hydroxide in his battery and he pushed

VIII-17

rapidly ahead in manufacturing and marketing this new product.
Edison found that this new battery, which he dubbed the Type E,
performed better than most of the competing lead-acid cells,
but it cost more to manufacture. Nevertheless, the Type E soldwell, and 14,000 cells were installed in electric cars andtrucks in 1903 and 1904. 23 Unfortunately problems soon appearedin this product. The battery leaked because the caustic
electrolyte ate through the solder along the seams of thebattery's outer steel can. Even worse was the substantial drop
in electrical capacity of the battery after a period of use.^
As customers reported these difficulties, Edison realizedthat he had not fully tested his new battery and he recalled
all of the defective cells in November 1904. With
characteristic determination, Edison set about finding the bugs
which caused the leaks and the capacity loss. While he and his
men easily eliminated the leaks by switching from soldering towelding the seams of the battery's outer can, the capacity
problem proved far more vexing. Over the next five years,
Edison undertook thousands of additional experiments to
identify the cause of this problem.^5 Eventually, he traced thecapacity problem to the nickel oxide electrodes. During
charging and discharging, these electrodes would swell andshrink. Because of this continual change, electrical contact
between the nickel oxide granules and the grid pockets was
reduced, thus increasing the internal resistance of cell andlowering its electrical output. ° Edison overcame this

VIII-18

difficulty by alternating layers of very thin nickel flakes
with nickel oxide in the electrode. To minimize any expansion
or shrinkage during charging or discharging, Edison designed
machinery which tamped down these layers with a pressure of2000 pounds per square inch. ' Edison called this new nickel
flake cell the Type A and he began manufacturing it in 1909.
The enormous costs of this research and the constructionof a new factory swamped the paltry finances of the Edison
Storage battery Company and during the 1900s it became thefinancial weakling of the Edison business organization. From1904 to 1909, it had no product to sell and yet it was burdenedwith the heavy costs of solving the problem of capacity loss.
By 1905 it was carrying $154,693 of experimental charges, which
was about equal to the value of machinery and tools at bothWest Orange and the Glen Ridge factory.

The financial

position of the Edison Storage Battery Company was so poor that
Edison decided that it would be unwise to release statistics tocredit companies. It was feared that the fragile finances ofthe storage battery operation would destroy faith in thefinancial health of TAE Inc.
The failure to get the storage battery right the firsttime had put an unbearable strain on Edison's personal
finances. Edison supported much of the Storage Battery Company
through his own pocket, by 1910 its indebtedness to him was$1,300,000, a sum that was more than the capital stock of thecompanyl It was estimated that he invested $1,900,000 in

VIII-19

developing the battery and preparing it for manufacture. 29
The storage battery research had a detrimental effect on
both Edison's finances and health. The desperate search to findthe bugs in the battery wore him out as he drove himself to thelimit to save the project. Experimenting was dangerous work;
Edison had been burnt by explosions, gased by toxic fumes, andexposed to radiation in the course of his work. Several of his
men had been crushed in ore milling equipment, and one
experimenter had died from radiation poisoning. The mental
trauma of an unsuccessful R&D campaign also took its toll andDickson was probably not the only mucker to suffer a nervous
breakdown. The pressures of managing the Edison enterprise was
too much for Johnny Randolph, who took his own life in 1908.
In 1900 Edison was a sprightly 53-year-old, but hishealth had begun to deteriorate and the early twentieth century
marked a serious decline. He became seriously ill in 1900 andagain in 1901. He underwent emergency surgery on an ear
infection in 1906 and 1908. Such was the danger of thiscondition that Edison decided to "retire from commercial
business altogether" in 1907.

Edison's business associates

and the general public were told that he had retired fromcommercial work and was now going to devote himself to generalscientific experimenting for his own personal enjoyment. In
1908 his secretaries announced in their correspondence that "weno longer do commercial work at the lab." 31
The failing health of the founder presented an immediate

VIII-20

problem for the management of the Edison enterprise for there
was an urgent need to shape his sprawling industrial empire
into an organization that could carry on without him. Edison
had filled many vital positions within his companies: chief
executive, inventor, chief engineer, and financial manager.
Each of these functions had to be delineated and filled with aprofessional manager who could maintain day-to-day operationsof his department if the "old man" were not around. By 1907
William Gilmore was running the Edison enterprise through the
managers of each department. His authority extended from theadministration building into the laboratory and Works. He
instructed his subordinates "to act intelligently and wisely
without disturbing or bothering Mr. Edison." 32 The goal of theadministration was to keep operations running smoothly while
Edison busied himself in the laboratory.
The administration had grown steadily from 1900 in thewake of the boom in phonograph sales. It had slowly evolved
into an organization that could run the Edison enterprise in
the absence of Edison himself, but the ramshackle nature of hisdiverse business operations prevented a truly efficientadministration. Many of the operations were widely dispersed
about New Jersey and New York, and the management of far flung
units, like the newly constructed film studio in the Bronx,
were free to become "a law unto itself." 33 The complicatedlegal and financial relationships between Edison's companies
meant little organization and few clear lines of authority inVIII-21

his industrial empire. This was not seen as a problem in thebalmy days of the phonograph boom, when profits were high,growth was spectacular, and the attention of the "old man" wason research rather than operations. The flood of profits fromthe phonograph business masked the structural weakness of
Edison's empire, and it took a serious depression in thisbusiness to bring reform and rationalization to theorganization.
The phonograph operation was the core business of the
Edison enterprise in the twentieth century. The motion picturebusiness had picked up as a result of the impact of thenarrative film— pioneered by Edwin Porter of the Edison
Manufacturing Company— and the success of the Nickelodeon
theatres. But even the turnaround in this field and thesubsequent rise in sales was no comparison with the sales ofphonographs and records. The cylinder phonograph businessreached its peak in 1907; the results for the first quarterpromised a fifty percent increase in business over 1906. In one
week in June of 1907, the Phonograph Works shipped 6151
phonographs and 591,000 records.
The phonograph boom was stopped dead by the depression of1907. What started as a financial panic in the fall of 1907 led
to a serious decline in business in 1908 and the National
Phonograph Company watched its market share diminish at a rapid
rate. Yet all the reasons for the decline of Edison's
phonograph business are not to be found in the financial panic

TABLE 8-1
SALES OF EDISON PHONOGRAPHS(in thousands of dollars)

Sales Year

1899

756

1900

1120

1901

11053*

1902

1866

1903

2629

1904

3244

1905

4762

1906

6852

1907

7105

1908

4831

1909

3990

1910

3640

1911

2627

1912

2218

1913

3688

1914

4144

1915

6790

*This figure is probably an estimate for total phonograph sales
in the nineteenth century.

VIII-22

of 1907; they embrace the broad development of the phonographindustry from 1900 and the changing tastes of its customers.
Competition increased steadily in the twentieth century as morecompanies entered the phonograph market. Foreign manufacturers
quickly flooded Europe with cheap phonographs and threatened
the American market. The introduction of the disc phonographchallenged the cylinder machine everywhere. The Edison company
had to compete with cheap cylinder machines in the mass market
and found their more affluent customers choosing discphonographs. Even after the 1907 downturn was over, sluggish
sales and high inventories continued to hurt the company.
More problems followed. The franchisees of the now
defunct North American Phonograph Company sued Edison for ashare of the profits of phonographs sold in their areas. They
claimed that they had been illegally deprived of theirfranchises by Edison's manipulation of various phonographcompanies. A court case dragged on from 1908 to 1909 and it was
decided in favor of the franchisees who won $425,000 indamages. In 1908 Edison replaced Gilmore with Frank Dyer.
Business remained poor in 1909 and the Edison dealers were
becoming restless. Business and profits had still not returnedto Edison's phonograph enterprise by 1910 and the National
Phonograph Company had to quell rumors that Edison was gettingout of the business. 35 There was no blue sky on the horizon.
Sales of the Edison cylinder machine decreased rapidly while
the disc machines marketed by its competitors were rapidly

VIII-23

gaining acceptance and market share: ahead lay fiercer
competition and difficult technological challenges. The
National Phonograph Company was still the flagship of the
Edison enterprise in 1910 but its sales had decreased every
year since 1907.
The financial strength of the Edison enterprise wassapped by the failure of the storage battery project. The
National Phonograph Company had to help support the ailingstorage battery and cement companies which were hemorrhaging
funds. It was taking over $100,000 a month to keep theweaklings' heads above water by 1910, and this soon began toput a great strain on the finances of the company, which was
36
also meeting a large part of the laboratory payroll.
What
was worrying Frank Dyer and the accountants of the National
Phonograph Company was that "the earning power of the
profitable companies here is not as great as it once was andthe expenses of the unprofitable concerns are not diminishing."
37
It was probably the impending financial crisis in 1910
that hastened the creation of Thomas A. Edison Incorporated.
The banks on whom the company depended were becoming nervous
about extending any more credit. The problem for Dyer was toensure that the profitable companies had enough funds todevelop new products while avoiding financial disaster at thehands of the unprofitable cement, storage battery, and Lansden
Electric Car companies. In addition to supporting the weak

VIII-24

links of the Edison organization, the National PhonographCompany was also facing the great costs of developing a discrecord and improving the battery. The executives of the
National Company shared Edison's faith in the ultimate
profitability of his storage battery and Portland cement, butfeared that lack of credit would stop the Edison enterprisecompletely if drastic action were not taken in 1910. They
stressed the need for a sound financial base to support the
weaklings and provide centralized management. They appealed to
Edison to cut back on some of the highly unprofitable ventures,
especially the cement company, and generally economize until
the introduction of new products, then in the pipeline, could
replenish the treasury. It was going to take time before
promising new products could generate enough profits to cover
the expenses of R&D that overburdened their financial
statements.
Edison had successfully developed the improved A typebattery by 1909, but unfortunately the market of electricautomobiles had dried up. The internal combustion engine now
dominated the automobile and Edison was forced to look for newmarkets for his battery. (See Sidebar 8-1, Marketing theBattery.) By 1911 the Edison Storage Battery was doing about$60,000 of business a month, yet its start-up costs were sohigh (a result of the years of R&D) that it had yet to record a
profit. 38 The Edison organization had to be placed on a soundfinancial basis until new businesses such as the storageVIII-25

battery could return a profit. 39
The development of a professional management structure in
the Edison enterprise opened up a new information network.
Information about financial strategies, accounting techniques,
and company organization flowed between the staff of the
National Phonograph Company and its contacts in banking andaccounting. Professional accountants were a particularly
fruitful conduit of information; they saw a great number ofdifferent companies in the course of their work and theirdetailed financial knowledge gave them valuable insights into
organization.^® Dyer probably originated the idea of acentralized organization and then sold it to the "old man."
When Edison finally made the decision to merge several Edisoncompanies in 1910 "to bring them under a single corporation,"
the National Phonograph Company was chosen to be the core of
the new organization. ^It had the largest administrative

staff and its accounting, legal, advertising, and production
departments were to be the building blocks of a new, more
centralized management. Each product was supported by a
department that attended to the paperwork of production andsales. The middle managers were responsible for the economical
operation of the departments. A departmental committee for eachproduct was created and here the department manager got
together with representatives from advertising, production, andengineering to formulate sales plans and ensure concerted
action from all departments involved. This body also listenedVIII-26

to complaints concerning the product and took action to correct
them. ^Engineering problems often dominated the departmental

meetings as salesmen and production managers strove to direct
slender engineering resources towards their individualinterest.
The newly reorganized National Phonograph Company was
renamed Thomas A. Edison Incorporated and its stated capital
was $12,000,000. The new administration added a layer ofvice-presidents between the Chief Executive Officer and the
middle managers. Edison stood as the President of the neworganization, the executive management was carried out by two
vice-presidents and a general manager who, with Edison, formed
the executive committee which decided on all matters ofbusiness policy. The chief executive and general manager was
Frank L. Dyer. He had become Edison's chief patent counsel in1897 before replacing Gilmore in 1908. Gilmore's leaving waspart of a dispute over Edison's abrupt dismissal of one of
Gilmore's proteges. Dyer was much more suited to the legal
maneuvering which played a major role in the Edison enterprise.
The monopolistic Motion Picture Patents Company was in theplanning stage at this time and Dyer was a suitable replacement
for the combative Gilmore. It was appropriate that a lawyer now
ran the organization because one of the great challenges ahead
was the reform of the complex legal and financial links whichbound Edison to his many companies. This had to be straightenedout in order to avoid the painful kind of litigation the

VIII-27

National Phonograph Company underwent in 1908, and avoid any
embarrassments in the future.
The corporation's initial press release stressed that it
was a reorganized, rather than a new company, and that it was
the beginning of a plan to bring all Edison companies under one.
corporation,
for the purpose of "business convenience." 43 The
National Phonograph Company absorbed the New Jersey Patents
Company, the Edison Manufacturing Company, and the BusinessPhonograph company. Other (less profitable) companies were
excluded at this time but gradually assimilated into TAE Inc.
Several smaller organizations, such as the Bates Company, kept
their corporate identities although TAE Inc. took over their
management. TAE Inc. annexed certain functions, likeadvertising and purchasing, regardless of the legal
independence of other Edison companies. The new corporation was
financially strong, having $306,069 cash in hand, $349,237
invested, and its accounts receivable exceeded accounts payableby over $750,000. Its surplus of assets over liabilities was$9,752,556. This put it in a strong position to raise moremoney from banks and maintain financial support of the sickly
cement and storage battery companies. One important function
planned for the new corporation was that it should be afinancial umbrella, supporting the weak members with theearnings of the strong. In 1911 it was due $879,456 from its
affiliated companies, an indication of the financial strain of
supporting the weaklings. ^VIII-28

The creation of TAE Inc. followed in the wake of aphonograph depression and its leaner and more efficientadministration was seen to be "the wisest and most generally
accepted cure for decreased profits." 45 Its formation provided
some immediate financial relief in that one organization could
do away with the duplication of functions within several Edisoncompanies and provide cost-effective management. This involved
taking away purchasing, advertising, accounting, andadvertising functions from smaller companies and incorporatingthem into the departments of the main administration.
Arranging many jobs into a centralized organization also
gave Edison's managers an opportunity to cut costs. The
National Phonograph Company had begun this process when the
bubble burst in 1907 and they found themselves in a depression.
As the Edison Phonograph Monthly admitted, "from anorganizational standpoint the depression has been advantageous,
A C

forcing us to reorganize and reduce."° TAE Inc. was to be thevehicle to bring this process to all of Edison's many businessenterprises, and its early years were marked by vigorous
reduction of the labor force and white collar workers. The
central goal of the new organization was to reduce costs. Amongthe policies to achieve this end was a bylaw making any order
or contract worth over $10,000 subject to approval andratification by the Board of Directors and senior executives.
The consolidation of many functions into one compact bodyincreased the productivity of a smaller white collar work

VIII-29

force. According to one historian of the organization, theslimmed-down administration of TAE Inc. was " a splendid
example of what a vast amount of business could be accomplishedwith little or no office overhead." ^Changing the name of the National Phonograph Company toThomas A Edison Inc. also had some publicity value, for
Edison's personal reputation was very high; he was becoming an
American folk hero in the twentieth century. Frank Dyer notedthat the principal reason for changing the name was to "bringhome more firmly to the public the fact that this is Mr.
Edison's personal business and that his personality stands
behind it."

Edison's name and reputation were to be ofinestimable value in the growing competition in the phonographand other high-tech markets in the years after 1911, when hebecame the advertising symbol of the company. There can be no
doubt that Edison was the greatest asset of the new company.
His patents were valued at $6,000,000 in the statement of the
new corporation, and this represented over half its bookassets. TAE Inc. was centered on the person, achievements, andfuture inventive potential of Thomas Edison.

VIII-30

THE COMPETITIVE STRUGGLETAE Inc. depended on the profits from two rapidly growing
businesses, but unfortunately the phonograph and motion pictureindustries were volatile and highly competitive. In 1910 they
were worth over a million dollars in sales to the Edisonenterprise. The continual technological development ofphonographs and motion pictures placed a premium on the work of
the laboratory which had to counter the innovations of thecompetition. The "best lab ever" was now pitted against theengineering departments of companies like Columbia andBiograph— small, aggressive and highly innovative.
The technological battle was fought with both fair means
and foul. Each side carefully examined the opposition's
machines to try to gain the advantage. Edison was not above
instructing the laboratory staff to copy the successful
engineering of the opposition. Industrial espionage was common
in both motion picture and phonograph industries, and it wassaid that each company mantained spies in the enemy's camp. The
West Orange laboratory was now a security zone in the Edisoncomplex, with secret projects going on behind locked doors.
The major technical goal of the competing phonographcompanies was an extension of record playing time. The
competition was gradually increasing the playing time of

VIII-31

records— in both cylinder and disc formats— and the West Orange
laboratory had to follow suit. In 1900 Edison's phonographbusiness was based on the soft wax cylinder that could play forabout two minutes. The National Phonograph Company offered awide range of two-minute selections, with an emphasis on
traditional songs and humorous recordings. A longer playing
record had more grooves cut into it per inch than the standard
100, and this necessitated changes in the wax of the cylinder(to make it harder), and in the design and weight of the
reproducer (to avoid skipping from the smaller grooves). The
laboratory staff had been experimented freely in this area
since the 1890s, even going up to 400 threads per inch inexperimental conditions. The problem here was the reproducer
sapphire point skipping out of the groove. The closer grooves
also cut down the frequency response because the needle could't
fully capture the wide undulations of the bass notes.
The introduction of a 4-minute cylinder by thecompetition in 1907 not only threatened to cut into Edison's
cylinder business but also to promote the sales of machines
capable of playing it. This brought a concerted effort by thelab and the rapid introduction of the Amberol 4-minute cylinder
in 1908. This was a premature debut of the new technology
because the new cylinder was still made of the old wax compoundand remained fragile and easily damaged. Repeated playbackerased the high notes that were often the appeal of therecording. Edison and Aylsworth had experimented with

VIII-32

celluloid— a much harder substance than the stearic wax
compound— in the early years of the twentieth century but had
not secured patent protection for this area of research. A
legal solution was eventually found to this problem by thepurchase of rights to foreign patents in celluloid, but until aharder material could be developed Edison's customers were not. .
satisfiedwith the Amberol cylinders. 4 9
Edison's response to growing competition in thephonograph industry was to improve the sound of his phonographto make it recreate music more realistically. The Columbia
Company gave the National Phonograph administration a fright by
ruthlessly cutting prices during the first years of the new
century. Gilmore confidently wrote to Edison that "I hope you
have had good results with your new recorder experiments, andthat you will soon be able to produce a much better record,
which will offset this very radical move on their part."The

laboratory had made a considerable investment in basic
knowledge in sound during the nineteenth century and Edison
continued to exploit this information base in the twentieth. He
tried many combinations of organic and inorganic materials in
the reproducer design to achieve the right sound. He found thatsemi-viscous compounds— goo to the muckers— performed well not
only as a seal around the vibrating membrane but also managed
to dampen the sound to prevent excessive highs and lows. Thisline of experiments led to both improved reproducers and better
cutters— the tool that incised the sound waves on the masters.

VIII-33

Increasing competition in the phonograph industry led toprice cutting of both machines and records. Lowering the costsof production was essential in the phonograph business because
TAE Inc.'s products faced a competition which invariably
undersold them. Edison reduced the price of his "Gold moulded"
cylinder from 50c to 35c in 1904 and the price of his
phonographs was steadily decreased in the years before theGreat War. The Edison enterprise was able to reduce the cost ofits machines but its dominant position at the low end of themarket was continually being challenged by even cheapermachines.
Edison considered that reducing the cost of manufacturinghigh-tech products was one of the strengths of his laboratory.
This took the form of separating the machine into its component
parts and working on the design of each part to make it easierand cheaper to assemble the whole phonograph. The plan was toproduce a standard design and make each part to this standard.
Production engineering also encompassed designing the machine
tools to be used in the Works and streamlining the
manufacturing process to cut out unnecessary (or costly) steps.
The essence of mass production as practiced by Edison and his
generation of engineers was to reduce the cost of making a
product by standardizing its design and organizing long,uninterrupted manufacturing runs. Yet this goal was confoundedby the growing line of Edison phonograph models and thepractice of making design changes; the Edison Phonograph WorksVIII-34

was called upon to manufacture a bewildering range of machines.
Edison had a policy that his customers should not be left withobsolete machinery, and subsequently each new model or designchange was accompanied by a conversion kit to adopt old
machines. The introduction of the Amberol record, for example,
led to the creation of mechanical devices to convert existing
phonographs to play the 4-minute cylinder. This naturally added
more variants to a phonograph line that was already crowdedwith numerous models and types. The conversion kits weredifficult to make and install, making life more complicated for
the Phonograph Works and the dealer network.
The Works was a loosely organized facility that
manufactured everything from kinetoscopes to numberingmachines. It was a production engineer's nightmare: a do-all
general purpose factory, with no central task or stabilizedengineering designs, and few long production runs. The Works
was inundated with design changes and often had to manufacture
products before the laboratory finished the design. Even after
a design change was made, there still remained the long andarduous process of changing drawings and making sure the new
product was standardized. The absence of a routine for making
design changes and the lack of clear lines of authority createdan atmosphere in the Works where standardization of design andmanufacture was virtually impossible. It was a case of every
foreman for himself and few records were kept. One engineer
recalled that "New models chased themselves through the factory

VIII-35

without red tape— that is, if they could find their way though
the maze of cubby holes and partitions that formed the factory
floor." 51
The more new designs were produced in the lab, the moreproduction changes had to be made. The chaos in the PhonographWorks became steadily worse in the early years of the twentiethcentury as the Edison laboratory pushed forward with several
new phonographs. The work of product development wasconsequently plagued with delays; time-consuming engineeringchanges and the growing confusion in the Phonograph Works madeit difficult to innovate to commercial schedules. The numerous
delays were fatal in the growing competition of the phonographmarket where the competition often beat the National PhonographCompany m

introducing new technology.

Edison was not slow to realize that organized andeffective production engineering was the key to maintaining
high sales. Yet the important job of production engineering was
widely dispersed about the laboratory and Works. Althoughseveral experimenters worked on phonographs, there was no
permanent position in the laboratory devoted to the productionengineering of the phonograph. The work was carried on by
Edison himself (when the mood caught him), and the managers andforemen of the Edison Phonograph Works.
The superintendent of the Works had a responsibility fortool design and manufacturing techniques. Peter Weber, who held
the post in the early 20th century, carried out important work

VIII-36

on the production engineering of the phonograph. He took thedrawings and models produced in the lab and integrated all
modifications and changes into the design of a production modelthat would be cheap and easy to manufacture. Weber and his
assistants, especially E.L. Aiken, played a crucial role indeveloping new products and manufacturing existing ones. 53
Weber and his staff carried out improvements on machines, often
at the request of dealer feedback. For example, they redesigned
the horn of the phonograph to improve sound quality and givethe phonograph a new look, working on a new design for horn andattachment brackets in 1907. These small design changes were
often made to streamline production; but their number, and thenumber of people making them, led to more problems in
manufacture. 54
The transformation of all these design changes into new
blueprints, tools, and manufacturing processes was as importantas the actual engineering of the changes. The job of everyday
production engineering went, by default, into the hands of theforemen of the machine shops and Edison Phonograph Works. These
were the men who actually made the changes in design andmanufacturing processes. This was done in an informal,
haphazard way; there was no proper set of drawings kept andeach foreman made his own changes to suit himself and usually
failed to inform anybody else. The tools used in production
were designed and made by Otto Weber "largely as he saw fit."
No records were kept of this vital work. There was no

VIII-37

centralized control of the production process apart from thesuperintendent of the Edison Phonograph Works who was unable tokeep track of the many changes made by his foremen. 55 The lab
and Phonograph Works certainly had the personnel and resources
to continually redesign the phonograph, and they did!
The problem was to organize these forces to be able to
make changes quickly and to readjust all manufacturing
processes to suit. What was lacking was one authority tocoordinate all the parts of the process (R&D, drafting,toolmaking, and production) and the organization to control itfrom laboratory to Works. There was no central authority or
position in the Works or lab that could administer engineeringchanges, and no organization that could integrate the job of
production engineering into the work of several different
organizations.
The great number of design changes in Edison phonographs
made life difficult for the dealers, who often found out thatthe "improvement" often led to a malfunction in another part ofthe machine. The dealers were confused by the continualmodification of the product and in many cases they were nottold about changes— they had to find out for themselves by
examining the machine! Edison dealers had plenty to complain
about: modifications that did not work, changes in the machinethat made its operation difficult, and poor assembly. In manycases dealers had to overhaul and repair machines before they
could be sold.

This haphazard approach to production

VIII-38

engineering, typical of the Edison lab and Phonograph Works,
could be tolerated in the boom days up to 1907. But after the
depression came a great increase in competition, and it soon
became evident that changes would have to be made to eliminate
some of the abuses of manufacturing practice in the Edison
Phonograph Works.

VIII-39

FORMING AN ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT

It was time to restructure the laboratory organization tomeet the challenge of a highly competitive market. Engineering
was another function to be bureaucratized and fitted into thework of planning, production, and sales. A new organization was
created to bring the resources of the lab and Works together
into a coordinated system of production engineering. Edison andhis managers aimed to streamline the process of taking new
designs and transferring them to the Works where tooling andproduction engineering would be carried out. Significantly, thecore of the new organization came from the Phonograph Works andnot from the laboratory.
The duties of the superintendent of the Works ranged overfactory management, production engineering, and experimenting
in the laboratory with Edison. Peter Weber did all these whileserving as superintendent and he also supervised engineers
attached to specific products. In 1909 Weber appointed an
assistant (Charles Schiffl) to deal with engineering work suchas design of new products and changes in old ones. When Schiffl
was transferred from the Works to the main laboratory building,he was put to work on the design of a new business phonograph,on the request of the division manager. Schiffl's move to thelab was the first step in bringing many engineering functions

VIII-40

under one centralized control. 57
The next step was to create a department and give it the
support facilities to enable it to operate independently. In
1910 Edison made the decision to install in the lab an"engineering and experimental department" which was to develop
new machines from scratch and then send them to the phonographworks for manufacture. All new products had to be developed in
the Engineering Department, to avoid some expensive "mistakes"
which had occurred in the past. Any change in an existing
C O

product had to be approved by the new department.

The

Engineering Department was given charge of productionengineering: producing better designs for manufacture, andstandardizing a design after improvements had been made. The
products of the Engineering Department were to be models andblueprints of new phonographs.
A very important function of this department was to workwith the other engineering and works departments— it was
intended to be a permanent link in the chain of developmentthat began in the laboratory and ended in the shipping
department of the Works. This organization would present a
working machine to the executive committee for approval before
it was turned over to the drafting department for a complete
set of blueprints to be made up and sent to the Works. The neworganization was set up specifically to work on phonographs,
and there was some discussion whether it should be put on the
payroll of the National Phonograph Company. It was finally

VIII-41

decided to put the Engineering Department onto the laboratory
payroll because it was expected that the new department would
be producing patentable designs and improvements to thephonograph. 59
At first the Engineering Department consisted of Schiffl
in the laboratory— this reflected the old system of thefunction residing with the man rather than in a position. But
in 1910 the post of Chief Engineer was created, and he was thefirst to fill it. His duties and role in the organization were
diverse. His main duty was to redesign phonographs to make themcheaper and easier to manufacture, for this was the central
function of the Engineering Department.

When the European

affiliates of the National Phonograph Company were troubled
with low price competition, a number of very cheap machines
were sent to the West Orange lab, and Dyer reassured them that
the Engineering Department would be put to work to design acompetitive, low priced cylinder machine.

61

The need to develop new phonograph technology, in bothbusiness and amusement fields, led to a search for a phonographengineer in 1910. Newman H. Holland was chosen for the job andjoined the West Orange laboratory in March 1910. He had fifteen
years experience in the design of electrical apparatus,
including five years at Western Electric, where he had worked
in the original design section and rose to head to experimentallaboratory at Chicago.

Holland devoted his time to thebusiness phonograph, probably because Edison was concentrating

VIII-42on the amusement phonograph at this time. Holland was placed
under Schiffl's supervision for the Chief Engineer supervised
the development work of the experimenters, consulting them
before he designed new machines. 63
The Chief Engineer was the important link between the
researchers in the lab and the staff of the Phonograph Works.
He designed new parts and improvements for machines and gave
all relevant data and information to Weber, who then designed
the machine tools. A major part of his job was recording anddistributing information to the relevant production or research
64
departments.
The Engineering Department became an important
processing point in the ever increasing paperwork generated by
the West Orange facility. By 1911 all requisitions for outsideengineering or manufacturing work had to go through the Chief
Engineer's office to be approved and recorded.
The Engineering Department was an important part of the
new bureaucratic organization of TAE Inc. Its work was overseen
by a committee that managed expenditure on product development,
production engineering and the manufacture of tools, andimprovements in the manufacturing plant. All suggestions,requests, and proposals were first considered by the Chief
Engineer and after his approval and estimate of the cost ofchanges, it was given to the manufacturing committee. This bodywas comprised of executives of the National Phonograph Company,
the Chief Engineer, and other works staff. Its duties included
gathering all data pertinent to the change, and then examining

VIII-43

the impact of the change on the existing manufacturingsituation. Formed in June 1910, the committee assessed theeconomic consequences of a proposed design change and decided
if it was to be implemented.

66

The changes were authorized byEngineering Notices and carried out by the Chief Engineer andhis assistants. Their work also involved the careful recordingof all changes in design and production.
The Engineering Department soon enlarged its scope tocover more than the phonograph. Its staff worked on primary
batteries and motion pictures, producing a series ofimprovements to the projector and designing one for use in thehome. While the muckers in the laboratory were working with
Edison on the revolutionary new technologies of sound and color
for movies, the Engineering Department was given the importanttask of day-to-day production engineering. This involved verysmall, and seemingly inconsequential changes, in existingproduct lines such as a lock nut for the mandrel of thephonograph or a ridge on the primary battery jar cover in whicha label could be placed.

Small changes indeed, but if theresult was a cheaper and better product the Department was notlaboring in vain.

1
SIDEBAR
MARKETING THE STORAGE BATTERYOver the course of

his career, Edison was atalents.

Not only was he an ingenious

wasa goodalso

machines
In

production

man

of

experimenter but Edisonengineer,and hedesignedtheand layout of the factories in his industrial empire.

addition,laboratory

however,andtheEdisonfactory

was able toandconcernlook beyond
himself

When his first assumptions

a market forproved wrong, Edison

his inventions

identifying and stimulating

be a market innovator

is well

new markets.

the

with

marketing of his creations.

of

many

the
about

was capable

This ability

toillustrated by Edison's efforts

with the storage battery.
During his long struggle tobattery, Edison assumed thatmajor market.
thatcharacteristicbrought about commercially."(1)marketing data,

licensingstorageexuberance,hepredicted

vehicle traction in large

the U[nited] States will be done electrically & I amm[anu]f[acturin]g the battery

collect

alkaline

electric automobiles would be his"inside of 15 years the entire

cities in
now

With

perfect histhethat will permit this to be

To secure

sales

contacts andEdison sent men to different state capitals to

namesbureaus.

ofelectric

vehicleownersfromthe(This survey was a typical Edison businesstactic; he had done the same in

the 1880s to assess the market

2for incandescentrather thantheselighting

in New

York City).

Unfortunately,

reporting back a rosy future for the electric car,investigators

found that by 1910

the electricindustry had begun to

decline,cars.

for example, while

In New Jerseythat of the 800 electrics
1906, 98% had

had

vehiclelosing out to gasoline-powered
Edison's

been licensed

been abandoned by 1910.(2)

men

found

between 1899 and"The record is bad,"admitted Edison, but it was
not the fault ofthevehicle but
the leadbattery....A great deal of work will have to be doneby all of us to remove the bad impression.
Asatisfied & delighted customer is the only methodthat will build up a permanent business.(3)However, try as he might, Edison

was never able tonegative impressions associated

with

its

cheaper fuel, higher

speeds,theremove theelectric car.

With

and wider cruisingradius,the gasoline car was

quickly taken up by the American

public.

As a result, Edison

was forced to look for new markets for hisbattery.
From

the personal vehicle

battery for othertheelectric

Accordingservicetoeasilyurban applications.

delivery

truck

used

moved

to promoting his

The first
byof these was

department

stores.

to Edison, electric trucks were ideal for intraurban
since they could makethe garage

which

Edisontheir rounds by day

at night for charging.

Unliketobe cranked

thestartedandstopped1910s

severalhad

Throughout

the

to

start,
forNew

gasoline trucks

electrics could be

quick
York

and returndeliveries.(4)stores(including

3
Tiffany

andAltman's)

batteries.

However,usedelectric

truckswith the introduction

starter for the gasoline engine in 1912,
much

of

their

advantage

and

were

with

of

the

Edisonelectric

electric trucks
gradually

lost

replacedbygasoline trucks.
Along

with

battery-poweredthestreetcar.

were desirable for
they

did

electricrush

Edisonhours

not use additional

station and

hence

did

truck,

realizedlaboratoryaduringthaton mass transit
power from

the

for

such

a

cars

systems since
main generating

not require expansion

system's power plant in order to meet
To develop this idea,

Edison pushedofthe transit

an increased

peak load.

Edison built short railway line near thethe winter of 1909-1910.(5)To manufacture

special car, Edison gave a former General Electric engineer,

Ralph H. Beach, the exclusive right tohisbattery.

Beachestablished

Silver Lake Chemical Works.
theproject died because

buildstreetcars usinga factory adjacent

Unfortunately, after three
Beach wasunableorganization to promote the car and he failed

to

the

years,

to build asales

to pay his debts

to his suppliers.(6)In some ways,

the storage battery

same way as the ore

campaign had gone

milling venture; Edison had begun assumingthat a large market existed for his products,that theBut unlike
1915,

market changed during theore milling,

he devoted

theEdisonmuch effort

only to discoverlong years of development.

persevered, andtofrom 1910 to

identifying and cultivating

4
new markets forin

1911 ofhis battery.

Optimistically, he made one list

64 different applications.(7)list were many

of

the

tasks

Includedon

thisto which the Edison battery was

successfully applied:

lighting railway cars, providing back-up

power forgenerating

stations,

railroadsignals, and lighting isolated houses and yachts.

addition,

the

list

reveals

lighthouses,

many

new

electricity which Edison investigatedmenexperimentplows,

with using

hisand lawn mowers.(8)at the lab.

battery

were schemes for using thepowerfrom thesun, tides,

lamps,

applications

to

In
for

He had his

power

Finally, scatteredlist

suggestminer's

bicycles,throughout thestorage battery to accumulate

wind, andrivers,all ofwhich

Edison was sensitive to the America's growing appetite

for energy.
To supplement these diverse
themilitary

servedasmarket

an

Navy

and

contacts

through Miller Reese

electical

Lighthouse Service,
among
and

engineer

HavingStatesnumerous

contacts

in theWashington.(9)Throughthese

preparation

advertisements,

officials inskillful

Hutchison.
UnitedhadinEdison pursued

theHutchison

hisapplications,of

Hutchison arranged for the Edison battery to be usedtosubmarines, torpedoes,

motors inwarships.
battery

To convey its
assubsequently
Edisonwireless

being

as

came toStoragesets, and electricreliability, Hutchison"RuggedasaBattery

Company.

described theBattleship,"

be a major advertising
Although

power

and

this

slogan

for

the

many

of

these

5

military

uses broughtpromising
January

profits

application,
1916,

Edisonintothesubmarines,
cells

were

company,

provedthemostdisastrous.

Ininstalled

in

the

U.S.

Submarine E-2 which exploded while indrydock

Navy Yard.

Although the explosion waslater attributed to thefailure of

the

and

gases,

Navy subsequently

thecrew toopen ahatch

in the Brooklyn

vent thedemanded stringent

batteries which effectively prevented the purchase
Edison batteries for submarines.(10)battery

testingofof any more

6
NOTES FOR SIDEBAR ON MARKETING THE STORAGE BATTERY
1. P. Manoury to TAE, 6 May 1908, 1908 SB, TAE's notes.
2. TAE to Generalnotes.
3. TAE tohandwriting.

Healey,Carlisle,

22

11 June
June

1910,

1910,

1910

Auto,

TAE's

1910

Auto,

TAE's

4. TAE to Insull, 20 June 1910, LB100521, 204-205; TAE, Draft
of "Talking Points" for selling electric trucks, 1910 SB,
Wagons & TAE notes.
5. TAE to B.J. Arnold,
Railroad, Elec., lof2.

3 June1910;

TAE notes, n.d.,1909

6. F.J. Lisman, Memo, 23 July 1913, Dyer Correspondence.
7. TAE, "Uses for Edison Battery," 11 Oct. 1911.
8. G.A. Halford to TAE, 24 Nov. 1908, 1908 SB,
Hutchison Diary, 7 Nov. 1911 and 22 Jan. 1912.

TAE's

9. "Miller Hutchison, Inventor,
Feb. 1944.

York TIMES, 18

67, Dead," Newnotes;

10. M.R. Hutchison to TAE, 13 July 1910, 1910 SB, Boat;
Hutchison Diary, 24 Aug. 1910, 12 June and 21 Oct. 1911; TAE
to Bottomly, 28 Oct. 1911, 1911
SB, TAE's handwriting;Contract between Navy Pay Office and Edison Storage BatteryCo., 13 May 1915, 1915 Submarines, E-2 Case.

44

NOTES FOR CHAPTER EIGHT
1) Benjamin Hampton, A History of the Movies (New York: Arno,
1970), p.18
2) Balio, American Film Industry, p. 23.
3) Batchelor diaries, J Randolph to S.G. Burn, 15 Nov 1900, LB
000608, 229.
4) Norman R. Speiden and William T. Ingersoll, ’’Historical Site
Report— Part I: Metallurgial Laboratory, Historical Data,”
Unpublished Report, Edison NHS, 1961, 3-5; Shop Order 957,
N871124.
5) TAE to Herter, 19 July 1901; TAE notes, n.d., 1907 SB,
Experimental, TAE’s notes; Batchelor Diary, Cat. 1345, 254-255;
W. Mallory to Caskey, 23 Apr 1902, 1902 SB, ESB Co.
6) Conot, 347; TAE claimed in an interview with Harper’s Weeklythat "there would not be a belt in the mill.” 21 Dec. 1901,
1901 SB.
7) A.O. Tate to W Stinson, 12 Feb 1891, phono gen.
8) Thomas Lambert Vs Edison, Brief for Edison, Legal Box 169,
p. 25.
9) Ibid, p. 22.
10) Shop Order #1114
11) ’’Music Hath Charms” advert, 1903 Phono.
12) Tate to Insull, 12 Jan 1892, Phono, EdPwks.
13) Batchelor Journal 1338 p. 51, quoting Aylsworth, 1 Sept
1903.
14) Edison Phonograph Monthly. Feb 1907.
15) TAE to Gouraud, 30 May 1889, LB 890521, pp 153-170.
16) Ed Phono Monthly,IV #6 6 Aug 1906.

17) Durand to Gilmore, 9 Mar 1907, Phono NPCo Commercial dept.
18) Roundtable letter, (an informal history of theadministration probably written by Charles Edison) Engineering
Dept Files, 1920.

4b19) Memo 6/10/08 Dyer 1908 Phono Music Room.
20) TÂE notes in 1901 Nickel Search file; F. R. Hanna to TAE,
n.d., 1903 Nickel Search, Mines & Minerals file.
21) Lansden to TÂE, 4 Aug. 1903; L.C. Weir to TAE, 24 Aug.
1903; MRH to TAE, 9 Nov. 1906; Memo of Agreement, 1908 SB,
Gen.; TAE to Dyer, n.d., 1910 SB, Jan-May, lof2.
22) Robert Anderson, The Motion Picture Patents Company, Phd
dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1983 p. 166.
23) TAE note, 18 Dec 1905, 1905 SB, TAE's notes.
24) TAE to Bergmann, 9 Nov 1904; Edison may have recognized the
problem of the leaky cans early for in an undated note to Hays,
the manager of the Glen Ridge plant, Edison wrote "eight out of
21 Baker batteries leak at Top where soldered You probably use
too much sodium amalgam — shoud use only enough to clean
Iron— Better look into this soldering question & improve it
for it certainly is very bad.” See TAE to Hays, n.d., 1902 TAE
Personal Handwriting.
25) Memo, Edison Storage Battery Co., 1911 SB, ESB Co, Gen,
2of2; J.W. Allison to J.F. Randolph, 31 March 1906, 1906 SB,
Ed. SB Co., Jan-June; TAE to Bergmann, 29 Nov 1904, 9 Dec 1904,
and 21 Feb 1905; see also TAE notebook N041102, "NewExperiments started at Laboratory in our new test room todiscover why nickel elements in some cases lose their amp
capacity after being in use and also to discover a remedy thatis practical and commercial."
26) Dyer? to Meffert & Sell, 28 Nov 1905.
27) "The Edison Alkaline Storage Battery," (Orange, N.J.:
Edison Storage Battery Co., 1924) in Warshaw Collection ofBusiness Americana, National Museum of American History,
Washington, D.C., 17-19.
28) Trial Balance, April 30 1905, 1905 SB.
29) Memo 9 May 1910, 1910 SB Jan-May
30) TAE to F. Comitot, 15 Nov 1907, LB 070701, p. 178.
31) TAE to F.T. Gulliver, Oct 16 1907, LB 070701, p. 114. Asst
Sec to F Scheff1er, Nov 5 1908, LB 080919, p. 294.
32) Gilmore Memo, 1906, Phono33) Roundtable Letter, 1920 Engineering Files.

34) Westee to Gilmore, June 11 1907, M. P. Sales; Edison
Phonograph Monthly. April 1907, p. 1.
35) Edison Phonograph Monthly. Jan 1910, #1
36) Westee to Dyer, 30 March 1910, 1910 W. 0. Lab .
37) Dyer to Ed 30 March 1910, 1910 Wo Lab.
38) TAE to W. Sloane, 30 Jan 1911, LB 101218, p350.
39) Dyer to TAE, 30 March 1910, 1910 Wo Lab.
40) W.M. Lybrand to F Dyer, 23 Mar 1910, 1910 WO Lab Employees.
Lybrand was a partner in a CPA firm who was sending information
about company organization to Dyer.
41) Dyer to NPC, 13 Sept 1910, TAE lab employees.
42) ’’Key to Office Organization Chart," 1912 TAE Inc.
43) Press clippings in 1911 TAE Inc 2 of 2 .
44) MPC to R.G. Dun Co, 31 July 1911, 1911 West Orange
lab-general)45) Roundtable letter, 1920 Engineering Files.
46) Edison Phonograph Monthly. Mar 1903, #3.
47) Roundtable letter, 1920, Eng Files.
48) E.J. Bergren to Dyer, 11 May 1911, 1911 TAE inc, 2 of 2;
EPW Memo, April 15 1911, TAE Inc 1 of 2.
49) Welch & Read, Tinfoil to Stereo, p. 96. Thomas Lambert was
granted a patent covering use of celluloid in recording media.
The Indestructable Record Company was formed around Lambert’s
patents in 1906. John Wesley Hyatt developed celluloid andgained the important patents. His brother, Isiah Smith Hyattcoined the term, and the brothers set up the Celluloid
Manufacturing Company which began operations in Newark in 1872,
Robert Friedel, Pioneer plastic (Madison: U of Wisconsin Press,
1983), pp. 12-17.
50) Gilmore to Edison, 16 Sept 1903, Phono, NPco.
51) Roundtable letter, 26 April 1920, Engineering Dept files.
52) Wilson to Gilmore, 24 May 1907, 1907 Phono Sales; Weber
Memo 10 July 1907, 1907 Phono Manu.

4753) Nelson Durand to Gilmore, 9 March 1907, NPCo Commercial
Dept.
54) Memo to Weber, 6 Feb 1907 — 1907 phono Manu; Durand to
Gilmore, March 9 1907— NPC commercial dept.
55) Anonymous History, (probably written by John Constable),
1919 TAE inc organization, undated.
56) J Scheerhorn to Gilmore, 19 Feb 1907, 1907 Phono manu; memo
to Weber, 6 Feb 1907, 1907 Phono manu Jan to June 1 of 2.
57) Gilmore to Durand, 26 Mar 1907, NPCo Commercial Dept; P
Weber to all Foremen, Jan 29 1909, TAE Inc organization; Durandto Dyer, 17 Dec 1909, Phono Ed Business Phono Co.
58) Dyer Memo, 3/25/10, 1910 WO Lab General.
59) 1908 sic! Doc file, W. 0. Lab General, Dyer to Westee, Jan
26, 1910.
60) TAE to Dyer, 20 Jan 1910, Phono Manu.
61) Dyer to Graf(T) 21 March 1910, 1910 Phono Manu, J-J 1 of

2.

62) Holland to Durand, 10 Feb 1910, WO Lab employees.
63) N Holland to Schiff1, 1910 Business Phono.
64) C.H. Wilson Memo, 24 June 1910, 1910 Phono manu.
65) Wilson to Bliss, 10 Nov 1911, 1911 Engineering Dept.
66) Dyer Memo, 3 June 1910, 1910 Phono.
67) Minutes of Manufacturing Committee.

IX- 1CHAPTER NINE: R&D IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
DEVELOPING THE DISC PHONOGRAPH

The development of the Edison disc phonograph was one of
the most vital experimental projects carried out by the West
Orange laboratory; the future of TAE Inc. depended on the
successful introduction of a disc line. The rapid production of
an Edison disc phonograph was the first test of the newengineering organization involving concerted action from bothlaboratory and Works. It was also a test of the administrativeskills and marketing prowess of the new business organization.
TAE Inc. had the unenviable job of breaking into a market thatwas completely dominated by Victor, and then facing Victor's
angry response.
Sales of cylinder phonographs had slipped steadily after
they reached a peak in 1907, and the steady decline in sales
which followed alerted the National Phonograph Company to therealities of the phonograph market: the cylinder was in decline
and the future belonged to the disc record. In the financial
year ending February 1912 a total of 61,320 cylinder machines
were sold, compared to the 289,822 sold five years earlier. The
new disc machine was viewed within the Edison organization as
the product which would "put new life into the business" andreturn the company to its former position of prosperity.^"IX- 2

Edison had anticipated the disc format in his earliest
patents and thoroughly investigated it during the nineteenthand twentieth centuries. He discovered that the cylinder had
several theoretical advantages over the disc: it could beturned at a more constant speed and the needle was not pressed
into the groove by centrifugal force at the end of therecording. The cylinder format enabled better tracking at amore constant speed and this brought better fidelity. The
phonograph buying public however were not concerned withmatters of theory, but instead they were attracted to thelonger playing disc, and its ease of storage. The pioneer disc
instrument, called the Gramophone, was the work of the European
immigrant Emile Berliner. He demonstrated a machine, with alaterally cut disc, at the same time that Edison was"perfecting" his phonograph at West Orange. He also devised amethod of mass producing the disc record.
Within a short time of its introduction, the gramophone
was being manufactured in Europe and the United States. The
first hard rubber discs (measuring from five to six inches indiameter) were cheaper to produce than cylinders, and discplaying machines could also be made very cheaply. By the turnof the century, European manufacturers had successfully
introduced disc machines selling for less than $10 and American
manufacturers had produced $20 machines. The first gramophones
on the American market were no match for the phonograph until
Eldridge Johnson, a mechanic in Camden, New Jersey, made some

IX- 3significant improvements in the machine, including fitting in aspring motor. Johnson began, like Edison, by running a small
machine shop. He went on to become a major inventor andentrepreneur in the phonograph industry. His modified Berliner
machine became the Trade Mark model of 1896 and he later
produced a smaller version, the Toy, in 1900. Johnson turned
the gramophone into a serious competitor to Edison. In 1901 theVictor Talking Machine Company was formed on the Berliner andJohnson patents and the latter became the driving force of the
new entrant into the industry.
While cheap disc machines competed with the Edison
cylinders for the low end of the market, the Victor company
introduced a machine that was aimed at the more affluent
phonograph buyers. The Victrola was introduced by the Victor
Talking Machine Company in 1906. It was Johnson's masterpiece.
It embodied several improvements in phonograph design, not theleast of which was the tapered arm which carried the sound fromthe sound box and reproducer. The Victrola was a remarkableinnovation which combined technological and aesthetic
innovations. Its horn was enclosed in the cabinet which gave it
a completely different look. The Victrola became the phonographof the twentieth century. It determined the development oftalking machines for the forty years after its introduction,
when many people came to call any phonograph a "Victrola". Its
spring operated disc mechanism was fitted inside a handsome

IX- 4

wooden casing and the horn of the machine was enclosed in the
body of the phonograph, volume control being achieved byadjusting doors or louvres in the front of the machine. The
enclosed horn gave phonograph design a new lease of life
because the horn, overbearing, unsightly, and prone to collectdust, completely dominated the line of the phonograph. Unlike
the Edison phonograph, the Victrola could be taken for a pieceof furniture and many people bought it for exactly that reason.
Priced at $200, the Victrola was aimed at the luxury market andquickly became the fashionable machine of the middle classes.
The Edison laboratory's first response to the challengeof the Victrola was a cylinder machine designed to play the
4-minute Amberol cylinder. The Amberola was announced in 1908,
and introduced in 1909. It had a new diaphragm with a sapphireneedle, and its promotional material naturally claimed better
reproduction. It came enclosed in a cabinet which bore morethan a passing resemblance to the Victrola, and the Amberola's
price of $200 brought it into direct competition with it. The
Victor Company claimed (with good reason) that the Amberola wasa copy of their machine, even to the point of a similar name.
The Amberola was not the only Victrola copy on the market, for
the Columbia Company also had a luxury machine called the
Grafonola. The Victor company believed that they held the key
patents to the Victrola success and were prepared to license
them, but at a very high price. Edison's lab was given the jobof working around Eldridge Johnson's important patents,

IX- 5especially the enclosed horn innovation, while the Victor
company continued to protest bitterly and threaten legal
action.
The Amberola became very popular in the cylinder market
with the introduction of the Blue Amberol records in 1912. This
new record was made of a plaster of paris core covered with ahard celluloid that was made under license. This was muchharder than the stearic acid compounds and therefore gave
Edison's customers a clearer tone and improved reproduction ofmusic. The surface also lasted a lot longer. The great
improvement in the cylinder record boosted Amberola sales,
while those of the other Edison cylinder models decreased. In
1913 the Company decided that the Amberola should be the only
cylinder phonograph manufactured. Despite its popularity, The
Amberola was no match for the Victrola which was steadily
gaining in popularity and sales. By 1910 the affluent urban
markets for phonographs were "Victrola Crazy" according to the
Edison sales force. The Edison phonograph organization was in astate of disarray: chaos in the Phonograph Works, dealers
depressed, sales force demoralized, and steadily falling sales.
Its line of phonographs, "in worse condition than at any timein the last three years," could not compete with those of3
Victor and Columbia.
There was no doubt that "the Victrola isin the lead" and it was sweeping the Edison phonographs from4
the market.
The Amberola was only the first shot of the Edison

IX- 6laboratory in the upcoming struggle with Victor, forpreparations were being made for an fresh assault on theVictrola market, and this time with an Edison disc machine.
Here began an experimental project which Edison claimed took
five years and three million dollars!

CThis extensive R&D

project marked Edison's active return after his "retirement" in
1908. In addition to directing the project he also played amajor part in the experiments, working on several aspects ofthe disc in the lab, assisted by Sherwood Moore and George
Werner. The latter had been assigned to the recording
department of the lab in 1903 and had been trained by Walter
Miller on recording techniques. Werner had worked with several
experimenters on phonographs, including Newman Holland on the
dictating machine. He took an important part in the discproject, assisting in the work on disc recording machinery.®
Sam Moore was a tool-maker and designer who often worked
closely with Edison and by the 1920s he was described as his"right hand man."

Edison oversaw every aspect of the disc's

development, spending a good deal of time on the diamond point
which was to be the selling point of the new machine.
One of the most important parts of the project was
carried out in secret at the top of the Glen Ridge (storage
battery) factory. Edison's experience in the phonographbusiness told him that the most important part of the new discproduct was the duplication of records. This was the goal ofIX- 7the secret project at Glen Ridge. He used a familiar
experimental team: Walter Miller was to design the discrecording machinery for John Ott to execute. Ott was also tomake drawings of the plating apparatus (for duplicating) on Al
Wurth's instructions. Miller was to make all the experimental
master records for he was the recording expert of the West
Orange laboratory. His work had been devoted to examining
recording techniques and managing the Edison recording studios
at West Orange and later in New York City. Wurth had beenworking on cylinder duplication since the 1880s and he wasagain in charge of producing the moulds from which records were
to be duplicated. Ott was an old associate of Edison who had
been a mucker since the Newark days, working closely with theinventor in phonograph development. This group was under theleadership of F.L. Aiken of the Phonograph Works. Although aWorks employee, Aiken had been heavily involved in designingphonographs and later received patents on them. As assistant toWeber, Aiken was fully experienced in production engineeringand running a "gang" of workers.

qAnother vital part of this project was done outside thelaboratory. This was the work of Jonas Aylsworth, who wascharged with finding a harder compound for discs. Working at
his house in Orange, where he had a fully equipped lab,
Avl«=worth experimented with compounds that could be moulded
into shape. He examined the properties of phenolic resins which
could be moulded by heat and pressure. A short distance away

IX- 8from the laboratory, Leo H. Baekerland was experimenting withthe same resins in his efforts to find a substitute forshellac. He found that phenol resins could be mixed withbinding agents and moulded into hard heat-resistant shapes.
Aylsworth improved the phenol resins first developed by
Baekeland and produced a material called condensite which was apurer resin with less by-products. (Condensite refers to thecondensation of phenol and formaldehyde which produces theresin.) The development of condensite was a valuable
contribution to the Edison phonograph business and a major
chemical innovation. The excellence of the Edison disc records
was directly attributable to Aylsworth's condensite surface.

g

The West Orange laboratory was charged with the initialdesign of three disc machines— one of them to be a directcompetitor to the Victrola. The specifications and drawings ofthe disc machines were to be the contribution of the newEngineering Department. The lab had to come up with a designthat could compete with the Victrola while not infringing on
its strong patent position. Much of the R&D work on the discwas done to circumvent the patents on the swinging arm (thatcarried the reproducer), and enclosed horn design. There can belittle doubt that the Edison company copied the Victrola; in1911 Edison was designing cabinets for the new machine "likethe Victrola, but far finer."

In working around theimportant patents of Eldridge Johnson, the lab worked closelywith the legal department of TAE Inc. When Edison thought aboutIX- 9copying the Victrola spring motor, he first asked the legal
department if it would violate Victor's patents. He also asked
them "if we can use a swing arm of any kind" to move thereproducer across the disc. ^The Victor and Edison companies had nicely split themarket for phonographs: the Victrola took the affluent classes
and the city dwellers, while the Edison cylinder was thefavorite of rural America. As long as Edison stayed away fromthe disc format, the two companies enjoyed a period of
co-existence. In many cases a dealer carried both Victor andEdison lines to fit both ends of the market. A move into thedisc business was a direct assault on Victor's market and TAE
Inc. could expect a vigorous response. TAE Inc. had to beprepared for a fierce fight with Victor, for as the advertising
manager put it in 1915: "It isn't sufficient for us to say wehave the best machine. Victor have spent the last 14-15 years
making this market and they won't let us walk in and take it."
12

Advised by its legal department that the commercial

considerations of producing a disc warranted the risk of patent
litigation, the Company braced itself for a long legal dispute
over patents.^
The advertising department had already been employed in a
campaign against Victor over the relative merits of the twosystems of sound reproduction. The Edison side stressed thesuperiority of its phonographs' reproduction while the Victor
company relied on the reputation of its recording talent. The

IX-10

Edison phonograph used the unique method of making a verticalcut in the groove, providing a hill-and-dale path for the
stylus to follow. The existing disc technology, and standard
for companies manufacturing disc machines, was the lateral cut
whereby the stylus moved from side to side in the groove rather
than up and down. The vertical cut system had the advantage ofbetter frequency response because the stylus could modulate at
greater distances to capture the full effect of the bass
notes.
The advertising department became very important in thefight against Victor, especially when the Edison company began
to market unreliable (and often inferior) disc products.
Edison's fame as an inventor made it easy to sell thephonograph on the basis of its advanced technology. "Every
American citizen knows Edison and his work," said one advert in
1907, "and therefore feels convinced that the phonograph...must
be better..because Edison made it." Edison's image as the great
inventor and prophet of technological progress gained momentum
in the twentieth century. The "Wizard of Menlo Park" combined
success with some cherished American values, and his image
gained international recognition— only the face of King
Gillette was as universally known as Edison's. The convergenceof his manufacturing strategy and the Edison image brought
further exposure to the West Orange laboratory. Edison products
were the result of his genius in the laboratory andsubsequently they were advertised as "products of the Edison

IX-11laboratory" (or "laboratories") rather than "Made in the Edison
Phonograph Works, West Orange."
Edison's laboratory had normally set the technicalstandards that the competition had to follow, but in the discphonograph the shoe was on the other foot. Victor set thestandards in disc machines. The Edison advertising department
faced a difficult marketing task; the public had taken theVictrola to heart and its popularity made the name Victrola ahousehold word, it came to stand for all phonographs-- like
Hoover did for vacuum cleaners. Edison's customers often
referred to their machines as "Edison Victrolas" which greatly
upset him. The Company had to convince the public that Edison
disc phonograph was not just another Victrola but a completely
new and different machine, and neither the lab nor the company
wanted the Edison disc judged by Victrola standards. TAE Inc.
had to convince people that the Diamond Disc was an entirely
new product, a technological breakthrough in talking machines.
The marketing department pulled out all the stops of the
Edison myth to do so; its advertising glorified the process of
R&D and stressed the cost of developing "Edison's masterpiece."
Research was not only used to produce the innovation, it wasalso used to sell it. The Edison disc phonograph was portrayedas the ultimate in sound reproduction which could capture theslightest nuance of sound, "the overtones," even in demandingclassical music. Edison's own account of the introduction of
the disc machine (produced for advertising purposes) was that

IX-12he had labored for years before he came up with a disctechnology that met his high standards for reproduction ofsound. His new machine had to be free of the distortions and"irritating scratchy tone" of disc machines made by hiscompetitors.
A complete line of disc machines was planned, from thelow priced $25 table model to very expensive machines withimpressive cabinets and price tags. Thomas A. Edison Inc. aimed
at the top end of the market with elaborately ornamented
casings for the disc mechanism (including Louis XIX andChippendale styles) and the price range went as high as $450.
16(Illus. 9-1) Such was the urgency of the competitive
situation that large-scale production of the disc was planned
as soon as the prototype became available from the laboratory.
The Edison Phonograph Works planned to manufacture 600 machines
a day in 1910: this was a major undertaking done in a great
hurry— much like Edison's first venture into the phonographbusiness in 1888.

17

This had ended in failure; but, no doubt,

Edison believed that he had learned from his previous mistakes
and now fully expected his organization to move speedily into
disc production.
The decision to produce a disc machine did not mean theabandonment of the cylinder; experimental work continued on theAmberola and the Blue Amberol record with Edison and his staff
applying for very many new patents on cylinder technology bothduring and after the disc campaign.

The cylinder remained at

Complete Line of Edison Disc Phonographs for 1913-14

Louis XVICircassian Walnut
Cabinet, Circassian Walnut; halarge drawer holding 3b Kdison
Disc Record». Twelve-inch turn­
table. Automatic record feed. Dia­
mond Point Reproducer. Powerfulspring motor with worm driven gear»
Metal part» gold plated. Automata»too. Dimension«: 4IJ1j itches
high; 22 incite! wide; 22 'i incheLouis XVI
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Louis XV
Circassian Walnutl.ouis XV
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Cabinet. Citcasvian Walnut, halarge drawer holding .36 Kdiimi
Disc Record«. Twelve-inch turn­
table. Automatic record feed. Dia
mond Point Reproducer. Powerful

Cabinet. Mahogany; ha* large
drawer holding 56 Kdinon Di*r
Record« Twelve-inch turn-table
Automatic record lecd. Diamond
Point Reproducer. Powerful spring
intttor with worm driven gear«.
Metal part* gold plated. Automatn«top, Dimensions: 51 inches high.
23 inches wide; 28 ¡nche« deep.

Sheraton
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SheratonInlaid Plain

PRICK. $290.00

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Cabinet. Mahogany. Inlaid Mar

drawer holding
Twelve3luetry;ÍEdisonhasDinelargeRecordsinch turn-table. Automatic record

feed. Diamond Point Reproduce*
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wide: 23 inches deep

Circassian Walnut
PRICK. $300.00

Cabinet. Mahogany, Inlaid Plainha» large dtauet holding 36 Kdison
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mond Point Reproducer. Powerful•pring minor with worm driven
gear». Metal parts gold-plated
Automatic stop. Dimension« 40
inches high; 21 inches wide; 23
inches deep.

Cabinet. Circassian Walnut: ha»
two drawers each holding 56 Kdison
Disc Records. Twelve-inch turn­
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mond Point Reproducer. Powerful•pring motor with worm driven gear«
Metal parts gold plated. Automatic•top. Dimension«: 51 inches high;51 li inches wide: 23 inches deep

MODKL A 200

MODEL A 80

Mahogany

Mahogany and Oak

PRICK. $200.00

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Cabinet, \lah«*gany. Scnii-t II,h finish; ha« large draw«-! holding
It. Kdison Disc Rec«»rdt. Twelve
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leed. Diamond Point Reproducer
Powerful spring motor with worm
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Automatic stop. Dimension- 4'1
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inches deep.

Cabinet, Mahogany, Setm-Clos*
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Cabinet. Mahogany, Semi-glo«finish; ha» two drawer« each bidd­
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MODEL B 60

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PRICK. $60.00

Cabinet. Quartered Oak, fumed
finish. T w e lv e - in c h turn-table.
Automatic record feed. Diamond
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Nickel plated, huffed and polished.
Spring motor. Turn-table stop.
Dimensions; 12 inches high. 17
inches wide; 21 H inches deep.

IX-13the focus of R&D on the phonograph; the diamond disc was anoffshoot of the years of development on the cylinder phonographrather than a change of direction by the Edison laboratory. The
only part of the machine that could justifiably be called an
innovation was the diamond point of the reproducer. This, inturn, was the logical extension of the success of the sapphire.
Compared with the research work done at GE laboratories at thistime, Edison's laboratory was embarking on an easier, and moremundane task; the important trade secret of the new Edisonproduct was the method of fixing the piece of diamond to theshank of the reproducer.
After continually denying that it was going to introduce
a disc machine, the Company announced the Edison discphonograph in 1913. Yet it took more than two more years to
introduce a whole line of disc machines, and even these models
were not fully satisfactory, especially to Thomas Edison. The
disc development encompassed two periods of intensive work:from 1909-1912 to produce the first models and then from
1912-1915 to improve them. During this period Edison gained
over 70 patents and his researchers in the disc project were
granted several more. Yet this intense R&D effort had not
produced immediate success. Although the larger, free-standing
cabinet models were well received by Edison's faithfulcustomers, the low price models were heavily criticized as
inferior. One dissatisfied jobber wrote that: "it does notgive satisfaction...is not a credit to Edison disc line

IX-14and should not be offered for sale." 1 9
The first challenge to the newly reorganized system of
producing models and then quickly putting them into mass
production had failed. Despite the exhortations of the
management, the process had been plagued with delays and discproduction went forward very slowly. The speed that Edison
valued so greatly was not there. Engineering problems with thelower priced phonographs had been a major reason for the delay
in bringing out the disc line. The problem lay in the motor andfeed assembly which did not maintain power to the end of thedisc and thus could not maintain an even pitch. The design ofthe low-priced machines had given many problems and Edison's
engineers could not produce a reliable machine that could besold for less than $50. The target price of $25 dollars was notachieved and thus the new machine was aimed at $60 retailprice. Yet the motors caused so many delays that the A 60s, as
they were called, had to be withdrawn from the market. The
Company struggled to produce a diamond disc machine below $100.
20

The low-priced machines caused so much trouble that Edisonordered the lab to start all over again in 1913. The
Engineering Department had to redesign the motor and thedrafting room was ordered to produce a new set of drawings.^
The failure to produce a successful low-priced discmachine must have been especially disconcerting to the
management of Thomas A Edison Incorporated, for they had hoped
to capture the low end of the market— where the Edison cylinder

IX-15once reigned supreme. It was important for the company to havea competitive low-priced machine, especially when there was theconstant threat of cheap machines imported from Europe.
Extremely low-priced French and German products had swept
Edison machines from Europe and the fear of both TAE Inc. andthe Victor Company was that foreign competition would invade
their home market. Edison believed that the American system of
manufacturing was the best in the world and that Americancompanies should become more export minded. The reality wasthat foreign competitors had successfully lowered the cost of
manufacturing phonograph products, and that American companies
could not compete with them. Edison, who had always prided
himself on being able to produce cheaper and better than hiscompetitors, now had to face the fact that he did not have a
product to compete with even American manufacturers in thebudget disc market.
Edison's image as inventor for the public good wasrecognized as an important marketing edge, and his managers andengineers knew that there were many corners they could not cut
because it would sacrifice a level of quality that had become
associated with Edison products. Nevertheless, this position
limited the reduction of cost and inhibited competition withthe very cheap European disc machines. Frank Dyer was impressedwith the cheap disc machines sold in Europe and noted that allat West Orange were surprised that these disc phonographs could
be sold at prices well below $10, commenting that "it would

IX-16never do for us to attempt to put out work of this sort andlend our name to it."

Edison had to maintain his reputation

for high-quality products, and continue the tradition of
producing solid, well-made machines at West Orange.
Edison was very disappointed with the disc development,
and he blamed the delays on "the incompetence of our men." 23
Yet the great haste of the project was certainly a factor in
the failure of the work force to meet the "old man's"
expectations. The line of disc machines was added to thegrowing list of products manufactured in the Works, including
several kinds of film projectors and a series of Amberola
phonographs which encompassed many different models. One
historian of the disc machine, George Frow, points to poor
liaison between the Engineering Department and the Works as acause for the delay, and this was the area that had supposedly
been streamlined. There were bad relations among departments in
the Phonograph Works and personality differences hindered thecooperation that was vital for a speedy development job. The
Works was called "more disorganized than organized," where
foremen pursued their own politics and power struggles. 24
The formation of a new organization, and the massive
reductions that followed, had created a tense situation among
the professional managers which naturally led to politicalstruggles within the organization for power and survival. One
engineer in the laboratory wrote in 1912 to Edison's son
Charles, a student at MIT at the time, "every body is afraid

IX-17that somebody else is going to beat them out of their job" andindicated that the atmosphere was not pleasant in the West
Orange facility. He told Charles Edison that "your father knows
this condition exists, and it disgusts him very much."IX-18EDISON AT THE HELM

Many of the changes in the structure of Edison's businessorganization had been made on the assumption that the "old man"
was not going to be around forever. The first steps had beentaken to establish a permanent bureaucracy to run the business.
Several executive committees had been instituted, such as the
manufacturing committee, which had broad powers in operating
the organization. A stratum of middle managers had been formed,
and senior managers had been admitted to the decision making
process in which business strategy was devised. But formationof TAE Inc. was more a foundation for future change than anorganizational revolution. Edison was still more important thanthe organization; his "retirement" was short-lived, and hereturned to the laboratory to take a very active part in thedisc project. In the years immediately after the creation of
TAE Inc. the executive committees played a role that was mainly
advisory— Edison still made the major decisions and decided on
both technological and business policy.
One of the most important business decisions to be madeabout the new disc machine was its level of compatibility with
the Victor discs already on the market. The strength of theVictor company was their impressive catalogue of recordings.
They had set a course of signing the leading performers, such

IX-19as Caruso, to record on their premium priced labels. Music
lovers flocked to buy these historic recordings, and thegeneral record buying public were impressed by the "quality" ofVictor discs even if they didn't appreciate the music. The
managers of TAE Inc. wanted to make a reproducer that could
play the laterally cut Victor records, for this would
considerably increase the market for the Edison machine. Yet
Edison would have none of this suggestion even though it was
obviously the right business strategy to follow; the Edison
disc would immediately have an enormous selection of recordings
available for its customers, in much the same way that an IBM
compatible computer today has access to the extensive libraryof software written for the IBM machine. Edison had little
sympathy with the arguments of his managers, for him it was amatter of pride: he could not let the Victor Company set thestandards for all in the phonograph industry to follow. He
wanted his disc machine to stand on its own merits and be quite
different from the competition. The top level of management in
TAE Inc. was therefore faced with the task of persuading the"old man" to see reason, bringing him around to their point ofview before the forces of the marketplace did it for them. 26
Edison enlarged his role in the phonograph business,taking over the vital area of music selection and recording. In
the competition with Victor this was probably more important
than the actual machine; many people bought Victor phonographs
because they wanted to hear the famous singers who recorded on

IX-20Victor records. He acknowledged that the existing stock ofrecordings was poor and set out to improve both the techniqueof recording and the selections available on Edison records.
The choice of selections and talent was crucial not only in the
struggle against Victor, but also for the survival of thecylinder format; the increasing popularity of the recorded
music on discs would ultimately lead to the demise of thecylinder and the trade built on it. Edison evaluated thousandsof cylinder recordings before choosing the selections for the
new disc.
His strategy was the opposite of Victor's: "I propose todepend on the quality of the records and not on the reputationof the singers." 27 Edison believed that music lovers would
prefer a better recording rather than "a rotten scratchy record
by a great singer," and maintained that many of the famous
singers recorded by his competitors were better at acting thansinging. The experience with motion pictures had made Edisonand his managers wary of dealing with first-class talent— who
invariably cost more money and were difficult to handle— andthe strategy for musical talent was to keep them as anonymous,and as low paid, as possible, even to the point of leaving thesinger's name off the recording! Edison's influence wasdecisive in putting the technology before the artist.
It was ironic that the musical offerings of a leading
phonograph company were filtered through the prejudices anddamaged hearing of a sixty-year-old man. Edison enjoyed his job

IX-21

as music director, keeping a tight control of recording and thehiring of talent. All new recordings and signings had to bepassed by him, and he pressed his musical opinions and choices
onto his subordinates.

Walter Miller and George Werner were

often subject to Edison's opinionated directives on recording
music. To permit the recording of larger groups of musicians, a
new studio was constructed in building 4 of the West Orange
laboratory, to Edison's specifications. One of his great
ambitions was to record classical music played by large
orchestras and this new studio was designed to record chambermusic. The "old man" devoted a great deal of his experimenting
to the dynamics of sound recording in the quest for theperfect, realistic reproduction of sound. Many remember Edison
as the man who brought the wonders of electric light to theworld. Yet in terms of the amount of time spent on recording
and the phonograph, Edison should be remembered as the man wholabored for years to bring us the clear, faithful reproductionof music. The surface noise of the disc record became anobsession with him, and he worked for years in the lab toreduce the scratches and crackles. 29
While the "old man" was well enough to manage the workof the laboratory, the framework of R&D by committee set up in
the organizational changes of 1910 remained in the background.
Edison was indispensable to the laboratory and he led it inperson, telling a friend in 1911 that "I have 250 experimenters
who depend on me daily for directions and when I go away it

IX-22.
.
greatly disturbs the organization."

3 0 The new bureaucraticorganization of the lab functioned at Edison's whim. Although
the position of Chief Engineer had, in 1910, become part of theformal organization of the laboratory, it was filled at
Edison's discretion. Edison directed the activities of the new
Chief Engineer and was not above interfering in his work,sometimes taking projects from him to work on personally.

The

Chief Engineer could not be a specialist because the work of
his department was expanded to cover very many products. George
Bliss had been brought to West Orange because his expertise inelectric motors and regulators exactly fitted the direction of
the Edison enterprise and supported the newly created small
electric motor department in the Works. Yet Bliss was asked toundertake a great range of work of which electrical machinery
was only a small part. His tenure as Chief Engineer spanned thework of production engineering on the disc and storage battery
projects; this alone meant the design of several new machines.
The department carried out work on the phonograph, primary
battery and motion picture products. In 1911 his engineering
department was responsible for designing a small electric motor
for a prospective Edison lawn mower, a complete electricdelivery wagon, and shaving machine for the businessphonograph.
Edison's order that "if Bliss feels job is too big—
give it to Weber" reveals that the pressure was too great for
Bliss.

Edison gradually eroded the power of the Chief

IX-23Engineer and even ordered that all work carried out in thelaboratory's machine shops needed his approval. Bliss only
lasted one year before Edison removed him in 1912. The next
Chief Engineer was Miller Reese Hutchison, a prolific young
inventor who had gained the friendship of Thomas Edison and had
gradually worked his way into the favor of the elderly
inventor. Born and educated in the South, Hutchison had
produced a hearing aid, invented the electric klaxon horn, andwas in the process of developing a automobile self-starter when
he first came to visit the West Orange laboratory. Hutchison
had served as engineer of U.S. lighthouses and had valuable
contacts in the Navy. Like Edison, he was both inventor andentrepreneur. His work in marketing the Edison storage battery
produced some important sales and his growing friendship with
Edison soon led to an invitation to work with him at thelaboratory in 1911. By 1912 Hutchison was on very close termswith Edison and was soon made his Chief Engineer. 33
Hutchison's comment that the job of Chief Engineer "seems
to resolve itself into issuing engineering notices on screws,
nuts, bolts, gears, etc" shows that a gulf had emerged between
the purely experimental work of the laboratory and the
production engineering of the Engineering Department. The
leader of the laboratory had to be a generalist like Edison who
could turn his hand to any technology. Hutchison was able tospread his time among the many projects in the laboratory but
admitted to Edison that he found it difficult to successfully

IX-24"make a number of inventions simultaneously." ^This was

Edison's great strength and an ability that few could match.
Hutchison's association with Edison marked a tremendous burstof activity in the laboratory, where they worked on a broad
range of experiments that covered all the new products being
developed, from storage batteries to cement houses. The many
problems with the disc phonograph soon began to dominate
Edison's time and his protege was therefore directed into the
motion picture business and the important kinetophone project.

THE KINETOPHONE

When Hutchison first came to work at the laboratory the
motion picture business had become a major part of the Edisonenterprise. With phonograph sales in decline and serious
problems with the new disc machine, the returns from motion
pictures supported TAE Inc. during the difficult years after
1910. By 1912 the motion picture department was the mostprofitable part of the Edison enterprise, as Table 9-%,indicates. The creation of the Motion Picture Patents Company
in 1908 brought an end to the "unfair and ruinous competition"
which had deprived inventors, like Edison, a fair return on
their motion picture patents.

Although the agreement was

signed in the library of his West Orange laboratory, Edison did
not originate the idea or promote the Company— it was the workof some of his competitors, some of whom had put out feelers tomake cross licensing agreements well before the Company wasformed in 1908.
The Motion Picture

Patents Company (MPPC) was amonopolistic organization formed on the basis of the major
patents in motion picture cameras and films. The ten members of
the company, or Trust as it was called, comprised the leading
members of the American motion picture industry. The MPPC
issued licenses to film makers and collected the royalties from

TABLE 9-1
TAE INC SALES & PROFITS, MARCH-MAY 1912
(In thousands of dollars)

Product

sales

profitPhonograph

475

16

Battery

202

34

Motion Pictures

318

83

Dictating Machine

96

5

Kinetophone

5 lossIX-26the exhibitors who showed the trusts' films. It was similar to
many other patent pools and monopoly organizations in Americanindustry and finally achieved Edison's goal of monopoly of his
film camera patents. He received the lion's share of the incomeof the MPPC which was about $1,000,000 a year from 1909 to
1914. 37
Film historians have often interpreted the MPPC as aconservative monopoly that retarded the development of film
both as art and mass entertainment. The members of the trust
are sometimes depicted as conservative businessmen only
concerned with mass producing standard lengths of film for a
captive audience. The two important developments in film
subjects during the heyday of the MPPC (1908-1913)— thedevelopment of longer, feature films and the star system— areascribed to the independent film makers who finally broke theTrust. It can be argued that the MPPC had no incentive toinnovate; they claimed to account for seven-eights of film
production and distribution, and struggled to meet the voracious
demands of the film exhibitors. Longer and more elaborate
productions, with highly paid stars, would merely add cost to
the product.
Recent scholarship has shown a different MPPC. RobertAnderson has shown that far from being a retarding influence on
American film, the MPPC brought order to chaos and created astrong American industry that could compete with European filmmakers. The Trust was concerned not only with making profits

IX-27but also raising the quality of the film subjects. In the wildcompetitive days before the Trust, poorly made foreign films
were imported into the American market. These films accelerated
the opposition to the moral depravity of the movies. The filmsof the MPPC were not mundane subjects without regard tocontent. The MPPC did its part to improve the quality of movies
because respectability also meant the increased income of the
middle class audience. The Nickelodeons certainly started asplaces of low repute, but were soon frequented by the middle
classes. As the leading member of the Trust (with Biograph),
the Edison company did its part in developing longer, higher
quality film subjects and signing the stars of the Broadway
stage.

OO

Like the disc machine, Edison's motion picturebusiness was increasingly aimed at the more respectable, andaffluent, middle classes.
When the film exhibition business began in the late
1890s, Edison was primarily concerned with reducing the priceof the standard film strips made for exhibitors— the artistic
content of the film was not considered important. 39 Films weretreated as a commodity at West Orange, as another product to beeconomically manufactured and sold. As the business grew from anovelty to an industry of international scope, the managers of
the Kinetograph department, led by John White, took more
attention to the quality of the film product. By the turn ofthe century, they were busy buying the rights to literature,including the work of Mark Twain, and signing well-known stage

IX-28

performers to appear in Edison films. The directors of the
Edison company soon appreciated the advantages of making films
for specific audiences. In 1909, for example, Frank Dyer
pressed the Edison studios to make films about working classthemes— "with young mechanics and their sweethearts"— which
would appeal to the blue collar audiences of the Nickelodeon.
40 The evolution of film production from independent cameraman
to the director working in the studio gave the Kinetographdepartment more control over film subjects. The Bronx film
studio was the center of film production in TAE Inc., and by1909 the department had nine directors making Edison movies
there and on location. This operation was under the control ofGeorge Plimpton who attended to both content of movies and the
production of negatives.^
The output of the Kinetograph department was not
restricted to dramatic and comedy subjects; the Edison
Manufacturing Company took an early interest in what it termed"Educational films" producing a wide range of subjects covering
geographical, agricultural, industrial, historical, scientificand military topics. ^Several industrial films came fromcontracts with companies to make films of manufacturing
processes, a little known but important market for film makers.
The Armour meat packing plant, Ford Motor Company's factories,
and the Edison Phonograph Works were all filmed. This type ofmovie was comparatively inexpensive to make and a market was
guaranteed. There were many profit opportunities in educational

IX-29films and the entrepreneur in Hutchison saw potential in films
for specific educational audiences. He joined with anotherexperimenter in the laboratory to form a company devoted tomaking sound movies about scouting, expecting a large andprofitable market in the Boy Scouts of America.
In the first years of the MPPC, TAE Inc. produced avaried selection of film subjects and was committed to a highquality of these Edison films. Although film production was nolonger carried out at West Orange, the judgement of Edison
movies was centered there in a film committee which included
top management and experimenters from the laboratory. This
group assessed all new movies and passed them for release. They
had the power to reject unsatisfactory films or refer them backto the studios to be remade. Movies were judged on theircontent— acting and plot— and the technical concerns oflighting, photography, and the condition of the print. The film
studios established outside the laboratory still took theirorders from West Orange.
The benefits of the film monopoly did not end the R&D on
motion pictures carried out in Edison's laboratory for work
continued on improving existing equipment and developing newtechnology. Thousands of dollars were expended on experiments
to produce revolutionary new technologies such as color films
and talking pictures. The work of combining sight and sound was
carried from the nineteenth to the twentieth century,
experiments beginning on a new kinetophone in 1899 andIX-30continuing up to 1914. The tempo of research on the kinetophone
picked up during the negotiations leading to the formation of
the MPPC. By 1908 a man was working full time in the laboratoryon this project and monthly expenditure on experiments grewsteadily.
There were several difficult technical challenges in thedevelopment of sound films which were responsible for the long
delays in introducing a commercial machine. The kinetophone wasa film projector linked to a special phonograph. The two minute
cylinder format was naturally unsuitable for 15 minute films
and therefore the experimental team's first task was to develop
a longer playing phonograph. Here they had the benefit of years
of prior experimentation on larger cylinders and longer playing
times. It is significant that Edison chose to remain with thecylinder format for the kinetophone, even though the discoffered greater playing time. The kinetophone finally came withoutsize cylinders of 4 1/4'' diameter and 7 1/2 " long that
played for six minutes. The kinetophone was anotherelectrically powered machine to come out of Edison'slaboratory. The playback machine was powered by an electricmotor to run on house current (although the recorders seem tohave been spring driven). The projector was hand cranked but
needed electricity to power the lamp.
One of the toughest problems to solve in the kinetophone
project was the synchronization of sound with the moving image;
William Dickson could certainly attest to that after his years

IX-31of experiments in the 1890s. The considerable distance between
the film projector at the rear of the auditorium and thephonograph behind the screen added to the complications ofadjusting the two machines to work in unison. A clutchmechanism was developed to alter the speed of the playback inorder to synchronize it with the film but this was a very
difficult mechanism to work. It was linked to the operator in
the projection booth by a cord running on pulleys. The
projectionist had to continually adjust the speed of the film
and kinetophone playback to keep the sound in time with theimage.
Edison's men not only had to design a commercial machine,
they also had to produce a library of kinetophone film
subjects. It was pointless trying to market a talking picturemachine without movies to show with it. Recording thesoundtrack to accompany the film presented another group oftechnical problems. Edison's recording staff had plenty ofexperience recording musicians, but actors and dancers
presented a much more complex sonic environment and posed sometricky questions: How can you increase the sensitivity of therecording without also increasing the volume of background andreflected sound? How do you position the actors for best
technical results without destroying the quality of theperformance? The recording was done with a large horn on thephonograph which picked up and amplified the sound of theaction on stage. It took an experienced man to keep the sounds

IX-32of the actors clear without crowding the horn in their faces.
The requirements of good drama and good technical reproduction
rarely coincided. When sound recording of films was later triedwith electrical equipment a generation of actors had to be
trained in the technique of making sound movies which was muchdifferent from making silent pictures.
The final problem in the commercial kinetophone was toincrease the volume of the machine's playback; it had to play
the sound track clearly and audibly to every corner of a large
movie theatre. The problems of increasing the volume of thephonograph playback had been of utmost concern to theexperimenters in Edison's laboratory since popular music in thetwentieth century was meant to play loud. They found that
increased volume could be obtained by putting more pressure(tracking force) on the needle as it made its way through thegrooves, but this increased wear on the cylinder surface which
eradicated the highs and obscured fidelity. Patentconsiderations prevented the use of the harder, celluloid
cylinders that could bear this abuse and therefore anothersolution had to be found. Several inventors had achieved higher
volume by mechanically amplifiying the sound in the reproducer
and horn assembly. Daniel Higham of Brookline, Mass, had
patented a machine that produced very loud volume by means of afriction valve device built into a large reproducer. His
services were acquired and he came to West Orange in 1908 toplay a leading role in the development of the kinetophone.

IX-33

The work on the experimental machine had reached a stage
in 1910 when it could be successfully demonstrated to thePress. The laboratory was naturally the scene of thisdemonstration which included an announcer making various sounds
and a dancer with musical accompaniment. Edison told the press
that it would take about one year to finish the machine andperfect the recording of the soundtrack but when Hutchison
joined the kinetophone work in 1911 it was not enjoying muchsuccess. As he told Edison "We are up against a pretty stiff
proposition" in getting good results out of the machine. ^He

tried using several horns to get a more balanced and louder
soundtrack but Edison told him that "thousands of experiments"
with two or more horns had yielded no good results and "wealways returned to one horn and threw away the rest." 4^Experiments continued on recording and on the synchronization
device which was still not satisfactory. Hutchison felt thatthe synchronizing cord was hopelessly inadequate for the job
and put too heavy a burden on the operator. He therefore worked
on an electrical synchronizer which could be operated by remotecontrol. The kinetophone team began 1912 as one of the longest
running experimental projects on the laboratory's books. The
thousands of dollars spent on years of experiments had notbrought total success. The large team of experimenters finallysucceeded in recording some kinetophone cylinders which passed
the "old man's" scrutiny in the spring of 1912. Preparations
were then made for the machine's commercial introduction but

IX-34

Edison would not let it out of the laboratory until he wassatisfied with it. ^Once the experimental model had passed muster in thelaboratory, there still remained the work of producing acommercial machine. What Edison's experimenters were working on
was more than a projector linked to a phonograph: it was acomplete kit with rheostats to convert the house current todrive the machine. In addition to designing the machine there
was also the long and expensive job of training the personnel
to work the device. The kinetophone was too complicated a
device to market directly to theatre owners and showmen; Edisonplanned to use his own men to take the kinetophone on the roadto publicize the talking picture and manage its commercial
introduction. Hutchison was given the job of training theoperators. They were picked from the West Orange work force andunderwent extensive education in the laboratory. They had topass stringent tests, including written exams, before they weresent out with the kinetophone kits. Hutchison also had to write
the direction sheets and perfect the method of setting theapparatus up in theatres.

46

The work on the kinetophone reached a climax in thespring of 1913 when Hutchison noted in his diary that talking
pictures were at last working properly. ^ . The machine wasformally introduced with Edison's claim that he had perfected
the talking film. His was not the only system of talking
pictures on the market and Edison strove to persuade the press

IX-35that his was the best. The first public performances in avaudeville house in New York led the press to announce yet
another marvel from the West Orange laboratory. Enthusiastic
audiences thrilled to the kinetophone all over the country in1913 as Edison's men took the kinetophone on the road. The highnovelty value brought in the crowds and the New York Times
noted "gasps of astonishment could be heard in the audience" asthe pictures on the screen spoke.

48

The Talkies had begun wellbefore "The Jazz Singer."
Edison had characteristically signed agreements forforeign exhibition of kinetophones which covered Europe, theFar East, South America and the Pacific. All the resources ofthe lab and Works were applied to this large order, whichbrought in thousands of dollars. The motion picture businessinvolved the exchange of film subjects with European producers
and exhibitors and the kinetophone was no exception. Edison
made films for foreign consumption and acquired several
kinetophone subjects from German studios. This business wastruly multinational on the eve of the First World War. Unlike
the debut of the kinetoscope in 1894, the kinetophone was ofmajor commercial importance to TAE Inc. The financial strain ofdeveloping the disc made it imperative for the Edison
laboratory to develop a winning product to recoup some of thelosses. The kinetophone provided this for by 1913 it was the
major profit maker in Edison's many companies. 49
Unfortunately after a brilliant start, the kinetophone

IX-36

quickly declined and never fully paid back the expenses ofexperiments. As to be expected, the novelty value soon wore
off, but the novelty of the kinetoscope, for example, lasted
much longer than one year. The decline of the kinetophone isbest explained in the problems of maintaining and operating ahighly complex machine. One error in synchronization could turna triumph into a disaster and cheers into jeers from theaudience. More than one kinetophone show was booed off thestage! The problems could be traced back to the underpaid
operators and the rats who ate through the control cords. The
projectionist was too busy to run the machine and therefore theexhibitor had to hire an operator specifically for the
kinetophone. The first talking picture was introduced in 1913,
but met with little success; it was too difficult to control
the kinetophone with a string that reached from the machine(which was next to the screen), to the projection booth. A
further problem was the lack of enthusiasm and expertise on thepart of the low-paid operators. 50
Edison was embarrassed by the theatrical disasters of his
new invention, but he was not going to let one failure stophim. In the beginning of 1914 he told Hutchison that the fullresources of the Edison enterprise would soon be given over totalking pictures and that they were going to "perfect the
kinetophone to the limit." Instead of filming around theexisting schedule of the Bronx and 21 St studios, Hutchison was
soon going to have his own kinetophone studio in West Orange

IX-37

specially built to absorb the reflected sounds that ruined
sound tracks. Edison was going full out to improve thetechnical performance of the kinetophone. He had filled notebook with fresh ideas because he had a point to make, telling
Hutchison that "we are the only people who can do it...show thetheatrical people that scientific people can beat them as their51
own business."
Here Edison revealed the basic strategy ofthe phonograph and film operations; commercial success could be
attained with technical perfection that overcame aesthetic ordramatic considerations.
The overall concern with the technical rather than thedramatic was surely an appropriate one for "the best lab ever."The attention of the laboratory staff was on technical problems
and technical merit, each man was concerned that his area of
responsibility produced the right results and to Edison's
standards. The kinetophone team in the laboratory soon
discovered that technical considerations dominated sound motion
pictures; the technical man, especially the recording engineer,
had to dominate the proceedings or the result was a cloudy
sound track. 52 The problems of reflected sound m the studiomade it imperative that the actor directly speak into the horn
to be heard. The short kinetophone subjects were therefore
directed by technical staff who placed the actors and staged
dialogue to achieve technical standards. Their efforts did notalways meet with approval from the film committee in West
Orange and Hutchison was forever complaining about the poor

IX-38

quality of the films. Even if the final film was a goodtechnical accomplishment, as judged by the engineers at West
Orange, it still could not compete with a professional
entertainer who used other systems of sound motion pictures. It
was a show that audiences wanted and not several unrelated
technical demonstrations of the capabilities of the machine.
One observer concluded that compared with a good showman withsecond rate equipment the Edison superior machine still looked"amateurish". 53 The kinetophone failed to entertain audiences
and soon vanished from the scene. No further effort was made to
develop talking pictures at West Orange.
The failure to produce a commercial system of talking
pictures hurt the Edison enterprise and must have been a severe
disappointment to the "old man." Technology had not triumphedover art. The kinetophone was the last of the highly ambitious
experimental projects which had characterized the West Orange
laboratory in the nineteenth century. Huge amounts of money,
every possible resource, and the best brains in the laboratory
had not brought success. There were to be no more highly
expensive forays into new technologies at West Orange? the
kinetophone was the last hurrah of the "best lab ever."Innovation at the Edison laboratory was taking a conservativeand cost-conscious path away from the revolutionary
technologies such as the talking picture and magnetic ore
separation.

IX-33ENDNOTES FOR CHAPTER NINE
1) Dolbeer Memo, Jan 10 1910, 1910 Phon Manu.
2) "High Light History of Victor Phonographs,” Victor file,
Division of Mechanisms, Smithsonian.
3) Dolbeer to Dyer, 23

Dec 1910 : 1910 phono manu.

4) J Blackman to Dyer, 8 Dec 1910 Phono adv.
5) Frow, Edison Disc, p. 76
7) C H Wilson to Leeming, 12 Dec 1914, Phono Manu.
8) Dyer to Weber 15 Dec 1909, TAE Inc organization.
9) Vanderbilt, Edison the Chemist, p. 159.
10) TAE to Cunningham

Piano Co, 19 Dec 1911, LB111204,

11) TAE To legal dept,

6 Dec 1911, Legal Box 15 folder 2.

p.132.

12) L. McChesney to W Miller, 24 Jan 1915, 1913 Phono Gen, 3 of
3.
13) L. Hicks to Dyer, 12 April 1911, Legal box 15, folder 2.
14) Advertising copy from proofs in 1907 Phono, advertising.
Edison’s image has been assessed and described by Wyn
Wachhorst, Thomas Alva Edison; An American Myth (Cambridge:
MIT, 1981).
15) Edison’s notes for Hutchison, 1912, Phono Gen.
16) Price lists and promotional material in primary printed
file.
17) Maxwell memo, 21 July 1910 Phono Manu 2 of 4.
18) W.L. Eckert to TAE, 16 May 1913, WO Lab gen.
19) Fred Babson to CHW, 29 Dec 1914, 1914 Phono manu.
20) HFM to Goldsmith, LB151216, p. 121.
21) Minutes of Amusement Phonograph, 10 July 1913- Phono Gen.
22) Dyer to Graf, 31 March 1910, 1910 Phono Manu J-J 2 of 2.
23) TAE to E.H. Johnson, 28 Oct 1912- 1912 TAE friends.

IX “ 4 0

24) Frow, p. 38; C.E. Faibanks to Mambert 31 May 1917— W. 0. Lab
Eficiency Expert.
25) M.R.Hutchinson TO Charles Edison, 15 April 1912, 1912
Motion Pictures 2 of 4.
26) P Cromelin to Dyer 17 Aug 1911, 1911 Phono manu.
27) TAE to T. Graaf, 20 Nov 1911, LB 110628, p. 622.
28) TAE to Gallup & Alfred, 21 Feb 1916, LB 160127, p 387.
29) Meadowcroft to C Aston, 19 Feb 1917, LB 170122, p. 182.
30) TAE to H Byllesby, 2 Dec 1911, LB 110628, p. 695.
31) Minutes of Manufacturing Comm, 26 Jan 1911, 1911 Phono
Manu, Nat Phono Co.
32) TAE memo, Engineering Dept files, 1911.
33) Obituary, New York Times, 18 Feb 1944; Hutchison Diary, 17
July & 12 Aug 1912.
34) Hutchison to TAE, 5 Nov 1913, MP adverts.
35) MPPC Circular, 1909 MP Sales.
36) Hutch to TAE 19 Jan 1914, MP Kp.
37) See Robert J. Anderson, "The Motion Picture Patents
Company," Phd disseration, U of Wisconsin, 1983.
38) Balio, American Film Industry, p. 114.
39) TAE to H.P. Weidy, 29 June 1899, LB 980131, p. 66.
40) F Dyer to G. Plimpton, 19 May 1909, MP.
41) Memo in 1909 Motion Picture.
42) J W Farrell to F Dyer, 15 June 1909, MP
43) Interview of 27 Aug 1910, 1910 MP; Hutch to TAE, 19 Dec
1912, MP kp.
44) Annotation on 1913 Hutchison memo, Motion Picture.
45) F Dyer to R Cross, 22 April 1912, 8 July 1912, MP.
46) C. H. Wilson Memo, 18 Dec 1912, MP.

IX-4147) Hutchison Diary, 28 April 1913,48) Art Shirfrin has written two excellent accounts of the
kinetophone: "70th Anniversary of the Theatrical Release ofKinetophone," SMPTB Journal <92, July 1983, 739-751; and "TimeCode and Mr Edison," db <16, Dec 1982), 30-37. These have been
the foundation for this section.
49) Hutchison to TAE, 19 Jan 1914, MP Kph.
50) A. Shiffrin, "The Trouble with the Kinetophone."51) TAE to Hutch, 14 Jan 1914, MP Kph.
52) Newspaper clippings, 5 May 1910, MP; Hutchison to TAE, 19
Jan 1914, MP Kph.
53) A. M. Kennedy to Hutchison, 20 May 1914, MP.

X- 1

CHAPTER TEN
THE RISE OF THE ORGANIZATIONThe years leading up to the First World War were marked
by great activity in the laboratory as the Edison enterprise
struggled to introduce several innovations. The laboratory's
staff produced models of new kinetoscopes, disc phonographs,
and dictating machines. The Engineering Department grappledwith the work of turning these models into drawings and listsof parts. The profusion of new models was complicated by the
many small additions needed to make them into commercial
products. In motion picture projectors, for example, the new
designs were accompanied by several accessories, such asrheostats, which had to be produced by the Engineering
Department.
An Engineering Department committee meeting held in
November 1914 discussed work on the disc phonograph, the superkinetoscope, the dictating machine, and the Amberola. ^ The
introduction of the Blue Amberol cylinder had given new life to
Edison's cylinder trade (see Table 10-1) and several new models
were under construction in the laboratory as the Amberola
mushroomed into a line of phonographs. The development work on
a new dictating machine had also reached fruition by 1914. This
market for the phonograph promised continued growth in theTABLE 10-1
PHONOGRAPHS SOLD TO JOBBERS

Sales Yeardisccylinder

1911

—

1081

1912

3833

1945

1913

16252

30188

1914

29079

20650

1915

52632

28759

1916

73346

40845

1917

76256

54295

1918

67405

51971

1919

121537

54178

1920

140149

44310

1921

32343

3090

1922

59608

22

1923

65925

2001

1924

31900

_

_

X- 2

twentieth century. (See Chapter Eleven) Its potential had
convinced TAE Inc. to devote a large-scale engineering effort
to the dictating machine. The drawings for the new businessmachine were completed at the end of 1914 and then the tools
were designed in the Phonograph Works.

2

In addition tocompletely new products, there were also a wide range ofengineering problems connected with manufacturing existingproducts— especially storage batteries and motion
pictures— that occupied the laboratory work force. The pressureof work at West Orange blurred the lines between experimenting
and production engineering as Edison drove his men to complete
the many projects at hand before the end of 1914.
The overflow of work at West Orange was caused by the
problems with the first disc machines; this delayed theircommercial introduction and created a bottleneck in the Works.
The delays in the disc project disrupted the schedule ofmanufacturing the motion picture and dictating machine
products. The diamond disc line that was finally introduced in1913 had several more years of intense development on the discrecord and reproducer before it could match up to theadvertising claims of its makers. The disc machines and records
suffered from the same "bugs" that had delayed the introductionof other innovations in phonograph technology. Sales of discmachines were dependent on the the growth of a library of
Edison disc records, for the diamond disc machines could only
play the Edison disc records.

X- 3

The diamond point of the Edison disc phonograph wasclaimed to be superior to the competition's steel stylus
because it not only sounded better but also did not have to be
replaced. Unfortunately, the diamond point acted as an abrasiveon the record surface and decreased its playing life. The
search for an improved, lighter reproducer that would not
damage records became a long and difficult one. The condensite
recording media of the disc also had to be perfected. The
resources of the laboratory were therefore committed to frantic
efforts to solve these problems during the winter of 1914.
The year of great activity at the West Orange complex wasended on December 9, 1914 when a fire nearly consumed the wholearea. The starting point of the fire was a shed containing
highly inflamable motion picture film stock which stood in the
middle of the old Phonograph Works buildings. The wooden
factory structures soon began to burn furiously and the fire
spread rapidly through the rest of the Works. The flames blazed
for hours and could be seen seven miles away in Newark. By thetime the fire had been brought under control the next day,thirteen buildings had been badly damaged or destroyed at anOestimated loss of a million dollars.
(Illus.10-1)
Although the fire seriously damaged the West Orange
complex, the laboratory was miraculously saved and with it the
precious moulds and recordings for the phonograph business. The
rapid recovery from this disaster is a testament to Edison's
personal leadership of the organization. He led the clearing/z u __________/

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and rebuilding work that began the very next day after thefire. Experimenters, managers, and laborers returned to picktheir businesses out of the "fire swept W o r k s . S o o n after thefire a document circulated the West Orange complex listing the"Manufacturing Resources for a Quick Resumption." At the top of5
the list: "Edison, himself— 24 Hours a Day." The great fireunderlined the fact that Edison was still the driving force of
his industrial empire.
The retirement of 1907 was forgotten. The challenge ofthe disc phonograph now turned into the fight to rebuild anorganization that could survive the tempestuous businessenvironment of the twentieth century. Edison's son Charles was
now at West Orange, training to take over the business. A
graduate of M.I.T., Charles joined the Edison enterprise in1913. Edison must have been concerned to protect his businessenterprise in preparation for the hand-over of power at his
eventual retirement. He gave his son a personal demonstrationof the courage needed to run a modern corporation after thefire. The "old man" did not have time to mourn the damage done,
instead he reassured his son that "We'll have a much better
plant when we get through. We've swept away all the old shacks,gand now we can have a good plant."
The fire did indeed do more to reorganize the PhonographWorks than all the administrative innovations introduced from1900 to 1913. By destroying all work in progress, the fire gave
Edison's engineers the opportunity to start again from scratch.

X- 5

The fire was therefore a major turning point from theengineering and manufacturing standpoints. It also became thesymbolic watershed between a period of intense development anda period of manufacture which followed.
The company told the Internal Revenue Service that the
pre 1914 period was the "development" stage, when Edison,"being more interested in the perfecting of the product"
directed the resources of his enterprise towards research.

7

After the fire of 1914, TAE Inc. prepared to concentrate on the
manufacture of the new products. Edison had anticipated thisshift as early as 1910 when development work in the three major
businesses— phonographs, batteries, and motion pictures— were
well underway. He wrote to Bergmann that "our pioneering andexperimental period is now over and we are going for costQ
reduction." The continuing problems with the disc machine
spoiled this schedule, but production of the Edison discphonograph was the first priority when the Works reopened in
1915. By the end of January 1915, the first disc was producedin the storage battery factory opposite the laboratory. A new
era in the history of the laboratory was beginning.
TAE Inc. was now most concerned with the manufacture andmarketing of the new products, and the focus of the laboratory
turned from research to supporting manufacturing. This is not
to say that experimenting ended at the laboratory or that theexperimental period on the disc was over. For the bulk of thelabor force, the work was shifting to production engineering.

X- 6

Yet for Edison and the men around him, R&D on the disc productwas a major project that was to preoccupy them until 1917. The
first priority was to improve the disc and eliminate some ofthe surface noise. The more sensitive the recording diaphragm,
the more surface noise was reproduced. Edison was determined tocapture all the "overtones" of the recording but this forced
him into the difficult task of reducing the loudness of thesurface noise. He indulged in an orgy of all-night
experimenting sessions throughout 1915 and 1916, vowing that "I
Q
shall never stop until I get rid of it altogether." His large
personal staff was fully occupied in assisting the "old man,"and a great deal of time was spent on making minor improvements
in disc duplication and the condensite recording medium.
Edison's experts in the laboratory applied their knowledge ofthe phonograph and their experience with the cylinder format tothe disc. It was only after the quality of the disc surface had
been markedly improved that attention was given to themechanical operation of the new phonograph. The C-250
Chipppendale model, introduced in 1916, was the first Edison
disc phonograph to achieve widespread commercial success. (SeeTable 10-1.)
Edison supervised every major experimental campaign inthe laboratory in addition to his work of rebuilding the Works
and restructuring the organization. His secretary andbiographer, William Meadowcroft, had been with the "old man"long enough to have seen many periods of frantic activity, yetX- 7

he recounted that 1915 was the climax to many busy years at theWest Orange laboratory.

Next to Edison in the chain ofcommand stood Miller Reese Hutchison, chief engineer of thelaboratory and confidant of the "old man." When he took overthe position in 1912, Hutchison attempted to bring more orderto the daily work of the laboratory, installing some newprocedures and a time clock that still stands by the entrance
to Building 5. Although Hutchison had some new ideas about
managing the laboratory work force, he was strictly Edison's
man who applied the "old man's" policies and decisions to thework at hand. No model ever left the laboratory without
Edison's approval.
Hutchison was a "mucker" of the old school because he hadbusiness interests in the technology being developed at thelab. Like Tate and Batchelor before him, Hutchison stood tomake money on the marketing of a new product. Edison had given
Hutchison the rights to sell the storage battery and claim acommission. The work of selling the battery occupied much of
the chief engineer's time and his duties were so extensive thatthey were delegated to other men during Hutchison's tenure. The
job of managing the machine shops and scheduling work was given
to a "superintendent" of the laboratory (C. Luhr) and much of
the routine engineering work was assigned to an assistant chiefengineer, John Constable.^X- 8

THE DIVISIONAL POLICY

The strategies of diversification and vertical
integration of the nineteenth century had left Edison with acomplex and confused industrial empire. The creation of TAE
Inc. in 1911 had been a response to the falling profits andoverextended finances of the Edison enterprise. It provided
economical management to a broad range of operations andbrought central control to the many parts of Edison's
industrial empire. A level of middle management had beencreated and specialists hired, but their power remained
circumscribed by the great informal influence of Edison and theshifting sands of many the committees which, in essence, left
the decision making in the hands of a few senior executives
around Edison. Proximity to the "old man" was still the key topower in the organization, as the meteoric rise of Hutchison
had shown. (Illus 10-2, #14425)
The shift to marketing a string of new products made new
demands on the administration. The Edison interests foundthemselves faced with selling new products in markets that were
becoming increasingly competitive. They were still fighting on
all fronts, and against a competition that was well-entrenched.
Victor still dominated the phonograph business, the Dictaphone
Company (a subsidiary of the Columbia Company) held sway in theIllustration 10-2
Edison and Hutchison

L

X- 9

dictating machine market, and the Electric Storage Battery
Company was still the one to beat in this industry. The motion
picture business had been taken up after the fire, whencompetition in this industry reached new peaks after the demiseof the Motion Picture Patents Company. The Portland Cement
Company faced falling prices in an overcrowded business.
The surge of innovations from the laboratory had createdmany different businesses in the Edison enterprise and each one
had its own unique technology and market. Each of the Edisonproducts had a different market: primary batteries were soldlargely to the railroad industry, storage batteries went toindustrial users and delivery companies, the dictating machine
was marketed to the business community, and the phonograph andmotion picture were articles of mass consumption which demandeda special knowledge of the world of entertainment. The
centralized organization of TAE Inc. was not suited to thisbroad range of products because it concentrated power in theupper level of management and distanced it from day-to-day
activities. The administration of TAE Inc. had become top heavy
and this was perceived as a disadvantage in selling a broad
range of products in different markets. In the words of one
manager, "we were suffering from having the brains all on top
and the labor all underneath with nothing in between." 12 The
men who were closest to the points of manufacture and sale did
not have the initiative in the company.
It was recognized in TAE Inc. that each of the diverse

products it produced would be better managed by somebody
knowledgeable about the business. The divisional policy was a
response to the perceived weaknesses in TAE Inc; a corporate
dinosaur was not going to remove Victor from its commanding
place in the phonograph industry. It made sense that products
as different as cement and primary batteries should be marketedby independent organizations. The divisional policy was
intended to move decision making closer to the market and give
middle managers the opportunity to exercise their special
technical or marketing skills.
The evolution of the modern business organization has
been chronicled by Alfred Chandler. He has shown that themultidivisional, decentralized structure came as a response to
problems of running a diversified business and remained as thestandard of business organization in the twentieth century.
Beginning with Du Pont and General Motors, Chandler has
described how big business in America embraced thisstructure. 13 As Edison's policy of diversification cameslightly before Du Pont and GM, his move to a divisional
structure precedes theirs by several years. The policy was laidout by Edison and announced on March 15, 1915. It broke down
TAE Inc. into separate divisions, each the responsibility of adivision manager. The divisional structure was modelled on the
United States government; the central administration was thefederal government, each division was a state and the division
manager was the state governor.

The central

X-lladministration gave the Division Managers "as wide latitude as
possible," setting general policy and coordinating theirefforts. Edison did not concern himself with the day-to-day
affairs of his companies, for as Meadowcroft wrote: "His forte
does not lie in the lines of routine business methods." The jobof strategic planning remained with Edison and a few key
managers in the upper level of TAE Inc. The division structure
was their idea and it was originated, planned, and installedfrom above with brutal speed.^
The move toward an organization made up of marketing
divisions had begun after the creation of TAE Inc., when eachproduct was controlled by a sales manager who ran a small
marketing department. Many of the division managers wereprimarily sales orientated, including William Maxwell of theMusical Phonograph Division, and Nelson Durand of the Dictating
Machine Division. The divisional policy was first introduced tothe primary battery business, because this product was clearly
independent of the others and its market was narrow. The otherproducts followed. The laboratory was classed with thecentralized administration as a service organization. Its work
was to support the products and manufacturing activities ofeach division. Chart 10-1 shows the organization of TAE Inc. in1916 in which the divisions represent the Edison product line:
musical and business phonographs, disc and cylinder records,
numbering machines, chemicals, primary batteries, and motion
pictures. Some of the divisions were oriented toward marketing,Chart 10-2
Organization of West Orange Laboratory circa 1917

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X-12

such as the Musical Phonograph, and others concentrated on
manufacturing, including all the disc and cylinder divisions.
The Musical Phonograph Division was conceived as a jobbingorganization that bought the machines and records manufacturedby the manufacturing divisions, and then marketed them througha network of dealers.

16

The divisional policy not only established the basic
product divisions of TAE Inc., but also accelerated the policyof organizing each part of the manufacturing process into aseparate unit, under the control of a manager. The
manufacturing division was another milestone on the long roadto increased output and productivity. Previously, thePhonograph Works was divided into several departments,
including a cabinet department, numbering machine department,
electrical department, and an assembly department.

Over timethe departments that carried an increased load of business wereturned into divisions, such as the Reproducer Assembly Division
1 ftof the Phonograph Works, established in April 1916.
The
central administration of TAE Inc. had also been broken down
into departments. The great amount of new work to be done' by
the management led to the creation of many more departments,
each carrying out a specialized function.
The divisional policy not only aimed at more informed andenergetic management of each product division, but alsoestablished a management structure that was centered on
costing. The division was created to establish cost; theX-13division manager was made accountable for the costs ofmanufacture and sales. It was hoped that the division managers'
concern with keeping costs down would prevent theadministration from becoming large and inefficient. Under theold system at TAE Inc. there was no responsibility forfollowing the costs of each product as all were manufactured
under the same costing system. A highly dispersed industry,
like motion pictures, defied accurate estimation of the costsof production, and the sheer volume of an operation such asrecord production made it difficult to verify the cost of asingle disc. During the balmy days of the phonograph boom, TAE
Inc. produced thousands of products with little knowledge of
how much it was costing. "We never knew whether we were making
or losing money," remembered one executive. 19 This situation
could not be tolerated in the tight financial situation after
the fire. The divisional structure was intended to identify andrecord costs for every business within TAE Inc.
The division manager was made responsible for theidentification of costs in his division. All his transactions
were filtered through the Financial Executive which was thecentral organ of cost control. The divisional structure put
more power into the hands of the accountants and chief among
them was Stephen Mambert. He began his career in the company asa cost clerk in 1913, and by 1914 was assistant to Charles
Edison. Although he was being groomed to take over from hisfather, the twenty-four-year-old Charles found many

X-14

distractions during his early years in the company, including
the delights of Greenwich Village. 20 Mambert, on the other
hand, was a conscientious worker with great ambition. He gained
the ear of Edison and was soon promoted to "Efficiency
Engineer" and placed in the lab organization. His power andjurisdiction steadily increased and so did the size of the
Efficiency Engineer's department. Mambert was mainly concernedwith controlling the spiralling costs of the organization; he
was an administrator, not an engineer or a salesman.(Ilus.10-3,# 4660)As head of the Financial Executive, Stephen Mambert
implemented a much tighter purchasing policy on all parts of
TAE Inc. Previously the purchasing policy was poorly defined
and the department was small. In the new order of things
requisitions for materials were funnelled through Mambert'sorganization and the enlarged Purchasing Department could not
act until it received proper authorization. Mambert also had toapprove the disposal of by-products and waste. The divisions
were told that their dealings with outside manufacturers should
be confined to information that was needed to make "anintelligent request" for goods or supplies. 21 The financial
executive became the means to control the divisions. It
relentlessly pressed each manager for the exact details of his
operation. It scrutinized the payroll and hunted down
"discrepancies." It checked, and double checked, accounts
payable and receivable. It acted as the clearing house throughIllustration

John Constable,

10-3

Charles Edison,and Stephen MambertX-15

which all orders for materials, tools, and services had topass. 22
Although the divisional policy created several
organizations (the divisions) for coordinating production andadministering sales, it did not detract from the power of TAE
Inc's central management. The divisional structure was still
responsive to the economy drive of the central management, who
made it known that it was Edison's "personal desire...to effectoogreater economies and properly conserve our finances."The
division managers were instructed to send copious information
about their activities to the central management. When Edison
began the divisional policy he instructed every divison to
supply him with daily reports of orders and shipments.

The

stream of information arriving on Edison's desk in the lab
provided him with the means of staying in touch with
operations. This policy was continued by his son, whose power
was growing inside TAE Inc. Charles Edison requested thedivisions to provide him with monthly reports about cost
reductions and new methods of production. 25
While Edison concerned himself with the pressing
technical problems of the disc, professional managers took alarger part in running the new organization. Stephen Mambertreached the top of TAE Inc, by gaining the confidence of thechief executive. As Mambert got closer to Edison, his powergrew until he portrayed himself as the means to translate "Mr.
Edison's policies relative to Management, Labor and Sales" into

X-16

action. Edison's attitude to labor at this time was notfriendly and his instructions to Mambert were to reduce thepayroll.

2 6 It was important to cut the cost of operations

after the fire because the expense of rebuilding had increased
the debt of TAE Inc. Mambert was useful to Edison as a liaison
with the financial community, upon whom TAE Inc. was becoming
more dependent. Edison thought that Mambert was the mostvaluable man he ever employed because only he ever managed toget credit from the banks. Edison claimed that "Mambert1s
methods and showings have now enabled us to borrow very largesums... and the banks have confidence."27

The increased control of Mambert's Financial Executive
was built on a foundation of better record keeping within TAE
Inc. The new purchasing policy created a massive amount of
paperwork because even the smallest transaction between
divisions and departments of TAE Inc.f which had heretofore
been informal and unrecorded, now had to be carried out under apurchase order, including all the work of the laboratory. The
division managers also had the responsibility of reporting many
new types of transactions to the central management in theforms of weekly and monthly reports. Consequently the
Accounting Department was enlarged, and a new department, theEfficiency Department, was created. This was Mambert's domain.
He also controlled the work of the accountants, bookkeepers,
and statisticians in the Accounting and Auditing Departments.
Mambert sent his men to every part of the organization, some

X-17

acted as office managers, some operated the new mechanicalaccounting machines installed in all the divisions, and others
simply carried out Mambert's dictum of "Better Financial
Practices" which was based on copious business records andfrequent audits.

As Efficiency Engineer, he was also an

important member of the laboratory staff and as "Financial
Executive" he was second only to Charles Edison in thehierarchy below Thomas Edison.
Not all the divisions were in the hands of professional
managers; some were run by engineers. This was the case in thePrimary Battery Division (managed by W. Hudson) and in the Disc
Reproduction Division, which was headed by W.W. Dinwiddie. Oneof the main projects undertaken by Dinwiddie was the
reproduction of cylinder records. Yet in the flexible
arrangement of engineering at West Orange he was soon moved andgiven the task of making educational films, and in thisposition he gained management experience. He was then directed
to work on the problems of duplicating discs and finally put incharge of the division that was to do this. Walter Dinwiddie
was, at heart, an experimenter and it infuriated Mambert that
he ran his division in a democratic and (to Mambert)
unbusinesslike manner.
The Disc Reproduction Division became his target for
financial reform. Mambert thought this to be the weakest
division of TAE Inc., with the lowest profits and the sloppiest
29.
management.
The division did not make a profit in the firstX-18

few years of operation as production methods had still not been
perfected and the wartime disruption of raw materials madecosts unstable. Dinwiddie was an expert in wax moulds andrecord manufacture, but he faced difficult technical problems
in mass-producing disc records. Mambert set about changing thissituation by financial and organizational reforms, insistingthat Dinwiddie spend his time finding out the costs ofproducing the records.
One of the most important functions of the division
management was to estimate the costs of producing the product.
Previously this had been done in a haphazard manner, or not atall. Stephen Mambert was committed to exact records of cost.
One of the first divisional policies, which was delivered downby Edison himself, was to make intensive studies of costs ofoperations of each division. The disc reproduction operation
was a new business that produced 35,000 records a day and aimed
to go much higher, yet the cost to make per disc was not known.
30 The cost of disc records was roughly estimated but when afraction of a cent per disc record could alter the balance
between profit and loss, only an exact estimate could indicate
whether a profit was being made.
Mambert tried to install his men and his methods in thedisc reproduction division, yet all his attempts weresuccessfully resisted by Dinwiddie, who obviously did not share
Mambert's enthusiasm for better financial practices. 31 Mambertalso had little success in dealing with W. Hudson, the division /c

X-19

1c. Manager of Primary Batteries, who made a habit of ignoring
Mambert's memos and committees. The duel between Mambert and
Dinwiddie was ended when Dinwiddie was abruptly called back to
the lab to carry out special research. This move was part of
Edison's massive effort to improve the sound quality of thedisc record. It was probably seen as a victory for Mambert.
Mambert was able to institute cost studies of disc record
production, and Charles Edison worked on this when he joined
the company.
The Financial Executive continually stressed the need toproject the costs of each divison in advance, and division
managers were hounded to provide estimates.

32 It was Mambert's

goal to institute a system of standardized costing of
manufacturing. This is a modern accounting technique thatinvolves intensive research of the manufacturing process andthe creation of a set of estimated costs for each part of the
manufacturing process. These standard costs make it possible tocalculate potential overruns or cost reductions during
manufacturing. 33 Although he appreciated that standard costing
could only come after standardization of manufacturing,Mambert's speedy introduction of his financial reforms meantthat the system of costing was established before a system of
manufacturing could be instituted. This made standardized
costing impossible. As John Constable reflected in 1919, theerror of the divisional policy was to make men "responsible forthe costs on operations and parts of which they knew

X-20

nothing...There lies one of our greatest curses today." ^This

was certainly the case with Dinwiddie and the disc record
divison. Mambert was trying to set up the cost system before
Dinwiddie had worked out the manufacturing process.

X-21

THE REORGANIZATION OF THE LABORATORYThe organizational changes in the West Orange laboratoryreflected its changing function within the Edison organization.
The laboratory created by Edison in 1887 did not fit the needsof a large corporation that, by 1915, had become primarily
concerned with maintaining market shares in establishedbusinesses. The primary goal in creating divisions was toefficiently manufacture and energetically market existingproducts. The work of the West Orange laboratory, as envisagedby Edison in the nineteenth century, was to develop completely
new products. As the Edison concerns found themselves in morecompetitive markets, the pressure to provide engineering
support for the manufacturing branch grew more powerful. The
central lab that had been the moving force of the Edisoncompanies in the nineteenth century had to assume a differentrole in the twentieth. Meadowcroft reported in 1916 that thelaboratory's work was directed toward support of the Edisonproduct line and "there is little of mere research done here."35
The West Orange lab was no longer the only R&D facility
in the Edison interests; the creation of a laboratory at Silver
Lake in the 1890s started the process of establishing satellite
laboratories in the Edison industrial empire. The expansion of

X-22

Edison's manufacturing plants had led to the creation of
testing laboratories in the many factories built in the earlyyears of the twentieth century. The divisional policy of TAE
Inc. accelerated the growth of satellite laboratories in thevarious divisions of TAE Inc. By 1916 much of the experimenting
and testing at West Orange was being done in the manufacturingbuildings which clustered around the original Edison
laboratory.

36

As the primary function of these separated

laboratories was testing and quality control, they had to beclose to the point of manufacture.
The storage battery business required extensive testing
services and initially this was carried out at the West Orange
laboratory in the battery research department and later in thesmall cell test department. The pressure of work led to theformation of a separate testing department with its own
facilities at the storage battery factory. The test departmentof the Edison Storage Battery Company slowly enlarged its
functions and by 1913 a research department was created at
Silver Lake. Testing was considered a vital part of battery
manufacture because the end product had to be reliable and freeof defects. One tester argued that "the importance of the work
here, as related to the marketing of the product, is to my mind.
37
unquestionable."
In 1917 the Silver Lake laboratory wasenlarged, and it soon became a competitor with the West Orange
laboratory for chemical testing work.
Several other operations had been taken from the West

X-23

Orange laboratory and transferred elsewhere. Recording had
always been a function of the lab, but the need to place thestudio close to the artistic community resulted in a studioestablished on 5th Avenue in New York in 1906. The studio not
only recorded but also tested records and equipment. Movie
making had also been taken from West Orange and placed closer
to the artists in Manhattan. The Bronx studio, like all theother film making and recording facilities, was theoreticallyunder the control of the main laboratory at West Orange. The
final approval of all Edison records and movies lay in thecommittee of lab personnel who sat in judgement at West Orange.
O ft(Illus. 10-4, # 0454) Yet the management of the studios
often tried to assert their independence. This was especiallythe case of George Plimpton at the Bronx studio. Plimpton
fought to keep artistic autonomy over the production ofnegatives at the Bronx.
The relationship between central laboratory at West
Orange and the satellites was more than one of master andservants. Many projects required the coordination of effort
between the two. Special equipment that was designed and built
at the central lab needed testing in situ. This had to be donein the manufacturing plant and was normally carried out by thestaff of the satellite laboratory. Perfecting the technology
required close cooperation. In some cases, techniques andprocesses that had been developed in the satellite laboratories
were transfered to the central lab at West Orange. The

Illustration 10-4
The Recording Committee

X-24

continual improvement of the phenol resins used in disc
manufacture was dependent on good communications between theexperimental rooms at West Orange and the vats and ovens ofSilver Lake. Harmony and cooperation were often lacking in therelationships of laboratories in the Edison enterprise. There
were doubtless many personality conflicts, but underneath thesesquabbles was the growing rivalry among laboratories and thenatural feeling of superiority of those closest to the "oldman.”^
Many of the disputes would have been resolved if there
had been lines of demarcation between the functions of the main
West Orange laboratory and those in manufacturing sites. Yettrue to the original intention of the "old man," the West
Orange laboratory did a little bit of everything. Much of thetwentieth century growth of Edison's laboratory was in testing
and tool making, and these were functions that were the breadand butter of other laboratories in the organization. A primaryrole of the West Orange laboratory had been enforcing Edison's
standards on the manufacturing operations. This had begun withphonograph manufacture (see Chapter Three) and had been
extended to cover the diverse product range of the Edisonenterprise. Consequently the testing staff at West Orange grew.
Over time the value of neutral testing was appreciated and thisled to the creation of a new department in the West Orange
laboratory under the control of "Doc" Halprin.
Drafting and toolmaking were two other important jobs

X-25

that had assumed more importance in the twentieth century. The
destruction wrought by the fire in the Phonograph Works,
combined with the increased demand for drawings and blueprints,
forced a concentration of the drafting effort in the mainlaboratory building (Building 5). The drafting service of theWorks was combined with the laboratory's drafting department
and the new organization was housed in the main laboratorybuilding. Werner Olson was given control of the new department.
Olson had begun his work for Edison as a tool designer and .
was more of a team player than independently-minded Otto Weberwhom he replaced. Olson sat on several manufacturingcommittees, and as chief draftsman he was an important memberof the laboratory. The formation of a central Drafting
Department reflected the centralizing policies of TAE Inc. The
laboratory was subject to the same reorganization that hadchanged the administration. The new policy gave the chief
draftsman control of the drafting process and the power toschedule drafting work in an orderly manner. This replaced theinitiative of one man working on his own in the PhonographWorks. The drafting department had been independent of theEngineering Department, but after the reorganization it wasplaced under the jurisdiction of the chief engineer. Edison's
exalted position had always justified his own draftsman, yet
the reorganization of drafting gave Edison's personal drafting
to the main department. 40
The emphasis in manufacturing resulted in an increase in

X-26

the staff of the laboratory who were involved in productionengineering. The divisional policy was reflected in thecreation of service departments in the laboratory. The shift inengineering responsibilities from the Works to the lab isrevealed in the number of employees who were taken from theWorks payroll and transferred to the lab. Engineers like Doc
Halprin had always been Works employees in the years up to thecreation of TAE Inc. Yet the clearer definition of their duties
led to a realization that they should be managed by the chiefengineer rather than the Works superintendent. They were
therefore transferred to the lab to staff the new service
departments. Other engineers were brought in from thedivisions. Adolph Gall, for example, was moved from the Motion
Picture Division to the lab in 1917 and given the job of
production engineering for phonograph reproducers.
Chart 10-2 shows the organization of the laboratory. The
drafting, tool design, and testing departments were part of theEngineering Service, which also included the construction andmaintenance departments. The Experiment and Development
organization included the management of the laboratory's
machine shops, the music room, and Edison's personal staff. The
latter were the "muckers” experimenting with Edison. They were
the remnants of the nineteenth century Edison laboratory. The
music room was the site of experiments connected with recording
techniques and the testing of phonographs and reproducers. It
was under the control of Clarence Hayes who was also

Chart 10-1
Organization of TAE Inc in 1916

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responsible for scouting out new musical talent, purchasing
music, and making up the listings of Edison records. ^(Illus.

10-5», #4632)
The divisional policy had divided TAE Inc. along productlines and it was inevitable that the engineering services
provided by the laboratory should follow suit. In the years
before the divisional policy, the lab had begun to organize
engineering services around each product; the lab's work was
becoming product specific. Engineers with specialized knowledgeof a business were hired and permanently allotted to a product,such as Newman Holland with the business phonograph. The
product engineer was a specialist who devoted his time to asingle product, such as the disc phonograph or the motion
picture. The essence of his job was to focus the services ofthe lab onto his specific product; he was able to use all theservice departments of the lab— toolmaking, drafting,testing— in his work. The product engineer was a member of thelaboratory staff and he was supervised by the chief engineer.
He was expected to remain in close contact with the
manufacturing and sales departments of his product, andinitially this was the rationale behind the creation of thejob. A memo of 1917 classified the duties of the productengineer in experimental, development, manufacture, and sales.
The emphasis at first, however, was on the latter two
categories, and the engineer's duty "to keep your product one
jump ahead of the sales requirements" was stressed. 42

Illustration

10-5

The Music Room

X-28

The creation of the job of product engineer illustrates
the shift of the laboratory's effort to support the
manufacturing effort of the divisions. The product engineer was
the logical outcome of the product specific work that the lab
had done since the formation of TAE Inc. In the case of thebusiness phonograph, Holland had been acting as the productengineer since 1910, and the changes of 1915/1916 merely
confirmed his role in phonograph development. The productengineer grew out of the laboratory's commitment to standardize
manufacturing methods. The attempt to formalize productionengineering with the creation of the Engineering Department was
described in Chapter Eight. Despite the efforts of this new
department and several committees, the liaison between the West
Orange laboratory and the Phonograph Works was poor and thedevelopment of the disc machine had underlined this deficiency.
Each part of the production process was carried out by adifferent worker; from the researcher who produced the firstrough design to the clerk in the Phonograph Works who listed
the parts, the new product passed through many different hands.
The engineers developing the Amberola phonograph in the years
before the fire decided that one person should be maderesponsible for all stages of a product's development; the man
who made up the model should also lay out the method of its
manufacture and supervise its routing through the works. John
Constable, a phonograph engineer, was given the responsibility
for taking the Amberola from the lab to the Works. The

X-2 9experience with the Amberola showed that this policy was sound,and it was soon extended to other models, such as the discphonograph. ^This work was progressing slowly when the fire intervened
and presented an opportunity for a complete reorganization of
the Works. The multitude of various products made in the
Phonograph Works had presented a barrier to standardized
engineering practices and long production runs. The fire
destroyed all the work in progress and enabled Edison's
engineers to consolidate the product line when the Works
reopened. It also gave Constable the chance to standardize theAmberola line into three main models which all used the samemechanism, with the exception of an extra spring in the mostexpensive model. The new line of Amberolas was designed to use
as many standard parts as possible. 44 In this way thephonograph business was centered on a smaller number of models.
Many other products, such as the Bates Numbering Machine, were
not manufactured in 1915. By forcing the engineers to begin
again from scratch, the new systems and procedures envisaged in1911 could be instituted from the bottom up, and the result wasmore orderly production engineering.
Initially the product engineer was to have a foot in both
camps; he carried out experimental and development work in thelaboratory, at the same time he kept a close watch on problems
in manufacture and feedback coming from sales. An importantpart of his job was setting up the purhase orders which

X-30

requisitioned the services of the laboratory. The lab's shop
order system was reformed at this time and the management
stressed the importance of understanding and using the system.
The total number of purchase or shop orders was the means toestimate the value of the laboratory's work. All productengineer's work was billed to the relevant divison managers,
and they were normally the ones who initiated his line ofresearch.
The changing role of the lab in the Edison enterprise canbe gauged by the reorganization of the third floor of Building
5 in 1916. Chart 10-3 shows the floor plan before the changes,
the Music Room at one end and Dinwiddie's experimental room at
the other. The main office of the lab was on the third floor
and adjacent to it was the room of Harry Miller, secretary andtreasurer of TAE Inc. The administrative offices take only asmall part of the floor space; most of the third floor was
taken up with experimenting.
Chart 10-4 shows the new floor plan. The Music Room wasmaintained and two small offices were created for recording
research and the disc experiments of Dinwiddie. Next to theserooms was the office of R.W. Kellow, one of Edison's
secretaries who also handled all the bookkeeping and work
scheduling of the lab. Miller's staff was housed in Kellow's
office. At the other end of the third floor was a complex of
the drafting and testing services and the office of the chiefengineer; the Engineering Department was therefore broughtChart 10-3
Floor PLan of Third Floor of Laboratory*

Chart 10-4
Floor Plan of Third Floor of Laboratory

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X-31

together and next to it were the offices of the two phonographproduct engineers. The new floor plan shows a work space thatwas once used for experimentation was now devoted mainly toadministration.
The emphasis on engineering services at the lab brought
more draftsmen and clerks to Building 5, In addition to theoffices on the third floor, drafting was also carried out on
the second floor, close to the office of the superintendent of
the laboratory's machine shops. The second floor also housed
the Construction Engineering Department which attended to allchanges and repairs in the physical plant at West Orange. The
smaller rooms at the library end of the second floor contained
the Jewel Department (for reproducer needles) and the cabinet.
designteam. 45
Edison used rooms on all three floors of the lab, and theelimination of his room on the third floor did not leave him
without a place to work. His research on perfecting the discrecord led him to spend more of his time in the Chemical
Building, where he labored from 1912 to 1916 to eliminate thesurface noise of the disc. Meadowcroft noted that "Edison is
enjoying himself hugely on some chemical problems" and that theChemical laboratory in Building 2 was his favorite place towork in, the whole West Orange complex.

° Building 4 was also

taken up with Edison's work: half was devoted to experimenters
under his direction and the other half was the disc record
experimental room. 47

X- 32

The rooms of the product engineers on the third floor
were probably offices rather than experimental rooms. Most of
their work was done in the manufacturing plant of the products
for which they were responsible. Newman Holland was moved tohis office on the third floor from Building lf where Mambert's
men were housed. The fact that this building, once a main
attraction of Edison's laboratory, was now occupied bybureaucrats is evidence of the changes at West Orange. 4R
The creation of the product engineer formalized the lab's
engineering support for manufacturing. Their work of developing
new technology was framed by the division manager, and theresulting designs were defined by the needs of the market. Thisis evident in the development of the dictating machine, where
Newman Holland had to work to the requirements of Nelson
Durand. In stark contrast, the engineering criteria for thedisc phonograph were developed by Edison in the laboratory.
Failure in the market place can be directly attributed to
Edison's technological choices. The business phonograph wasdeveloped in a totally different manner and it reflected thecontrol exerted by division managers over the work of the
product engineers. The fact that the dictating machine went on
to become a highly successful (and long-lived) product shows
the advantages of the new ways at the Edison laboratory.

X

EHDHOTES FOE CHAPTER TEH
1) Hutchison minutes of meetings of Eng Dept. , 19 Mov 1914,
engineering files.
2) R.A. Bachman to Mambert, 31 Dec 1914, Phono Manu.
3) Conot, p. 408.
4) Hutchison Diary, pt. 2, 10 Dec 1910.
5) 19 Dec 1914, Phono Ediphone6) J Venable, Out of the Shadow, p. 76.
7) R.H. Allen to IRS, 1 Oct 1920, TAE Inc. Organization.
8) TAE to Bergmann, 24 Dec 1910, LB 101208.
9) TAE to S.W. Cutting, 20 Oct 1916, LB 160913, p. 516;
Meadowcroft to Delaney, 8 Jan 1916, LB 151216, p. 330.
10) Meadowcroft to Dickson, 30 Dec 1915, D box, bio D.
11) Hutchison minutes, diary entries, and letter to TAE, 5 Hov
1913, Motion Picture.
12) Roundtable Letter, 26 April 1920, vol 1, #3, Eng Deptfiles.
13) A Chandler, Strategy and Structure (Cambridge: MIT, 1962).
14) Dinwiddie Memo, Cylinder Div Blue Book, 21 April 1917.
15) Round Table Letter,(Charles Edison), 1920.

16) Mambert to Musical Phono Div, 5 Feb 1916, TAE Inc financial
executive.
17) I.A. Ventres to C. Edison, 17 Mar 1914, Phono Manu.
18) Mambert to divisions, 26 April 1916, TAE Inc Organization.
19) Round Table Letter.
20) John Venable, Out of the Shadow, chp.421) Financial Executive memo # 3602, 5 June 1916,
22) C Wilson to all Division heads, 14 Dec 1914, TAE Inc plantand equipment.
23) Financial Executive memo # 3602, 5 June 1916.
24) Mambert to Edison Storage Battery, 22 Jan 1916, TÂE Inc
financial executive.
24) Meadowcroft "Edison Industries" MB 78.
25) C. Edison to Managers, 25 June 1917 TAE Inc adminsitration,
C.Edison memos.
26) Mambert Report, Financial Executive memo # 3497, 6 March
1916, TAE Inc organization.
27) Conot, p. 422.
28) R.H. Allen to Mambert, 3 Years Report, 3 April 1919, TAE
Inc. financial.
29) Financial Executive Memo # 3497, 6 Mar 1916.
30) Disc Record Division Blue Books.
31) Mambert to C. Edison, 30 Jan 1918, TAE Inc organization.
32) Mambert to W. Stevens, 26 Aug 1918, TAE Inc financial.
33) Mambert to Robinson, 16 Nov 1918, TAE Inc financial.
34) Anon History, 1919.
35) Edison Lab to A. Fleming, 24 July 1916, LB 160630, p. 302.
36) Edison's Lab to A Fleming, 24 July 1916, LB 160630, p.
302.
37) C.E. Mitchell, January 1918, Blue Books, Employment
ratings.
38) Edison Phongraph Monthly, Bfov 1906.
39) George Clark to JP Constable, 16 July 1918, Disc Record
Division files.
40) J. Constable to W.0. Lab, 24 Dct 1919, TAE Inc
organization.
41) J. Constable to C. Hayes, 27 Hov 1917, Lab Business.
42) Lab blue Book memo of 11 September 1917.

43) Anon History 1919.
44) J Constable, Report on Hew Model" 9 Nov 1914, Phono Mann.
45) TAE Personal, lab floor Plan, 25 Mov 1918, WO Lab46) Meadowcroft to C Goodwin, 20 Oct 1916, LB 160913, p. 520.
47) TAE Personal, Lab Floor PLan, 25 Hov 1918.
48) TAE Personal, Lab Floor Plan, 25 Hov 1918, WO Lab.

XI- 1

BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY
THE DICTATING MACHINE

The product that gained the most from the reorganizationof the Edison enterprise was the business phonograph. Edison's
first intention for his phonograph was to develop it forbusiness use, but all his efforts to market a business machine
had met with failure. Preceding chapters have discussed thetechnological development of the phonograph, what Edison called
the "perfecting" of the machine. These advances were applied tothe dictating machine, but this alone did not ensure sales. The
marketing effort also had to be perfected

for this was the key

to success. It was only after the formation of TAE Inc. that
adequate resources were given to promoting the use of the
Edison business phonograph and selling them to businessmen. The
dictating machine was a highly complex product, probably themost complicated machine in the American business office, andit demanded a knowledgeable salesforce and support
organization. Marketing a dictating machine required a verylarge investment in R&D and sales staff. Edison's goal of
putting one of his machines in every office was not realized
until the 1920s, when two criteria were met: the laboratory had
produced a machine that was easy to use, and the divisional
policy of TAE Inc. had created the large sales organization

XI- 2that was essential to succeed in this business.
When Edison re-entered the business machine field in
1905, his laboratory staff had improved the orginal phonographformat considerably. His recording experts now knew more about
recording the human voice and achieving a loud and distinct
playback. The introduction of the 4 minute cylinder was
especially suited for the dictation of business letters.
Finally, the basic phonograph format had evolved into alighter, more compact machine. The development of the Home
model opened the way to a series of designs in which the lengthof the mandrel assembly was shortened. The Standard and Gem
models had short mandrels with the drive screw assembly
parallel and to its rear. This was the general arrangement of
the Edison business phonograph, which still retained the woodenbase of the amusement model. (Illus 11-1.)
The Edison business phonograph of 1905 was not
specifically designed for the business user. According toDurand, its basic format was no different from the graphophone,
the dictating machine that had first been introduced in the
1880s. ■*" (See Illus 11-2, Graphophone ad.) No effort was madeto make the business phonograph any easier to use than theamusement phonograph and there was no correction device normeans of measuring the length of the dictated message. The new
Edison product was priced at $70, significantly less than the$100 to $150 price range of the nineteenth century but still$10 more than the price of the Graphophone.

1

Illustration 11-1
1905 Business PhonographIllustration 11-2
Graphophone Advert

XI- 3

Although Edison once told his English agent, Gouraud,that "all my experience with marketing novel machines points tothe need of experts," the National Phonograph Company had been
unable to provide the skilled salesmen needed to market themachine.

3

The problem in the 1880s and 1890s was that the

Edison organization was too lean to support the costs oftraining experts and could not keep a large sales force in thefield. After Edison had tried to market a dictating machine in
the 1880s and 1890s he recognised that "a little instruction
and practice are needed to operate." As usual he had
underestimated the amount of effort needed to train bothsalesmen and potential users. The operation of the recording
and reproduction diaphragms of the business machine required agentle touch and good hand-eye coordination. The user had to be
trained in the correct method of speaking into the recording
diaphragm and it certainly was not just a matter of "talk into
a tube as fast as you can rattle it off— that's all."^
The creation of the commercial department of the National
Phonograph Company in 1906 was the beginning of the formationof a special organization, staffed by specialists, to support
the manufacture and sales of the business phonograph. But thesewere small beginnings; the amount of user instruction offered
was slight because the dealers were given only a minimal
education in the operation and selling points of a dictatingmachine. The sales network at this time were dealers of
amusement phonographs who were trying to make some money in theXI- 4

off-season. Durand said of them in 1909: "the large majority ofthese dealers are handling our product as a sideline." ^ The
most that the commercial department could offer them was a few
pamphlets explaining the operation of the machines and its
uses!
Although the efforts of the commercial department did notbring a great deal of success (only 3000 serial numbers wereused in the 1905-1909 period), there was an identification ofsome vital goals that shaped the future development of thebusiness. The first of these was that the business machine had
to be designed on a completely different set of criteria than
the amusement phonograph— it had to be a different machine,from casing to recorder/reproducer. It also needed some
important new features— such as the universal motor and an easycorrection device. Frank Dyer noted in 1907 that despite thecompetition of Dictaphone, the successor of the Graphophone,"we are beginning to succeed" in this business.
Sales increased every year in the years before the FirstWorld War, but Durand knew that the dictating machine would
have to be greatly improved to achieve mass acceptance inAmerican business. In this area, the skilled phonograph men in
the laboratory provided valuable assistance and helped develop
specifications for a new dictating machine. In 1906, Charles L.
Hibbard was brought to the laboratory to experiment on
dictating machines. He stayed at the lab until 1910 and gained
several phonograph patents. He worked on all aspects of theXI- 5

machine and produced some innovative new designs, including amachine employing discs instead of cylinders.

The high priceof the business phonograph was a disadvantage in the struggle
with the Dictaphone, and consequently the reduction of its cost
was also attended to by Hibbard. This was not an easy task.
Although its advertising bravely stressed the reduction in
price brought about by "economical manufacture" in 1907, thebusiness phonograph still cost more than the average typewriterO

and the machines of the competition.

It took many years before

a dictating machines cost less than other common officeequipment like typewriter and duplicating machines.
In the years leading up to the formation of TAE Inc., thebusiness phonograph gained more scarce experimental time. In
1910 Newman Holland replaced Charles Hibbard. When Holland
joined the Edison organization, the important decision had been
made to produce a new business phonograph. Encouraged by thegrowth of sales, and mindful of the competition, the Edisoninterests decided in 1909 to develop a completely new businessphonograph which would be the basis of a complete officesystem. The business phonograph department aimed at producing
an "office appliance" of unique new design which would set thestandard in dictating machines for years to come.

Hollandworked on the three machines which would constitute the Edison
dictating system: the "executive" dictating machine, the"secretarial" machine, which was used for transcribing only,
and a shaving machine to recycle used cylinders. (Illus. 11-4,

XI- 6

# 29.320)
Holland's work at the West Orange laboratory covered allparts of the Edison dictating system: he developed new
reproducers, designed many different machines (including aspring driven portable machine), and produced a range ofcontrols. ^The input from the marketing force was animportant determinant of the focus of his work. Nelson Durandinsisted on modifications of the machine and engineering work
to meet the needs of the user. This led to years of R&D on thedesign of a sturdy recording/reproducer assembly which would
not break with use, and the development of a correction
feature. ^Despite the long delays, which were compounded by

Durand's constant interference in development work, newbusiness designs were slowly introduced onto the market in 1911
and 1912.
The correction device was a major selling point in themarketing of a dictating machine; the difficulty of making
corrections provided a great deal of sales resistance. Although
the promotional literature for the business phonograph claimed
that it had a correction device and a repeat function, theseimportant features were add-ons to the existing machine rather
than a new design begun with these goals in mind. By 1911 theonly significant change in the design of the machine was theintroduction of a steel case and an improved electric motor.
The correction device was still the clumsy scale and marker on
the cylinder.

The improved dictating machine of 1912 came

XI- 7

with a better correcting device and the new pneumatic control
mechanism that was attached to the speaking tube. This was a
distinct improvement on the foot peddle used to control themachines.

13

Typically, Holland's work at the West Orange laboratory
was not confined to one model or one job. He set to work on abroad range of different technical problems and production
jobs. Much of his experimenting was devoted to a completely
different concept for the dictating machine— the Edison
telescribe. This machine could record telephone messages
automatically. Edison had envisaged this application of thephonograph in 1878, "so as to make that invention an auxiliaryin the transmission of permanent and reliable methods, insteadof being the recipient of momentary and fleeting
communication." ^The telescribe brought together two

inventions: the phonograph and the carbon microphone. It was acomplex machine which amplified sound from the telephone andrecorded it on the phonograph. The user operated the machine byremote control and could also dictate using a separatetransmitter. After extensive R&D work, the first models werebrought out in 1914 and an improved machine was introduced in
1918. ^

(Illus 11-5, telescribe ads)

The telescribe was an ambitious project in the Edison
mould. It was too ambitious for both the available technology
and the patience of the user. Edison was again attempting tosteal a march on the competition by a technological innovation.

I1 l u s t r â t i o n 11-4

T

HE name Telescribe is derived from tele, far, and scribe, write—meaning,
literally, to write from afar.

The Telescribe consists of a sensitive telephone for convenient desk use,with controlling buttons to operate a special recording machine, placed on a floor
pedestal nearby.
With this electrical arrangement we are able to magnify the voice so that dicta­tion may be performed at conversational distance; or, without delay, we can record
all the words passing over the ordinary telephone by lifting the horn (hinged for the
purpose), resting the telephone receiver in its place, and listening through a small
receiverattached
to the Telescribe.
Briefly,
the -Telescribe
is a more sensitive recording instrument, adjusted toreceive the same impressions of sound as the human ear. The comparatively faintvibrations through a telephone are now for the first time transferred to a record; or,in dictating, where we formerly held our lips inside a tube to obtain a sufficient volume
of sound, we may now speak with even less physical force at a considerable distance,with freedom approaching human conditions.
For business dictation, the older form of Edison Dictating Machine will still beavailable and useful in many instances where the maximum convenience and scopeof the Telescribe’s operation is not essential.
However, the recording of both sides of our telephone talk is so desirable that theTelescribe will naturally be adopted by many for its universal ability to record all
three means of distant communication—letters, telegrams (by ’phone), and telephonemessages.
The efficiency of machine dictation is well established, and standard literaturedescribes the operation, but the uses of the Telescribe for telephone recording, while
offering even a greater opportunity, is a more unfamiliar field.
The following pages are consequently rather devoted to Edison’s
method of employing the Telescribe so that it will be profitably used inbusiness for recording telephone talk.

I N C O R i»oi**TroXI- 8Yet trying to transmit telephone messages to the phonographacoustically, via an amplifer on the telephone and a sensitive
recorder, was patently unpractical in the average businessoffice. Nevertheless, Holland and other Edison engineers
devoted much time to this project. There was probably nobody in
the Edison organization who could dampen the ambition and the
optimism of the "old man." While the resources of thelaboratory were being wasted on a product that would neverachieve any commercial success, the competition was moving
forward on lower priced machines and extensive advertising. The
Edison dictating machine was always more expensive than the
Dictaphone, because the years of improvements and new features
had gradually increased the price of the Edison product fromthe $60s up to the $80s and $90s. On the other hand, theDictaphone Company was able to keep to the $60 price tag formany years. ^Holland's work at the lab also involved long-range
development of a totally new dictating machine. In considering
the design for a new machine, Holland started by reviewing all
the previous ideas for business phonographs. The crucial
element of the design was the arrangement of therecorder/reproducer. Many designs had been considered,including one by Hibbard in which all the working parts except
the recorder/reproducer had been placed beneath the level ofthe base plate. The great advantage of this format was that themachine was better protected from dirt and abuse from the user.

XI- 9This decreased breakdowns and promised to make the machine morereliable. The main criterion developed by Holland for the new
business machine was simplicity of operation andappearance— all working parts should be concealed in the
housing. The essence of the new business phonograph was asimple, sturdy machine that minimized the number of breakdowns
in the hands of a careless user. Here was the basic concept of.
the modern dictatingmachine. 17
Newman Holland worked on this machine for several years
and did not complete his design until late 1912. 18 By 1914,
the management of TAE Inc. had decided that as soon as the discmachine tooling was complete, the Works would turn its
attention to manufacturing business machines. The name of the
Edison dictating machine was changed to the Ediphone in 1916
and a completely new machine introduced shortly afterwards. The
first innovation of the Ediphone was the much cleaner design ofthe top plate. (Illus 11-5, Ediphone photo) Gone is the clutterof the spectacle arrangement of two diaphragms and the many
adjustment screws. The Ediphone was designed primariy as a
dictating machine and it had one totally enclosed diaphragm andone lever arrangement to lower it on to the cylinder. The heartof the new machine was the electric motor which could operateon several different voltages, including alternating current.
Production of these motors was under the control of the newsmall motor department which was producing about 100 a day in
1916.

The belt drive and gearing was enclosed in a metalIllustration 11-5
EdiphoneJ

XI-10casing. The Ediphone came with a long mandrel for the 5 inch
cylinders. It had an ejection device to move the cylinder fromthe mandrel when dictation was over.
The Ediphone incorporated several years of improvements
and modifications, such as the new glass mouthpiece which madeit easier to dictate and a semi-automatic correction device.
The rubber tubing of the earlier machines was replaced with aflexible metal one which gave better recordings. One
outstanding feature of the later Ediphones was the electricalcontrol device which gave the user complete control of themachine via a switch on the mouthpiece. The transcribing
machine had the electrical control on the secretary's
typewriter which greatly increased ease of use and speed of.
20
operation.
The correction system marked some improvements
over earlier ones but was still a comparatively troublesome
process involving marking a guide band attached to a holder on
the machine.

XI-11

CREATING AN OFFICE SYSTEM

The introduction, and steady improvement, of the Ediphone
finally provided the right machine for the job, yet it was only
part of the systems approach that was the most importantinnovation in the dictating machine business. In selling a
dictation system rather than just a machine, the commercial
department needed to integrate a highly complicated technology
into the work habits of the American office. This latter task
could only be accomplished by a layer of administrative staff
and a large sales force. In this way the triumph of theorganization would also be the triumph of the businessphonograph. Durand and his men took this product from being thelame duck of the nineteenth century and made it a winner in thetwentieth.
The original marketing strategy for the Edison BusinessPhonograph was a primitive attempt to replace the stenographer
with a dictating machine. Edison naively believed that thebusinessman would jump at the opportunity to save money with amachine:Your stenographer goes to lunch, goes home, needs a
day off occasionally...The phonograph don't eat, ison hand at all times, is always ready.
In the nineteenth century, the stenographer was normallya male who could command high wages for his services, up to $20

XI-12

per week according to the Edison advertising literature.
Replacing a stenographer might reduce labor costs, but it also
put the burden of operation on the businessman, and this placed
unacceptable demands on his time and patience. The problem withthe early dictating machines was their difficulty of use. One
demonstrator said that the machines "were so complicated thatthe average man would have to keep his eye constantly on the. while working them." 22 The slightest
book of directions
mechanical failure brought this technological revolution in thework place to a halt. Even if the dictation was successfullyrecorded on the 2 minute cylinder, there were no assurancesthat the stenographer, and later the typist, would be able tounderstand it.
Edison's return to this market in the twentieth century
marked a more realistic approach to sales; the business,
phonograph was marketed as a means to make the stenographer
more productive. The argument used by Edison salesmen was thatthe phonograph could be used to replace an expensive
stenographer, skilled in short hand dictation, with a typist
who would transcribe the correspondence taken with thephonograph. The latter need only be able to type, and theslogan of the Edison company was "You can secure half-priced
typists to take the place of your experienced stenographers."

2 3 The company no longer talked about displacing skilled
stenographers, for these could be used to manage thecorrespondence process and also dictate to the machine.

XI-13The most important innovation in marketing was therealization that what was needed in the office was a complete
system of dictation and transcription, rather than just a
dictating machine. In 1905 Durand tried to persuade themanagers of the National Phonograph Company that the businessphonograph should be sold as a system rather than as a single
machine. 2^ The conception of introducing new technology assystems rather than independent products had been the hallmarkof Edison's business strategies. The design and marketing of
the Edison incandescent lighting system has been correctly
described as his great innovation in this industry. The conceptof a business system was equally important in the successful
introduction of a dictating machine; this complicated device
had to be marketed as a range of products which complemented
each other and the work place into which they were introduced.
Edison himself shared this belief, and around 1910 he wasthinking about producing a range of machines to suit eachcustomer.25
The change of strategy from marketing a single machine to
producing an office system was the crucial step in breaking
into the business market. The systems approach allowed theseparation of the functions of dictating and transcribing. This
gave Edison's engineers the leeway to concentrate on one mainfunction in the design of each machines the dictating machine
no longer had to be able to do everything. Now there weredifferent machines for dictating, transcribing, and shaving

XI-14functions. This technological division had advantages in sales
because the businessman who made the decision to buy was
relieved of much of the tedium of operation. The dirty work wasdone by those lower on the pay scale.
The new dictating system was based on the creation of
three levels in the office hierarchy: executives at the top,typists who transcribed, and office boys who shaved thecylinders and helped maintain the machinery. The essence of thesystem was a central transcribing department which would handle
all the correspondence dictated to the machines by managers andstenographers. Marketing the business phonograph in this manner
involved a careful assessment of the organization of the user's
office before centralizing the flow of correspondence into one
transcribing department. The Edison salesman had to be trained
to arrange the offices of their customers and identify the
dynamics of office politics. In many cases it was unwise tosuggest that a stenographer should be replaced by a typist. If
the former carried out clerical work in addition tocorrespondence, then the executive would resist replacing avaluable employee. Each office situation had to be treateddifferently.
The Edison promotional material stressed the uniquenessof the Edison system and proudly claimed that it was "not soldin stores." The customer was visited by an Edison
representative to study the work place and "adapt the Edison
business system, of which the phonograph is a part," to theXI-15existing office arrangement. Customers were told that in buying
a machine they were assured of more than the expertise of the
Edison laboratory, but also the support of "Our Local Service
Organization for maintenance and ...daily attention." Durand
told the sales force that "people don't buy it (the dictatingmachine) for the motor or the other parts, but for the27
service."
It was only with the creation of the Commercial
Phonograph Division that Durand finally had the money to build
up his own network of dealers and mould the sales force into anorganization that could sell and maintain dictating machines.
He aimed at keeping over one hundred salesmen in the field at
all times. There was still a great deal of resistance to the
dictating machine in American offices. Businessmen preferred todictate to a stenographer, rather to a machine. Edison's
executives were no exception. Charles Edison was most annoyedthat the division managers of TAE Inc. did not use the Edison
dictating machine. 28
There were many good reasons for the sales resistance todictating machines. The machines might be efficient, but they
could not replace the personal relationship of businessman andstenographer. The latter— now normally a woman— often played an
important part in composing the letter. She was more forgivingof frequent errors and corrections than a machine. Manybusinessmen preferred to dictate to office girls. Many users ofdictating machines dropped them when the secretarial staff

XI-16decided that they did not like to use them. Many felt that they
did not generate enough correspondence to justify mechanizing
letter writing, and many would not use dictating machines
because they thought their work was too technical. * (This lastreason was probably the excuse of the managers of TAE Inc.)
Durand had to keep up a large-scale sales effort andrelentlessly badger prospective customers. He was tireless inorganizing exhibits and shows to convince businessmen of theadvantages of the dictating machine.
The dictating machine business enjoyed steady growth from1910 onwards; that year about 6000 machines were sold and by1918 the figure had exceeded 10,000 for the year, total sales
volume reaching over $1,000,000.

With a growing organization

and a adequate technology in hand, Durand could look forward to
the future. Yet he still leaned heavily on the Edison
laboratory to maintain market position and even challenge thelead of the Dictaphone. Durand's division was depending on theWest Orange laboratory to keep improving the product and lessen
the costs of production.
By the time of the great fire of 1914, the businessphonograph was a permanent job in the laboratory, financed andcontrolled by the managers of the business phonographdepartment. The story of development work on the dictatingmachine is one of increasing control of experimenters bymanagers in the Edison organization. The work on the businessphonograph had always been more like product engineering than

XI-17"mucking", for even the experimental work of Holland— a man who
preferred to experiment— was directed by Durand. Hibbard too
had been controlled by Gilmore who swiftly curtailed theexperimenter's foray into the disc format. Holland's tenure as
Product Engineer on the business phonograph illustrates thechange from the traditional experimental outlook of thelaboratory to the new emphasis on engineering support ofmanufacturing and marketing. The success of the dictatingmachine was based on the primacy of business over technicalconsiderations.
The successful marketing of the business machine demanded
close cooperation between the salesmen in the field and theengineers in the lab. Durand's division was in hot competition
with Dictaphone, who buttressed its position of market leader
by continually lowering prices and making small improvements.
The men in the field brought back information needed to maketechnical improvements in the machine, and the organization of
resources at West Orange allowed Durand to direct thelaboratory staff to meet his requirements. The rising costs of
R&D made it imperative to efficiently manage these resources.
The annual salary of experimenters and mechanics was rising31
inexorably in the inflation of the First World War.
The reform of engineering at West Orange, including thecreation of the Engineering Department, made Durand's job mucheasier. The divisional policy and the creation of the positionof product engineer put Durand firmly in control of R&D andXI-18engineering work. The development of the dictating machineranged from minor changes, such as improving the headband
holding the earpiece of the transcribing machine which caught
in the typists hair, to exploring completely new designs.
Durand's mission to lower the cost of the Ediphone was aided bybetter cooperation between laboratory and Works and more formal
engineering practices in the Works. Laboratory men such as
Constable worked with engineers in the Works to apply cost
reductions developed in phonograph manufacture to businessphonographs. In this way, parts of the Amberola phonograph weresuccessfully used in dictating machines. 32
Improved communication between the various engineering
activities of the Edison enterprise offered division managers
valued economies of scope in the technical improvement of theirproducts. The dictating machine division was the beneficiary ofsound experiments made in the Columbia St, phonograph recording
studio and studies of electric circuits made in thelaboratories of the primary battery division. 33 Cooperation
between engineers in the West Orange complex finally led to thedevelopment of a successful correction device in 1918. This was
based on an electromechanical start, repeat, and stopmechanism. This project was under the general control of
Holland, but it was dependent on considerable feedback from theusers and the cooperation of Sam Langley, the engineer incharge of the motor department of the Phonograph Works. 34
This steady increase in sales up to 1918 had not

XI-19convinced Durand that this business was secure. He wasconcerned with the steady increase of production capacity inthe industry and predicted that the post-war market would behighly competitive. To meet this threat, he envisaged acompletely new machine that would be designed for the cheapest
possible manufacture. 35 The development path of the dictatingmachine in the 1920s was toward a smaller, cheaper, and simpler
machine. A portable spring-driven model was added to the lineof Edison machines in anticipation that the busy executive
would want to dictate at home or on the road. Over twenty yearsof experience with spring motor phonographs was obviously ahelp in creating this new product. About twenty years ofexperience in selling dictating machines was behind a new
design finally introduced in the 1930s. (See Illus 11-6) This
Voicewriter model achieved great success and was the machinethat finally brought substance to Edison's ambitious claims
that there would be a dictating machine in every American
office.
The Voicewriter reflected a new movement in design thatwas gaining momentum in American industry. It was sleek andstreamlined. Its spring-loaded hood automatically closed downover the top works. Although the format and the controls were
the same as the Ediphone, they were all enclosed. Only thelever on the recorder assembly was changed to make it easier toreach. A revolution in industrial design took place in America
in the 1930s and this dictating machine is an excellent example

Illustration 11-6
Voicewriter

of it. The first Edison business phonographs reflected a craft
style of the nineteenth century that can be appreciated in thedesign of telegraph equipment and sewing machines. From thepolished wood base to the exposed metal parts of the top works,
Edison's phonographs followed this style. His first dictatingmachines were solid, heavy, and built so that the many controls
could be adjusted.
The dictating machine moved from an expensive instrument
to a mass-produced staple in every office. Sheet metal replacedfine wood and heavy castings. Lighter and more utilitarian
materials were sought by a new wave of industrial designers,
and the new Bakelite plastics were found to be ideal. These
plastics were used in Edison products, including the
Voicewriter and a telephone number index made under the Bates
Manufacturing Co.name.

The Ediphone and the Voicewriter werebased on a new aesthetic, a machine aesthetic that was clean,
simple, and beautiful. The style that originated in the German
Werkbund was based on the efficiency of form and not cosmetic
decoration. It was a style that consciously reflected modernity
and technological progress. The goal was a machine that was
simple to operate and easy to clean. A smooth shell that
enclosed the operating parts was perfectly suited to thefunction. Beauty of form was found in the continuity of line
and the contrasts of color. In the dictating machine, form
followed function perfectly.

A.
1
.-

NOTES FOR CHAPTER ELEVEN.

1) Durand in Ediphone Minutes, 1 M37, 27 Dec 1916. Charles
Edison fund.
2) TAE to Gouraud, 30 May 1889, LB 890521, pp. 153-170.
3) TAE, "The Perfected Phonograph,” North American Review June
1888, 641-650.
4) North American Phonograph Advertising, D box phono; Businessphonographs account sheet, 19 May 1905.
5) N Durand to Dyer, 17 Mar 1909, Phono Ed Business Phono.
6) Dyer to F Scribner, 18 April 1907, Phono sales.
7) Gilmore to Durand, 26 Mar 1907, N.P.co Commercial Dept
8) Advertising material, 1907 Phono Comm Dept.
9) N Durand to Dyer, 17 Mar 1909, Ed Business Phono10) Holland to Hutchison, 31 Dct 1912, Phono Ediphone.
11) Holland to Hutchison, 5 Dec 1913, Phono Ediphone.
12) Edison Business Phonograph promotional material, 1911 Phono
General.
13) Holland reports, 1918 Phono Ediphone.
14) D Box 8, Phono 2.
15) Ibid, & J Constable to N Durand, 1 April 1918, Phono
Ediphone.
16) Ediphone minutes, 27 Dec 1916, Charles Edison Fund, East
Orange New Jersey.
17) Holland to Schiffl, 1910 Phono Business Phono.
18) Holland to M.R. Hutchison, 31 Oct 1912, Phono Ediphone.
19) Meadowcroft to F Kimball, 2 May 1911, LB 160314, p. 663
20) Ediphone Buyers Guide, Warsaw collection, Smithsonian.
21) N Am Phono Co advertising, D Box phono.

XI22) Miller reminiscences, lew York Public ledger. 22 Mar 1925,
1925 Radio.
23) 1909, Phono Edison Business Phonograph.
24) Durand to Gilmore, 9 Mar 1907, Phono l.P. Co Commercial
dept.
25) Dyer to Durand, 29 April 1910, Phono, BB ph.
26) Ediphone Competition Bulletin, #179, 6 April 1931.
27) Buyers Guide, Warsaw collection .
28) Charles Edison to Division Managers, 4 Sept 1917, TAE Inc.
29) Rational Ediphone Sales Conference, 9 Jan 1925, D7
Phonograph.
30) MB 78, Ediphone Business, 6 May 1918, TAE Inc.
organization.
31) Experimental costs on the Ediphone rose from around $9,000
p.a. in 1913/1914 to $15,000 p.a.in 1920. This was the cost of
one experimenter, half time for an assistant or Works engineer,
and a skilled mechanic. Ediphone minutes, experimental lists,
accounts.
32) 1 Durand to C Edison, 31 Jan 1918, Phono Ediphone.
33) Memo to Constable, Development Work for Ediphone, 1 lov
1919, Phono.
34) Ediphone Buyers Guide, Warsaw collection.
35) 1 Durand to J Constable and C Edison, 22 Aug 1918, Phono
Ediphone.
36) J.L. Meikle, Twentieth Century Limited Industrial Design in
America 1925-1939 (Philadelphia: Temple U, 1979), p. 82.

XII- 1CHAPTER TWELVE
THE WEST ORANGE LABORATORY IN WAR AND PEACE.

Edison had always seen military applications for his
inventions. Electricity offered many opportunities in thisfield: it could be used as a weapon— sprays of water linked
with high voltage alternating currents, for example; as a meansof power; and for communications. The first military customers
for electricity were modern navies who used isolated plants tolight and power their iron warships. Edison had a special
interest in electrically-powered torpedoes and experimented onthem at the West Orange laboratory. He formed a company with
Gardiner Sims, (the Edison-Sims Electric Torpedo Company) todesign and manufacture submarines, torpedoes, and other naval
weapons. This company is credited with the design of the first
remote-controlled weapon, a torpedo powered by electricity andguided through an elaborate cable system. ^The West Orange laboratory was built at a time ofrevolutionary changes in military strategy and technology.
There were a growing number of businesses, such as Vickers
Armstrong and Krupps, who depended on military orders tomaintain their rapid multinational growth. The twentiethcentury opened in an atmosphere of international tension andrearmament. The United States was no exception; after theXII- 2

Spanish-American war it was a world power and needed a modernnavy to match. Edison had no objections to becoming part ofthis process and making money from it. The Navy offered to be amajor customer for Edison storage batteries for their submarine
fleet. They had also employed Edison motion picture equipment
to film projectiles in flight. A patriot and a scrapper, he was
not going to be left out of any conflict entered into by the
U.S. As early as 1895 he publically announced his intention "todrop everything and serve the country" should there be a war.

2

The outbreak of war in 1914 probably came as no surpriseto Edison, but unlike many other Americans he could not afford
to ignore it. His multinational enterprise was immediately
affected by the war. After a burst of profits from the European
market eager to see patriotic war films, Edison's overseas
moving picture business disappeared and with it an important
market. (See SIDEBAR 12-1: End of Edison's Motion Picture
Business) The Allied blockade cut off the supply of chemicals
from Germany on which his phonograph and storage battery
businesses depended. The continuing conflict in Europe greatly
influenced life and work at West Orange until 1919.
Although the United States did not immediately enter thewar, its economic impact was soon felt as American industry
took part in the policy of "preparedness" to ensure that if war
did come, the U.S. would be ready. The factories of West Orange
were fully involved in this by 1915. Edison commented that "I
am in that (preparedness) with both feet and hands.

The West

XII- 3

Orange laboratory's contribution to the war effort was not
restricted to supporting the factories around it; for the firsttime industrial research was applied to warfare on a grandscale. The First World War marked the beginning of the serviceof science to the state. Observers on both sides of theAtlantic had noted Germany's use of its scientists and researchfacilities in preparing for war, and Edison was not alone inadvocating that the United States should follow suit.^
The U.S. government soon decided to mobilize theindustrial and scientific resources of the nation. The
Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, approached Edison in1915 with the idea of a braintrust of technical experts who
would advise the armed forces in matters of militarytechnology. The Naval Consulting Board, as it was later called,
rested on the belief that science had an important part to playin the war. Secretary Daniels not only wanted Edison to advise,
but also to employ his "own magnificent facilities" at West
Orange in important experimental work that the Navy was not
equipped to handle.^ Edison enthusiastically embraced thisidea. His attitude can be summed up in the illustration "TheImpending Conflict" which symbolizes the role of science in theservice of democracy. Edison was particularly pleased with themessage of this cartoon and had it mounted on the wall of thelaboratory library. ®
The Naval Consulting Board (NCB) was officially formed in
the fall of 1915 and Edison was appointed chairman. Many of

XII- 4

America's greatest minds were involved in the NCB, includingFrank Sprague, Willis Whitney, Leo Baekeland, and Elmer Sperry.
A early meeting of the Board resolved that its work would best
be served by the creation of a naval laboratory that would test
new equipment and carry out experiments in naval technology.
This facility was intended to make sure that the Navy got value
for money on its contracts and that it would have the bestequipment available, and at a fair price. A secondary task was
the development of new technology to fit the Navy's
requirements. Edison took a leading role in the committee thatconsidered the makeup of the laboratory. The recommendations of
this committee described an installation that bore a close
resemblance to his West Orange lab. It was to contain a machine
shop, pattern shop, foundry, drafting rooms, testing rooms, anda motion picture developing department. It was to have,electrical, chemical, and physical laboratories.

7

Edisonplanned this laboratory along the same lines as his own; it was
to be large enough to benefit from economies of scale and it
had to be situated close to New York City, "the great mart"
where supplies could be quickly obtained. Edison insisted thatthe lab be stocked with supplies of every kind so that it could
Q

work quickly. ° He described it as "Not a research laboratory;
it is a construction laboratory— more properly a universal
machine shop" that could produce "anything from a submarine toa microscope."

Q

Edison envisaged a facility that could work ina broad spectrum of different experimental projects. Speed of

XII- 5innovation was again an important consideration in the designof the laboratory: "the value of the lab is to turn things out
quickly."
The experimental directions of the naval laboratory were
dominated by the submarine. Chief among the proposed projects
considered by the NCB were: motive power for torpedoes andsubmarines (including storage batteries), improvements insubmarine attachments and guns, and submarine detection. The
laboratory they planned included a facility big enough to build
experimental submarines. The West Orange laboratory was alreadyinvolved in the development of this weapon; Edison storage
batteries were powering the Navy's new submarine, the E2.
Edison's involvement in the development of a modern American
submarine came to a sudden end when the E2 blew up. Several men
were killed. The cause of this accident was traced to hydrogenbuild-up from the batteries which then exploded. Ironically, atthe same time that the Navy was proudly announcing the great
inventor's connection with them, his batteries were blamed forthe tragic accident.^ This accident killed any hope ofdeveloping the submarine market for Edison's alkaline battery.
12
The war came at a busy time for Edison who was spending
much of his time on the storage battery and on resolving
problems with the disc record. Nevertheless, he threw himself
into the creation of the Naval Consulting Board with his usual
enthusiasm. His deafness made him a poor choice for a leader ofXII- 6

a committee and he soon asked to be relieved of this duty inorder to concentrate on experimental work. Edison gave up allother research activities and war work took up all his time
until the end of 1918. 13 Edison was joined in this endeavor byexperimenters on his payroll and volunteers from universities
and industry. His expenses were forwarded to the Department of
the Navy, but Edison did not charge for his time.
After the explosion of the E2 events turned Edison's
attention to detecting submarines. The research effort of theNaval Consulting Board, and several other research facilities,
was directed towards the threat of the submarine. This "new andterrible engine of warfare" had figured in Secretary Daniels'
plans for the Board. 14 Although Edison undertook over forty
experiments between March 1917 and November 1918, ranging fromplating search light reflectors to airplane detection, he
15
concentrated his efforts on the submarine menace.
The German
U-boats were disrupting the vital lines of communication thatstretched across the high seas. The sinking of the Lusitania in
1915 was a portent of things to come, but the authorities onboth sides of the Atlantic did little to counter the threat
until the Germans began unlimited submarine warfare in early
1917. Within a very short time the German U-boats severed theflow of supplies into the Allied ports and the British
Admiralty secretly concluded that unless the submarine could be
16
stopped, the war was lost.

XII- 7

Unrestricted submarine warfare was the final straw thatbrought the United States into the War in 1917. It alsoenergized the NCB into action. Edison typically approached thesubmarine problem from all angles, experimenting on finding anddestroying submarines, attempting to prevent torpedoes fromhitting merchant ships, and finally devising methods to makeshipping harder for the submarine to see. He had all sorts ofideas to evade a German torpedo: he suggested laying a film ofoil on the surface to obscure the submarine's periscope, hetoyed with the idea of a protection system for ships using nets
fired into a torpedo's

path, and he designed a sea anchor to

rapidly change a vessel's heading once a torpedo was sighted.
His work on ship camouflage was the beginning of a strategy
that had great success in two world wars.
The majority of the experiments carried out by Edison
were on submarine location. At the beginning of the war thebest way to locate submarines underwater was to listen forthem. Ships used hydrophones to detect the sound of submarine
engines and screws. Edison was no stranger to the science ofsound and he concentrated on tracking the noise of submarines
by amplifying the sound waves as they came through the water.
He tried telephone amplifiers, audions, resonators, and otherdevices to pick up and amplify the sound of the submarine's
screws. None of these approaches could locate submarines at a
distance— the vital prerequisite of a submarine detection
system. His next plan was to locate the submarine by measuringXII- 8changes in magnetic fields caused by its metallic bulk passing
through the water. He devised an induction balance to achieve
this end but it was not sensitive enough. The idea was good— itis the basis of an excellent modern submarine locater— but theright technology was not available.
Edison gave up trying to locate submarines at a distanceand concentrated on detecting torpedoes as they came close tomerchant ships. Employing technology that had been developed
for the phonograph and telephone, Edison constructed simple
listening devices based on a phonograph reproducer attached toa long speaking tube which was connected to an amplifying
device on board ship. Much of this experimental ground had been
covered by the disc experiments and the development of special
dictating machines. The problems Edison faced were to increase
the scale of the technology and work for a corresponding
increase in sensitivity. The Navy gave Edison the use of avessel and during the summer of 1917 he cruised the Long Island
Sound testing his listening devices.The listening device wasplaced in the water about 20 feet from a ship and in perfectconditions could detect a submarine at 5000 yards.

Edisonfound out that the problem of this type of locater is thatconditions are never perfect. All the locaters then underdevelopment could not distinguish between the noise of asubmarine's screws and the background noise of the search
vessel screw's and water turbulence.
Several other teams engaged in the same line of researchXII- 9found this out. A group, including scientists from the researchlaboratories of GE and AT&T, attacked the problem of submarine
location at an experimental station at Nahant, Massachusetts.
Instead of an acoustic amplifier, as found in the phonographdiaphragm, they tried electronic amplification with an
oscillator designed by Reginald Fessenden. At one time a"mucker" in the West Orange laboratory, Fessenden was now apioneer of radio and the first man to transmit music by radio
waves. He had successfully used his device for detecting
icebergs after the tragic sinking of the Titanic. GE and AT&T
were highly interested in the potential of radio and theirlaboratories were well versed in this new electronic
technology. Yet they met with the same problems as Edison andhad the same lack of practical results. The most successful
submarine detection device that came out of all this research
effort was still an acoustic device— the broca tube which
IO
resembled an elaborate stethoscope.
An electronic device did finally produce the important
breakthrough in submarine detection. This was the developmentof an active sonar system which used reflected sound waves todetect submarines instead of the passive system of listening
for them. The essence of this idea was to electronicallygenerate ultrasonic waves and bounce them off metal objects
underwater. This was achieved by the scientists of the Allied
Submarine Detection Investigation Committee in England who
named their creation ASDIC. This method was considered to beXII-10the ultimate in submarine detection, but the experience of theSecond World War showed that it suffered from the same
operational problems as all other detection equipment.
The best solution to the submarine problem was a very
simple idea that banked on the vast area of the sea to hidemerchant ships. The naval authorities were unreceptive to theidea of convoys, but not Edison. He had investigated thestatistics of ship sinkings and come to the conclusion thatmerchant ships were making it easy for the U-boats to findthem. 19 By grouping ships in convoys, the Allies made it
harder for the U-boats to find a target and also forced them toengage the armed escorts. The introduction of the convoy system
in 1917 radically reduced the number of sinkings and held the
U-boats at bay until the war ended.
The role of science in this partial victory was notdecisive and the achievements of the Naval Consulting Board
were slight. The one lesson that emerged from this massive R&D
effort was that scientific research was often an expensive
failure. Despite years of effort, Edison was never able to cut
through the bureaucratic red tape of the Navy to build a naval
laboratory. As usual, the difficulty with establishing the lab
was finance; Congress did not appropriate enough money to suit
Edison's grand design— he estimated that the lab would cost
$5,000,000 fully equipped. He vigorously opposed theestablishment of the lab near Washington, arguing that it could
only be a success if it was far away from Washington. His own

XII-11

choice of a location was Sandy Hook, New Jersey. 20 His granddesign for the "Naval Lab" came to nothing although alaboratory was built for the Navy in Annapolis in the 1920s.

XII-12

THE WEST ORANGE LABORATORY DURING THE WORLD WAR.

The Edison enterprise was founded on the international
flow of information and materials. The war severely disrupted
this network and placed TAE Inc. in a precarious position.
Edison's phonograph business had made him a major importer ofchemicals from Germany, for example. The sudden elimination ofthis source of raw material might have crippled anothercompany. But Edison had built his laboratory to meet thedemands of this situation. He quickly made made TAE Inc.
self-sufficient in strategic chemicals and made handsome
profits selling off his surplus. At West Orange Edison had an
excellent chemical laboratory, and a staff with considerable
experience in finding substitutes for chemicals. The demands ofquality control in record manufacture had led to an thoroughinvestigation of the chemistry of the raw materials. The
experiments to diminish the surface noise on disc records had
pointed to the poor quality of the phenol used in manufacture.
Edison's chemists knew that this was an area for improvement.
The shortages of chemicals became evident at the very
beginning of the war, in the fall of 1914.

OI

Edison wasconcerned with good reason; he was the largest importer ofphenol in the U.S. and the brilliant tone of the diamond discrecords depended on their condensite finish. Edison mobilizedXII-13

the resources of the West Orange laboratory to find a way tomake synthetic phenol, assigning about 40 men to work on theprocess. The experimental and design stage was concentrated atWest Orange, as usual, and the pilot plant was erected at theSilver Lake complex under direction of the laboratory, and withequipment fabricated in the machine shops of West Orange.
Edison and his men took great pride in the rapid establishmentof phenol plants and their successful operation. The phenolthat Edison produced was of higher quality than the phenol
obtained previously. The result was better sounding records! 22
The laboratory staff also found a way to produce
paraphenylene, which was also needed to make disc records. A
manufacturing process was devised for paraphenylene and a small
plant was constructed at the laboratory. ^Edison started anexperimental program to find a substitute for potash andeventually found that caustic soda would do the job. Many of
the chemicals needed in Edison's factories were by-products ofthe carbonization of coal to make coke, such as benzene,
phenol, toluene, and aniline. These were produced in chemicalplants that Edison constructed next to the furnaces of thedCambria Steel Company of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. 0 *As to be expected, Edison's engineers streamlined the
manufacture of chemicals and soon began to increase output. His
plants were soon making 6 tons of phenol a day to meet a dailyrequirement of 1 ton a day. Phenol had some strategic value as
it could be used to make explosives, and Edison was able toXII-14sell his surplus, and many other chemicals he made, at great
profit. The venture in chemical manufacture showed that theWest Orange laboratory could move quickly to exploit anopportunity to turn innovation into a paying business.
The entry of the United States into the World War in 1917
had an immediate impact on the Edison enterprise. The
photographs of the West Orange lab reflect the surge of
patriotism that swept America: buildings covered with patriotic
buntings, victory parades passing outside on Main Street, War
Bond drives in the great factories, and workers in uniform,
ready to go to war. (Illus. 12-1, #496) The work force
decreased rapidly as men joined up. Mambert's department
estimated that by 1917 the administration had lost 50% of its
O C

staff. 3 The lab's staff played their part in the war effort bydesigning a special phonograph, the Army and Navy model, for
the American troops on active duty. The recording studios in
New York and Columbia Street, West Orange, produced patriotic
records of marches and sentimental favorites for the"doughboys." The armed forces were quick to adopt the dictatingmachine and a special portable model was developed for use in
the field. Edison batteries were used in many different roles
during the war, from powering turrets on ships to providing the
weak current for the signal corps.
Edison was also swept up in the war effort. He was so
involved in the submarine location project that he had to forgo
his annual camping trip with Ford and Henry Firestone. Yet his

Lab Staff Ready for War

XII-15

war research was not all hard work. He wrote to Firestone thathe could not possibly evade the work for the government, but
enthusiastically described his experiments on " a big submarine
chaser" and invited Ford and Firestone to man a yacht and join
him in the Long Island Sound. 26
While Edison chased submarines in the waters of theSound, the Edison complex at West Orange also devoted itself tothe war effort. It had very little choice. The First World War
marked the increasing power of the U.S. Government in theeconomy. Federal authorities placed limits on phonographproduction and requisitioned key raw materials. The US
Government became the leading purchaser of goods and services
in the economy. The Phonograph Works manufactured several
military products under government contracts, including a bombsight, Gibbs rescue apparatus, Shear Wire pistols (to cut
through barbed wire) and several types of adapters. 27 The
resources of the laboratory were directed into supporting thiswar work. The government contracts called for precision
products demanding a level of competence in design andmanufacture, and only the laboratory could ensure this. The
government devised specifications and the Engineering
Department in the laboratory made up blueprints and drawings
for the Phonograph Works. Here was another opportunity tocontinue the work of standardizing production engineering. F.J.
Riker was appointed product engineer for the government workand given the power to approve all drawings, parts, and raw

XII-16

material orders. 28 Before the fire most planning for
manufacturing was done in the divisions. The lab took over thisfunction after the fire and planned out four successive
government jobs, introducing control sheets to keep track ofall stages of production.

oq

The laboratory's machine shops were also kept busy with
Edison's experimental work. Between the beginning of 1917 andthe end of 1919, almost $250,000 was spent on Edison's
experiments, the largest amount going to the submarine location
project.
The many government contracts accounted for most of thecapacity of the Works by 1918 and Mambert soon became anxiousthat the war work was holding up production of the more
profitable phonographs and dictating machines. Yet with the
reduced manpower of the lab and the delays inherent ininstituting a new organization and new methods, there was
O I

little possibility of speeding up production.

The work force

and resources of the West Orange complex were directed into thewar effort and the business of making phonographs and otherproducts had to wait.
Although the administrative staff was greatly reduced,
the management of TAE Inc. operated smoothly through the war.
The disruption of the divisional policy had dissipated by 1917;
the years of complaints and political infighting were over andthe lines of financial responsibility had been established.
In the long absences of the "old man," Charles Edison governed

XII-17the various Edison interests. He had been an early advocate ofthe divisional system and the War gave him the opportunity to
put his ideas into practice and fine-tune the organization.
Charles Edison established a large personnel office and otherservice departments in TAE Inc. Charles was proud of hisachievements and his style of "modern" management. Alfred
Sloan, of General Motors, sent his men to study the West Orange
operation before carrying out his own divisional policy.
Sloan's reorganization of General Motors is taken as thepioneering divisional structure that laid the basis of modern
management of large business organizations. Sloan inherited asituation much like the position of the Edison enterprise in
1911s
We were short of cash. We had a confused productline. There was a lack of control and of any means ofcontrol in operations and finance, and a lack ofadequate information about anything.
He created a structure that managed to keep control ofthe direction of the organization without losing the advantagesof decentralization. The new GM organization was based on the
Edison example, with divisions centered around each product andcentral service departments, such as a research laboratory,
which was run by Charles Kettering. Charles Edison felt
complimented.^
The final tribute to Charles Edison's administration camefrom the "old man." On his return from Florida, where he had
been carrying out submarine detection experiments at the Key
West Naval Station, Edison told the press that he was "veryXII-18

pleased" with his son's work, adding "I have graduallydeveloped an organization which relieves me from the details of•
35 Edison was preparing to spend more of his time inbusiness."
Florida at his fully equipped laboratory in Fort Myers. With
all his businesses showing profits in the post war boom, thetime seemed right for the greatest inventor of his age to takea well-earned rest.

XII-19

THE WEST ORANGE LABORATORY IN THE 192OS

After the War Edison became increasingly isolated fromthe general work of the laboratory. When all the leading
managers of the company (including the chief engineer) came
together in a meeting of the Executive Committee in 1918,
nobody had any idea what the "old man" was doing on the top
floor of the laboratory. 36 Edison had completely withdrawn
from the running of the laboratory on a day-to-day basis. A
memo sent by Edison's secretary in 1919 informed company
executives that communications about laboratory operations
should be sent to J.P. Constable, manager of the laboratory,
and not to Edison. 37
John Constable had replaced Hutchison as chief engineer
in 1918 after the latter's activities as salesman for storage
batteries had caused much trouble within the organization.
Hutchison's personal concession to market the battery was arelic from the old days at the West Orange laboratory whentrusted "muckers" got the commercial rights to Edison's
inventions. Yet it was totally unsuited to the operations of amodern business. Hutchison's wheeling and dealing underminedthe efforts of the storage battery company and its network ofsales agents.38 Hutchison and Edison parted company and an era

XII-20came to an end at the laboratory.
Constable's position as chief engineer was supplemented
by a new title of division manager when the laboratory was madeinto a division. His assistant, A. Weinert, was superintendentof the lab's machine shops, giving Constable control over all
39
the activities of Building 5.
Constable was an engineer, nota professional manager, and he came under constant pressure
from Mambert to run the lab as a business rather than anengineering service. Mambert believed that the laboratory
should be supported by the income it earned and argued that itshould be operated "a little more on the business principle,"
especially when it came to giving priority to different types
of work.^® This was not a new idea for the financing of theWest Orange lab; it had been Edison's original intention thatthe lab should be self-supporting. But many things had changed
since 1887 and few people in TAE Inc. had ever suggested thatthe laboratory should pay its own way. Mambert wanted financial
results first and was not a supporter of long-term projects or
the many small jobs done for Edison's personal interest.
Running the lab on business principles implied giving highest
priority to the work with the greatest return.
Mambert assured Constable that the division manager was
responsible for the organization and management of the lab, butwhen Constable tried to exert his authority over Edison's
secretary, R.W. Kellow, he was promptly rebuffed. Mambert was
instructed to remind the chief engineer that he was hired toXII-21

run the engineering effort and not the business of the lab.
Kellow remained in charge of the business affairs of the lab,
including billing, scheduling, and accounting, and Constable
was ordered to give him full cooperation. Edison's comment that
"if he is a good engineer, he will be a poor biz man as a rule"
reveals something of his attitude to the engineers in hislaboratory ^After Edison relinquished his control over the

R&D effort there would never be an engineer or experimenter who
had the power to make business decisions in the laboratory; thenew divisional structure of TAE Inc. had divided the functionsof engineering and administration.
The major customer of the lab was the Phonograph Works.
The bulk of the work of the machine shops and engineering
services, especially the Engineering Department, was in supportof the manufacture of phonographs. The work of the Engineering
Department was totally devoted to the phonograph product and it
was distinguished from R&D in the accounting system. The
Engineering Department was charged with improving details indesign to effect more economical manufacture. The first duty ofthis department was to "record, systematize and issue
information to the manufacturing organization." ^This

information was needed for modern manufacturing methods using
interchangeable parts, and it was the responsibility of theEngineering Department to keep the drawings and specifications
up-to-date. The Engineering Notice had become the main productof the West Orange laboratory. It was the formal instrument toXII-22

make changes in a product and then record them. These notices
were listed by part and product number, and they were used toaugment the parts lists and sample boards held in in Building
5 . ^ Record keeping was now a major function of the West Orange
laboratory, the third floor of the lab housing lists of parts,
blueprints, and bills of materials used in manufacture.
The other important role played by Edison's laboratory
was as a central testing facility. The Testing Department of
the lab grew steadily after the War as its staff and functions
increased. It began as one man in the days before the fire,, but
in 1918 it consisted of a staff of ten people, each of whom
tested a specific product. It was then named the Engineering
Test Service Department. Its initial job was to carry out tests
on phonographs but it soon expanded its testing and inspection
services to cover all manufacturing activities at West Orange.
It held the sample boards that established the standard foreach product. The testing rooms on the third floor contained
special equipment that could check the accuracy of all themeters and measuring instruments used in the many Edison
factories. The head of this department, F.S. Povah, advertised
his services and invited all division managers to inspect thefacilties and send their testing work to the lab. ^The workof this department was vital to quality control. A sample ofits reports indicates that up to 50% of the phonographs anddictating machines it tested were defective.^
The R&D work in the lab was carried out by the productXII-23

engineers for the divisions. Their work was initiated by thedivision manager and controlled by the various committees on
which they sat. Their activities in the lab were closely
supervised by the chief engineer who had to render frequent
reports to the Board of Directors. In 1919 six productengineers were employed at the lab and each had an assistant.
The exception was Holland who had 4 helpers on his dictatingmachine experiments. Most of the six were permanently allocatedto one product; only one man was a free-lance engineer at thistime.

° They were known as the "experimental staff" althoughmuch of their work was routine engineering. In each productengineering group there was normally one experimental man andthe rest devoted themselves to production engineering.
By 1918 the division managers were able to exert a close
control over the direction and costs of development workthrough their manufacturing committee. This committee waschaired by the division manager and comprised of several
representatives of the manufacturing division (management,planning and production), and the product engineer. It is clearthat "R&D by committee" put all the important decisions into
the hands of division managers. ^ The managers were convincedthat the work of product engineering was vital to their successin the marketplace and soon began to argue for complete control
over their product engineers. A letter from the manager of thePrimary Battery Division to Carl Wilson, Vice- President of TAE
Inc., argued: "the foundation stone of our success is theXII-24

engineering division...it must be reorganized...The development(product) engineer must be placed under my jurisdiction and I
must govern his research and development activities and control
expenditures. He is working exclusively on articles whose sales
I control."The division managers wanted to direct the productengineer's work with financial rather than engineering
criteria. The changing structure of TAE Inc. forced the lab tojustify its existence and the money spent on research. It was
no longer the sole source of engineering and R&D for the Edisoncomplex and had to compete with other laboratories for testing
and chemical analysis business. The laboratory at Silver Lake
had begun with testing raw materials used in record and storage
battery manufacture. By 1918 the laboratory was also carryingout analysis for several other division^ research work on the
primary battery and Amberol records, and electrical testing.
Its manager hoped to take over some of the electrical testing
work done at West Orange.^ John Constable was forced into
selling the services of the West Orange lab to the divisions of
TAE Inc. In some ways this was a return to the "research for
hire" strategy of the 1880s. The customers of the laboratory
had changed. Instead of a broad range of high tech industries,
the customers were now the division managers of a large
integrated corporation.
The policy of giving financial responsibility to thedivision managers often made them reluctant supporters of R&D.

XII-25

For much of the work of the laboratory, billing (and in turnfinancing) did not present a problem. Testing, tool-making,pattern-making, drafting and other engineering support of the
manufacturing branch were clearly identified and accounted for.
It was the more general basic research that was harder tofinance. This involved high-risk research, perhaps to develop a
totally new product or to discover a completely new way ofmaking a product. It demanded a long-term commitment of funds
and resources, and in a tighter corporate structure in which
division managers had to watch their costs very closely, it was
sometimes hard to justify the expense of experimental work.
The central issue between the laboratory and the
manufacturing divisions was who was going to decide, and pay
for, experimental and development work. The divisions wanted toknow how much of their money was being spent, and on what. The
divisional policy required purchase orders for every service
performed by the laboratory and the years after 1915 weremarked by interdivisional squabbles over who should pay for the
lab's work. The divisions often claimed that they had been
billed for work done for other people.

cn(This kind ofcomplaint was not new to Edison; he had been answering charges
like this since he managed machine shops in Newark.) The
division manager had to keep his eye on the bottom line andtherefore resisted spending on R&D. On the other hand, thelaboratory had to charge even the smallest job to a purchaseorder— and somebody had to pay it.

XII-26

A case in point was the inspection of reproducers used inwear tests by the disc division. This was a crucial part ofquality control for records and only the lab could ensure thatthe right standard was maintained. It also provided useful dataon the wear of diamond points. Yet the division resisted
issuing a purchase order and Constable had to appeal for aruling from the central administration.

Another sore point

was the purchase of equipment used in the laboratory forexperimental purposes. When this was billed to the relevant
division it normally led to a heated dispute over who shouldpay. It was finally decided that the lab could not order orbuild specialized equipment without the knowledge and consent
of the division affected. ^The divisional policy led to the introduction of modern
management and accounting practices and this forever changed
the nature of research at West Orange. In question was therelationship between expenditures on R&D work and the benefits
that accrued to the manufacturing divisions. According todivision managers, the benefits were frequently out of
proportion to the costs. This new corporate environment made itvery difficult to finance long term R&D projects. For example,
Nelson Durand had long been agitating for a new design for abusiness machine that could compete with the cheap models
produced by the competition. The development of a new productinvolved an extensive research and development project that
Durand was reluctant to support, instead he argued that thisXII-27

campaign should be made an "Edison family affair," supported
from the treasury of TAE Inc., and not from the budget of the
Dictating Machine Division. 53
The implementation of financial controls after 1911
created a division between the short-term engineering services
and the long-term experimental and development work carried out
by the lab. In the years that followed Edison took over thebasic research that did not have an immediate payoff. In 1919
he reviewed the activities of the lab and concluded that it was"mostly routine work," adding that he would personally attend
to the development work with his present staff ofexperimenters. John Constable stated in 1919 that "the only
experimental work I know of now is carried out under the directsupervision of Mr. Edison." 54 This split of the R&D effort
mirrored the situation in other companies organized aroundseveral manufacturing divisions. In GM the basic engineering
work was carried out in each divisions, while Kettering and his
team worked on entirely new technology in a separate
laboratory. 55
Before the divisional policy, the support of basic
research and development had not created problems. Edison was,in fact, spending his own money and the lack of adequate
financial controls had enabled him to experiment without
counting the cost. Edison still kept his personal finances
separate from the corporate finances of TAE Inc. The chemicalplants, for example, were not part of TAE Inc. but were

XII-28

operated and owned by Edison personally. Much of the financingof the West Orange laboratory at this time was coming from
Edison's purse. He funnelled several sources of income into thefinances of the lab, including salaries from his various
companies, royalties from his inventions, and private research
projects. One of the most important of the latter was the work
done for the Ford Motor Company. Henry Ford advanced Edisonlarge sums of money for experimental work and this became an
important part of his personal finances.
Edison was in an excellent position to look into the
future and decide on the development paths of his businesses.
Unfortunately, the division managers had to concentrate on the
short-term, and in the difficult financial conditions after the
War they often refused to pay for Edison's experiments. The
lack of divisional support for Edison's experiments meant that
more and more research was supported by him personally. Thisapplied not only to personal projects, such as the work for
Ford, but other long-term R&D ventures, especially the research
into recording and reproduction which offered great potential
for the future of the phonograph business. Consequently, thedevelopment of new primary batteries and dictating machines was
supported by the financial reserves of the laboratory.
The increased financial stringency brought on by the highprice of capital in the early 1920s, accelerated by a postwar
depression, led to important changes both in the structure andthe financing of the lab. A bureacratic arrangement had to beXII-29

found to replace Edison's informal financing of R&D. Changing
economic conditions meant that the Edison organization had "toget the most out of every dollar we spend", especially inexperimental work. 56 The most pressing consideration was todevelop the system of financing the laboratory that would
support long-term experimental work and at the same time impose
financial discipline on experimental expenditures.
A scheme to rationalize the laboratory was therefore
undertaken in 1920. Henceforth all major experimental projects
needed the approval of the Board of Directors who appropriatedthe funds. The direction of the research effort was now in thehands of men like Stephen Mambert, Carl Wilson, and Charles
Edison. The new system introduced in the 1920s gave a much moreformal and closed structure to laboratory finance. One
standardized shop order system was used by which the managersof the lab could bill work ranging from experimenting, researchand supervison to the more easily billed activities of tool­
making, drafting, and blueprinting.

XII-30

THE CHANGING STATUS OF THE LAB

The lab's work become more mundane and orderly in the
1920s. Instead of the chaos of the 1880s, there was routine andorder. No more would gentlemen travel to West Orange, drawn on
by the fame of Edison's laboratory, and carry out their own
experiments with the inventor's permission. Even the work of
the professional engineers in the laboratory was so closely
controlled that they could not carry out research on their own
volition. The product engineers had to obtain purchase orders
for any experimental work, and this required the approval ofthe management. The lab no longer employed "experimenters" andmuckers but experienced engineers who came to the lab from. or business.
.
57 This policy was a contrast to
academia
employment of inexperienced, but flexible, help thatcharacterized hiring practices in the nineteenth century. The
policy of employing specialists at West Orange paralleled thenational tendency toward professionalization of work. By 1920
the lab employed 17 categories of workers paid on an hourly
basis and over 30 on a weekly basis. Included in the latterCO
were librarians, stenographers, and engineers.
In the old machine shop culture at West Orange theengineer was a law to himself and the laboratory was theguiding force of the Edison enterprise. Now the engineer was a

XII-31

corporate employee in a service organization. Instead of the"old man," he had to answer to administrators and division
managers who let him know that the old "aloof andscientifically impersonal viewpoint" was inappropriate for amodern business organization.

The laboratory had onceenjoyed the highest status in the organization, its work asource of pride and confidence. In the twentieth century it wasforced to justify its existence, and overcome the prevailing
attitude within TAE Inc. that it was an expensive luxury. A
measure of the status of the lab in 1920 is revealed in thefollowing comments made by Edison's secretary: "the laboratory
has been quite popularly conceived to be a place where sundry
mysterious experiments are carried on by Mr. Edison and charged
to other Edison functions arbitrarily without any corresponding
advantage to them."
In physical terms, the changing status of the laboratory
can be seen in the transition from a free standing structure of1887 to a small part of a great industrial complex in 1920.
Illustration 12-2 is an aerial view of West Orange. The
laboratory is dwarfed by many factory buildings, its brickconstruction a contrast to the modern cement-clad buildings
around it. The life of West Orange had been dramaticallychanged by the growth of Edison's plant. Once a rural retreat
for affluent New Yorkers, it was now an industrial suburb of
Newark. The labor force included many immigrants— Italians,
Greeks, Poles, Ukrainians— who spilled into the Oranges from

Illustration

12-2

West Orange Complex in 1920s

XII-32

Newark and New York. Its numbers had grown from a few hundred
men in the nineteenth century to thousands in the twentieth. In
1900 there were about 3,000 men, and by the time of the World
War there were about 8,000. Around the factories, a rough andready community had sprung up, with bars and boarding houses.
Weekend nights were punctuated by the drunken rowdiness of theworkers.
The focus of the West Orange complex and the lab hadturned to "steady output of manufactured articles" and Edisonclaimed "I have no dept in which men are employed to perfectinventions." Instead, trained engineers examined theperformance and cost of the hair in the brushes sold withphonographs. 62 Long gone were the days of experiments intopyro-magnetic generators and flying machines. The equipment of
the West Orange laboratory had once been the envy of other the
research institutions, but it was the other way around. Whileindustrial research laboratories of GE and AT&T spent freely on
new scientific equipment, Constable had to continually petition
the management for new machines. He tried to persuade Edison tobuy more modern machinery for the machine shops, arguing thatthe lab should be "the last word in high class machine shops."
His appeals fell on deaf ears. Edison told him to repair theold machines and prohibited the purchase of new ones. As aresult of Edison's parsimony, visitors to the Edison National
Historic Site can view the same machine tools first installedin the lab in 1887. 63

1

SIDEBARTHE END OF EDISON'S MOTION PICTURE BUSINESSThe dissolution of the Motion Picture Patents Company in1913 led to a more crowded and competitive movie industry. The
trust (as the MPPC was called) and its short program films had
had their day, and now it was the turn of the longer movie that
told a compelling story. As America took the movies to heart,
America's favorites became stars. Edison pictures had their own
stars who were taken from the Broadway stage, such as Mary
Fuller. She was a big hit with her "What Happened to Mary"adventures which were the first serial pictures.'*’ Yet Mary left
to get more money in the large film production companies who
were paying higher wages to film actors and actresses. Viola
Dana, the next big Edison star, could not match the poularityof Mary Pickford nor could any Edison comedy compete with the
Chaplin shorts which were sweeping all before them. The Edisoncompany was against the star system not so much because it cost
too much money but rather that the organization put a higher
value on technical excellence.
Longer movies with big name stars rapidly forced up
costs. In 1909 it might cost about $200 to make a one reelfeature, with the more expensive multi-reelers reaching $2,000
per film. In 1912 TAE Inc was making over 150 short films perannum. The average cost of Edison movies had moved to the2$20,000s by 1916, and much fewer were made each year.

9

Film

making was becoming more of a gamble, costs were going up
alarmingly but the returns of a successful movie wereastronomical; one block buster could justify the enormous
expense of film making with established stars. Some of thelarger exhibitors had joined together and moved into film
production with massive financial resources. TAE Inc. did nothave the money to play this high stakes game— all its capital
was in disc phonographs and storage batteries— instead it
concentrated on shorter films with uplifting themes. Its"Conquest" series of pictures were advertised as "clean andwholesome" fare that would entertain and educate, but notprovide the titilation and violence that sold seats in movie
houses.^
While its marketing experts claimed that the public weretiring of longer films, the Motion Picture Division of TAE Inc.
watched its sales slump. The "Conquest" films were an expensive
failure and only a few melodramas— such as "The Cossack
4Whip"— caught the public's fancy. Many of the original membersof the MPPC had gone bankrupt and the survivors struggled on as
KESE, Kleine, Selig, Essanay, and Edison. The world war strucka sharp blow to Edison who leaned heavily on foreign
distribution. It also added to the costs of making pictures andshowing them. The distributors were taxed after the US entered
the war and this dampened down optimism in the industry.
The first Edison motion picture product to go was the

3film projector. Rising competition and falling prices forced
Edison out of the market by the end of 1916. During 1917 themanagement of TAE Inc. pondered the question of abandoning thebusiness or putting more resources into it. The war provided
the answer. On one hand was the threat of more regulation andtaxation and on the other were the bright prospects ofprocuring government contracts. In the first months of 1918 theentire motion picture business was sold to the Lincold & Parker
5
Film Company. The last sets were struck in October. In themeantime the motion picture equipment had been moved out of theWorks and government contracts were underway. Manufacturing
anonymous equipment was far less glamourous than making movies,
but it was a predictable and highly profitable business. It wasironic that the man who had done so much to create a motion
picture industry in the nineteenth century could not stand thecompetition in the modern industry of the twentieth.

NOTES
1) Ramsaye, Million and One Nights, p. 655.
2) Film lists of 1909 and 1912, Plimpton to Dyer 24 April 1912,
Memo to Lanahan, Dyer Corres. 2 Sept 1916.
3) Advertising Circular in 1917 Motion Picture.
4) Memo of 13 June 1917, 1917 Motion Picture, closing down.
5) Charles Wilson to Charles Edison, 23 & 25 March 1918, 1918
Motion Picture.

ENDNOTES FOR CHAPTER TWELVE.
1) Conot, Streak of Luck, p. 414.
2) Newspaper Interview, 18 Nov 1895, Torpedo
3) Win Maxwell to E.T. Grundlach, 2? Nov 1915, TAE Inc.
4) In 1903 Admiral Melville pointed out the advancee ofGermany's fleet and the connection with industrial research.
His arguments were summarized by Willis Whitney on 20 Dec 1915,
and a copy given to Edison, NCB Box 1.
5) J. Daniels to TAE, 7 July 1915, Naval Consulting Board (NCB)
records, Box 16) 75) TAE to Rollin Kirby, 10 May 1917, LB 170426, p. 90.
7) Lloyd N. Scott, Naval Consulting Board of the United States(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1920), p. 111.
8) TAE to Tillman, 1916, NCB box 4.
9) TAE to J. Daniels, 4 Mar 1918, NCB Box 22.
10) TAE to C Harwood, 6 April 1917, LB 170122, p. 571.
11) The New York Sun. 7 Feb 1916, pointed out thiscontradiction in Edison's naval service, and blamed him for
installing a dangerous technology on the submarine
12) Hutchison Diaries, 31 Dec 1916, noting "We were in no way
to blame but the odium has gone all over and has hurt ourbusiness some.”13) Meadowcroft to N Pratt, 11 June 1917, LB 170426, p. 226.
14) J Daniels to TAE, 7 July 1915, NCB Box 1
15) List of experimetal work, NCB box 22, Experiments
finances.
16) Vanderbilt, Edison the Chemist, p. 264.
17) Edison Work during the war, Mcft D box bio.
18) Wise, Willis Whitney, pp. 187-191.
19) Edison went to Washington with three assistants to make thestatistical survey, "Strategic Plans for Saving Cargo BoatsX I 1-34

from Subarin.es,” NCB Box 21 TAE* s War Work.
20) TAE to Robins, 13 Oct 1916, NCB Box 5.
21) Hutchison’s diary notes Edison's growing concern withshortages of chemicals; H. T. Leeming to dept heads, 18 Aug 1918
tells of shortages causing layoffs, 1914 Ed Manu Co22) Meadowcroft to C. Aston, 19 Feb 1917, LB 170122, p. 182;
Vanderbilt, Edison the Chemist, pp. 248-251.
23) Meadowcroft, Edison’s work during the war, D Boxes, Bio
Files.
24) Newspaper cuttings, 1915 Benzol; Meadowcroft to Emery, 31
Oct 1916.
25) Allen to Mambert, Three Years Report, 3 April 1919, TAE inc
financial.
26) TAE to Henry Ford, 18 Aug 1917, D box bio.
27) H.H. Eckert to Mambert, 18 July 1919, WWI experimental
work.
28) J Constable to Luhr, 28 Dec 1917, 1918 TAE Inc
organization.
29) J Constable to W. Maxwell, 27 Oct 1919, Phono E Phono Wks;J Constable to TAE, Outline of Lab’s activities, 25 Nov 1919,
Eng Dept files.
30) Cost sheets, NCB Box 2131) Mambert Verbatim minutes, # 104, Executive Committee
meeting, 16 May 1918.
32) Three Year Report.
33) Alfred P. Sloan, My Years with General Motors (New York:
Doubeday, 1964), p. 42.
34) Venable, Out of the Shadow, pp. 78-79.
35) Edison Herald, vol. 3 #2, 25 Feb 1919.
36) Minutes of executive commitee, 23 May 1918, verbatim
minutes, #102 vault 33.
37) 1920 Doc. file, TAE Inc Organization.
38) Memo to TAE, 29 April 1918, D box ”D”.

39) Notice of 11 April 1918, TAE Inc organization.
40) Verbatim minutes of 23 May 1918, #102
41) Undated copy in Engineering Dept, files probably Dec 1919.
42) JP Constable to V.Maxwell, 27 Oct 1919, Phonoe, BPWks.
43) JP Constable to Lukr, 19 Oct 1917, Eng Dept files
44) F.S. Povah to all Division Managers, 2 April 1919, TAE Inc
Engineering test Service dept.
45) Povah to Constable, Monthly Record of Reports, 1918 W. 0.
Lab Experimental work.
46) Functions of the lab, 24 Oct 1919, TAE Inc organization.
47) J.W. Robinson to S Mambert, 2 Dec 1918, TAE Inc Financial.
48) Lepreau to C.Wilson, Primary Battery Division Blue Book,
memo of 28 June 1918.
49) V.T. Stewart to JP Constable, 15 Feb 1918, WO Lab
experimental work.
50) G.T. Owen to W Maxwell, 3 July 1918, Phono manu EPWks.
51) JPC to Kellow, 8 Nov 1917, Eng Dept files.
52) J.W. Robinson to SM, 2 Dec 1918, TAE Inc Financial.
53) N Durand to CE, 4 Sept 1918, Phono Ediphone.
54) Comments quoted in JPC to CE 26 Nov 1919, Eng Dept files;
JPC memo, 31 July 1919, TAE Inc organization.
55) Sloan, Years with GM, p. 82; Stuart Leslie, Boss Kettering(New York: Columbia Univ Press, 1983), chap 5.
56) Mambert memo, 1920 Doc. file, TAE Inc. Organization,
financial statement.
57) Meadowcroft to Applegate, 23 Mar 1917, LB 170122, p. 471
58) G. M. Ryder to FR Shell, 2 Dec 1920, TAE Inc payroll.
59) Maxwell to JPC, 2 February 1920, Constable file Eng Deptfiles.
60) Kellow memo 1920 Doc. File, WO Lab Financial.

XII61) F Dyer to A Jaynes, 16 Mar 1911, TAE Inc.
62) TAE to J Franklin, 12 Dec 1916, LB 161107, p. 331; C.
Huenlich to EF Durand, 3 May 1920, Eng Dept, subject folders.
63) JPC to C Edison, 15 Aug 1918, WO Lab.

XIII- 1

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE PHONOGRAPH.

The war years had brought increased sales and profits tothe Edison enterprise. Table 13-1 shows the wartime prosperity
and the boom that came immediately after the cessation of
hostilities. During the war, Americans had been unable to buy
phonographs, and many other consumer durables, because thefactories were devoted to war production. Demand soared after
the war when American industry returned to peace time
production. The steady flow of government contracts hadprovided jobs for an increasing number of workers at West
Orange, and the booming phonograph business kept them there.
The labor force had grown to around 4000 in the first decade of
the twentieth century. There was a rapid increase in size
during the War, with total number of employees around 10,000 by
war's end. The increased demand and output of the war effort
had caused a period of sharp inflation. The Phonograph Works
had correspondingly increased its prices to the Amusement andBusiness Phonograph Divisions. This was not a matter of great
concern when profits were high and demand increasing. There
seemed to be an upward trend in phonograph sales. The industry
as a whole had increased its output considerably. The decade of
1899-1909 saw a 250% increase over the previous decade, whileTABLE 13-1
SALES AND PROFITS OF TAE INC(in thousands of dollars)

Sales Year

Sales

Profits

1916

13201

936

1917

18002

1663

1918

20629

1166

1919

22992

291

1920

30252

2930

1921

34371

820

1922

13833

1311 lo:XIII- 2

that of 1909-1919 recorded an increase of 520% ^The boom year of 1920 came to an unhappy end for the
Edison enterprise as the economy suffered a sharp downturn. Theinternational economy had been shattered during the World War
and the United States now stood as the leader of a weakened
world economy, and vulnerable to its ups and downs. In early
1920 the danger signs were apparent: a collapse in the currency
markets, rising interest rates, and some steep declines inshare prices.

The US government embarked on a policy of sharp

deflation, and cut its budget by about $6 billion. The money
supply decreased alarmingly. At the end of 1920 the West Orange
complex reeled under the shock of a drastic decrease in salesof phonographs. Many other manufacturers suffered the same,fate, and had to watch the rapid collapse of their markets.

3

Edison returned to the helm as his enterprise lurched
towards a major crisis. He had given control to his son
Charles, but the latter was brushed aside as Edison seniorbegan a campaign of reducing costs by cutting staff. Edison's
enormous energy was applied to resolving the crisis. He notedthat "these hard times keep me busy day and night, and I haven 4

to work about 18 hours a day to keep the ship afloat.

The

shock of the post-war depression intensified the cost reduction
program that had Edison had tried to execute earlier. He
returned to West Orange at war's end convinced that a
deflationary financial policy was imminent, and orderedcutbacks in his organization to face the uncertain future.

E

XIII- 3

Little had been done to reduce the payroll and in 1921 drastic
steps were taken. Every division was ordered to cut back its
men, including the West Orange laboratory. Edison told Mambertthat this kind of directive was never carried out and he went
on a rampage through the Works, firing men right and left,
C

including John Constable, chief engineer of the lab.
Edison's already low view of labor deteriorated throughthe period of inflation and labor strife during the War. He had
no sympathy for the working man who wanted his wages to keep
pace with inflation. He told Mambert in 1919: "Wages arecertainly up with more loafing than ever...Only remedy is
automatic machinery and less men." After Edison's great purges
nof 1920/21, it was estimated that less than 2000 remained.
Charles Edison recalled the pain he felt at the decimation ofO
the management organization he had assembled and perfected.
Mambert survived the crisis of 1921 but could not maintain his
powerful position much longer. In 1924 Edison personally
removed him from office. The man who had done much to modernize
the administration was scorned by Edison who vindictively
asserted that Mambert, once a vice president of TAE Inc., wasonly good enough to be a $60 a week clerk.

Q

An economy program was administered to those who remainedin the West Orange labor force. Administrative positions wereabolished or merged into others and the work of departments
amalgamated. The services of the laboratory were morevigorously marketed and the machine shops did more routine work

XIII- 4

for the divisions to avoid the cost of sending it to outside
c o n t r a c t o r s . T h e Engineering Department concentrated onlowering the price of existing models, but the attention given
to this particular problem was too little and too late. The
Edison phonograph organization was ill-equipped to survive inthe highly competitive post-war market. Experienced managers
such as Nelson Durand, division manager of the dictatingmachine operation, had anticipated a drastic decreases inprices as competition heated up after the war. Despite the many
warnings, the engineering effort at West Orange had not been
directed into a special low-priced phonograph to use if a pricewar erupted.
Edison's original plan for the disc phonograph was toproduce a machine priced for each pocket. Chapter 9 showed thatengineering problems forced him to pitch the diamond discmachine to the upper end of the market. A continuing stream of
improvements slowly increased the price of Edison phonographsand dictating machines. The same problem affected his otherproducts. The cylinder business was reported to be in a
"critical condition" as early as December 1918 because theprice of the Amberola was too high.^ The primary battery wasslipping from its dominant position in the market because of
its high price. The division manager admitted that he had been
unable to reduce manufacturing costs to keep up with thecompetition. The Edison product was losing ground because of"our inability to maintain our old position...of furnishing

XIII- 5practically the best cell for equal or less money than the bulkof our competitors."
The Edison industries, especially the phonographdivisions, were shocked by the severity of the competition
after the 1920 depression. The recession of 1920/1921 hit thesales of medium and expensive models because the public now
wanted low prices and better value. ^Just at the time when

the selling divisions needed to reduce prices, they were werebeing forced up by the costs of manufacture. After the War thephonograph market shifted from the high priced Victrolas to thevery cheap disc machines. Again Victor had beaten TAE Inc. tothe largest segment of the market, in this case the low-priced
machines. The laboratory and Works struggled to make thistransition while the sales force rethought its marketingstrategies. Salesmen had always stressed the quality of the
Edison phonograph and had been instructed to sell it as "thesuperior instrument...because of its superior musical merit."
This line was now outdated because from 1920 onwards TAE Inc.
had to look for sales in the mass market.^ In belated response
to market conditions, TAE Inc. introduced a new line of discmachines in 1922. The London series were the first to include
an upright model selling at $100, yet this was still over theideal price range of $75-80 needed to compete with Victor andColumbia, whose prices were dropping. The Edison machines werestill not cheap enough to sell in a sluggish market. Many of
Edison's customers lived in rural areas and their GreatXIII- 6

Depression began early in the 1920s.
Table 10-1 shows the steady downward trend of phonographsales, which no amount of cost reductions in the Works, or
improvements in the lab, could halt. A world-wide recession
after the disruption of the World War quickly turned into a
depression at West Orange as the phonograph business, the main
profit maker of TAE Inc., went into a slide, "a terrible slide
into the valley of depression," from which it never recovered.
After years of declining sales and tremendous losses, TAE
Inc. finally threw in the towel. In October 1929 manufacture ofphonographs and records ceased. All recording was stopped. The
Great Depression had truly begun at West Orange.
Although the diamond disc had eventually been turned into
a commercial success after the First World War, the Edison
phonograph business as a whole was weak. Sales of the Edison
cylinder machine, the Amberola, were declining because the
Edison dealers took the introduction of the disc as a signalthat TAE Inc. would soon desert the cylinder. This was nottrue, for Edison had a policy not to leave his customers withobsolete technology and had no intention of abandoning thecylinder format. In fact the lab had continued research anddevelopment into Blue Amberol records, and several patents wereawarded to Edison and his co-workers on cylinder records andmachines. The steady improvement of cylinder technology madelittle impression on a declining trade. The depression of
1920/1921 finished off Edison's cylinder business for good. The

XIII- 7

Amberola was the last of the cylinder machines and it wascontemptuously regarded as obsolete by the competition. Despite
tumbling sales, TAE Inc. stayed true to the "old man's"
philosophy and supported the cylinder users to the very end,
incurring heavy loses throughout the 1920s.
Yet the greatest problem of the Edison phonographbusiness was in the records rather than the machines; theselections on Edison discs were not as appealing as those of
the competition. This weakness had been identified by William
Maxwell, who led the musical phonograph division. Maxwell was aprofessional salesman who had made a living as a businessconsultant before joining TAE Inc. Well before the War, he hadargued that most effort should be put into the choice ofrecordings, rather than in the design of the machine, but
unfortunately the management of TAE Inc. paid little attention
to him. It was Maxwell who saw the future of the industry inthe quality of the recorded music and not the quality of therecording. Edison concentrated on the latter and his meddlingin the former was ultimately disastrous for the amusement
phonograph. Maxwell predicted that "our commercial success will
hinge upon our production of recorded music," but this was theweakest part of the Edison organization which shunned thefamous names and musical "fads" to concentrate on the truest
reproduction. The phonograph was no longer a novelty depending
on a brand new technology, but an article of mass consumption.
Maxwell as a salesman could see the writing on the

XIII- 8

wall well before Edison. Maxwell realized that manufacturers
had to pander to changing musical tastes. Edison preferred toeducate the user into the joys of "good music" (as defined by
Edison) as he had educated customers before in other new
technologies he introduced. While Edison experimented on thedesign of reproducers. Maxwell was thinking about thepsychological and philosophical problems involved in cateringto the public's musical tastes. He accurately predicted that"the company who correctly solves these problems will dominate
the trade." ^Victor's domination of the disc market rested not only on
an excellent machine but also on a successful marketingstrategy. Their premium recordings brought the company brandrecognition, and although not every record buyer wanted to heara classical record, they did buy Victor recordings of more
popular singers, such as Michael McCormack, and jazz records.
Victor, Brunswick, and Columbia gradually cornered the market
on records and the big three had the additional advantage that
their machines could play each other's laterally-cut
recordings. On the other hand, the Edison company maintained
its position of splendid isolation with its hill-and-dale
records which were unique in the industry. Edison records had
to be twice the thickness of the competition's discs in orderto take the vertical cut. The need for an absolutely flat
surface to take the vertically-cut groove meant that the Edison
records were larger and heavier. This did not bother Edison,

XIII- 9

whose prime concern was fidelity, but his customers were moreconcerned with ease of handling and storage.

The decision tokeep a unique format for the Edison records was a serious
disadvantage in the 1920s. When the Edison machines had
dominated the market there was a reason to make them play only
Edison records, but when the majority of recorded music wasavailable in lateral cut format Edison customers had to buy
attachments to play Victor or Columbia records. The rigid
adherence to an outdated standard cost the Edison company manycustomers, yet it perfectly suited the disposition of its
founder— Edison was loath to change with the times. The 1920s
were years of great social change in the United States and thejazz craze was just one indication of new American tastes. The
Edison company did not exploit the popularity of jazz because
the chief executive hated the sound and was most interested inrecording more cultivated music. Edison's great ambition was
the accurate reproduction of classical and operatic music,
although his own taste was more mundane; his favorite song was"I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen," and he claimed that thiswas also the most popular Edison recording. ^Americans were

becoming more eclectic in their choice of music. The word fromthe customer was "the Edison is a good machine, but has a very
limited selection of records."
The record buying public was becoming younger, and theywanted to dance to their phonograph and not listen intently toits lucid sound, as depicted in the Edison advertising. Even

XIII-10

the vaunted Edison phonograph technology was out of step withthe market; it was designed for accurate reproduction rather
than loudness and the finely crafted reproducer tended to"blast" the sound at high volume. Edison's goal for thephonograph was the most realistic recreation of the sound of
the soloist and accompaniment. He had labored for years to
produce the the right combination of reproducer technology,
record quality, and recording technique. As soon as he returned
to West Orange after the war, he resumed the work of reducing
the surface noise of the diamond disc. He directed the staff ofthe recording studios built in the West Orange complex, a few
blocks from the laboratory. The Columbia Street studios
produced both disc and cylinder masters. Edison and therecording staff carried out research to advance the science of
acoustics and apply it to the phonograph. Their success can bemeasured in the Tone Tests in which thousands of listeners wereunable to distinguish between the live performance and therecreation of the Edison Diamond Disc Phonograph. (SEE SIDEBAR,The Tone Tests.) Edison and his laboratory had advanced thescience of acoustical recording almost to the point ofperfection, especially in reproducing the brilliance of theupper registers of the human voice. Yet Edison's market
research showed that the customer wanted loudness first and agood tone second. Edison's quest for the perfect sound was notin tune with a changing market place; the development work doneat the laboratory was driven by the inventor's own

XIII-11

technological perfectionism rather than his customer's musicalneeds.

1

SIDEBARTHE TONE TESTSThe Tone Tests were part of the extensive promotion of
the Edison diamond disc machine. During the 1920s advertisingexpenditure for amusement phonographs increased rapidly. The
competition, especially Victor, were heavily involved innational advertising campaigns in newspapers and the new
popular magazines. TAE Inc. had to follow suit, even though the"old man" was discouraged at the cost of national advertising.
Edison took a personal interest in phonograph advertising,planning special promotions and exhibits. "I have strong ideas
regarding advertising" he told a subordinate in 1913 and during
the 1920s he became heavily involved in marketing schemes.^" His
ideas naturally leaned more towards technical demonstrations of
the merits of diamond disc recreation.
The idea of the Tone Test was to show the customer thatthe phonograph reproduction was so lifelike that it was
impossible to distinguish it from the actual performance. This
was a precursor to the "Is it live or is it Memorex" type ofadvertising line of today. The Edison diamond disc machine wasdesigned to achieve just this effect and did so very
successfully. Thousands of people went to concert halls to hear
the Tone Tests and were amazed that the talking machine didsound just like the singer. There was certainly more than a2little stage craft involved in convincing the audience that themachine could perfectly mimic the human voice, yet Edison did
prove his point that the diamond disc was the ultimate in sound.
2
reproduction.
The Tone Tests were one of many promotions to sell themachine on its superior sound. TAE Inc. devised various
comparison tests and free trials of Edison disc machines.
Edison devoted more time to marketing in the 1920s— after hehad solved the technical problems. In 1922 he was busy working
3out new ideas for demonstrations and sales promotions. Free
trials of the new disc machines were offered to prospective
customers in the belief that one listen to the sound would makethe sale. Unfortunately, perfect recreation failed to impress
the many customers who were looking for the largest record
library. Here is another example of Edison's reliance ontechnical features to the detriment of the commercial realitiesof the phonograph business.

NOTES1) TAE annotation on Amusement Phonograph Committee minutes, 17
Jan 1913.
2) Frow, Edison Diamond Discs, pp.236-242.
3) Meadowcroft to Mallory, 11 May 1922, D box, bio M.

XIII-12

THE CHALLENGE OF RADIO.

The introduction of radio produced drastic changes inmusical tastes and signalled the end of the phonograph's
dominant place in home entertainment. It was partly responsible
for the end of Edison's phonograph business and the decline of
the whole industry. After the boom years up to 1920, the output
of phonographs declined. The gains of the 1909-1919 period (a520% increase) were followed by a 45% decline from 1919-1929.
^

The phonograph industry became a highly competitive business,fighting off the technological challenge of an invention as
revolutionary as Edison's electric light. The 1920s provided a
stiff test of the innovative powers of the phonographmanufacturers. The decline and fall of the Edison phonograph isa testament to the failure of innovation at West Orange.
The West Orange lab had been the starting point of theradio story but "the father of electronics" had not exploited
his early work on the "Edison Effect." When a glowing history
of Lee DeForest's work on radio arrived at the West Orange
laboratory, Meadowcroft told Edison that the radio was "anotherone of your stunts gotten away from you." 22 That this should
happen at all is evidence that Edison's powers of rapid
exploitation of a new technology had diminished. But when it
occurred more than once in the post-war period there are

XIII-13

grounds to suspect a general ossification of the innovative
structure at West Orange.
The use of the "Edison Effect" bulb as a rectifier ofalternating current had followed the initial discovery of 1883and several tubes demonstrating this function had been
distributed to scientists. A British scientist, Ambrose
Fleming, used an "Edison Effect" bulb as the basis of his"valve" (or diode) which could detect high frequency waves usedin wireless telegraphy. Several inventors and scientists wereactive in this area, including Reginald Fessenden. Edison
followed the development of wireless technology but did not
become involved in either the commercial or technical side of
the innovation. He believed that someday there would be
wireless communication, but thought (at the end of thenineteenth century) that it would be well in the future.^3
The critical innovation was the work of theinventor-entrepreneur Lee De Forest, who added a third element
to the Edison-Fleming rectifier tube, and connected it to an
external supply of electricity. His "audion" (or triode) could
be used not only to detect radio waves, but also as an
oscillator to generate them. Fessenden had also developed an
oscillator to transmit high-frequency waves. This work was
carried out with the cooperation of GE's research lab who built
the oscillator. In 1906 Fessenden successfully transmitted
music with this equipment, and in the same year De Forest set
up a commercial system of radio telephony.

XIII-14

The Bell system could not ignore this threat andredoubled the efforts of their industrial laboratories into
electronic technology. A special research branch of WesternElectric's Engineering Department was established to examine
the possibility of an electronic amplifier for long distance
telephone circuits. When De Forest and other experimentersfound that the triode could act as an amplifier AT&T acted
quickly to acquire the audion patents. This became the basis of
their involvement in radio and their dominance of long distance
telephony.2^ GE's involvement in incandescent light bulbs hadbrought its research organization into the field ofelectronics. The lab designed improved diodes and GE
manufactured these vacuum tubes during the war for wirelesstelegraphy. In 1919 GE and AT&T pooled their patents and formed
the Radio Company of America to hold them. Both companies
prepared themselves to manufacture radio equipment in the
1920s. 25
The basic elements of radio had been assembled by thetime of the World War: oscillators to generate waves,electronic detectors to pick them up, and the triode to amplify
them. The first commercial radio station began transmission inlate 1919. By 1921 there were over 250,000 sets in the US andsales increased to 400,000 sets in 1922.2® The first radios
were primitive crystal sets, but these were soon replaced byradios with several vacuum tubes and loud speakers. The Edison
laboratory had done little work on radio waves since the 1880s,

XIII- 15

because the "old man" was reluctant to enter a business where
the patent situation was complex. Edison did not see his way
clear to develop a product without considerable conflict withother inventors. He was afraid that moving into the radio wouldbe "going against the boys on wireless." ^Radio soon began to cut into the sales of pianos, sheetmusic, and phonographs, but Edison labeled it a passing craze
and would have nothing to do with it. He told Charles to stayaway from the "radio gang of crooks" and predicted the imminent
demise of the chaotic industry, where many small companies hadentered and were struggling for survival. 9f°t Radio promised tobe the great new consumer technology of the twentieth century,and many inventor-entreprenuers were attracted to it. Miller
Reese Hutchison was typical of the men who thought that a
fortune could be made in radio. His small company was also
typical of the many drop-outs in the industry. Edison's
stubborn opposition to radio was not unusual in the phonographindustry for all the leading companies opposed radio and would
not let their stars perform on the air. His opposition to radio
was based on both commercial and technical considerations, inthe same way that he opposed alternating current for its
economic and technological drawbacks. Edison doubted thatradio had a commercial future; he was unable to see its great
market potential and hear its sound. Edison judged theradio as a musical instrument and not as the great
communicator, and was convinced that the speaker on the firstXIII-16

radio sets badly distorted the sound. He felt that radio could
never be more than a novelty, forgetting the enormous novelty
appeal of his own phonograph which kept it going in the very
early years of technical problems.

Just as people were

impressed that sound could be reproduced in the 1880s,
Americans in the 1920s bought radios because of the wonder ofwireless. There was a great appeal in listening to a live
performance on the air and the show was free! Edison had
trained his ear to listen to the phonograph and consequently hecould not bear to hear the rasping sound of the first radio
loudspeakers. He was full of criticism of the radio, arguingthat the amplification distorted the sound of music. The radio
industry shot back that Mr. Edison might be the world's
greatest inventor, but he was also deaf.
Although Edison was totally opposed to radio as a productfor the mass market, he had not ignored the technology of thewireless. His lab experimented in several areas involving theelectrical recording and reproduction of sound. Edison was
intrigued by the audion and asked Lee De Forest what parts of
the invention were free and open for development. Edison wasinterested in the audion as an amplifier and made it clear to
De Forest that he was not interested in its application toradio.^ The lab had provided De Forest with phonograph partsfor his experiments with wireless telephones and had taken partin the development of a lighthouse warning device. ^Severalof the engineers at West Orange took an interest in radio,

XIII-17buying books on the subject and making up experimental
apparatus. 33 Holland and Constable obtained one of the earlyaudions, "a very delicate little affair," which they rigged up
to a disc machine. The audion acted as an amplifier and wasconnected to a loudspeaker. This experimental apparatus
obviously had important applications in the business andamusement phonograph fields, but it remained an "experimental
proposition" and was not developed further. ^Edison did notignore the electrical recording of sound, although it did takea back seat to his life-long quest to perfect acoustic
recording. In 1927 he listed his research goals for his son.
Electric recording was second on this list, first was "I wantto perfect Super phono." 35Radio had a strong supporter in Charles Edison who
summoned all the good reasons why Edison should enter thebusiness. Yet Charles failed to convince his father who
declared that "I do not intend making radio sets."

While

Edison adamantly refused to go into radio, his phonographbusiness rapidly lost its customers. While many industries
began a recovery in 1923, the phonograph business of TAE Inc.
posted only small gains. The cylinder business was very poor as
customers deserted the Edison amberola for disc machines. In
1924 sales slumped and crisis returned again to West Orange.
The amusement phonograph business lost $1,000,000 in 1924 andthe level of loss was expected to continue. 37

XIII-18

INNOVATION IN A DECLINING INDUSTRY

The decline of the phonograph business, and the frequentcrises it created, had an effect on the morale of the Edisonenterprise. The future, which had once been bright and full ofopportunities, was now viewed with anxiety, and in some cases,
fear. Instead of brave new experimental projects, the "old man"seemed obsessed with cutting costs and saving money. Edison's
overall strategy for the 1920s was financial retrenchment andcautious support of the existing product line. His research
agenda had been set in the nineteenth century for he stilllabored to improve the sound of records and the quality of the
duplicates.
By 1925 radio had captured the entertainment market andwas beginning to redefine musical tastes. Customers wereclamoring for the loudness and strident bass notes thatcharacterized electrical amplification of sound. Edison'srecording techniques, on the other hand, emphasized the clear
reproduction of each sound as it left the instrument. Yet such
was the demand for the radio sound that electrical amplifiers
were quickly put onto the market to attach to acoustic
phonographs. This produced the high volume and extenuated bass
notes that were fashionable, but it is doubtful that they added
new fidelity and beauty to acoustic recordings as claimed by

XIII-19

the manufacturers.

ooAll phonograph manufacturers were

struggling to come to terms with the new radio environment andthis led to a wave of innovation in this declining industry.
The desperate situation of the Edison phonograph business
required radical innovation. William Miller told Edison, "under
the present conditions, I feel that we have got to come out
with some improvement."

O Q

The technological response to the phonograph depression
was the development of a louder "dance" reproducer and a
12-inch long-playing disc record. The latter was a double sided
disc which was cut with 450 grooves to the inch instead of thenormal 150. This was a difficult technical task because therecord material had to be very hard to prevent the stylus frombreaking down the walls of the grooves. The long-player wastouted as a "revolutionizing invention" that would permit the
reproduction of entire symphonies in the 40 minute playing timeof both sides. In fact the innovation was a failure.
Technically the long-playing record could not stand up to
repeated play and its sound was too faint to please thecustomer. Commercially the Edison library of recordings did notinclude complete symphonies or operas that could be played on
the long-playing machines.

Edison had produced the wrong

technological response to the demand for louder recordings. The
long-playing record indicates the gulf between his objectives
in the laboratory and the needs of the market place. In the
1920s he was no longer the commercial inventor he had been inXIII-20

the 1880s.
No amount of inspired advertising or innovation was able
to wrest sales from the competition while the Edison phonographtechnology remained conservative. At the time that Edison tried
to increase sales by improving the tone of his disc anddeveloping a long-playing record, Victor met the radio
challenge head-on by adopting a system of electrical
recording— the technology which took the talking machine fromthe acoustic phonograph of the nineteenth century to the highfidelity of the twentieth. Edison had anticipated electrical
recording when he stated, in 1877, that a telephone repeater
could be used to record and reproduce sound. The development ofelectrical recording required an extensive knowledge of
acoustics and electronics— and here the research laboratories
of GE and AT&T had the advantage. Experiments carried out by
J.P. Maxfield in the Western Electric laboratories resulted in
the introduction of a method of electrical recording in whichsound is picked up with a microphone, amplified by a vacuum
tube, and then inscribed on the disc with an electromagnetic
recorder.
The Victor company had agreements with AT&T which enabled
it to take advantage of the research being carried out inelectrical amplification and acoustics in the laboratories ofWestern Electric. Initially, Victor was slow to see theadvantages of electrical recording and procrastinated in theirnegotiations with AT&T. Then the forces of the market took

XIII-21

charge. An aging record library and the growing popularity ofradiohurt Victor's sales which declined by 60% in 1924. Its

response was swift. 4^ It obtained the right to the new process
and began to record music electrically in 1924 but did not
publicise it, with the result that its customers were appalledat the harsh sound coming from an electrically recorded discplayed with an acoustic reproducer.4^ ^ new machine wasdesigned to play the electrically recorded discs. The
Orthophonic was a dramatic departure from existing technology,
employing a new design of reproducer which produced a clear
tone throughout the volume range. It had a radio timbre which
made it acceptable to a public that had become enamored withthe radio sound. The Orthophonic was another importantinnovation from Victor, its performance was exceptional and it
quickly became a highly successful product, maintaining
Victor's preeminent position in the phonograph industry andsetting the standard in acoustical reproduction. It was later
judged to be "The First Modern Phonograph." Introduced in 1925,
the Orthophonic led Victor to its most profitable year in its
history; in 1926 the company made $8,000,000 profit on$20,000,000 sales. 4^ Victor also took the step into radio andintroduced a receiving set, the Radiola, in 1925. On the other
hand, Edison was pleased that his was now the only "straightphono" company in the running.44 Orthophonic machines had been
examined in the laboratory and Edison's engineers had devised
electric reproducers, but in secret. 45 Miller and Holland had

XIII-22

continued their work on electrical recording without theknowledge or consent of the "old man." The facilities at theWest Orange laboratory were in no way comparable to theadvanced testing and measuring devices of the Western Electriclaboratories. This serious disadvantage hindered thedevelopment of electrical recording. While the competition
charted new waters, the Edison line remained unchanged; Edison
phonographs still came equipped with the standard,
floating-head reproducer first introduced before the War.
The Edison phonograph suffered from several
disadvantages: narrow record selection, recordings that could
not meet the public's demand for increased volume, andinability to play the competition's records. Efforts were being
made to develop new technologies in the West Orange laboratory,
but progress was slow. Edison's technological perfectionism
played its part in delaying the rapid introduction of
innovations, such as the automatic changer, that might havegiven the Edison phonograph more commercial appeal.

AC

This

device was under consideration and test at West Orange foryears. TAE Inc. stood by and watched the competition introduce
this important innovation. Edison's opposition to laterally-cut
records delayed the introduction of a universal reproducer forhis phonographs that might have turned the tide in thephonograph business. In consequence, by 1927 the Edison company
only accounted for 2% of the total sales of records! Pressure
was growing within the amusement phonograph division for theXIII-23

development of a universal reproducer and the manufacture oflateral cut records, but little was done.^ When the Brunswick
record company came up with a universal reproducer— that would
play any record— it quickly gained a large section of themarket. A competitor had again taken the technologicalinitiative.
Edison was by now a technological conservative, and TAE
Inc. was being beaten in the marketplace by a more innovative
company. TAE Inc. was a follower rather than a leader inphonograph technology, lagging behind in key innovations suchas electrical recording and a universal reproducer, and had
paid the price in the marketplace. On the other hand, Victor
had wasted no time in responding to the challenge of radio,
quickly producing a new phonograph and a radio and rushing theminto production. These new products exploited the public
acceptance of the Victrola while making that technology
obsolete! A burst of innovation in the mid 1920s gave Victor an
opportunity to reclaim much of their phonograph market. One
year after Victor had crossed the Rubicon in 1925, the louder
Edison dance reproducer was announced. Its advertising stillreferred to the "volume fad"— anything that diverged from
Edison's conception of the phonograph was likely to be called afad.^® Edison's plan for the West Orange laboratory lay inspeed, flexibility, and control. The experience of thephonograph in the 1920s shows that this was no longer present
in the R&D effort. Only the control remained.

XIII-24

Although the most profitable division had taken abeating, the Edison enterprise went forward bolstered by thehighly profitable battery operations. The primary battery
division enjoyed a dominant share of the market; and, after aslow start, the storage battery had gained a market niche inindustry. The trials and tribulations of producing a superior
storage battery were finally justified by strong sales in the
1920s. The decline of the phonograph was partly offset by thegrowing acceptance of the Ediphone in American offices, as
Table 13-2 indicates.

Table 13-2
Sales of TAE Inc, in $000ths
9 Months ending 30 Sept 1926.

Product

Sales

Profits

Phonograph (disc)

1157.

-527.

cylinder

623.

-414.

Storage battery

4915.

1486.

Primary battery

1634.

248.

CementN/K.

824.

Ediphone

991.

278.

XIII-25

The basic strategy of having five different productlines— storage batteries, primary batteries, cement, andbusiness and amusement phonographs— paid dividends in the
1920s. It enabled TAE Inc. to ride out two business depressions
and survive into the 1930s. The company even managed to produce
a yearly surplus during the dark days of the decline of thephonograph. Outside work was found for the Phonograph Works tomake up for the lack of phonograph sales, and several new
Edison products were manufactured there, including rectifiers,
electrical instruments, and dental drills. ^The 1920s saw the forces of change working at West
Orange. Immigrants had provided the bulk of the workers in thefactories around the laboratory. The decreasing rate ofimmigration into the United States after the War slowly cut
down the number of immigrants working in the Edison industrial
complex. By the end of the 1920s there were shortages ofskilled labor. This had been offset in many factories by the
introduction of labor-saving, automatic machinery. This shift
to a more capital-intensive mode of production had been
resisted by Edison who was loath to spend the money. This wasin direct contradiction to his well-publicized support of the"Machine Made Freedom" which would follow the automation of thework place.
The keenest felt shortage was in the skilled mechanics
that had staffed Edison's machine shops since the 1870s. The
personnel office had to begin a program of training apprentices

XIII-26

to fill the requirement for skilled workers. The very low wagesof West Orange reduced the flow of highly skilled machinists
and engineers to the laboratory. The weekly wage of amechanical engineer was fixed at $35-$40— the same amount as
fixed scale wages for laborers, electrician's helpers, andderrick m e n . ^ Bureaucrats and clerks could earn more thanthemen who actually did the engineering work in laboratory andWorks. It was a greatly reduced Edison organization thatsurvived the phonograph depression of 1921. The great purges
had cut a deep scar in the organization. It added to Edison's
reputation for firing men whenever there was a slackening off
of demand, and probably encouraged many of the professional
C O

staff to look elsewhere for employment.

Several senior

executives left of their own accord to find better, and moresecure, positions in the 1920s. The Edison enterprise lostskilled managers, such as William Maxwell, that it could illafford to lose.^
Edison's prestige could no longer offset the low wages
and job insecurity and attract first-class men to the West
Orange laboratory. In fact there was little need for them inthe mundane daily work of the laboratory in the 1920s. Edison
still maintained his personal staff of muckers, but they were
there to do his pick and carry work rather than challenging
experiments. He still employed professional chemists whenneeded, and many were trained in German universities. Several
product engineers had academic credentials, including Dr. Gibbs

XIII-27of the amusement phonograph, but the work force of the West
Orange laboratory in 1920s was relatively untrained andunderqualified when compared with other industrial researchlaboratories. GE's laboratory at Schenectady, for example, hada staff of around 300 in 1920, including about 50 scientists
and engineers. Western Electric's Research Branch had 234
employees in 1921, many of whom were Phds and professional
engineers. In the early 1920s the West Orange laboratory
employed around 200 men, yet only about 10 to 15 of them were.
54
formally trained.
Despite the decline in the work force during the purgesof the 1920s, the West Orange lab was still a major importantresearch facility. There were several laboratories that had
smaller staffs and budgets. Eastman Kodak, for example,
increased the staff of its laboratory from 20 in 1913 to 88 in
1920. Its work force and expenditure in that year, $338,680
were much less than the Edison laboratory. 55 Yet m

terms ofquality and quantity of staff, Edison's laboratory could notcompare with the front rank of GE and AT&T industrial research.
During the 1920s, research expenditures at GE and AT&T rosesteadily. On the other hand, the expenses of Edison'slaboratory decreased. By 1926 it had dropped to below$150,000— one tenth of GE's costs. The "best lab ever" was now
a shadow of its former stature as the leading research
institution in the United States.

ENDNOTES FOR CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

1) Soloman Fabrleant, The Output of Manufacturing Industries(New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1940), p.
578.
2) Mambert memo,

16 Feb 1920, Mambert corres,letter #6966.

3) Robert Lacey, Ford (Boston: Little Brown, 1986),
Chandler, Strategy and Structure, pp. 128-129
4) TAE to A. Williams,

p. 268,5 Jan 1921, D box bio.

5) Minutes of Executive committee,
mi nutes.

1 May 1918,

102 verbatim

6) Hutchison Diary, 1 Jan 1921. Hutchison also notes that
Edison ’’clipped Charles’ wings.”7) TAE to Mambert, 16 Dec 1919, Mambert correspondance;
Business Activities of M. Jones, MJ Box 13.
8) John Venable, Out of the Shadow, p.80.
9) TAE Annotation on Mambert’s letter for a reference,10) Minutes of Executive committee,
microf iIra
11) W. Maxwell to C. Edison,

1924.

21 Aug 1921, reserve

13 Dec 1918, Phono.

12) F.J.Lepreau quote in minutes of a special meeting of Boardof TAE inc. with executives of primary battery division, 9April 1918, Primary Battery Div Minutes, Vol 1, C Edison fund13) Mambert Correspondence, vol 1, 26 July 1920.
14) W. Stevens to C Edison, 23 Sept 1918, Blue Books financial
cabinet.
15) Art Walsh to Charles Edison, 25 April 1927, phono closing
down.
16) Memos in 1925 Phono sales about plans to get out of
Amberola business because of ’’heavy losses.”17) Maxwell report,

1911 Phono Manu 2 of 2.

18) H.C. Brainerd to TAE,

16 Nov 1926 in Phono LP record.

XII1-29

19) Questionaire answered by TAE, 1926 Phono adv.
20) W. Mallory to Meadowcroft, 7 Jan 1922, D box bio.
21) Fabricant, Manufacturing Industries, p. 578.
22) See Harold G. Bowen, The Edison Effect (West Orange: Thomas
Alva Edison foundation, 1951) for a history of Edison’s role inwireless; Meadowcroft annotation on "The Story of a Great
Achievement" in DIO Radio.
23

Edison annotation on 19 May 1898 letter, 1898 Radio.

24) Reich, pp. 157-159.
25) Wise, pp. 218-219.
26) C.J. Pusateri, A History of American Business (Arlington
Heights, 111.: Harlan Davidson, 1982), p. 243.
27) W. Miller to G.H. Mann, 21 May 1910, LB 100521.
28) To Chas Edison in 1926 Radio cabinets.
29) TAE annotation on Sun Radio Data Sheets, "Speaker
Distortion;" TAE to H. Phillips, 29 Dec 1925, Radio.
30) Mew York Times. 3 Oct 1926, Radio.
31) TAE to DeForest, 17 June 1926, D box bio.
32) Feb 1917 General Correspondence, subjects.
33) John Constable letter, 13 May 1919, Edison General
Correspondence, subj ects.
34) JPC to E. Boykin, 25 Oct 1918.
35) Chas Edison to TAE, 21 June 1927, TAE Work outline.
36) TAE to H. Phillips, 29 Dec 1925, Radio.
37) R.A. Allen to Charles Edison, 22 April 1925, Phono Manu.
38) Gradeon advertisment, Mew York Times. 2 July 1926, p. 9.
39) W Miller to TAE, 25 Oct 1925, Phono Victor.
40) TAE Inc minutes, 1 feb 1926, RR 68.
41) H Miller to H. Heifman, 24 Dec 1909, LB 090927, p. 433.

XI11-30

42) Frow, Edison Disc Phonographs, p. 68.
43) ”Excerpt from Mr de la Chapelle* s talk,'* Script for tour ofVictor Works, 1/15/27, 1927 Phono Victor.
44) Annotation on 1925 Radio newspaper cutting45) Notes in 1925 Phono Victor.
46) TAE annotation on 17 Mar 1926 letter, phono manu.
47) Art Walsh to CE, 25 April 1927, Phono closing down.
48) Phonograph advertising in Frow, Edison Discs, pp. 70-71.
49) 1928 Edison Industries Products, promotional booklet.
50) Edward Marshall, "Machine Made Freedom," Forum. Oct 1926.
51) Anon to TAE inc., 31 Dec 1919, M Jones Collection, Box 1152) "Personal Audit," Jones Collection, Box 19, 1920.
53) Maxwell resigned 8 Mar 1922, Edison Phonograph Works
minutes, Charles Edison fund, East Orange NJ.
54) Wise, Appendices; Reich, pp.181-182; Acounts records andW.0. lab folders for 1920-1922.
55) Jenkins,

Images and Enterprise, p.312.

1

XIV- 1CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE END OF AN ERA

Edison's advancing years slowly loosened his grip on the
management of TAE Inc. As he approached his 80th birthday in1927 his health deteriorated seriously. He was totally deaf by
the mid 1920s and increasingly troubled with stomach pains.
When he came to the West Orange laboratory, he stayed on the
ground floor, working at his desk in the library. (Illus. 14-1)
In 1926 he relinquished control of the company to Charles
Edison; the latter became President and Edison took the nominal
title of Chairman of the Board. In the same year Edison sold
his remaining patent rights to TAE Inc. for $78,200. ^Thereafter Edison spent more of his time in Florida at his Fort
Myers home. He had acquired the property for his winter home in1885 and gradually built it up, erecting houses, providing itwith a pier, and constructing a laboratory. Edison and his wife
customarily spent the winter months at Fort Myers, but Edison
did not take a break from experimenting; he equipped hislaboratory with everything he needed to continue work and often
took assistants to Florida with him when he was involved in anexperimental campaign. The experiments on the storage battery
and phonograph record continued there, and postal
communications were maintained with the laboratory at West

Illustration

14-1

Edison in the Library

XIV-

Orange.

22With Charles Edison running the business affairs of thecompany, Thomas Edison could spend more of his time
experimenting. In the late 1920s he continued his research on
the recording of sound and the battery for the Ford automobile.
The eighty-year-old inventor even began a new experimental
project. During the First World War, the United States'
dependency on foreign raw materials was underlined toindustrialists like Edison. Many strategic materials wereconcentrated in a few places and subject to being cut off inwartime. In the early 1920s the US consumed about 70% of theworld's rubber, mainly for the growing automobile industry. The
supply of rubber was largely in British and Dutch hands, andthey were not above exploiting their monopoly of rubber
production. Subsequently several attempts had been made to
produce synthetic rubber, but with little success. Anothersolution was to find another source of organic rubber which
could be grown in the US. This became Edison's goal. His friend
Henry Ford was partly responsible for the increased demand, andsubsequent increased value, of rubber; and it was Henry Ford,along with Harvey Firestone of the Firestone Tire and Rubber
Company, who persuaded Edison to look for a domestic source of
rubber. The idea was not to substitute American for Malayan andSouth American production, but to ensure a supply of domestic
rubber in an emergency. The Edison Botanic Research Company wasformed in 1927. Ford and Firestone provided the capital andXIV- 3

Edison agreed to donate his time.
Edison 's involvement with rubber went back well before
the late 1920s. It had begun, in fact, when the laboratory
first opened in the late 1880s. Several of Edison's competitors
in the phonograph business were using records made out of hardrubber, which offered a durable recording medium. In 1888 Jonas
Aylsworth experimented with hard rubber records in the West3
Orange laboratory.
The interest in rubber continued into the
1900s when it was an important part of the storage battery
project. The containment of the chemicals used in storage
batteries was a major research problem for the laboratory. By
1920 the laboratory staff were well acquainted with thismaterial and the "old man" had a knowledge of the chemistry andbotany of rubber that impressed Harvey Firestone.^
Typically the rubber project began with a thorough searchof the literature and several trips to obtain information andexamine botanical operations. Many studies had been carried out
on native plants that might contain rubber but Edison wanted to
go one further and mount a systematic search that would cover
thousands of plants, ever hopefully that kindly nature might
have provided a substitute for the latex of the Hevea tree.
Here was a perfect research project for Edison. It was totallyfinanced by his two friends which enabled him to run the
program outside the checks and controls of TAE Inc. The search
for a domestic source of rubber suited Edison's experimental
style; it was clearly a line of research that needed an

XIV- 4

empirical approach and it combined the adventure of the huntfor bamboo filaments with an opportunity to develop his
botanical skills. Finally, the project could be carried out inthe balmy weather of Florida. Edison began the search for a newsource of rubber with his usual gusto, gathering a library ofbooks on rubber at Fort Myers and planting many different
species in the gardens around his home. He built a new chemicallaboratory across the street from his home and soon filled itCwith supplies and equipment.
Edison cultivated rubber plants in the gardens around his
house and also found time to develop Fort Myers as a garden
community, planting trees and shrubs in the land around his
property. He enthusiastically turned his property at Fort Myers
into a large experimental farm, and proudly showed off his
results. It was reported that he had 4800 varieties of shrubs
and trees under cultivation. He also had a small army ofamateurs and professionals in the field collecting samples. In
a very short time his assistants had gathered over 3000
examples of wild plants and tested them for rubber content.
Meanwhile the flow of specimens collected by well-wishers
increased as the West Orange laboratory was innundated withplants.®
Much of the testing work was done at the laboratory.
Building 4 was converted to receive the incoming flow of plants
and shrubs gathered from all parts of North America. (Hundredsof the specimens are still stored with the Edison archives.)

XIV- 5

The rubber project not only involved finding a source of rubber
but also encompassed the development of an economical
production process. Edison was again in his element; he had
considerable experience in chemical engineering and the FirstWorld War illustrated how quickly he could set up chemicalplants. He worked on a rubber extracting machine to extract thesap from his specimens. The rubber project shows that time had
not altered Edison's approach to innovation and his inventive
style. His staff were directed by a steady flow of written
notes. He worked with a small team of experimenters and broughtin chemists and botanists when needed. His deafness did notinterfere with the management of the experimental team, forwritten communication proved adequate. Even the men in thefield were instructed to keep in constant contact with the West
7
Orange laboratory by mail. Edison was totally absorbed, somemight even say obsessed, with the work.
After exhaustive testing, the goldenrod plant was foundto offer the most rubber content. Two varieties, solidago
rugosa and solidago leavenworthii, were singled out for
intensive cultivation and crossbreeding. Edison spent all histime on this project, studying botany in the house at Fort
Myers along with his family, examining specimens in the special
lab built across the street, directing a small staff ofchemists and botanists in the crossbreeding program, andexamining the progress of the goldenrod plants in the gardens.
In 1929 he acknowledged that "I can't get my mind off rubber

XIV- 6just now."

Q

He was able to produce a strain with high rubber

content, but the results gained did not justify production. Yet
the rubber project kept the aged inventor busy and content. The
staff at West Orange were instructed not to send him any bad
news. He took pride in telling the press and his associatesthat he was busy "getting rubber from weeds," and what could begmore appropriate a task for a patriot and a practical man.
The experimental projects undertaken by Edison in hislast years show no divergence from his earlier work; he stayedin the same general areas— storage battery, phonograph, andchemistry. Nor did he not alter his approach to the problem or
his experimental method. The West Orange laboratory also
continued along the conservative paths set in the twentiethcentury. Production engineering was the order of the day andthe new products developed in the laboratory were hardly
revolutionary. Radios and consumer durables, such as toasters
and coffee percolators, were new departures for TAE Inc., butthey were in no way radical new products. Instead of leading
the pack, the Edison industries were entering fields that had
already passed through the pioneering phase. Both the radio and
Edicraft appliances leaned heavily on the appeal of Edison's
name without advancing the technological boundaries of theseproducts.
Edison's stubborn opposition to radio had been overcome
by 1928. The Board of Directors of TAE Inc. allotted a large
sum of money for R&D and the setting up of manufacture. The

XIV- 7

Splitdorf Radio Company was purchased in order to give TAE Inc.
access to the RCA pool of radio patents.1® Theodore Edison was
put in charge of the development project. A graduate of M.I.T.,
Theodore was well qualified for the task, and his brotherrecalls that Theodore, in the same way as his father, worked
day and night to produce the Edison radio in a remarkably shorttime.'1'1 Theodore was a talented engineer who had been
instrumental in the development of an Edison phonograph withelectromagnetic rather than acoustic reproduction. He invented
a pick-up that could play both hill-and-dale and laterally-cut
records and these were installed in the Edisonic line ofphonographs. The Radio-Phonograph Division of TAE Inc. (oncethe Amusement Phonograph Division) planned to market a radio
receiver and also an Edisonic radio-phonograph combination,
beginning in 1928. These products were pitched at the high endof the market and were intended to be "the Steinway of theRadio business." Their striking wooden cabinets and impressive
bulk added to their cost, and the top of the line sold for morethan $1000. Naturally they were advertised as the highest stageof sound recreation with a superior tonal quality, "The New
Voice of the Skies" offered the kind of quality that had become
synonymous with the Edison trademark. The promotional material
emphasized Edison's pioneering role in the technologicaldevelopment of radio and immodestly claimed that it was his
research that made it all possible. 12
In reality, TAE Inc. brought out its radio line with theXIV- 8work of college-trained engineers and experienced marketingmen. Edison's insistence that the radio business was too
chaotic and dangerous to enter was probably ascribed to the
obstinacy of the "old man" who could not see, or hear, its
advantages. Yet Edison's jaundiced pessimism about radio proved
to be correct: the industry was marked by overproduction andcompetition between many small players. As early as 1925 thesigns of an overcrowded industry were present as many of thefinancial weaklings went bankrupt .13 The Splitdorf Company had
warned its investors that the radio business was a "hazardous
one," but nothing seemed to dampen the enthusiasm of the
management of TAE Inc.^ The marketing problems were many; thetechnology was new and no one could predict how the customer
would respond. The Edison company used the same strategy
adopted for the phonograph by aiming at the high end of themarket. This had shown some results in the early twenties, but
unfortunately the company entered the radio market just as thecompetition became intense and a vicious price war began. In
1929 the first indications of the Great Depression were
present: sluggish demand, soft prices, and growing
unemployment. The radio business was hit hard because themarket was flooded with very cheap radios produced by the manysmall companies struggling to survive. This was the death knell
for TAE Inc.'s ambitious marketing strategy; only the low-cost
producers had a chance to make a profit. After losing about $2
million dollars, the company withdrew from the industry. The

XIV- 9"old man" had been right about the dangers of getting into theradio business, but he never said "I told you so" to hissons.^
This sad story was repeated with the other new productline of TAE Inc. The decision to manufacture electricalappliances for the kitchen was made by the management who thenearmarked a fixed amount for R&D work. Theodore Edison again
carried out much of the research and development. In 1926 theBoard of Directors appropriated $20,000 to investigate
16electrical refrigeration.
But this was insufficient for anadequate R&D program that might end in a commercial product.
When Charles Kettering and an experimental team at GM's
research laboratory undertook this task, it took several years
and false-trails before a commercial technology was developed.
The project began at GM's lab in 1920 and continued throughout
the decade. GM and Du Pont finally pooled their technicaltalent into a joint operation to produce a new system ofrefrigeration based on freon. 17
TAE Inc. had neither the time nor resources to mount sucha venture. The management of the Edison enterprise were looking
for some new products to replace the earnings lost in the
declining phonograph business. And they needed them in a hurry.
The lab was put to work to designing electric coffee makers,
waffle irons, and toasters. These were simple products that
could easily be manufactured in the Phonograph Works.
Thomas Edison Junior returned to the West Orange lab toXIV-10

work on developing the line of consumer durables. The son of
Edison's first wife, Mary Stillwell, Tom Jr. had achieved
little in a troubled life which was littered with failed
businesses and health problems. Edison allowed him to come backto the laboratory in the 1920s. Tom Jr.'s careful drawings oftoaster filaments and heater elements bear a signature that isquite similar to that of his famous father. His notes tell us
something of the daily work of experimenters in the lab of thelate 1920s. He carried out endurance tests of all theelectrical components of the toaster and continuously monitored
repeated toasting of all kinds of bread, "this test to be
conducted by someone unacquainted with such devices-who will
represent the public."

The experiments of the new Edisons

have none of the ambition and scope of the "old man;" thesedrawings provide a symbolic commentary on the new role of theWest Orange laboratory. It was a long road from theincandescent bulb to the electric toaster, and the only truly
innovative part of the Edicraft range of appliances was theirdesign. Appearance had become an important consideration in thephonograph business and it took a greater importance in the newconsumer durable line. The engineering effort was conditionedby the goal to "improve the appearance " of the products.

I Q

The

marketing strategy was again aimed at the most affluent
households and subsequently a free-lance designer was hired togive these products a distinctive look. The toaster was
described as resembling "a beautiful metal book" and even theXiv-lladvertising material is a striking example of tasteful art
deco.

Although these designs were simple and elegant, they

were in no way revolutionary. They do not have the flair of thework of Peter Behrens for AEG, or the dramatic clarity ofGerhard Marck's designs for coffee makers. The Edicraft
products are conservative renditions of a new style inindustrial design.
The Edicraft products were to be the ultimate in styleand performance, representing "the final achievement of yearsof research and experiment." 21 The products were two years in
the development stage and claimed to be radical improvements on
the existing toasters and coffee makers on the market. The newfeature of the toaster was that it could toast both sides of
two pieces of bread simultaneously. The siphonator was
portrayed as "the first real improvement in coffee making in 25
years."

22

These products bore Edison's image, his famous

signature, and his personal assurance that these were the only
toasters and coffee makers developed in his laboratories. After
years of relentless exploitation, this advertising line was
beginning to lose its appeal. The public did not seem to carethat these were Edison toasters and the hard times of the Great
Depression reduced the market for premium priced kitchen
appliances. The great future for consumer durables did notmaterialize. The Edicraft division did not meet the
expectations of the management of TAE Inc.
Failure followed in the wake of R&D by committee. The

XIV-12

expenditure had been agreed upon, the research controlled andplaced within well defined limits, all expenses had beenaccounted for and the result had been mundane products withlittle appeal. TAE Inc. had charted a course of conservativetechnology: no great experimental campaigns into totally new
areas, no irresponsible spending without limits, and no new
products to excite the customer. While the Engineering
Department labored diligently to make small improvements in the
Edison phonograph, a small number of experimenters— including a
few Edisons— worked in a tightly controlled environment toproduce slightly better versions of existing products. The
revolutionary new technologies, such as the talking picture,
had all fallen by the wayside, victims of technologicalproblems and conservative financial policies. The attempts todevelop innovative new products were half-hearted and small
scale. The Ediscope, for example, tried to utilize thelong-playing record in a motion picture device which flashedstill pictures on the front screen of the machine. It was afusion of two partly developed technologies into one
complicated machine. Little thought had gone into its potential
market, and the best the Edison company company could do wasclaim that it would "entertain and educate children." Notnosurprisingly, it failed to achieve any commercial success. J

THE EDISON LEGEND

While innovation at the West Orange laboratory declined,
Edison's image as a great inventor grew. The myth of the heroic
inventor who went from rags to riches was described in a
growing number of books and articles. It read like a Horatio
Alger story. Edison's long career bridged two Americas: thenineteenth century world of his mid-western upbringing andmeteoric rise to fame and fortune, and the modern industrial
society of the twentieth century that his inventions had helped
create. The appeal of the Edison legend was that it managed to
combine the values of rural America with the trappings of anindustrial state. 24
The image of Edison the great inventor, and of his famous
laboratory, had served the Edison industries well. TAE Inc.
always claimed that "Ours is the best machine" because Edison's
genius, and the great resources of his West Orange laboratory,stood behind it. The standards of the laboratory were thehighest, and in this way the Official Laboratory Modelphonograph was advertised as the ultimate in reproduction. In
the same way the Diamond Disc machine was portrayed as Edison's
masterpiece; after years of work in the laboratory, Edison andhis assistants had produced a superior means of reproducing
sound. It was his "supreme effort" and his "latest and greatest
triumph."25

XIV-14

Edison's name had become a valuable asset. As one
executive of the New York Consolidated Edison Company put it:
The use of the name EDISON in our business relations
and corporate title is of inestimable value. Everyone
is familiar with the name, his accomplishments, andthe standard of apparatus, equipment, of service, andperformance implied in the use of the name Edison,
gives it a very great commercial advantage.
It stood for innovation with integrity. It was associated withradically new products that embodied the founder's ethic ofsafety and value. This image of benign technology and quality
products was the most valuable asset he left to his company.
The Edison name was jealously guarded by "the old man" and thecompanies that bore his name.
The lessons that Edison learnt in the years of
introducing the lighting systems were carried with him for the
rest of his life. He realized that the public would buy a new
product if a familiar face, and international reputation, stoodbehind it. His great public visibility led him to take personal
responsibility for his companies and the technology they
introduced. 27 His technological choices had to err on the sideof safety and reliability for one mistake could lead todisaster in all his many businesses. The E2 explosion was acase in point. The destruction of an experimental
submarine— caused not by technical failure but by humanerror— cost Edison a valuable market for his battery and placed
his reputation under a cloud. The company did not feel thatthey were to blame but nevertheless made a cash settlement with28
the relatives of the deceased.
Edison was well aware that a

XIV-15

loss of public confidence in the salutary effects of newtechnology would hurt his businesses. This lay behind his
opposition to alternating current and his devotion to low
voltage electric traction.
The solid reputation of quality goods was a great asset
in the long run, even though short-term profits often had to besacrificed to meet Edison's demanding standards. The storage
battery is a case in point. The recall of his first attempt wasan expensive business for TAE Inc. that came while financial
reserves were low— the worst possible time. Many othercompanies would have kept this product on the market while
improving it in their laboratories. But Edison was adamant: "Wehave to get it right" he insisted, and only then was it to be
sold. Every Edison product had to meet the high standards of
its maker. Harry Miller expressed this sentiment perfectly: "If
it wasn't far superior to other batteries," he told aprospective customer "we would't make them." 29 The Edison namestood for quality.
It was the job of the West Orange laboratory to maintain
Edison's standards. His policy was simple: "The Edison productmust be of the highest quality." It was hammered home incountless memoranda and meetings. The laboratory's work intesting, production engineering, and new product development
was the key to maintain Edison's standards. The productengineers were instructed to maintain Edison's basic policy of
QUALITY FIRST: "It is up to you to uphold his standard of

XIV-16

perfection in every detail." 30 In the 1920s Edison was nolonger around to approve every machine leaving the laboratory
for the Works. But even when the "old man" was long gone, theengineering organization he guided for so long continued workin his image: "The Engineering Department represents Mr. Edisonin safeguarding the standards of quality."

The process oftesting and quality assurance had become a long and complex
one. But normally it was an engineer from the main lab who had
the last word. Phonograph mechanisms, for example, were tested
by a staff of inspectors in a special room in the PhonographWorks. Their work was monitored by a chief inspector and he, inturn, was under a man from the laboratory, who double checked
the checkers and tested a small sample of the daily output. 3 2
Although the function of the laboratory had moved from thedriving force of the Edison enterprise in the 1880s to anadvisory role in the 1920s, it still played an important partin quality assurance.

XIV-17

FINALE

Edison's insistence on retaining his good name, his imageof benign technology, became stronger as he grew older and thepressures of business were doubtless molified by thoughts of
his place in history. As the years went by he forgot thequestionable business manoeuvrings and the painful litigation,and concentrated on the good his innovations had done. His
companies proudly stated that "Edison has invented no machinethat will do you harm. All of his inventions are for the
benefit of humanity." 33 In later years, Edison spent more timeon innovations that he claimed were for the public good. His
cement houses, for example, were not only a means to find amarket for his cement but also a force of social improvement.
Edison thought that they would provide low cost housing for theworking classes. The urban poor were also the beneficiaries ofanother idea— automatic vending machines. These were intended
to sell coal and the necessities of life at low prices. Edison
was all for "businessmen (to) use their brains ...to help thehard working man with a family who is doing the best he canwith limited intelligence."^ The great irony is that Edison
seemed to have cared more for the unknown working man who wasgoing to benefit from his inventions than he did for his own
workers at West Orange.
The particular ironies of Edison's situation were lost onXIV-18

the general public, who still imagined him working through thenight in the small lab in rural New Jersey. It irked "the oldman" no end when letters arrived at West Orange addressed tothe "Edison laboratory, Menlo Park." The Edison laboratory
existed in the minds of the public as the Home of the "Wizard,"
and he never did shake this image, still being known as the
Wizard of Menlo Park up until his death. The fact that he moved
from Menlo Park and become a great industrialist was lost on
many Americans.

O C"The Edison laboratories" which were claimed

as the starting point of all his products were as mysterious as
the process of innovation that created the products.
However abstract their idea of innovation and Edison's
genius, Americans took Edison the man to heart. His cavortings
with fellow millionaire industrialists Harvey Firestone andHenry Ford captured the public's imagination. Here were theheroes of capitalism enjoying the simple life of camping andhiking, and newsreel audiences were led to believe that thesegreat men acted no differently from the average American. The
climax of Edison's popularity came with the Festival of Light,a celebration marking the opening of Henry Ford's Greenfield
Village. This carefully-choreographed exercise in public
relations was promoted by the electric utilities, who had cometo appreciate the value of a good image. While the ceremonies
at Greenfield Village were underway, the United States Congress
passed a resolution expressing the nation's thanks to Edison"whose conquests in the realm of science have enriched allXIV-19

human life."

36

Ironically, while Edison was being lionized at

the Festival of Light in 1929, his customers were deserting the
products based on his traditional values and aesthetics. The
phonograph business shows that he was out of step with theconsuming public of the 1920s. The fact that he had to close
down the phonograph operation— a humiliating step for theinventor of the talking machine— while being honored as thegreat innovator, is an indication of the gulf that had arisen
between between the Edison image and reality.
The newsreels taken at the Festival of Light show thatage and illness had begun to take their toll. Yet Edison was
still determined to keep on experimenting. By 1930 he wasconfined to a wheelchair but still continued working on therubber experiments. He normally returned to West Orange from
Florida in the spring, around March. But in 1931 his health wasso poor that his return was delayed until June. When his staff
asked him what was to be shipped back to New Jersey, a one word.
37
answer indicated that the end was near: "Everything."
Edisondid return to the laboratory in the summer of 1931 and reported
for work several times. Some progress was being made in
producing rubber from goldenrod and he was well pleased.
In September Edison was confined to his bed and thefamily began to prepare for the funeral arrangements. He diedon 18 October 1931. A national outpouring of grief followed.
The great inventor's last days had been followed by the world's
press. President Hoover had asked for daily bulletins. It wasXIV-20

as if America and the world sensed that an era was coming to an
end. There was no question that Edison should lie in state toreceive one last round of homage. There was no question that
his body would lie in the laboratory and not Glenmont.
Thousands of people came to pay their last respects. (SeeUlus. 14-2, 14,500.)
The Great Depression was two years old when Edison died.
The first shocks to the Stock Market had struck while Edison,
Ford, and President Hoover were parading through the streets of
Detroit during the Festival of Light. Charles Edison had adifficult task ahead of him as chief executive of TAE Inc. Yet
the organization did survive the Great Depression, just as it
had survived the Great Depression of the nineteenth century andthe depressions of 1907-8 and 1920-21. Edison senior had turned
over a resilient and financially strong business to the next
generation. In 1887 Edison had looked into the future andenvisioned a great industrial complex. He told a financial
backer that "I honestly believe that I can build up a works in
15 to 20 years that will employ 10 to 15,000 men and yield 500
per cent to stockholders."

O O

He had gone a long way inachieving this goal. At the time of his death, TAE Inc. wasreturning a dividend and had an average yearly surplus of$7,000,000. The indebtedness of over $2,000,000 that had beenacquired during the war years and post-war depression was fullydischarged. TAE Inc. had over $5,000,000 invested in Liberty
Bonds in 1931.^®

Illustration 14-2
Mourning Edison at the Laboratory

XIV-21

The divisional structure of TAE Inc. had helped it
weather the storm of the Depression and the decline of its corephonograph business. As one product reached maturity and thenbegan its decline, another came to take its place. The storage
battery and Ediphone kept TAE Inc. solvent in the 1930s. The
instrument division matured in the 1940s and helped arm America
during the Second World War. The division of function between
R&D and production engineering was finalized during the 1930s
and 1940s: the lab was devoted to research while productdevelopment groups worked in the operating divisions. Building
5 of the West Orange complex still contained the personnel andequipment of the research effort until 1953, when a modern
facility was built on nearby Watchung Avenue. The newlaboratory was an unexceptional, one-story building in theinternational architectural style. It contained 9 experimentalrooms and began with only 28 employees— a far cry from the
grandiose plans and impressive size of Edison's laboratory in1887. R&D still played an important part in the organization.
The Annual Report of 1948 stressed that "Research Assures
Progress and Quality." 40
Charles Edison sold TAE Inc. to the McGraw ElectricCompany. McGraw Edison, as it was then called, slowly
dismantled the West Orange complex. Today all of the factorybuildings are gone except the storage battery plant across theroad from Building 5. The Edison laboratory sits alone, stillgiving the mistaken impression that the lab was free standingXIV-22and not part of a great industrial complex. To those who havevisited the Edison National Historic Site, his spirit lives on;
if not in the hallways and machine shops, then in the wide eyesof the children as they are shepherded through "the best lab
ever."

X I V -X

ENDNOTES FOR CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1) TAE Inc minutes, 1 feb 1926, RR 68.
2) H Miller to H. Heifman, 24 Dec 1909, LB 090927, p. 433.
3) N 880102, pp. 101-105.
4) Vanderbilt, Edison the Chemist, p. pp.281-282.
5) Robert C. Halgrim, The Edison Record (Fort Myers: Edison
Museum, N. D.), p. 12; Fort Myers Press clippings, 2 Aug 1927,
Rubber.
6) Brooklyn Times, 1928 Rubber, clippings.
7) Instructions for Collecting and Shipping Latex Bearing
Plants, 1 July 1927, Rubber.
8) Annotation on a letter of 2 Dec 1929.
9) Mambert correspondence, 27 Mar 1922.
10) Splitdorf Co Stockholder circular, 25 Jan 1929, D10.
11) J Venable, Out of the Shadow, p. 82.
12) Advertising Notes to radio announcer, 10 June 1929, D9radio; promotional material, primary printed.
13) Standard Daily Trade Servicee, 21 July 1925, Radio.
14) Splitdorf Co Stockholder circular, 25 Jan 1919, D10.
15) J Venable, Out of the Shadow, p. 83.
16) Minutes of Board meeting, 8 Aug 1928, RR 68.
17) Leslie, Boss Kettering, pp. 219-227.
18) Notes and sketches in D26.
19) Meeting of Electrical Products Division, 1928 Toaster.
20) Advertising material in primary printed.
21) Ibid.
22) Press release, TAE Inc., 22 Nov 1928.

XIV—24

23) Advertising for long playing record, 1926, D8 phono.
24) See Wyn Wachhorst, T A Edison: An American Myth (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1981).
25) Promotional material, 15 May 1912, Phono Disc.
26) Testimony of John W Lieb, 13 April 1925, D box bio L.
27) "The rule that has been adopted not to permit your name to
be used in connection with any enterprise except those which
you control and for which you feel a personal responsibility,
is a safe one to follw, Dyer to TAE, 11 July 1910, 1910 SB.
28) TAE to F.D. Roosevelt, 10 Sept 1915, Bio file Rj Hutchison
diary, 31 Dec 1918.
29) H Miller to C Flint, 9 Mar 1909, LB 090115, p. 360.
30) JP Constable to Product Engineers, 11 Sept 1917, Lab bb.
31) JP Constable to G L Clark, 29 Jan 1920, Constable files Eng
Dept.
32) Constable to R Hudson, 28 Sept 1917.
33) H Miller to H Tasker, 19 Aug 1909, LB 090507, p. 521.
34) TAE to H.F. Brady, 14 Dec 1910.
35) P. Sutcliffe to H.M. Scott, 27 Mov 1918, ” a lot of people
think that he (Edison) is still working at a small lab in Menlo
Park," 1918 Phono Gen.
36) Congressional Record, vol 71, no. 97, Resolution of 21 Oct
1929.
37) Vanderbilt, p. 299.
38) TAE to Hood Wright, Mov 1887, H 871115.
39) Conot, p. 448.
40) TAE Inc. Annual report, 1952, Charles Edison fund.