Interior view of Kinetoscope with peephole viewer at top of cabinet

The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. Though not a movie projector—it was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing its components—the Kinetoscope introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video: it creates the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. First described in conceptual terms by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1888, it was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. Dickson and his team at the Edison lab also devised the Kinetograph, an innovative motion picture camera with rapid intermittent, or stop-and-go, film movement, to photograph movies for in-house experiments and, eventually, commercial Kinetoscope presentations.

On April 14, 1894, the first commercial exhibition of motion pictures in history was given in New York City, using ten Kinetoscopes. Instrumental to the birth of American movie culture, the Kinetoscope also had a major impact in Europe; its influence abroad was magnified by Edison's decision not to seek international patents on the device, facilitating numerous imitations of and improvements on the technology. In 1895, Edison introduced the Kinetophone, which joined the Kinetoscope with a cylinder phonograph. Film projection, which Edison initially disdained as financially nonviable, soon superseded the Kinetoscope's individual exhibition model. Many of the projection systems developed by Edison's firm in later years would use the Kinetoscope name.

Development[link]

Sheet of images from one of the three Monkeyshines films (ca. 1889–90) produced as tests of an early version of the Kinetoscope

An encounter with the work and ideas of photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge appears to have spurred Edison to pursue the development of a motion picture system. On February 25, 1888, in Orange, New Jersey, Muybridge gave a lecture that may have included a demonstration of his zoopraxiscope, a device that projected sequential images drawn around the edge of a glass disc, producing the illusion of motion. The Edison facility was very close by, and the lecture was possibly attended by both Edison and his company's official photographer, William Dickson. Two days later, Muybridge and Edison met at Edison's laboratory in West Orange; Muybridge later described how he proposed a collaboration to join his device with the Edison phonograph—a combination system that would play sound and images concurrently.^[1] No such collaboration was undertaken, but in October 1888, Edison filed a preliminary claim, known as a caveat, with the U.S. Patent Office announcing his plans to create a device that would do "for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear". It is clear that it was intended as part of a complete audiovisual system: "we may see & hear a whole Opera as perfectly as if actually present".^[2] In March 1889, a second caveat was filed, in which the proposed motion picture device was given a name, Kinetoscope, derived from the Greek roots kineto- ("movement") and scopos ("to view").^[3]

Edison assigned Dickson, one of his most talented employees, to the job of making the Kinetoscope a reality. Edison would take full credit for the invention, but the historiographical consensus is that the title of creator can hardly go to one man:

While Edison seems to have conceived the idea and initiated the experiments, Dickson apparently performed the bulk of the experimentation, leading most modern scholars to assign Dickson with the major credit for turning the concept into a practical reality. The Edison laboratory, though, worked as a collaborative organization. Laboratory assistants were assigned to work on many projects while Edison supervised and involved himself and participated to varying degrees.^[4]

Dickson and his then lead assistant, Charles Brown, made halting progress at first. Edison's original idea involved recording pinpoint photographs, 1/32 of an inch wide, directly on to a cylinder (also referred to as a "drum"); the cylinder, made of an opaque material for positive images or of glass for negatives, was coated in collodion to provide a photographic base.^[5] An audio cylinder would provide synchronized sound, while the rotating images, hardly operatic in scale, were viewed through a microscope-like tube. When tests were made with images expanded to a mere 1/8 of an inch in width, the coarseness of the silver bromide emulsion used on the cylinder became unacceptably apparent. Around June 1889, the lab began working with sensitized celluloid sheets, supplied by John Carbutt, that could be wrapped around the cylinder, providing a far superior base for the recording of photographs.^[6] The first film made for the Kinetoscope, and apparently the first motion picture ever produced on photographic film in the United States, may have been shot at this time (there is an unresolved debate over whether it was made in June 1889 or November 1890); known as Monkeyshines, No. 1, it shows an employee of the lab in an apparently tongue-in-cheek display of physical dexterity.^[7] Attempts at synchronizing sound were soon left behind, while Dickson would also experiment with disc-based exhibition designs.^[8]

An acre in size, Edison's exhibit at the Exposition Universelle included an entire electrical power station. (Smithsonian Institution/William J. Hammer Collection)

The project would soon head off in more productive directions, largely impelled by a trip of Edison's to Europe and the Exposition Universelle in Paris, for which he departed August 2 or 3, 1889.^[9] During his two months abroad, Edison visited with scientist-photographer Étienne-Jules Marey, who had devised a "chronophotographic gun"—the first portable motion picture camera—which used a strip of flexible film designed to capture sequential images at twelve frames per second.^[10] Upon his return to the United States, Edison filed another patent caveat, on November 2, which described a Kinetoscope based not just on a flexible filmstrip, but one in which the film was perforated to allow for its engagement by sprockets, making its mechanical conveyance much more smooth and reliable.^[11] The first motion picture system to employ a perforated image band was apparently the Théâtre Optique, patented by French inventor Charles-Émile Reynaud in 1888. Reynaud's system did not use photographic film, but images painted on gelatine frames.^[12] At the Exposition Universelle, Edison would have seen both the Théâtre Optique and the electrical tachyscope of German inventor Ottamar Anschütz.^[13] This disc-based projection device is often referred to as an important conceptual source for the development of the Kinetoscope. Its crucial innovation was to take advantage of the persistence of vision theory by using an intermittent light source to momentarily "freeze" the projection of each image; the goal was to facilitate the viewer's retention of many minutely different stages of a photographed activity, thus producing a highly effective illusion of constant motion. By late 1890, intermittent visibility would be integral to the Kinetoscope's design.^[14]

The question of when the Edison lab began working on a filmstrip device is a matter of historical debate. According to Dickson, in the summer of 1889, he began cutting the stiff celluloid sheets supplied by Carbutt into strips for use in such a prototype machine; in August, by his description, he attended a demonstration of George Eastman's new flexible film and was given a roll by an Eastman representative, which was immediately applied to experiments with the prototype.^[15] As described by historian Marta Braun, Eastman's product

was sufficiently strong, thin, and pliable to permit the intermittent movement of the film strip behind [a camera] lens at considerable speed and under great tension without tearing...stimulat[ing] the almost immediate solution of the essential problems of cinematic invention.^[16]

Charles Kayser of the Edison lab seated behind the Kinetograph. Portability was not among the camera's virtues.

Some scholars—in particular, Gordon Hendricks, in The Edison Motion Picture Myth (1961)—have argued that the lab began working on a filmstrip machine much later and that Dickson and Edison misrepresented the date to establish priority for reasons of both patent protection and intellectual status. In any event, though film historian David Robinson claims that "the cylinder experiments seem to have been carried on to the bitter end" (meaning the final months of 1890), as far back as September 1889—while Edison was still in Europe, but corresponding regularly with Dickson—the lab definitely placed its first order with the Eastman company for roll film. Three more orders for roll film were placed over the next five months.^[17]

Only sporadic work was done on the Kinetoscope for much of 1890 as Dickson concentrated on Edison's unsuccessful venture into ore milling—between May and November, no expenses at all were billed to the lab's Kinetoscope account.^[18] By early 1891, however, Dickson, his new chief assistant, William Heise, and another lab employee, Charles Kayser, had succeeded in devising a functional strip-based film viewing system. In the new design, whose mechanics were housed in a wooden cabinet, a loop of horizontally configured 19 mm (3/4 inch) film ran around a series of spindles. The film, with a single row of perforations engaged by an electrically powered sprocket wheel, was drawn continuously beneath a magnifying lens.^[19] An electric lamp shone up from beneath the film, casting its circular-format images onto the lens and thence through a peephole atop the cabinet. As described by Robinson, a rapidly spinning shutter "permitted a flash of light so brief that [each] frame appeared to be frozen. This rapid series of apparently still frames appeared, thanks to the persistence of vision phenomenon, as a moving image."^[20] The lab also developed a motor-powered camera, the Kinetograph, capable of shooting with the new sprocketed film. To govern the intermittent movement of the film in the camera, allowing the strip to stop long enough so each frame could be fully exposed and then advancing it quickly (in about 1/460 of a second) to the next frame, the sprocket wheel that engaged the strip was driven by an escapement disc mechanism—the first practical system for the high-speed stop-and-go film movement that would be the foundation for the next century of cinematography.^[21]

35 mm filmstrip of the Edison production Butterfly Dance (ca. 1894–95), featuring Annabelle Whitford Moore, in the format that would become standard for both still and motion picture photography around the world.^[22]

On May 20, 1891, the first public demonstration of a prototype Kinetoscope was given at the laboratory for approximately 150 members of the National Federation of Women's Clubs. The New York Sun described what the club women saw in the "small pine box" they encountered:

In the top of the box was a hole perhaps an inch in diameter. As they looked through the hole they saw the picture of a man. It was a most marvelous picture. It bowed and smiled and waved its hands and took off its hat with the most perfect naturalness and grace. Every motion was perfect....^[23]

The man was Dickson; the little movie, approximately three seconds long, is now referred to as Dickson Greeting. On August 24, three detailed patent applications were filed: the first for a "Kinetographic Camera", the second for the camera as well, and the third for an "Apparatus for Exhibiting Photographs of Moving Objects".^[24] In the first Kinetograph application, Edison stated, "I have been able to take with a single camera and a tape-film as many as forty-six photographs per second...but I do not wish to limit the scope of my invention to this high rate of speed...since with some subjects a speed as low as thirty pictures per second or even lower is sufficient."^[25] Indeed, according to the Library of Congress archive, based on data from a study by historian Charles Musser, Dickson Greeting and at least two other films made with the Kinetograph in 1891 were shot at 30 frames per second or even slower.^[26] The Kinetoscope application also included a plan for a stereoscopic film projection system that was apparently abandoned.^[27]

In the spring of the following year, steps began to make coin operation, via a nickel slot, part of the mechanics of the viewing system.^[28] By autumn 1892, the design of the Kinetoscope was essentially complete. The filmstrip, based on stock manufactured first by Eastman, and then, from April 1893 onward, by New York's Blair Camera Co., was 35 mm (1 3/8 inches) wide; each vertically sequenced frame bore a rectangular image and four perforations on each side.^[29] Within a few years, this basic format would be adopted globally as the standard for motion picture film, which it remains to this day. The publication in the October 1892 Phonogram of cinematographic sequences shot in the format demonstrates that the Kinetograph had already been reconfigured to produce movies with the new film.^[30]

As for the Kinetoscope itself, there is a significant disagreement over the location of the shutter providing the crucial intermittent visibility effect. According to a report by inventor Herman Casler described as "authoritative" by Hendricks, who personally examined five of the six still-extant first-generation devices, "Just above the film,...a shutter wheel having five spokes and a very small rectangular opening in the rim [rotates] directly over the film. An incandescent lamp...is placed below the film...and the light passes up through the film, shutter opening, and magnifying lens...to the eye of the observer placed at the opening in the top of the case."^[31] Robinson, on the other hand, says the shutter—which he agrees has only a single slit—is positioned lower, "between the lamp and film".^[20] The Casler–Hendricks description is supported by the diagrams of the Kinetoscope that accompany the 1891 patent application, in particular, diagram 2. A side view, it does not illustrate the shutter, but it shows the impossibility of it fitting between the lamp and the film without a major redesign and indicates a space that seems suitable for it between the film and the lens.^[32] Robinson's description, however, is supported by a photograph of a Kinetoscope interior that appears in Hendricks's own book.^[33]

On February 21, 1893, a patent was issued for the system that governed the intermittent movement of film in the Kinetograph.^[34] The escapement-based mechanism would be superseded within a few years by competing systems, in particular those based on the so-called Geneva drive or "Maltese cross" that would become the norm for both movie cameras and projectors.^[35] The exhibition device itself—which, despite erroneous accounts to the contrary, never employed intermittent film movement, only intermittent lighting or viewing—was finally awarded its patent, number 493,426, on March 14.^[36] The Kinetoscope was ready to be unveiled.

Going public[link]

Construction on the imposing Black Maria began in December 1892. In order to take full advantage of sunlight, the tar paper–lined studio was equipped with a hinged, flip-up roof and the entire structure could rotate on a track. "It obeys no architectural rules," declared Dickson, who found it "productive of the happiest effects in the films."^[37]

The premiere of the completed Kinetoscope was held not at the Chicago World's Fair, as originally scheduled, but at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on May 9, 1893. The first film publicly shown on the system was Blacksmith Scene (aka Blacksmiths); directed by Dickson and shot by Heise, it was produced at the new Edison moviemaking studio, known as the Black Maria.^[38] Despite extensive promotion, a major display of the Kinetoscope, involving as many as twenty-five machines, never took place at the Chicago exposition. Kinetoscope production had been delayed in part because of Dickson's absence of more than eleven weeks early in the year with a nervous breakdown.^[39] Robinson argues that "[s]peculation that a single Kinetoscope reached the Fair seems to be conclusively dismissed by an 1894 leaflet issued for the launching of the invention in London," which states, "the Kinetoscope was not perfected in time for the great Fair."^[40] Hendricks, in contrast, refers to accounts in the Scientific American of July 21 and October 21, 1893, that constitute evidence no less "conclusive" that one Kinetoscope did make it to the fair.^[41] The weight of evidence supports Hendricks; as fair historian Stanley Appelbaum states, "Doubt has been cast on the reports of [the Kinetoscope's] actual presence at the fair, but these reports are numerous and circumstantial" (Appelbaum does err in claiming that the device was "first shown at the Exposition").^[42]

The first U.S. copyright for an identifiable motion picture was given to Edison for Fred Ott's Sneeze.

Work proceeded, though slowly, on the Kinetoscope project. On October 6, a U.S. copyright was issued for a "publication" received by the Library of Congress consisting of "Edison Kinetoscopic Records." It remains unclear what film was awarded this, the first motion picture copyright in North America.^[43] By the turn of the year, the Kinetoscope project would be reenergized. During the first week of January 1894, a five-second film starring an Edison technician was shot at the Black Maria; Fred Ott's Sneeze, as it is now widely known, was made expressly to produce a sequence of images for an article in Harper's magazine. Never intended for exhibition, it would become one of the most famous Edison films and the first identifiable motion picture to receive a U.S. copyright. Three months later, the Kinetoscope's epochal moment arrived.^[44]

On April 14, 1894, a public Kinetoscope parlor was opened by the Holland Bros. in New York City at 1155 Broadway, on the corner of 27th Street—the first commercial motion picture house. The venue had ten machines, set up in parallel rows of five, each showing a different movie. For 25 cents a viewer could see all the films in either row; half a dollar gave access to the entire bill.^[45] The machines were purchased from the new Kinetoscope Company, which had contracted with Edison for their production; the firm, headed by Norman C. Raff and Frank R. Gammon, included among its investors Andrew M. Holland, one of the entrepreneurial siblings, and Edison's former business chief, Alfred O. Tate. The ten films that comprise the first commercial movie program, all shot at the Black Maria, were descriptively titled: Barber Shop, Bertoldi (mouth support) (Ena Bertoldi, a British vaudeville contortionist), Bertoldi (table contortion), Blacksmiths, Roosters (some manner of cock fight), Highland Dance, Horse Shoeing, Sandow (Eugen Sandow, a German strongman managed by Florenz Ziegfeld), Trapeze, and Wrestling.^[46] As historian Charles Musser describes, a "profound transformation of American life and performance culture" had begun.^[44]

A San Francisco Kinetoscope parlor, ca. 1894–95.

Twenty-five cents for no more than a few minutes of entertainment was hardly cheap diversion. For the same amount, one could purchase a ticket to a major vaudeville theater; when America's first amusement park opened in Coney Island the following year, a 25-cent entrance fee covered admission to three rides, a performing sea lion show, and a dance hall.^[47] The Kinetoscope was an immediate success, however, and by June 1, the Hollands were also operating venues in Chicago and San Francisco. Entrepreneurs (including Raff and Gammon, with their own International Novelty Co.) were soon running Kinetoscope parlors and temporary exhibition venues around the United States. New firms joined the Kinetoscope Company in commissioning and marketing the machines. The Kinetoscope exhibition spaces were largely, though not uniformly, profitable. After fifty weeks in operation, the Hollands' New York parlor had generated approximately $1,400 in monthly receipts against an estimated $515 in monthly operating costs; receipts from the Chicago venue (located in a Masonic temple) were substantially lower, about $700 a month, though presumably operating costs were lower as well.^[48] For each machine, Edison's business at first generally charged $250 to the Kinetoscope Company and other distributors, which would use them in their own exhibition parlors or resell them to independent exhibitors; individual films were initially priced by Edison at $10.^[49] During the Kinetoscope's first eleven months of commercialization, the sale of viewing machines, films, and auxiliary items generated a profit of more than $85,000 for Edison's company.^[50]

One of the new firms to enter the field was the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company; the firm's partners, brothers Otway and Grey Latham, Otway's friend Enoch Rector, and their employer, Samuel J. Tilden Jr., sought to combine the popularity of the Kinetoscope with that of prizefighting. This led to a series of significant developments in the motion picture field: The Kinetograph was then capable of shooting only a 50-foot-long negative (evidence suggests 48 feet (15 m) feet was the longest length actually used).^[51] At 16 frames per foot, this meant a maximum running time of 20 seconds at 40 frames per second (fps), the speed most frequently employed with the camera. At the rate of 30 fps that had been used as far back as 1891, a film could run for almost 27 seconds. Hendricks identifies Sandow as having been shot at 16 fps, as does the Library of Congress in its online catalog, where its duration is listed as 40 seconds.^[52] Even at the slowest of these rates, the running time would not have been enough to accommodate a satisfactory exchange of fisticuffs; 16 fps, as well, might have been thought to give too herky-jerky a visual effect for enjoyment of the sport. The Kinetograph and Kinetoscope were modified, possibly with Rector's assistance, so they could manage filmstrips three times longer than had previously been used.^[53]

The June 1894 Leonard–Cushing bout. Each of the six one-minute rounds recorded by the Kinetograph was made available to exhibitors for $22.50.^[54] Customers who watched the final round saw Leonard score a knockdown.

On June 14, a match with abbreviated rounds was staged between boxers Michael Leonard and Jack Cushing at the Black Maria. Seven-hundred-and-fifty feet worth of images or even more were shot at the rate of 30 fps—easily the longest motion picture to date.^[55] In August 1894, the film premiered at the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company's parlor at 83 Nassau Street in New York. A half-dozen expanded Kinetoscope machines each showed a different round of the fight for a dime, meaning sixty cents to see the complete bout.^[56] For a planned series of follow-up fights (of which the outcome of at least the first was fixed), the Lathams signed famous heavyweight James J. Corbett, stipulating that his image could not be recorded by any other Kinetoscope company—the first movie star contract.^[57]

Just three months after the commercial debut of the motion picture came the first recorded instance of motion picture censorship. The film in question showed a performance by the Spanish dancer Carmencita, a New York music hall star since the beginning of the decade. According to one description of her live act, she "communicated an intense sexuality across the footlights that led male reporters to write long, exuberant columns about her performance"—articles that would later be reproduced in the Edison film catalog.^[58] The Kinetoscope movie of her dance, shot at the Black Maria in mid-March 1894, was playing in the New Jersey resort town Asbury Park by summer. The town's founder, James A. Bradley, a real estate developer and leading member of the Methodist community, had recently been elected a state senator:^[59] "The Newark Evening News of 17 July 1894 reported that [Senator] Bradley...was so shocked by the glimpse of Carmencita's ankles and lace that he complained to Mayor Ten Broeck. The showman was thereupon ordered to withdraw the offending film, which he replaced with Boxing Cats."^[60] The following month, a San Francisco exhibitor was arrested for a Kinetoscope operation "alleged to be indecent."^[61] The group whose disgruntlement occasioned the arrest was the Pacific Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose targets included "illicit literature, obscene pictures and books, the sale of morphine, cocaine, opium, tobacco and liquors to minors, lottery tickets, etc.," and which proudly took credit for having "caused 70 arrests and obtained 48 convictions" in a recent two-month span.^[62]

Advertisement announcing the initial Kinetoscope exhibition in London, held on October 17, 1894.

The Kinetoscope was also gaining notice on the other side of the Atlantic. In the summer of 1894, it was demonstrated at 20, boulevard Poissonnière in Paris; this was one of the primary inspirations to the Lumière brothers, who would go on to develop the first commercially successful movie projection system.^[63] On October 17, 1894, the first Kinetoscope parlor outside the United States opened in London.^[64] Dissemination of the system proceeded rapidly in Europe, as Edison had left his patents unprotected overseas. The most likely reason was the technology's reliance on a variety of foreign innovations and a consequent belief that patent applications would have little chance of success. An alternative view, however, used to be popular: The 1971 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, for instance, claims that Edison "apparently thought so little of his invention that he failed to pay the $150 that would have granted him an international copyright [sic]."^[65] As recently as 2004, Andrew Rausch stated that Edison "balked at a $150 fee for overseas patents" and "saw little commercial value in the Kinetoscope."^[66] Given that Edison, as much a businessman as an inventor, spent approximately $24,000 on the system's development and went so far as to build a facility expressly for moviemaking before his U.S. patent was awarded, Rausch's interpretation is not widely shared by present-day scholars.^[67] Whatever the cause, two Greek entrepreneurs, George Georgiades and George Tragides, took advantage of the opening. Already successfully operating a pair of London movie parlors with Edison Kinetoscopes, they commissioned English inventor and manufacturer Robert W. Paul to make copies of them. After fulfilling the Georgiades–Tragides contract, Paul decided to go into the movie business himself, proceeding to make dozens of additional Kinetoscope reproductions. Paul's work would result in a series of important innovations in both camera and exhibition technology.^[68] Meanwhile, plans were advancing at the Black Maria to realize Edison's goal of a motion picture system uniting image with sound.

Kinetophone[link]

The 1895 version of the Kinetophone in use, showing the earphones that lead to the cylinder phonograph within the cabinet

The Kinetophone (aka Phonokinetoscope) was an early attempt by Edison and Dickson to create a sound-film system. Reports suggest that in July 1893, a Kinetoscope accompanied by a cylinder phonograph had been presented at the Chicago World's Fair.^[41] The first known movie made as a test of the Kinetophone was shot at Edison's New Jersey studio in late 1894 or early 1895; now referred to as the Dickson Experimental Sound Film, it is the only surviving movie with live-recorded sound made for the Kinetophone. In March 1895, Edison offered the device for sale; involving no technological innovations, it was a Kinetoscope whose modified cabinet included an accompanying cylinder phonograph. Kinetoscope owners were also offered kits with which to retrofit their equipment. The first Kinetophone exhibitions appear to have taken place in April.^[69] Though a Library of Congress educational website states, "The picture and sound were made somewhat synchronous by connecting the two with a belt,"^[70] this is incorrect. As historian David Robinson describes, "The Kinetophone...made no attempt at synchronization. The viewer listened through tubes to a phonograph concealed in the cabinet and performing approximately appropriate music or other sound." Historian Douglas Gomery concurs, "[Edison] did not try to synchronize sound and image." Leading production sound mixer Mark Ulano writes, "[O]nly 45 Kinetophones were made. They did NOT play synchronously other than the phonograph turned on when viewing and off when stopped."^[71] Though the surviving Dickson test involves live-recorded sound, certainly most, and probably all, of the films marketed for the Kinetophone were shot as silents, predominantly march or dance subjects; exhibitors could then choose from a variety of musical cylinders offering a rhythmic match.^[72] For example, three different cylinders with orchestral performances were proposed as accompaniments for Carmencita: "Valse Santiago", "La Paloma", and "Alma-Danza Spagnola".^[73]

Even as Edison followed his dream of securing the Kinetoscope's popularity by adding sound to its allure, many in the field were beginning to suspect that film projection was the next step that should be pursued. When Norman Raff communicated his customers' interest in such a system to Edison, the great inventor summarily rejected the notion:

No, if we make this screen machine that you are asking for, it will spoil everything. We are making these peep show machines and selling a lot of them at a good profit. If we put out a screen machine there will be a use for maybe about ten of them in the whole United States. With that many screen machines you could show the pictures to everybody in the country—and then it would be done. Let's not kill the goose that lays the golden egg.^[74]

Under continuing pressure from Raff, Edison eventually conceded to investigate the possibility of developing a projection system. He seconded one of his lab's technicians to the Kinetoscope Company to initiate the work, without informing Dickson. Dickson's ultimate discovery of this move appears to have been one of the central factors leading to his break with Edison that occurred in spring 1895.^[75]

Projecting Kinetoscopes[link]

In the first decade of the 1900s, years before developing the compact Home Projecting Kinetoscope, Edison marketed an essentially theatrical 35 mm Projecting Kinetoscope for domestic use.

Over the course of 1895, it became clear that the Kinetoscope was going to lose out on one end to projected motion pictures and, on the other, to a new "peep show" device, the cheap, flip-book-based Mutoscope. In its second year of commercialization, the Kinetoscope operation's profits plummeted by more than 95 percent, to just over $4,000.^[76] The Latham brothers and their father, Woodville, had retained the services of former Edison employee Eugene Lauste and then, in April 1895, Dickson himself to develop a film projection system. On May 20, in New York City, the new Eidoloscope was used for the first commercial screening of a motion picture: a boxing match between Young Griffo and Charles Barnett, four or eight minutes long.^[77] European inventors, most prominently the Lumières and Germany's Skladanowsky brothers, were moving forward with similar systems.

By the beginning of 1896, Edison had turned his attention to promoting a projector technology, the Phantoscope, developed by young inventors Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. The rights to the system had been acquired by Raff and Gammon, who redubbed it the Vitascope and arranged with Edison to present himself as its creator.^[78] With Dickson having left his employ, the Kinetophone was soon mothballed and Edison suspended work on sound cinema for an extended period. Departing the Vitascope operation after little more than a year, Edison commissioned the development of his own projection systems, the Projectoscope and then multiple iterations of the Projecting Kinetoscope. In 1912, he introduced the ambitious and expensive Home Projecting Kinetoscope, which employed a unique format of three parallel columns of sequential frames on one strip of film—the middle column ran through the machine in the reverse direction from its neighbors. It was a commercial failure.^[79] Four years later, the Edison operation came out with its last substantial new film exhibition technology, a short-lived theatrical system called the Super Kinetoscope. Much of the Edison company's most creative work in the motion picture field from 1897 on involved the use of Kinetoscope-related patents in threatened or actual lawsuits for the purpose of financially pressuring or blocking commercial rivals.^[80]

Image of a Projecting Kinetoscope published in 1914

As far back as the Vitascope days, some exhibitors had screened films accompanied by phonographs playing appropriate, though very roughly timed, sound effects; in the style of the Kinetophone described above, rhythmically matching recordings were also made available for march and dance subjects.^[81] While Edison oversaw cursory sound-cinema experiments after the success of The Great Train Robbery (1903) and other Edison Manufacturing Company productions, it was not until 1908 that he returned in earnest to the combined audiovisual concept that had first led him to enter the motion picture field. Edison patented a synchronization system connecting a projector and a phonograph, located behind the screen, via an assembly of three rigid shafts—a vertical one descending from each device, joined by a third running horizontally the entire length of the theater, beneath the floor.^[82] Two years later, he supervised a press demonstration at the laboratory of a sound-film system of either this or a later design.^[83] In 1913, Edison finally introduced the new Kinetophone—like all of his sound-film exhibition systems since the first in the mid-1890s, it used a cylinder phonograph, now connected to a Projecting Kinetoscope via a fishing line–type belt and a series of metal pulleys.^[84] While it met with great acclaim in the short term, poorly trained operators had trouble keeping picture in synchronization with sound and, like other sound-film systems of the era, the Kinetophone had not solved the issues of insufficient amplification and unpleasant audio quality. Its drawing power as a novelty soon faded and when a fire at Edison's West Orange complex in December 1914 destroyed all of the company's Kinetophone image and sound masters, the system was abandoned.^[85]

See also[link]

Film portal

• History of film
• List of film formats
• Motion Picture Patents Company
• William Friese-Greene

Notes[link]

Sources[link]

External links[link]

Media related to Kinetoscope at Wikimedia Commons

• Edison Motion Picture Equipment Chronology part of Professor Hall's Silent Movies website
• Machines illustrated survey of early cinematic equipment; part of the Who's Who of Victorian Cinema website
• "Motion Pictures" chap. 21 of Edison, His Life and Inventions (1910), by Frank Lewis Dyer (Edison lawyer) and Thomas Commerford Martin (AIEE ex-president)
• Technology: Kinetoscope essay with technical analysis of the system; part of the EarlyCinema.com website
• Voice Trial—Kinetophone Actor Audition by Frank Lenord mp3 audio file of undated audition; part of Project Gutenberg
• Voice Trial—Kinetophone Actor Audition by Siegfried Von Schultz mp3 audio file of undated audition; part of Project Gutenberg

Kinetoscope films[link]

• Edison National Historic Site: Blacksmith Scene (1893), Sandow (1894), Serpentine Dance (ca. 1894–95), Edison at Work in His Chemistry Lab (n.d.). Note that The Kiss (1896) was shot not for the Kinetoscope but for Vitascope projection.
• Library of Congress: twenty-five films from 1891 through 1895

Thomas Edison
"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." – Thomas Alva Edison, Harper's Monthly (September 1932)
Born	Thomas Alva Edison (1847-02-11)February 11, 1847 Milan, Ohio, U.S.
Died	October 18, 1931(1931-10-18) (aged 84) West Orange, New Jersey, U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	School dropout
Occupation	Inventor, businessman
Religion	Deist
Spouse	Mary Stilwell (m. 1871–1884) «start: (1871)–end+1: (1885)»"Marriage: Mary Stilwell to Thomas Edison" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Thomas_Edison) Mina Miller (m. 1886–1931) «start: (1886)–end+1: (1932)»"Marriage: Mina Miller to Thomas Edison" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Thomas_Edison)
Children	Marion Estelle Edison (1873–1965) Thomas Alva Edison Jr. (1876–1935) William Leslie Edison (1878–1937) Madeleine Edison (1888–1979) Charles Edison (1890–1969) Theodore Miller Edison (1898–1992)
Parents	Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. (1804–1896) Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871)
Relatives	Lewis Miller (father-in-law)
Signature

Edison as a boy

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large-scale teamwork to the process of invention, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.^[1]

Edison is the fourth most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. These included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures.

His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison originated the concept and implementation of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Manhattan Island, New York.

Early life[link]

Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. (1804–96, born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, Canada) and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871, born in Chenango County, New York).^{[2][citation needed]} His father had to escape from Canada because he took part in the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837.^{[citation needed]} Edison reported being of Dutch ancestry.^[3]

In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him "addled". This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. Edison recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint." His mother taught him at home.^[4] Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker's School of Natural Philosophy and The Cooper Union.

Edison developed hearing problems at an early age. The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections. Around the middle of his career, Edison attributed the hearing impairment to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire and he was thrown off the train in Smiths Creek, Michigan, along with his apparatus and chemicals. In his later years, he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears.^[5][6]

Edison's family moved to Port Huron, Michigan after the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854 and business declined;^[7] his life there was bittersweet. He sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, and he sold vegetables to supplement his income. He also studied qualitative analysis, and conducted chemical experiments on the train until an accident prohibited further work of the kind.^[8]

He obtained the exclusive right to sell newspapers on the road, and, with the aid of four assistants, he set in type and printed the Grand Trunk Herald, which he sold with his other papers.^[8] This began Edison's long streak of entrepreneurial ventures, as he discovered his talents as a businessman. These talents eventually led him to found 14 companies, including General Electric, which is still one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world.^[9][10]

Telegrapher[link]

Edison became a telegraph operator after he saved three-year-old Jimmie MacKenzie from being struck by a runaway train. Jimmie's father, station agent J.U. MacKenzie of Mount Clemens, Michigan, was so grateful that he trained Edison as a telegraph operator. Edison's first telegraphy job away from Port Huron was at Stratford Junction, Ontario, on the Grand Trunk Railway.^[11]

In 1866, at the age of 19, Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where, as an employee of Western Union, he worked the Associated Press bureau news wire. Edison requested the night shift, which allowed him plenty of time to spend at his two favorite pastimes—reading and experimenting. Eventually, the latter pre-occupation cost him his job. One night in 1867, he was working with a lead–acid battery when he spilled sulfuric acid onto the floor. It ran between the floorboards and onto his boss's desk below. The next morning Edison was fired.^[12]

One of his mentors during those early years was a fellow telegrapher and inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope, who allowed the impoverished youth to live and work in the basement of his Elizabeth, New Jersey home. Some of Edison's earliest inventions were related to telegraphy, including a stock ticker. His first patent was for the electric vote recorder, (U.S. Patent 90,646),^[13] which was granted on June 1, 1869.^[14]

Marriages and children[link]

On December 25, 1871, Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell (1855-1884), whom he had met two months earlier; she was an employee at one of his shops. They had three children:

• Marion Estelle Edison (1873–1965), nicknamed "Dot"^[15]
• Thomas Alva Edison, Jr. (1876–1935), nicknamed "Dash"^[16]
• William Leslie Edison (1878–1937) Inventor, graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, 1900.^[17]

Mary Edison died at age 29 on August 9, 1884, of unknown causes: possibly from a brain tumor^[18] or a morphine overdose. Doctors frequently prescribed morphine to women in those years to treat a variety of causes, and researchers believe that some of her symptoms sounded as if they were associated with morphine poisoning.^[19]

Mina Edison in 1906

On February 24, 1886, at the age of thirty-nine, Edison married the 20-year-old Mina Miller (1866-1947) in Akron, Ohio.^[20] She was the daughter of the inventor Lewis Miller, co-founder of the Chautauqua Institution and a benefactor of Methodist charities. They also had three children together:

• Madeleine Edison (1888–1979), who married John Eyre Sloane.^[21][22]
• Charles Edison (1890–1969), who took over the company upon his father's death and who later was elected Governor of New Jersey.^[23] He also took charge of his father's experimental laboratories in West Orange.
• Theodore Edison (1898–1992), (MIT Physics 1923), credited with more than 80 patents.

Mina outlived Thomas Edison, dying on August 24, 1947.^[24][25]

Beginning his career[link]

Photograph of Edison with his phonograph (2nd model), taken in Mathew Brady's Washington, DC studio in April 1878.

	Mary Had a Little Lamb Thomas Edison reciting "Mary Had a Little Lamb"
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention that first gained him notice was the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park," New Jersey.

His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder, but had poor sound quality and the recordings could be played only a few times. In the 1880s, a redesigned model using wax-coated cardboard cylinders was produced by Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, and Charles Tainter. This was one reason that Thomas Edison continued work on his own "Perfected Phonograph."

Menlo Park (1876–1881)[link]

Edison's Menlo Park Laboratory, removed to Greenfield Village at Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. (Note the organ against the back wall)

Edison's major innovation was the first industrial research lab, which was built in Menlo Park, New Jersey. It was built with the funds from the sale of Edison's quadruplex telegraph. After his demonstration of the telegraph, Edison was not sure that his original plan to sell it for $4,000 to $5,000 was right, so he asked Western Union to make a bid. He was surprised to hear them offer $10,000,^{[citation needed]} ($202,000 USD 2010) which he gratefully accepted.

The quadruplex telegraph was Edison's first big financial success, and Menlo Park became the first institution set up with the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation and improvement. Edison was legally attributed with most of the inventions produced there, though many employees carried out research and development under his direction. His staff was generally told to carry out his directions in conducting research, and he drove them hard to produce results.

William Joseph Hammer, a consulting electrical engineer, began his duties as a laboratory assistant to Edison in December 1879. He assisted in experiments on the telephone, phonograph, electric railway, iron ore separator, electric lighting, and other developing inventions. However, Hammer worked primarily on the incandescent electric lamp and was put in charge of tests and records on that device. In 1880, he was appointed chief engineer of the Edison Lamp Works. In his first year, the plant under General Manager Francis Robbins Upton turned out 50,000 lamps. According to Edison, Hammer was "a pioneer of incandescent electric lighting".

Thomas Edison's first successful light bulb model, used in public demonstration at Menlo Park, December 1879

Nearly all of Edison's patents were utility patents, which were protected for a 17-year period and included inventions or processes that are electrical, mechanical, or chemical in nature. About a dozen were design patents, which protect an ornamental design for up to a 14-year period. As in most patents, the inventions he described were improvements over prior art. The phonograph patent, in contrast, was unprecedented as describing the first device to record and reproduce sounds.^[26]

Edison did not invent the first electric light bulb, but instead invented the first commercially practical incandescent light.^{[citation needed]} Many earlier inventors had previously devised incandescent lamps, including Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans. Others who developed early and commercially impractical incandescent electric lamps included Humphry Davy, James Bowman Lindsay, Moses G. Farmer,^[27] William E. Sawyer, Joseph Swan and Heinrich Göbel. Some of these early bulbs had such flaws as an extremely short life, high expense to produce, and high electric current drawn, making them difficult to apply on a large scale commercially.^[28]

In 1878, Edison applied the term filament to the element of glowing wire carrying the current, although the English inventor Joseph Swan had used the term prior to this. Swan developed an incandescent light with a long lasting filament at about the same time as Edison, as Swan's earlier bulbs lacked the high resistance needed to be an effective part of an electrical utility. Edison and his co-workers set about the task of creating longer-lasting bulbs. In Britain, Joseph Swan had been able to obtain a patent on the incandescent lamp; though Edison had already been making successful lamps for some time, his patent application was incompletely prepared and failed.^[28]

Unable to raise the required capital in Britain because of this, Edison was forced to enter into a joint venture with Swan (known as Ediswan). Swan acknowledged that Edison had anticipated him, saying "Edison is entitled to more than I ... he has seen further into this subject, vastly than I, and foreseen and provided for details that I did not comprehend until I saw his system".^[29]

By 1879, Edison had produced a new concept: a high resistance lamp in a very high vacuum, which would burn for hundreds of hours. While the earlier inventors had produced electric lighting in laboratory conditions, dating back to a demonstration of a glowing wire by Alessandro Volta in 1800, Edison concentrated on commercial application, and was able to sell the concept to homes and businesses by mass-producing relatively long-lasting light bulbs and creating a complete system for the generation and distribution of electricity.

In just over a decade, Edison's Menlo Park laboratory had expanded to occupy two city blocks. Edison said he wanted the lab to have "a stock of almost every conceivable material". A newspaper article printed in 1887 reveals the seriousness of his claim, stating the lab contained "eight thousand kinds of chemicals, every kind of screw made, every size of needle, every kind of cord or wire, hair of humans, horses, hogs, cows, rabbits, goats, minx, camels ... silk in every texture, cocoons, various kinds of hoofs, shark's teeth, deer horns, tortoise shell ... cork, resin, varnish and oil, ostrich feathers, a peacock's tail, jet, amber, rubber, all ores ..." and the list goes on.^[30]

Over his desk, Edison displayed a placard with Sir Joshua Reynolds' famous quotation: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking."^[31] This slogan was reputedly posted at several other locations throughout the facility.

With Menlo Park, Edison had created the first industrial laboratory concerned with creating knowledge and then controlling its application.

Carbon telephone transmitter[link]

In 1877–78, Edison invented and developed the carbon microphone used in all telephones along with the Bell receiver until the 1980s. After protracted patent litigation, in 1892 a federal court ruled that Edison and not Emile Berliner was the inventor of the carbon microphone. The carbon microphone was also used in radio broadcasting and public address work through the 1920s.

Electric light[link]

Edison in 1878

Building on the contributions of other developers over the previous three quarters of a century, Edison made improvements to the idea of incandescent light, and entered the public consciousness as "the inventor" of the lightbulb, and a prime mover in developing the necessary infrastructure for electric power.

After many experiments with platinum and other metal filaments, Edison returned to a carbon filament. The first successful test was on October 22, 1879;^[32] it lasted 13.5 hours.^[33] Edison continued to improve this design and by November 4, 1879, filed for U.S. patent 223,898 (granted on January 27, 1880) for an electric lamp using "a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected to platina contact wires".^[34]

Although the patent described several ways of creating the carbon filament including "cotton and linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways",^[34] it was not until several months after the patent was granted that Edison and his team discovered a carbonized bamboo filament that could last over 1,200 hours. The idea of using this particular raw material originated from Edison's recalling his examination of a few threads from a bamboo fishing pole while relaxing on the shore of Battle Lake in the present-day state of Wyoming, where he and other members of a scientific team had traveled so that they could clearly observe a total eclipse of the sun on July 29, 1878, from the Continental Divide.^[35]

U.S. Patent#223898: Electric-Lamp. Issued January 27, 1880.

In 1878, Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City with several financiers, including J. P. Morgan and the members of the Vanderbilt family. Edison made the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park. It was during this time that he said: "We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles."^[36]

Lewis Latimer joined the Edison Electric Light Company in 1884. Latimer had received a patent in January 1881 for the "Process of Manufacturing Carbons", an improved method for the production of carbon filaments for lightbulbs. Latimer worked as an engineer, a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigation on electric lights.^[37]

George Westinghouse's company bought Philip Diehl's competing induction lamp patent rights (1882) for $25,000, forcing the holders of the Edison patent to charge a more reasonable rate for the use of the Edison patent rights and lowering the price of the electric lamp.^[38]

On October 8, 1883, the US patent office ruled that Edison's patent was based on the work of William Sawyer and was therefore invalid. Litigation continued for nearly six years, until October 6, 1889, when a judge ruled that Edison's electric-light improvement claim for "a filament of carbon of high resistance" was valid. To avoid a possible court battle with Joseph Swan, whose British patent had been awarded a year before Edison's, he and Swan formed a joint company called Ediswan to manufacture and market the invention in Britain.

Mahen Theatre in Brno (in what is now the Czech Republic) was the first public building in the world to use Edison's electric lamps, with the installation supervised by Edison's assistant in the invention of the lamp, Francis Jehl.^[39] In September 2010, a sculpture of three giant light bulbs was erected in Brno, in front of the theatre.^[40]

Electric power distribution[link]

Edison patented a system for electricity distribution in 1880, which was essential to capitalize on the invention of the electric lamp. On December 17, 1880, Edison founded the Edison Illuminating Company. The company established the first investor-owned electric utility in 1882 on Pearl Street Station, New York City. It was on September 4, 1882, that Edison switched on his Pearl Street generating station's electrical power distribution system, which provided 110 volts direct current (DC) to 59 customers in lower Manhattan.^[41]

Earlier in the year, in January 1882, he had switched on the first steam-generating power station at Holborn Viaduct in London. The DC supply system provided electricity supplies to street lamps and several private dwellings within a short distance of the station. On January 19, 1883, the first standardized incandescent electric lighting system employing overhead wires began service in Roselle, New Jersey.

War of currents[link]

Extravagant displays of electric lights quickly became a feature of public events, as in this picture from the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition.

Edison's true success, like that of his friend Henry Ford, was in his ability to maximize profits through establishment of mass-production systems and intellectual property rights. George Westinghouse and Edison became adversaries because of Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power distribution instead of the more easily transmitted alternating current (AC) system invented by Nikola Tesla and promoted by Westinghouse. Unlike DC, AC could be stepped up to very high voltages with transformers, sent over thinner and cheaper wires, and stepped down again at the destination for distribution to users.

In 1887, there were 121 Edison power stations in the United States delivering DC electricity to customers. When the limitations of DC were discussed by the public, Edison launched a propaganda campaign to convince people that AC was far too dangerous to use. The problem with DC was that the power plants could economically deliver DC electricity only to customers within about one and a half miles (about 2.4 km) from the generating station, so that it was suitable only for central business districts. When George Westinghouse suggested using high-voltage AC instead, as it could carry electricity hundreds of miles with marginal loss of power, Edison waged a "War of Currents" to prevent AC from being adopted.

The war against AC led him to become involved in the development and promotion of the electric chair (using AC) as an attempt to portray AC to have greater lethal potential than DC. Edison went on to carry out a brief but intense campaign to ban the use of AC or to limit the allowable voltage for safety purposes. As part of this campaign, Edison's employees publicly electrocuted animals to demonstrate the dangers of AC;^[42][43] alternating electric currents are slightly more dangerous in that frequencies near 60 Hz have a markedly greater potential for inducing fatal "cardiac fibrillation" than do direct currents.^[44] On one of the more notable occasions, in 1903, Edison's workers electrocuted Topsy the elephant at Luna Park, near Coney Island, after she had killed several men and her owners wanted her put to death.^[45] His company filmed the electrocution.

AC replaced DC in most instances of generation and power distribution, enormously extending the range and improving the efficiency of power distribution. Though widespread use of DC ultimately lost favor for distribution, it exists today primarily in long-distance high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems. Low-voltage DC distribution continued to be used in high-density downtown areas for many years but was eventually replaced by AC low-voltage network distribution in many of them.^[46]

DC had the advantage that large battery banks could maintain continuous power through brief interruptions of the electric supply from generators and the transmission system. Utilities such as Commonwealth Edison in Chicago had rotary converters or motor-generator sets, which could change DC to AC and AC to various frequencies in the early to mid-20th century. Utilities supplied rectifiers to convert the low voltage AC to DC for such DC loads as elevators, fans and pumps. There were still 1,600 DC customers in downtown New York City as of 2005, and service was finally discontinued only on November 14, 2007.^[46] Most subway systems are still powered by direct current.

Fluoroscopy[link]

Edison is credited with designing and producing the first commercially available fluoroscope, a machine that uses X-rays to take radiographs. Until Edison discovered that calcium tungstate fluoroscopy screens produced brighter images than the barium platinocyanide screens originally used by Wilhelm Röntgen, the technology was capable of producing only very faint images.

The fundamental design of Edison's fluoroscope is still in use today, although Edison himself abandoned the project after nearly losing his own eyesight and seriously injuring his assistant, Clarence Dally. Dally had made himself an enthusiastic human guinea pig for the fluoroscopy project and in the process been exposed to a poisonous dose of radiation. He later died of injuries related to the exposure. In 1903, a shaken Edison said "Don't talk to me about X-rays, I am afraid of them."^[47]

Work relations[link]

Photograph of Thomas Edison by Victor Daireaux, Paris, circa 1880s

Frank J. Sprague, a competent mathematician and former naval officer, was recruited by Edward H. Johnson and joined the Edison organization in 1883. One of Sprague's contributions to the Edison Laboratory at Menlo Park was to expand Edison's mathematical methods. Despite the common belief that Edison did not use mathematics, analysis of his notebooks reveal that he was an astute user of mathematical analysis conducted by his assistants such as Francis Robbins Upton, for example, determining the critical parameters of his electric lighting system including lamp resistance by an analysis of Ohm's Law, Joule's Law and economics.^[48]

Another of Edison's assistants was Nikola Tesla. Tesla claimed that Edison had promised him $50,000 if he succeeded in making improvements to his DC generation plants. Several months later, when Tesla had finished the work and asked to be paid, he said that Edison replied, "When you become a full-fledged American you will appreciate an American joke."^[49]

Tesla immediately resigned. With Tesla's salary of $18 per week, the payment would have amounted to over 53 years' pay and the amount was equal to the initial capital of the company. Another account states that Tesla resigned when he was refused a raise to $25 per week.^[50]

Although Tesla accepted an Edison Medal later in life, this and other negative events concerning Edison remained with him. The day after Edison died, the New York Times contained extensive coverage of Edison's life, with the only negative opinion coming from Tesla who was quoted as saying:

He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene. [...] His method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90% of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense.^[51]

—Nikola Tesla

One of Edison's famous quotations about his attempts to make the light globe suggest that perhaps Tesla was right about Edison's methods of working: "If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."^[52]

When Edison was a very old man and close to death, he said, in looking back, that the biggest mistake he had made was in not respecting Tesla or his work.^[53]

There were 28 men recognized as Edison Pioneers.

Media inventions[link]

The key to Edison's fortunes was telegraphy. With knowledge gained from years of working as a telegraph operator, he learned the basics of electricity. This allowed him to make his early fortune with the stock ticker, the first electricity-based broadcast system. Edison patented the sound recording and reproducing phonograph in 1878. Edison was also granted a patent for the motion picture camera or "Kinetograph". He did the electromechanical design, while his employee W.K.L. Dickson, a photographer, worked on the photographic and optical development. Much of the credit for the invention belongs to Dickson.^[32] In 1891, Thomas Edison built a Kinetoscope, or peep-hole viewer. This device was installed in penny arcades, where people could watch short, simple films. The kinetograph and kinetoscope were both first publicly exhibited May 20, 1891.^[54]

On August 9, 1892, Edison received a patent for a two-way telegraph. In April 1896, Thomas Armat's Vitascope, manufactured by the Edison factory and marketed in Edison's name, was used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City. Later he exhibited motion pictures with voice soundtrack on cylinder recordings, mechanically synchronized with the film.

The June 1894 Leonard–Cushing bout. Each of the six one-minute rounds recorded by the Kinetoscope was made available to exhibitors for $22.50.^[55] Customers who watched the final round saw Leonard score a knockdown.

Officially the kinetoscope entered Europe when the rich American Businessman Irving T. Bush (1869–1948) bought from the Continental Commerce Company of Frank Z. Maguire and Joseph D. Baucus a dozen machines. Bush placed from October 17, 1894, the first kinetoscopes in London. At the same time the French company Kinétoscope Edison Michel et Alexis Werner bought these machines for the market in France. In the last three months of 1894, The Continental Commerce Company sold hundreds of kinetoscopes in Europe (i.e. the Netherlands and Italy). In Germany and in Austria-Hungary the kinetoscope was introduced by the Deutsche-österreichische-Edison-Kinetoscop Gesellschaft, founded by the Ludwig Stollwerck^[56] of the Schokoladen-Süsswarenfabrik Stollwerck & Co of Cologne.

The first kinetoscopes arrived in Belgium at the Fairs in early 1895. The Edison's Kinétoscope Français, a Belgian company, was founded in Brussels on January 15, 1895, with the rights to sell the kinetoscopes in Monaco, France and the French colonies. The main investors in this company were Belgian industrialists.^[57]

On May 14, 1895, the Edison's Kinétoscope Belge was founded in Brussels. The businessman Ladislas-Victor Lewitzki, living in London but active in Belgium and France, took the initiative in starting this business. He had contacts with Leon Gaumont and the American Mutoscope and Biograph Co. In 1898 he also became a shareholder of the Biograph and Mutoscope Company for France.^[57]

In 1901, he visited the Sudbury area in Ontario, Canada, as a mining prospector, and is credited with the original discovery of the Falconbridge ore body. His attempts to mine the ore body were not successful, however, and he abandoned his mining claim in 1903.^[58] A street in Falconbridge, as well as the Edison Building, which served as the head office of Falconbridge Mines, are named for him.

In 1902, agents of Thomas Edison bribed a theater owner in London for a copy of A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès. Edison then made hundreds of copies and showed them in New York City. Méliès received no compensation. He was counting on taking the film to the US and recapture its huge cost by showing it throughout the country when he realized it had already been shown there by Edison. This effectively bankrupted Méliès.^[59]

Other exhibitors similarly routinely copied and exhibited each others' films.^[60] To better protect the copyrights on his films, Edison deposited prints of them on long strips of photographic paper with the U.S. copyright office. Many of these paper prints survived longer and in better condition than the actual films of that era.^[61]

Edison's favorite movie was The Birth of a Nation. He thought that talkies had "spoiled everything" for him. "There isn't any good acting on the screen. They concentrate on the voice now and have forgotten how to act. I can sense it more than you because I am deaf."^[62] His favorite stars were Mary Pickford and Clara Bow.^[63]

In 1908, Edison started the Motion Picture Patents Company, which was a conglomerate of nine major film studios (commonly known as the Edison Trust). Thomas Edison was the first honorary fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, which was founded in 1929.

West Orange and Fort Myers (1886–1931)[link]

Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harvey Firestone, respectively. Ft. Myers, Florida, February 11, 1929

Edison moved from Menlo Park after the death of Mary Stilwell and purchased a home known as "Glenmont" in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey. In 1885, Thomas Edison bought property in Fort Myers, Florida, and built what was later called Seminole Lodge as a winter retreat. Edison and his wife Mina spent many winters in Fort Myers where they recreated and Edison tried to find a domestic source of natural rubber.

Henry Ford, the automobile magnate, later lived a few hundred feet away from Edison at his winter retreat in Fort Myers, Florida. Edison even contributed technology to the automobile. They were friends until Edison's death.

In 1928, Edison joined the Fort Myers Civitan Club. He believed strongly in the organization, writing that "The Civitan Club is doing things—big things—for the community, state, and nation, and I certainly consider it an honor to be numbered in its ranks."^[64] He was an active member in the club until his death, sometimes bringing Henry Ford to the club's meetings.

The final years[link]

Edison was active in business right up to the end. Just months before his death in 1931, the Lackawanna Railroad implemented electric trains in suburban service from Hoboken to Gladstone, Montclair and Dover in New Jersey. Transmission was by means of an overhead catenary system, with the entire project under Edison's guidance. To the surprise of many, he was at the throttle of the very first MU (Multiple-Unit) train to depart Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, driving the train all the way to Dover.^[65]

As another tribute to his lasting legacy, the same fleet of cars Edison deployed on the Lackawanna in 1931 served commuters until their retirement in 1984, when some of them were purchased by the Berkshire Scenic Railway Museum in Lenox, Massachusetts. A special plaque commemorating the joint achievement of both the railway and Edison can be seen today in the waiting room of Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, presently operated by New Jersey Transit.^[65]

Edison was said to have been influenced by a popular fad diet in his last few years; "the only liquid he consumed was a pint of milk every three hours".^[32] He is reported to have believed this diet would restore his health. However, this tale is doubtful. In 1930, the year before Edison died, Mina said in an interview about him, "correct eating is one of his greatest hobbies." She also said that during one of his periodic "great scientific adventures", Edison would be up at 7:00, have breakfast at 8:00, and be rarely home for lunch or dinner, implying that he continued to have all three.^[62]

Edison became the owner of his Milan, Ohio, birthplace in 1906. On his last visit, in 1923, he was shocked to find his old home still lit by lamps and candles.

Thomas Edison died of complications of diabetes on October 18, 1931, in his home, "Glenmont" in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey, which he had purchased in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina. He is buried behind the home.^[66][67]

Edison's last breath is reportedly contained in a test tube at the Henry Ford Museum. Ford reportedly convinced Charles Edison to seal a test tube of air in the inventor's room shortly after his death, as a memento. A plaster death mask was also made.^[68]

Mina died in 1947.

Views on politics, religion and metaphysics[link]

Historian Paul Israel has characterized Edison as a "freethinker".^[32] Edison was heavily influenced by Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason.^[32] Edison defended Paine's "scientific deism", saying, "He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity."^[32] In an October 2, 1910, interview in the New York Times Magazine, Edison stated:

Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions.^[69]

Edison was called an atheist for those remarks, and although he did not allow himself to be drawn into the controversy publicly, he clarified himself in a private letter: "You have misunderstood the whole article, because you jumped to the conclusion that it denies the existence of God. There is no such denial, what you call God I call Nature, the Supreme intelligence that rules matter. All the article states is that it is doubtful in my opinion if our intelligence or soul or whatever one may call it lives hereafter as an entity or disperses back again from whence it came, scattered amongst the cells of which we are made."^[32]

Nonviolence was key to Edison's moral views, and when asked to serve as a naval consultant for World War I, he specified he would work only on defensive weapons and later noted, "I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill." Edison's philosophy of nonviolence extended to animals as well, about which he stated: "Nonviolence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."^[70] However, he is also notorious for having electrocuted a number of dogs in 1888, both by direct and alternating current, in an attempt to argue that the former (which he had a vested business interest in promoting) was safer than the latter (favored by his rival George Westinghouse).^[71]

Edison's success in promoting direct current as less lethal also led to alternating current being used in the electric chair adopted by New York in 1889 as a supposedly humane execution method. Because Westinghouse was angered by the decision, he funded Eighth Amendment-based appeals for inmates set to die in the electric chair, ultimately resulting in Edison providing the generators which powered early electrocutions and testifying successfully on behalf of the state that electrocution was a painless method of execution.^[72]

Tributes[link]

Places and people named for Edison[link]

Several places have been named after Edison, most notably the town of Edison, New Jersey. Thomas Edison State College, a nationally known college for adult learners, is in Trenton, New Jersey. Two community colleges are named for him: Edison State College in Fort Myers, Florida, and Edison Community College in Piqua, Ohio.^[73] There are numerous high schools named after Edison; see Edison High School.

In 1883, the City Hotel in Sunbury, Pennsylvania was the first building to be lit with Edison's three-wire system. The hotel was renamed The Hotel Edison upon Edison's return to the City on 1922. ^[74]

Edison was on hand to turn on the lights at the Hotel Edison in New York City when it opened in 1931.

Three bridges around the United States have been named in his honor (see Edison Bridge).

In space, his name is commemorated in asteroid 742 Edisona.

The Russian composer Edison Denisov, whose father was a radio-physicist, was named after the inventor.

Museums and memorials[link]

Statue of young Thomas Edison by the railroad tracks in Port Huron, Michigan.

In West Orange, New Jersey, the 13.5 acre (5.5 ha) Glenmont estate is maintained and operated by the National Park Service as the Edison National Historic Site.^[75] The Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum is in the town of Edison, New Jersey.^[76] In Beaumont, Texas, there is an Edison Museum, though Edison never visited there.^{[citation needed]}

The Port Huron Museum, in Port Huron, Michigan, restored the original depot that Thomas Edison worked out of as a young newsbutcher. The depot has been named the Thomas Edison Depot Museum.^[77] The town has many Edison historical landmarks, including the graves of Edison's parents, and a monument along the St. Clair River. Edison's influence can be seen throughout this city of 32,000.

In Detroit, the Edison Memorial Fountain in Grand Circus Park was created to honor his achievements. The limestone fountain was dedicated October 21, 1929, the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the lightbulb.^[78] On the same night, The Edison Institute was dedicated in nearby Dearborn.

In early 2010, Edison was proposed by the Ohio Historical Society as a finalist in a statewide vote for inclusion in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol.

Companies bearing Edison's name[link]

In 1915

• Edison General Electric, merged with Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric
• Commonwealth Edison, now part of Exelon
• Consolidated Edison
• Edison International
  • Southern California Edison
  • Edison Mission Energy
  • Edison Capital
• Detroit Edison, a unit of DTE Energy
• Edison Sault Electric Company, a unit of Wisconsin Energy Corporation
• FirstEnergy
  • Metropolitan Edison
  • Ohio Edison
  • Toledo Edison
• Edison S.p.A., a unit of Italenergia
• Boston Edison, a unit of NSTAR, formerly known as the Edison Electric Illuminating Company
• WEEI radio station in Boston, established by the Edison Electric Illuminating Company (hence the call letters)
• Trade association the Edison Electric Institute, a lobbying and research group for investor-owned utilities in the United States
• Edison Ore-Milling Company
• Edison Portland Cement Company

Awards named in honor of Edison[link]

The Edison Medal was created on February 11, 1904, by a group of Edison's friends and associates. Four years later the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), later IEEE, entered into an agreement with the group to present the medal as its highest award. The first medal was presented in 1909 to Elihu Thomson and, in a twist of fate, was awarded to Nikola Tesla in 1917. It is the oldest award in the area of electrical and electronics engineering, and is presented annually "for a career of meritorious achievement in electrical science, electrical engineering or the electrical arts."

In the Netherlands, the major music awards are named the Edison Award after him.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers concedes the Thomas A. Edison Patent Award to individual patents since 2000.^[79]

Honors and awards given to Edison[link]

The President of the Third French Republic, Jules Grévy, on the recommendation of his Minister of Foreign Affairs Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire and with the presentations of the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs Louis Cochery, designated Edison with the distinction of an 'Officer of the Legion of Honour' (Légion d'honneur) by decree on November 10, 1881;^[80] He also named a Chevalier in 1879, and a Commander in 1889.^[81]

In 1887, Edison won the Matteucci Medal. In 1890, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

The Philadelphia City Council named Edison the recipient of the John Scott Medal in 1889.^[81]

In 1899, Edison was awarded the Edward Longstreth Medal of The Franklin Institute.^[82]

He was named an Honorable Consulting Engineer at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition World's fair in 1904.^[81]

In 1908, Edison received the American Association of Engineering Societies John Fritz Medal.^[81]

Edison was awarded Franklin Medal of The Franklin Institute in 1915 for discoveries contributing to the foundation of industries and the well-being of the human race.

The United States Navy department awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal in 1920.^[81]

The American Institute of Electrical Engineers created the Edison Medal in 1923 and he was its first recipient.^[81]

In 1927, he was granted membership in the National Academy of Sciences.^[81]

On May 29, 1928, Edison received the Congressional Gold Medal.^[81]

In 1983, the United States Congress, pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution 140 (Public Law 97—198), designated February 11, Edison's birthday, as National Inventor's Day.

Edison was ranked thirty-fifth on Michael H. Hart's 1978 book The 100, a list of the most influential figures in history. Life magazine (USA), in a special double issue in 1997, placed Edison first in the list of the "100 Most Important People in the Last 1000 Years", noting that the light bulb he promoted "lit up the world". In the 2005 television series The Greatest American, he was voted by viewers as the fifteenth-greatest.

In 2008, Edison was inducted in the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

In 2010, Edison was honored with a Technical Grammy Award.

In 2011, Edison was inducted into the Entrepreneur Walk of Fame, and named a Great Floridian by the Florida Governor and Cabinet.^[83]

On November 6, 1915, The New York Times announced that both Edison and Tesla were to jointly receive the 1915 Nobel Prize but it did not occur.^[84] The details of what happened are not known but Tesla who had once worked for Edison quit when he was promised a large bonus for solving a problem and then after being successful was told the promise was a joke.^[85] Tesla once said that if Edison had to find a needle in a haystack he would take apart the haystack one straw at a time.^[86] The Prize was awarded to Sir William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg "for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays".

Other items named after Edison[link]

The United States Navy named the USS Edison (DD-439), a Gleaves class destroyer, in his honor in 1940. The ship was decommissioned a few months after the end of World War II. In 1962, the Navy commissioned USS Thomas A. Edison (SSBN-610), a fleet ballistic missile nuclear-powered submarine.

Decommissioned on December 1, 1983, Thomas A. Edison was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on April 30, 1986. She went through the Navy's Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program at Bremerton, Washington, beginning on October 1, 1996. When she finished the program on December 1, 1997, she ceased to exist as a complete ship and was listed as scrapped.

In popular culture[link]

Thomas Edison has appeared in popular culture as a character in novels, films, comics and video games. His prolific inventing helped make him an icon and he has made appearances in popular culture during his lifetime down to the present day. His history with Nikola Tesla has also provided dramatic tension and is a theme returned to numerous times.

On February 11, 2011, on Thomas Edison's 164th birthday, Google's homepage featured an animated Google Doodle commemorating his many inventions. When the cursor was hovered over the doodle, a series of mechanisms seemed to move, causing a lightbulb to glow.^[87]

See also[link]

	Book: Thomas Edison
Wikipedia books are collections of articles that can be downloaded or ordered in print.

• Animated Hero Classics – Animated DVD biography series of historical figures, including Thomas Edison
• John I. Beggs
• List of Edison patents
• List of people on stamps of Ireland
• Thomas Alva Edison Birthplace
• Thomas E. Murray
• Thomas Edison National Historical Park
• Phonomotor
• Joseph Swan
• Edison Pioneers

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

External links[link]

Find more about Thomas Edison on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

Locations

• Menlo Park Museum and Edison Memorial Tower
• Thomas Edison National Historical Park (National Park Service)
• Edison exhibit and Menlo Park Laboratory at Henry Ford Museum
• Edison Museum
• Edison Depot Museum
• Edison Birthplace Museum
• Thomas Edison House

Information and media

• Thomas Edison on In Our Time at the BBC. (listen now)
• The Diary of Thomas Edison
• Works by Thomas Edison at Project Gutenberg
• Edison's patent application for the light bulb at the National Archives.
• Thomas Edison at the Internet Movie Database
• Jan. 4, 1903: Edison Fries an Elephant to Prove His Point – Wired article about Edison's "macabre form of a series of animal electrocutions using AC."
• The Invention Factory: Thomas Edison's Laboratories
• Edison, His Life and Inventions by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin' at Project Gutenberg
• The short film "Story of Thomas Alva Edison" is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• Rutgers: Edison Papers
• Edisonian Museum Antique Electrics
• "Edison's Miracle of Light"
• Edison Innovation Foundation – Non-profit foundation supporting the legacy of Thomas Edison.
• Thomas Alva Edison at Find a Grave
• The Illustrious Vagabonds
• "The World's Greatest Inventor", October 1931, Popular Mechanics detailed, illustrated article
• 14 minutes "instructional" film with fictional elements The boyhood of Thomas Edison from 1964, produced by Coronet, published by archive.org
• Booknotes interview with Neil Baldwin on Edison: Inventing the Century, March 19, 1995.
• Booknotes interview with Jill Jonnes on Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse and the Race to Electrify the World, October 26, 2003.