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The Thomas Edison – Abraham Lincoln Connection

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Thomas Edison was 14 years old when the Civil War broke out, but already learning how to send and received telegraph messages. Which is how he began his Abraham Lincoln connection. During the Civil War, the telegraph had become a critical means of communication, both to get news from the front and to relay strategies and orders from President Lincoln and Secretary of War Stanton. A popular song of the era captured the essence of the power of the telegraph:

For our mountains, lakes and rivers, are all a blaze of fire
And we send our news by lightning, on the telegraphic wire.

Edison spent the rest of the war working the telegraph lines safely ensconced in northeastern Michigan. After the war, Edison built his own business modifying telegraphs to send and receive on multiple channels, as well as print out the messages and automatically convert the dots and dashes into text. Much of his early work was sold to Western Union, that is until its Superintendent Thomas T. Eckert – who had been in charge of Lincoln’s telegraph office during the war – jumped ship to the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company and convinced Edison to sell his new quadruplex telegraph rights to them.

About ten years later Edison had moved on to invention of the tinfoil phonograph. In April 1878 he took it to Washington, D.C. for a demonstration of the National Academy of Sciences, created in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln. There he met Joseph Henry, then doing double duty as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and President of the National Academy. Henry had been Lincoln’s unofficial science adviser during the Civil War. The demonstration went so well that Edison was asked to bring the phonograph up the road to the White House, where he demonstrated it in a personal audience with President Rutherford B. Hayes and guests into the wee hours of the morning. Lincoln friend and now Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz played a lively tune on the piano. Ironically, Edison was so deaf by this point that his colleague Charles Batchelor had done most of the presentation at the National Academy. At the White House, Edison chimed in with his off-yelled rendition of “Mary had a little lamb” and other ditties.

Still later, Edison invented what became the film projector. One of his most famous early films was The Life of Abraham Lincoln. A silent film (with musical soundtrack) presenting highlights from Lincoln’s life, The Life expanded the length of motion pictures and now took up two reels. The Life was a “two-part drama” that ran “from the scene in front of the log cabin to the assassination at Ford’s Theater in Washington.” The sales catalog claimed, “Nothing has been left undone to make this a consummate review of Lincoln’s life.” For the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth in 1909, Wanamaker’s huge department store in lower Manhattan hosted a screening of Edison’s ten-minute film The Blue and the Grey, or the Boys of ’61, accompanied by “favorite war songs” of the era.

Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln

Edison was so enamored of Lincoln “that he placed Lincoln’s profile on his own letterhead, and wrote out this testimonial in 1880:

” … the life and character of Abraham Lincoln and his great services to this country during the war of the rebellion will stand as a monument long after the granite monuments erected to his memory have crumbled in the dust.”

The photo shown is in the collection of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, IL.

As I think back on my own admiration of Lincoln it strikes me that there are a number of connections between the three topics of my published books – Tesla, Edison, and Lincoln. Perhaps I was destined to write about all three.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Thomas Edison Builds a Better Telegraph

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Thomas EdisonDisheveled as he was when he showed up on the doorstep of the venerable Western Union Company, Edison was confident that management would see through the rough exterior into his insightful mind. The company had made a name for itself even before the Civil War, but the rampant use of telegraphy during the conflict enabled Western Union to grow immensely, swallowing up its nearest competitors and becoming a force in the industry. This was just the opportunity Edison was looking for. During his initial interview, office manager George Milliken was so impressed with the 21-year-old that he hired him immediately. Milliken asked how soon Edison would be ready to work, to which Edison replied “Now.” He was put to work on the shift that day at 5:30 p.m.

The more professionally attired and traditionally educated eastern men thought the ill-dressed “westerner” was somewhat of a rube, so they devised a way to put him to the test. Edison recalls:

I was given a pen and assigned to the New York No. 1 wire. After waiting an hour, I was told to come over to a special table and take a special report for the Boston Herald, the conspirators having arranged to have one of the faster senders in New York send the despatch and “salt” the new man. I sat down unsuspiciously at the table, and the New York man started slowly. Soon he increased his speed, to which I easily adapted my pace. This put my rival on his mettle, and he put on his best powers, which, however, were soon reached. At this point I happened to look up, and saw the operators all looking over my shoulder, with their faces shining with fun and excitement. I knew then that they were trying to put up a job on me, but I kept my own counsel. The New York man commenced to slur over his words, running them together and sticking the signals; but I had been used to this style of telegraphy in taking report, and was not in the least discomfited. Finally, when I thought the fun had gone far enough, and having about completed the special, I quietly opened the key and remarked, telegraphically, to my New York friend: “Say, young man, change off and send with your other foot.” This broke the New York man all up and he turned the job over to another man to finish.

And just like that, he had won over the new office.

Edison earned $125 per month at Western Union, but more important, the job gave him considerable flexibility and many opportunities to access equipment to continue his independent research. While in Boston he bought copies of the works of Michael Faraday, then considered one of the foremost experimenters in electricity and the father of electromagnetic induction. At the time, “the only people who did anything with electricity were the telegraphers and the opticians making simple school apparatus to demonstrate the principles.” Edison experimented with telegraphy equipment and electricity and “had an unflagging desire and belief in his own ability to improve the apparatus he handled daily.” He worked all day long in his own makeshift laboratory before heading into Western Union for his night shift duties.

After a year on the job, Edison found it increasingly difficult to juggle his telegraph operator responsibilities with his more interesting extracurricular activities. On January 30, 1869, he published a notice in The Telegrapher: Mr. T.A. Edison has resigned his situation at the Western Union office, Boston, Mass., and will devote his time to bringing out his inventions. He was only 22 years old.

[Adapted from my book, Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World. I thought of this incident while working on an upcoming presentation in which the telegraph becomes an important communication – and military strategy – tool during the Civil War.]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Thomas Edison Invents the Movies

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Edison KinetoscopeOn August 31, 1897, Thomas Edison invented the movies. Or at least that was the day he patented the kinetoscope, an early motion picture projector. But as with all inventions, the story is much more complicated than just one man.

In fact, others had already started the process that Edison’s team would move forward. In June 1889, William Friese-Greene had patented a motion picture camera in England. Two months later, Englishman Wordsworth Donisthorpe patented his own version of a motion picture camera. Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, a Frenchman working in England, developed a multiple-lens camera in 1888. Le Prince also filmed two motion picture sequences using a single-lens camera and paper film; the twelve-frame-per-second Roundhay Garden Scene runs for a grand total of 2.11 seconds. In a bizarre twist reminiscent of future action movies, Le Prince and his luggage mysteriously vanished from a moving train just prior to making a trip to the United States to present his invention.

These early inventors did not have the finances to continue development, but Edison did. The first version out of the Edison laboratory was “rather too ambitious,” as it attempted to synchronize the sound of the phonograph with the movement of images. “Thousands of tiny images” were taken with a conventional camera, and one by one they were mounted on a modified phonograph cylinder. A second cylinder played back the sound, ideally in sync with the images. But the machine did not work. The curvature of the cylinder distorted the small images, so it was nearly impossible to view them with any resolution. Increasing the size of the images to 1/4 inch and applying a photographic emulsion to the cylinder failed to resolve the problem, although Edison did produce a series of short films (of a few seconds each) collectively called Monkeyshines. Overall, however, the idea of using cylinders was abandoned.

Another Englishman, Eadweard Muybridge, came to the rescue. Muybridge was a photographer who as far back as the 1870s was producing images in series, which he used mainly to study the motion of animals. In one sequence, Muybridge had taken twelve rapid photos of a horse in full gallop in order to determine if all four legs were off the ground at the same time (they were). He accomplished this by using multiple cameras to record images in rapid succession.

Muybridge had also invented a zoopraxiscope, a rotating glass wheel and a slotted disk that projected a series of pictures in sequence, each slightly ahead of the other. Turning the wheel made the pictures appear to be in motion. With these devices in hand, the now-famous Muybridge paid a visit to Edison during a tour of the United States in February 1888. As with his earlier visit with Wallace, Edison gained considerable insights into his next steps after this meeting. Edison barely acknowledged the visit for months, but in October suddenly submitted his caveat to the patent office for “a system of motion pictures: a device to record the images, a device for viewing them, and an instrument that merged viewing pictures and listening to sound in the same experience.”

Étienne-Jules Marey was another influence on Edison’s thinking about motion pictures. After growing up in the Côte-d’Or region of France, Marey studied medicine and became interested in the science of laboratory photography; he is widely credited with being the Father of Chronophotography, or photographing motion. In 1882 he invented the chronophotographic gun, a menacing-looking instrument capable of capturing images at a rate of twelve frames per second. All twelve sequential still images were recorded on the same strip of film, a disk that rotated as the rapid-fire photos were taken. Marey also designed a camera that captured “sixty images a second on a long continuous strip of film, which was pulled by a cam in a deliberately jerky fashion to stop the film momentarily, so that the light could saturate the film and capture motion.” Edison sought out Marey when he attended the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris.

The World’s Fair’s biggest attraction was the huge iron-latticed tower named after its designer, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, on whose edifice Edison wined and dined with the rich and famous during the exposition. But what really caught Edison’s interest was Marey’s photographic gun. Marey was more focused on the technical developments of his invention and less about the market value, and he gladly showed Edison the mechanics and examples of his work. He also gave Edison a copy of his book providing all the technical details. Armed with new ideas, but still lacking in substantive time to develop them, Edison passed the information to Dickson and left him to make something of it.

The Kinetoscope Emerges

Edison’s patent caveat was filed with Dickson working anonymously in the background. The device they had in mind would not only show pictures in motion, it would do so “in such a form as to be both Cheap[,] practical and convenient. This apparatus I call a Kinetoscope ‘Moving View.’”(The name is derived from the Greek kinesis, meaning motion.) They described it as a silver emulsion-coated phonograph cylinder with 42,000 “pin-point” photographic images each 1/32 inch wide mounted spirally upon it, to be viewed through a binocular eyepiece salvaged from a microscope; the visual cylinder spun to the simultaneous accompaniment of a contiguous phonograph sharing the same shaft and playing the “sound track.” The idea of synchronized cylinders was completely unworkable, but it epitomizes how Edison worked—he built on something he already did, and he hesitated to move away from it.

But move away he did. Dickson searched for a way to take and display the thousands of pictures that would need to be strung together for any length of viewing time. The usual way of making photographs was to produce them on glass negatives, which clearly was not an option for moving pictures. One option that seemed viable was celluloid, a plastic material made out of cellulose nitrate that English photographer John Carbutt successfully used. Another promising option was rolls of paper that George Eastman had managed to coat with photographic film and fused into a cheap Kodak camera.

Dickson experimented with celluloid and paper, and after Edison’s visit with Marey filed a new patent caveat, this one describing a “sensitive film” that would “pass from one reel to another.” Then, like the phonograph before it, the kinetoscope project was dropped—this time for only a year—while Edison kept Dickson busy with his ore milling business. When Dickson was finally allowed to return to the kinetoscope, Edison assigned William Heise to give him a hand.

Heise had expertise stemming from his prior work with printing telegraphs, which he now used to design the mechanical movement of film through the camera. Dickson focused on the optical components of the camera itself, along with the chemical and physical characteristics of the film. Together they developed the two parts that would make it possible to film, and then display, motion pictures.

By the spring of 1891, the two men had designed a camera, which they called a kinetograph, to film moving pictures. The kinetograph’s horizontal-feed exposed images on strips of perforated film 3/4 inch wide. A “shutter and escapement mechanism” allowed the camera to stop the film “for a fraction of a second,” just long enough to expose the film before advancing to the next exposure. Dickson and Heise advanced the technology with amazing rapidity: “forty-six impressions are taken each second, which is 2,760 a minute and 165,600 an hour.” Several short experimental films were produced, “including a lab worker smoking a pipe and another swinging a set of Indian clubs.”

After developing a suitable camera to create motion pictures, they needed to develop a way to watch them. The answer was a wooden box, much like those housing phonographs, which they called a kinetoscope. The box stood about four feet high and was twenty inches square. Inside the box was “an electric lamp, a battery-powered motor, and a fifty-foot ribbon of positive celluloid film arranged on a series of rollers and pulleys.” The film viewer would bend over the box, stare through an eyepiece, and watch as the film whizzed through view at forty-six frames per second.

And whiz it did. The first films were over in twenty seconds or less; basic scenes such as Dickson tipping his hat or a blacksmith banging his hammer. Still, it was a start, and Dickson continued to work on perfecting both the kinetograph camera and the kinetoscope player. Edison, on the other hand, was not sure there was much of a market: “This invention will not have any particular commercial value. It will be rather of a sentimental worth,” something of a novelty. At the same time he seemed to recognize the future attraction to the new medium, which could reproduce on the walls of their homes actors and scenes they currently had to go out to the theater to experience. Despite his hesitations, Edison arranged for a kinetoscope exhibit at the Chicago World’s Fair. It was a couple of years in the future, so he had plenty of time to perfect the device. Or so he thought. He assigned James Egan, one of his machinists, to build twenty-five kinetoscopes.

Enter the Black Maria. Edison became a movie mogul.

[Adapted from Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World]

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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It’s Thomas Edison’s Birthday!

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Young Thomas EdisonAlthough he was the last of seven children, Thomas Alva Edison was born into a largely empty household. February 11, 1847, was a cold, snowy night in the tiny village of Milan, Ohio, not far from the shores of Lake Erie. Edison’s mother, Nancy, who seemed always to be wrapped in black mourning garb, was eager to have more children to replace those who had not survived. One son, Carlile, died in 1842, when he was only 6 years old. A second son, 3-year-old Samuel Ogden, perished a year later while Nancy was pregnant with daughter Eliza. Eliza also lived only three years, passing away in late 1847, when Thomas was still an infant.

The arrival of “Little Al,” as he was known in his youth, was a welcome sight. Frail and burdened with an unusually large (though “well-shaped”) head, Edison struggled to survive a sickly childhood. The doctors feared he had something they called “brain fever.” Mostly he struggled alone; his eldest sister, Marion, often his only real companion, was already an adult when he was born. In 1849, when she was 20 and he just 2 years old, she married and moved away. Edison never forgave her new husband for taking Marion from him. His older brother William Pitt (named for the English statesman) and sister Harriet Ann moved out of the house not long after. Little Al was essentially raised as an only child.

His older siblings were born in Vienna, Ontario, a mirror of Milan on the northern shore of Lake Erie. Edison’s great-grandfather John, who lived to be a feisty 102 years old, was a Tory fighting on the British side in the American Revolution before barely escaping into Canada ahead of the noose. Edison’s father, Samuel, continued the family tradition of rebellion, this time against the Canadian government. Many years later, Edison remarked that his father had “always been a rebel, a regular red-hot copperhead Democrat, and [had] General Jackson as his hero.” Samuel Edison’s actions once again made emigration a necessary, and rather sudden, option for survival. He had joined with the losing side of the short-lived Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837 and escaped Canada on the run, stopping off briefly in Michigan before settling in Milan. John’s family soon joined him. With new children on the way, Samuel began the next phase of his life. Little Al—named Alva in honor of Captain Alva Bradley, a family friend and ship owner on the Great Lakes who had helped the family escape Canada—was the only one of the Milan-born children to survive.

[Adapted from my book, Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World.]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Was Thomas Edison Dim-Witted?

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Young Thomas EdisonIt was not easy for the young Thomas Edison to get an education. In the fall of 1854, Little Al (as he was then known) was enrolled in the school of Reverend G. B. Engle, a strict disciplinarian who taught by rote. The easily distracted Al didn’t do well under such conditions, and ran away. The reverend’s wife called Edison “addled” and “dreamy,” neither of which was intended as a compliment. Furious, Edison’s strong-willed mother pulled him from the school and home-schooled him with a rigorous regimen studying a variety of subjects, reading literature, and memorizing. Above all else, Edison was a voracious reader. With his mother’s guidance, he read Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hume’s History of England, Sears’ History of the World, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, and the Dictionary of Sciences.

Later, during a brief attendance at the Union School in Port Huron, Richard Green Parker’s A School Compendium of Natural and Experimental Philosophy fed his growing interest in science. Another favorite book was Carl Fresenius’ System of Instruction in Chemical Analyses. He tried to read Newton’s Principia, but later admitted he was stymied by the math, which was beyond his capability. With that exception, his excellent memory allowed him to retain virtually everything he read.

If ever there was a man who tore the heart out of books it is Edison, and what has been read by him is never forgotten if useful or worthy of submission to the test of experiment.

Early on Edison displayed a trait that would bode well for his chosen avocation: He questioned everything. Ironically, this led his father to wonder if he was a bit dim-witted. Little Al had to know everything, and he nearly drove his father to exhaustion with his incessant inquiries. One early biographer described young Edison as having “the inquisitiveness of a red squirrel.” He hung around shipbuilders and asked them question after question about building ships, steam power, sailing, and whatever else he could think of. To say he was a curious child would be an understatement.

Young Edison developed a profound interest in chemistry, building up a collection of some 200 bottles of chemicals in the family basement, duly labeled “Poison” to keep away prying eyes. Visits to local drug store proprietors, and his incessant inquisitiveness, made him knowledgeable about most chemicals. He began doing experiments from chemistry and physics books he got from the local library, and had “tested to his satisfaction many of the statements encountered in his scientific reading.” His experiments made him familiar with the workings of early electrical batteries and the production of current, knowledge that would come in handy in his life as an electrical wizard.

[Adapted from my book, Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World]

David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, now available. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Thomas Edison and the Total Solar Eclipse of 1878

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Thomas Edison Total Solar Eclispse 1878Thomas Edison invented just about everything, or at least got credit for much of it. He even was involved in a total solar eclipse in 1878. Edison had developed a tasimeter to measure infrared radiation, and he wanted to use it to measure the small changes in temperature from the sun during the eclipse.

Edison had been in Washington, D.C., where he was showing off his new invention – the tinfoil phonograph – to the National Academy of Sciences, followed by a late night private presentation in the White House to President Rutherford B. Hayes. While in the nation’s capital he jumped at an invitation to join a expedition of scientists on their way out to Wyoming to see a total eclipse of the sun, which could be viewed on July 29th. Edison was keen to test his newest invention. The tasimeter, like the phonograph, was an almost accidental spinoff from Edison’s research on telephones, then in hotly contested race to beat Alexander Graham Bell, the young upstart (he was born a month after Edison) from Edinburgh. [Bell won that race]

Like most eclipses, the total solar eclipse of 1878 was a great opportunity to study celestial phenomena and travel with renowned astronomers. Once in Wyoming, Edison set up his tasimeter and recorded minor changes in the heat coming from the distant red giant star, Arcturus. When July 29th arrived, weather conditions were not optimum – a storm nearly blew over the structure protecting the tasimeter and other instruments – but cleared long enough to get a good view. Unfortunately, the tasimeter was too sensitive and the solar emissions of the sun’s corona overwhelmed the tasimeter’s ability to get accurate readings. The idea was a bust, and indeed no huge discoveries were made by any of the scientists on the expedition.

Edison did, however, take advantage of the elite scientific company and continued the trip up into Yosemite, through Nevada (where he descended deep into a silver mine), and greatly enjoyed camping under the stars he had just so scientifically observed. This trip became a prelude to his much publicized annual “camping” trips with friends Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, and aging naturalist John Burroughs (plus an occasional U.S. president or two).

Returning from his western adventure, Edison dropped the tasimeter idea and shifted his attention to electric lighting, a project that would consume him for several years and set off the “War of the Currents” with Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse. Someone else would have to study eclipses, Edison was on to other mysteries.

[The above is partially extracted from Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World]

David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, now available. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Thomas Edison and the Talking Doll

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Edison talking dollThomas Edison is well known as the inventor of the phonograph. But did you know he also marketed a talking doll? As I note in my book, Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World:

In bit of fancy, Edison and Batchelor made a reproducing mechanism small enough to fit into the torso of a child’s doll. Pulling a string would engage “a small phonograph…with an automatic return motion so that you simply turn always in one direction and it always says the same thing over and over again.”

What a great idea? Think of all the fun young children could have with a talking doll in their playroom in 1890. What a thrill! What an experience!

What a bomb!

Unfortunately, the mini-phonographs were easily damaged in transit and rarely remained in working order. This was perhaps for the best, as the high-pitched, tinny voice, when it worked, shrieked out creepy versions of child’s nursery rhymes.

Okay. Not such a thrill.

The talking dolls were one of many “failures” of Thomas Edison. Even his phonograph was left behind as competitors such as the Victor Talking Machine Company (producer of the Victrola) out-designed and out-competed Edison. The iconic Edison wax cylinders (which I heard in last year’s visit to Menlo Park) were replaced by flat disks featuring Enrico Caruso and other famed singers. Ironically, the nearly deaf Edison insisted on picking out all the music for his phonographs, then refused to put the names of the singers on the disks. In the end, people wanted to listen to famous artists, not famous arias.

What they did not want to listen to was the screechy sounds coming out of the dolls. Kids were more scared than entertained. Luckily, the dolls rarely worked at all, so Edison closed down production after only a few weeks. In addition to what I say in the book, you can read more on the dolls here and see one in person at a new exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History.

David J. Kent is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate. His next book, Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, is scheduled for release in summer 2017.

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Thomas Edison the Movie Mogul

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Along with his many other inventions, Thomas Edison invented (or at least marketed) motion picture cameras and films. I cover the history of the inventions in my book, Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World, but one fascinating aspect that most people may not be aware of is that Edison was the first movie mogul.

Black Maria

The first experimental films were shot in the West Orange laboratory, but as motion pictures gradually became more professional, Edison needed a professional studio in which to film. In December 1892, construction began behind Building 4 on a studio that Edison later remembered as “a ghastly proposition for a stranger daring enough to brave its mysteries.” Covered in black tar paper inside and out, it was dubbed the Black Maria after the slang term for the police paddy wagons of the day it resembled. Not coincidentally, it looked like Marey’s “barnlike studio” Edison had seen during his 1889 visit:

“It obeys no architectural rules, embraces no conventional materials, and follows no accepted schemes of color,” boasted the sometimes flamboyant Dickson of the Black Maria. He did admit it had “a weird and semi-nautical appearance.”

The Black Maria was a “fifty-by-eighteen-foot wood building with a twenty-one-foot-high pitched roof.” It also had two rather unique features. The first was the roof: “Half of the roof could be raised or lowered like a drawbridge by means of ropes, pulleys and weights, so that the sunlight could strike squarely on the space before the machine [i.e., the motion picture camera].” The studio had to allow in sunlight, even though it was outfitted with electricity; Edison’s incandescent bulbs were not bright enough for filmmaking, and arc lighting was too harsh. This need for light led to the second odd feature: The whole building was mounted “on a graphite pivot that allowed the staff to turn the studio on a wood track.” As the sun arced across the sky during the day, they simply turned the building to keep pace. Edison wistfully noted in later years how the building could “turn like a ship in a gale.”

Life of Abraham Lincoln still

Using this odd studio, Edison’s team – led by William K. L. Dickson, a natural showman – created thousands of films. Most were short; Fred Ott’s Sneeze was all of 5 seconds long. But eventually they grew to longer, though “longer” meant 10 minutes for The Great Train Robbery and 15 minutes for The Life of Abraham Lincoln.

Motion pictures quickly became a huge money maker for Edison, but just as quickly dropped off in value as competitors focused on longer movies while Edison was distracted by his many other endeavors.

]The above is adapted from Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World, in Barnes and Noble stores and online now. Read more about Thomas Edison and the book by clicking here.]

David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, now available. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Thomas Edison is Here!

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There was an ominous knock on the door around 7 p.m. last night. By the time I opened it there was nothing to be seen except a package, a manila envelope the same size I generally use to send out books to those who request signed copies via my website. And then it dawned on me – Edison was here!

Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World

I finished the writing of Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World just as summer was turning to fall. Then copy editing, design, printing, scheduling (all thankfully done by my great editorial team and publisher). It seemed it would be forever before I would see the book in print, and now the day had come. I was holding it in my hands.

The book was an advance copy sent by my editor. “Congratulations!,” the card inside said. More copies would come when the printer’s shipment reached the warehouse. That would be in July. Next month. It was finally happening.

I’ve been through this before, of course. Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity followed a similar schedule and my heart raced when I held that first copy. That thrill returns, just as I hope it will for every advance copy of every book I write.

Check out a preview of Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World.

Monday had been a bad day – it seemed everyone had their hand in my pocket, the roof was leaking, and nagging problems just didn’t seem to want to go away. But Tuesday made up for all that. A day later, I’m still thrilled.

I’ll be doing a Goodreads giveaway of both books, Tesla and Edison, shortly so check back soon for details. The Edison book in both hardcopy and e-book formats will be available for pre-order on the Barnes and Noble website any time now, and you’ll find the book in Barnes and Noble bookstores in late July.

Stay tuned!

David J. Kent has been a scientist for thirty-five years, is an avid science traveler, and an independent Abraham Lincoln historian. He is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate. His book on Thomas Edison is due in Barnes and Noble stores in July 2016.

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Thomas Edison – Birth of an Inventor

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Edison cover on BNThomas Edison is well known as one of America’s greatest inventors. But how did he get his start? My new book, https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/edison-david-j-kent/1121320316?ean=9781435162136 (July 2016 release date), takes a look at how Edison fell into a career of invention, feuded with other inventors like Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, and changed the world. From the prologue:

One misty morning in 1862, as the Civil War raged throughout the nation, the teenage Tom Edison saved a life, and in doing so set the stage for a career of invention that would change the lives of millions. Lingering at the train station in Mount Clemens, Michigan, Edison was gazing over the freight cars being moved around the rail yard. Suddenly, he noticed Jimmie MacKenzie, the stationmaster’s young son, playing on the tracks and oblivious to a rail car speedily approaching. Recognizing the danger, Edison “made a dash for the child, whom he picked up and lifted to safety without a second to spare, as the wheel of the car struck his heel.” Falling hard along the gravel embankment, both Edison and Jimmie cut their faces and hands, but were otherwise unharmed. It was the scare of their young lives. In return for his heroic act, the stationmaster offered to teach Edison the art and science of telegraphy, and Edison accepted. This decision would change his life—and ours.

There was another profound impact from his train days – deafness.

He recounted being roughly lifted onto the train by his ears, at which point he heard a “pop!” After that, his hearing steadily degenerated. Another report suggests a baggage master on the train “boxed his ears.” Or perhaps it was a history of illness as a child or a congenital disease? Although the cause is unknown, Thomas Edison became progressively hard of hearing during his lifetime, which impacted both his inventive ability (he claimed the affliction helped him concentrate better) and his attitude (he would “not hear critiques at convenient times”). His hearing impairment played a recurring, and sometimes ironic, role during his long career.

These two fundamental events as a young man helped shape his personality and his career path. Suddenly the idea of toiling away all night and day in the lab doesn’t seem so surprising. That said, there are many things you don’t know about Thomas Edison.

Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World is due out in July 2016 from Fall River Press, Sterling Publishing. The Nook e-book version is already available for pre-order on the Barnes and Noble website. The hardcover book will be available for pre-order shortly. Please help spread the word and watch for more previews here.

And if you’re interested in Nikola Tesla, check out this comparison: Edison vs Tesla: Two Very Different Men of Invention.

David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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