My Science School

A young lady named Mina Miller came into Edison’s life after the death of Mary. Edison, who was then 39, married the 20-year-old Mina in 1886. Mina had been born to a highly cultured family in Akron, Ohio, and she was very different from Mary who had come from a humbler background.

Edison bought a huge, 23-room mansion as a wedding gift to Mina. It was an estate of 13 acres including the home, a barn, garage, farm animals and tended grounds, Mina became the loving matriarch of the place. She was a loving wife to Edison, and also a trusted business advisor.

Three children were born to Edison and Mina - Madeleine, Charles and Theodore. Charles Edison later became the governor of New Jersey (1941-1944). It was Charles who took over Edison’s laboratories and businesses, after his death. Theodore, the youngest son was also an inventor, and had acquired over eighty patents.

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Edison started work on a new laboratory, in 1886, to replace the one at Menlo Park. His earlier idea of an ‘invention factory’ had been a huge success, and the Menlo Park complex was the largest private laboratory in the U.S., in the 1870s. Now he wanted to create a much bigger facility to do large-scale industrial research and develop new inventions. That is how the West Orange Laboratory came to be.

When the West Orange Laboratory was opened, it was the world’s best-equipped private industrial research facility. It had all the resources needed by the world’s greatest inventor — highly skilled experimenters, the best equipment and the latest scientific knowledge.

Edison worked there from 1887 to his death in 1931.

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The West Orange Laboratory was the ultimate dream of a great inventor. Many legendary inventions and products came from there, like the motion picture camera, improved phonographs, sound recordings, movies with and without sound, and the nickel-iron alkaline electric storage battery.

Inventions were developed at the laboratory, and then mass-produced in the factory buildings around it. Black Maria, the world’s first building built as a motion picture studio, was also a part of the complex.

The Laboratory grew into a huge establishment. Edison had a staff of more than two hundred in the laboratory buildings in 1912; add to this the many more employed in the factory complex that surrounded the laboratories.

During 1919-1920 the number of staff reached a peak of about ten thousand.

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Edison was certainly not one to give in easily, and he did all he could to promote his DC technology and to give a bad name to AC. Towards the end of the 19th century, he held demonstrations in which animals were electrocuted with AC — just to convince the people that alternating current was dangerous. There was also the instance of the New York State installing its first electric chair, to carry out death sentences. It was built using alternative current: what better way to give AC an unpleasant image?

But all his efforts were in vain, and AC went on to win the race. An important contract was granted to Westinghouse to construct the AC generators for a hydro-electric power plant at the Niagara Falls. The plant started to supply electricity in 1896 to places as far as 42 Kms away. After this, AC soon came to dominate the power sector.

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Edison got married in 1871, to Mary Stilwell who was a former employee of his. He did love his wife deeply, but their family life was not always an easy one. Edison was always busy with his work, and he would often sleep in the workplace. However, having seen Edison at work with his team in Newark, Mary was able to understand his obsession with work.

The Edison had three children, Marion, Thomas Jr. and William Leslie. For the first two, Edison had given the cute nicknames, ‘Dot’ and ‘Dash’ — taken from the Morse code used in telegraphs. Edison was very fond of his children.

Unfortunately, Mary became very ill and she died in 1884, at the young age of 29.

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When Edison’s electrical empire grew, he recruited a young engineer named Nikola Tesla to improve the DC distribution system. He was from Croatia, which was then a part of the Austrian Empire. Tesla improved the dynamo. At the same time, he also came up with new ideas based on the new technology of alternating current, or AC. Edison did not show much interest in this, as he was focussing more on the DC technology. Tesla soon left Edison.

Now working alone, Tesla applied his full mind on the AC technology and designed a complete system for it. He secured seven patents in the U.S., for polyphase AC motors and power transmission equipment. Tesla also made a deal with George Westinghouse, a big entrepreneur who believed in the new AC technology. Westinghouse purchased the patents held by Tesla. What followed was an epic battle between the two technologies of AC and DC - the War of the Currents, as historians call it.

As you may know, the electric supply in our homes is based on ‘alternating current’ or AC, in short. Batteries on the other hand, have ‘direct current’, or DC.

In fact, it was all DC when the supply of electricity began, including the first long-distance transmission system. When Edison developed his incandescent bulb, it needed an electric distribution system. The first commercial dynamo, a DC generator, became available during that time. This led Edison to develop a lot of devices which the DC electric system needed. Soon, more than 200 electric companies in America were paying him patent royalties.

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Edison made an astounding announcement in October, 1920: that he was working on a machine that could communicate with the world of spirits! There was a revival of spiritualism after World War I and there were many people who hoped science would find a means to reach out to the world of souls. Edison himself admitted he had no idea if a world of spirits really existed, but spoke to some magazines and The New York Times that his new machine would measure the ‘life units’ that scatter through the universe after death.

There was a British inventor named Sir William Crookes, who claimed to have taken photographs of spirits. Edison corresponded with Crookes, and the photos interested him. However, he did not actually come up with any machine to communicate with the dead. Quite probably, Edison was just playing a joke on the reporters, when he spoke of the ‘spirit phone’.

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As you know, World War I began in 1914, and ended only in 1918. In the beginning America had not joined this Great War, but there was at least one American whose mind was already part of it - Thomas Alva Edison, of course! He believed in being prepared to meet any possible threat against the United States of America.

Edison dedicated himself to naval research, conducting experiments on camouflaging ships and detecting torpedoes. The U.S. entered the war in 1917. Edison spent eighteen months in the field, and conceived 48 projects including a hydrogen-detecting alarm to avoid undersea explosions, antirust coating of vaseline zinc for submarine guns, and an antiroll platform for ships to ensure accurate shooting even in rough seas. He also worked on other ideas, like an anchor that could turn a ship quickly to avoid a torpedo, and a highly sensitive listening device that could hear a far-away submarine bell even during a storm.

Edison, however, was unhappy with the Navy because they failed to implement any of his ideas. None of his 48 wartime inventions went beyond the prototype stage.

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Edison tried his hand with mining technology too. He wanted to develop a method to separate magnetic particles like iron, from non-magnetic rock. Edison developed a whole system at a mine in New Jersey that covered mining, crushing, separating and concentrating. Sand or crushed rock from the mine would be poured through a hopper so that it would fall like a broad stream, in front of an electromagnet; the magnet would attract magnetic particles like iron into a separate container.

Edison had sold all his stock in the General Electric Company to finance this work. But ultimately, his venture was not a success and he had to abandon it. Edison lost all the money he had invested in it. However, he later transferred his rock-crushing technology to the production of Portland cement, and recouped part of his investment.

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The man who made the world’s first talking machine also wanted to make it fun for kids. That is how Edison came up with the world’s first talking dolls, in 1877. His idea was to make those dolls available for the Christmas sales in the same year, but their release happened only in 1890 due to some production problems.

The talking dolls were sold under the label of the Edison Toy Phonograph Company. The dolls had tiny cylinder phonographs inside them, worked by a spring motor. Voices of the dolls were recorded by girls reciting nursery rhymes. The talking dolls were fun, but they did not have a happy ending. The inside mechanism often came loose during shipping and the ring-shaped wax records wore out fast, causing crackles in the sound. Also, some children were frightened of their dolls talking!

Ultimately, Edison’s talking dolls were a failure in the market. All of the unsold phonographs made for those dolls were destroyed by 1896.

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Edison was a great lover of nature and supported clean energy technologies. The ‘Twentieth Century Suburban Residence’ was unveiled by him in 1912. It was completely self-sufficient for its energy-use. The prototype of the house was powered by batteries and a small-scale generator. Edison used a motor run by petrol, but documents suggest that his intention was to use wind power ultimately.

Edison is reported to have said towards the end of his life: “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

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It was Edison’s cement company that built the original Yankee Stadium in New York, the home field of the New York Yankees, a major baseball team. Its construction was finished in just 284 days. Built in 1922, the Stadium was renovated in 1973, but Edison’s concrete walls were so strong that they were left untouched. In 2008, the Yankees moved to a more spacious stadium, but they retained many elements of Edison’s original design.

Here was an invention Edison was afraid of! Fluoroscopy is a technique to view images of the interior of something, using X-rays. This needed a fluorescent screen. Edison started to experiment on this, soon after Roentgen discovered the X-ray in 1895. He tried various substances trying to see how bright they would shine when exposed to X-rays. Ultimately he found that calcium tungstate screens are the most effective in showing the X-rays as visible light. This discovery enabled him to develop his fluoroscopic device.

Edison’s fluoroscope showed images in sufficient clarity, but he abandoned all research in this field in 1903. This was because of the health hazards involved. A lab assistant named Clarence Dally was repeatedly exposed to radiation, and she died of cancer. Edison later said, “Don’t talk to me about X-rays. I am afraid of them.”

In 1878, the scientists in America were excited about a rare event that was to happen in the sky. It was a total solar eclipse that was to occur over much of the United States. It was a rare opportunity for scientists to study the phenomenon.

American scientists like Samuel Langley and Henry Draper were looking for a highly sensitive instrument that could measure minute changes in the heat emitted by the Sun’s corona during the eclipse. Edison was quick to take up the challenge, and he soon came up with a device that could detect infrared rays. He named it the tasimeter.

Edison went to Rawlins, Wyoming on July 29, 1878 to observe the total solar eclipse, with the other scientists. In fact, Edison took it as a competition with Samuel Langley, who was the director of Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Observatory. Edison preferred to work with his device alone, rather than letting Langley test the tasimeter’s performance along with other devices like the thermopile. Maybe Edison wanted to steal the show by working solo, but he didn’t succeed. Langley, too, failed to measure the heat from the Sun’s corona using his thermopile. However, he invented the bolometer within a year which is still in common use.

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