The Edison phonograph monthly (Mar 1903-Feb 1904)

EDISON PHONOGRAPH MONTHLY. EDISON'S FAVORITE INVENTION. By Joe Mitchell Chappie. The following interesting article on the Phonograph appeared in the May issue of the National Magazine, accompanied by a full page picture of Mr. Edison: Of all the names to conjure with, in a horoscope of the present century, none surpasses that of Thomas Alva Edison. When I entered his laboratory at Orange, New Jersey, I felt that it was truly a shrine of the great inventive genius of the age. There I saw the Wizard, just one day past his fifty-sixth birthday, mixing a substance in a mortar, pestle in hand, more with the air of an absorbed and concentrated workman than of the great inventor of an age. Attired in a light gray suit covered with stains of real labor, with spectacles focused well down on his nose, he was involved in the intricacies of a new process of making Portland cement so as to bring the price within the range of a commercial necessity. There is a gentle and sweet winsomeness m the smile of Thomas A. Edison that is attractive. His blue eyes light up, and there is an expression of kindness in his countenance that one seldom sees in the face of a man. He left his work and took me through an arsenal of chemicals, compounds and contrivances to a quiet corner, where, on plain stools, we could talk. Mr. William E. Gilmore, the president and manager of the National Phonograph Company, was with me, and it was plain to see where the successful alliance has been formed that has made the Edison phonograph so great and so complete a commercial success. As he leaned back on the bench from his stool, Mr. Edison began to talk in his own quaint quizzical way, with an expressive twitch of the mouth and shoulders by way of emphasis. He is slightly deaf, which he minds tut little, as do those with him, and his voice has a gentle softness that is charming. His keen eye catches the words and expressions so quickly that one soon forgets that the ears of the man who invented the phonograph, as well as a thousand other things, do not absorb every sound of articulation. Perhaps he hears just enough to concentrate his attention only on things that count. My first interrogation as to his favorite invention child, among the long array of his . brain creations, elicited a prompt reply. \y " The phonograph — the phonograph, by all yVmeans ' " he exclaimed, with the enthusiasm S Vof a lad with his first kite. "It has been a long time since the first phonograph, as we count time nowadays, and improvements come every day ; but I think I have accomplished more the past year on it than in any of the years before. My ambition is to have it so perfect that it will reproduce your Boston symphonies to perfection, giving the distinct intonation of every instrument. " Yes sir, the Edison Phonograph has more than a commercial mission to perform, although that is the first practical point we seek. It will make American homes brighter and more cheerful and attractive. If we can produce them so cheaply that they can go into every home and bring the little circle in touch with the greatest music and oratory of all time, I shall esteem a life's work well repaid. These long winter evenings, in the solitude of isolated homes — I knew what they were as a boy — there is where the real character of the individual is determined." It was plain to see that in this laboratory, containing almost all, if not all, the known substances on earth; from lima beans, cotton skins, chemicals, including every known mineral ranging from kalium, that ignites water and is preserved in benzine, to radium, ten times as valuable as gold; there was a Wizard who worked with real things, as well as with ideas. This has been the great characteristic of Mr. Edison's work. He has practicalized products as well as projects, and produced them at a cost that has brought them within the range of every day use, as he did the incandescent light. I shall never look upon an electric light again without recalling a picture of the modest man who made it all possible. When asked as to how he came to invent the phonograph, he replied in his grimly humorous way: "All things within reason are possible, if you keep at them long enough, but the phonograph when first discovered, was as great a surprise to me as it is to the world. I was working on some telephone receivers and observed the point moved and made a whirring sound, as it does recording a telegraph message. I put a piece of tin foil on a cylinder and it recorded sound, a whirring noise, that seemed to me, then, almost articulate. From that moment, I was convinced that sound could be practically recorded and reproduced. " In those days, I used to make a rough draft of my ideas on paper, and mark the price on the paper for the boys' to produce the machine according to specifications. Sometimes it was nine dollars — sometimes it was ninety dollars. The question of profits never entered their heads. They made it. Sometimes it was a profit for a day's work, other times a loss of a month. But dear old' John Kruesi, who recently died at Schenectady, made my first phonograph for me, and his quaint, German-accented comments in broken English were always cheery and optimistic. We took it in a box to the office of the Scientific American in New York. I had recorded the verse — Mary had a little lamb, Its fleece was white as snow, And everywhere that Mary went, The lamb was sure to go, — and the reproduction of my own voice sounded almost supernatural at first. Of _ course the articulation was not especially distinct, — unless you knew what the words were, — but it revealed the wonderful possibilities in the perfection of the work performed on that piece of tin foil." Those who recall the days when Edison 'introduced the first phonograph, remember the tremendous sensation it occasioned. Here he was twenty years after, as enthusiastic as ever, and at work on the same machine, the Edison phonograph, which has echoed the human voice in every country on earth. The original plant of the Phonograph Company was a modest beginning, which has been added to,