The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

January, 1943 All photos courtcsv of the Edison Company and the Museum of Modern Art. Edison Tried It, Too By WILLIAM L. JAMISON The field investigator ior the Museiun of Modern Art Film Library, who worked with Edison throughout his motion picture years, tells why non-theatrical folk should celebrate the inventor's coming birthday WFIEN IT comes to opinions on education, the out- standing paradox in the much discussed attitude of Thomas A. Edison—whose birthday occurs in l-"ebruary along with those of two other great Americans —was that on one hand he could not conceive of any normal person being too lazy to learn, and on the other he gave his life to creating apparatus to save human effort. It seems to me that this was at the bottom of his fre- quently expressed opinion that the motion picture, which he invented in about all practical aspects, would supplant the classroom textbool: "in ten years." These words were twisted to say that it would supplant the teacher in ten years; but I have never seen any direct quotation which said precisely that. Of course that would have been wrong. We always will need teachers. Regardless of the march of technology, tiiere always will be a requirement for a directing mind to apply the dumb machine and to interpret its action. But to this man who, in his early years, was so athirst for knowledge while denied the benefits of formal education that he forced his eager, unaided way into vast secrets of science for the benefit of mankind, it was just incredible that anyone could refuse to take up knowledge once it was spread before him. It is a pity that this honest and understandable point of view should have led him to utterances which antagonized teachers and that have caused many of them since to dismiss all of Edison but his inventions. In this indiscriminate shutting-out, the affronted teachers have closed the door also on many of Edison's teaching contributions—constructive ideas and practical approaches to classroom prob- lems which far outweigh his well-mean- ing trespass on pedagogical dignity. As I recall, he talked about a "vanishing" opera, too—at that time when his inven- tion of the phonograph had caught the popular imagination—instead of whicli Interior mechanism of the Home Kinet- oscope. The hand touches an arc light control, but the carbons are missing. Note the base made of wood and the hand-drive in front for the tripartite film. The Wizard of Menlo Park about 1913. He is giving final inspection to his then newly invented Home Kinetoscope made to serve a still undeveloped non-theatrical field. his talking machine gave the opera an extended lease on life by developing musical appreciation everywhere out- side the Diamond Horseshoe. And his mistaken judgment in still another vast field was evinced when he pronounced the talking picture something that the public did not want, his own early experience with talkies not having turned out so well. But is a great benefactor of the race to be condemned for these relatively small opinions when he proved his unerring knowledge of what the public does want by giving it the incandescent light, the central power station, the phonograph, the motion picture, and a host of other tangible blessings? T T IS \OT common knowledge in the field of visual •'■ instruction that Edison produced a number of teaching films and made widely available a non-theatrical projector designed and built in his ov^'n laboratories, together with