Thomas Edison

Humanity captured the best form of power at the beginning of the 20th century when two great industrialists discovered a new and magical form of electrical power that sparked a long and heated  battle for its control and ownership. The new invention held a multi-billion future that started a rivalry between George Westinghouse a renowned engineer and Thomas Edison a brilliant inventor. The two engaged in a public relations war concerning the economic dominance of the new invention. The battle which is often described as the “War of currents” revolved around fear. The war was so unbelievingly thrilling that it was featured in the movie “The prestige”. As we commemorate Tesla’s birthday on July 10th, let us relive the experiences of the inventor as he set out on the journey to provide the world with an affordable way of getting electric power.

This public archaeology endeavor was conducted by the Archaeological Society of New Jersey with assistance from the Middlesex County Office of Culture and Heritage and the Thomas A. Edison Center at Menlo Park, through funding provided by the Middlesex County Board of Chosen Freeholders to identify the former location of Thomas A. Edison's Menlo Park, New Jersey home, along with associated side yard deposits. The research revealed that the house property, which was included in Edison's 1879 and 1880 outdoor incandescent lighting experiment, was also occupied by a later inventor and rubber manufacturer, Charles Elliot.

During his lifetime Thomas Edison acquired iconic status as an inventor and innovator, his authority in these persisting after his creative powers had waned and even after his death. This paper examines the source of his authority by contrasting two incidents from Edison's early career, his invention of the Phonograph in 1877 and his claim, two years earlier, to have discovered a new force of nature that he named Etheric force. The initial evidence for each was meagre, but it persuasive enough for Edison to devote considerable research effort to exploring its potential. Despite the similarities in their origins and in Edison's approach to each, the outcomes were radically different. In the case of the Phonograph, Edison became a national celebrity but his Etheric force claim, though receiving some popular support, led to ridicule, and threatened to alienate his most important sponsor. This opposition led Edison to abandon Etheric force and in so doing, missed the possibility of adding inventor of wireless telegraphy to his list of achievements. In each case, the outcome was a consequence of the way in which Edison developed the initial, meagre evidence and the way in which he built, or failed to build, the resulting knowledge into successful artefacts.

From ECT to electrical execution, electricity exudes ambivalent powers: visible and imperceptible, life giving and lethal, healing and punitive. This chapter traces the scorched intersections of discipline and punish
that govern the treatment of delinquents and beasts: from Sylvia Plath’s crazed female and the pair of Jewish communist spies (the Rosenbergs), and before them, the man-killing, crooked-tailed elephant Topsy, whose death by electrocution in 1903 at Coney Island was filmed by Edison in the early actuality Electrocuting an Elephant (1903). Topsy finds herself at the center of different derivations of electrical power that course through the bodies of animals and humans and confuse neat delineations of species. The film gave rise to multiple afterlives – as YouTube videos, in fiction, historical journalism, and film theory. Several important readings of the film as symptomatic of cinematic death, and cinematic animal death, stress the film’s inconclusiveness aided and abetted by electricity’s fictitious immediacy.

Animalities: Literary and Cultural Studies Beyond the Human. Michael Lundblad, ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017, pp. 104-126.

This article presents a new discovery, based on a text published in a local newspaper in Split, Dalmatia in late 1892, which confirms the hypothesis of multiple versions of Edison and Dickson’s early Kinetoscope films, in particular, in regards to the Blacksmiths subject. Furthermore, it elucidates the relationship between Edison and announcements of initial moving image shows in Dalmatia and the region, to demonstrate how the inventor’s name and fame were frequently associated with the invention of moving image technology. While establishing transnational and transatlantic connections via print and visual media, the article provides further impetus for early cinema scholars to look beyond established figures and narratives, and consider the development of moving images in interstitial spaces around the world such as the Balkans.

My thesis is an investigation into the period of history surrounding the introduction of synchronised sound to film. The intention is in part to redress the current position that sound practice and theory holds in film today, but also to discover a method for understanding film as an audiovisual medium; ontologically necessitating an interplay between sound and image. Prioritising sound is not the intention of this thesis, as to do so would negate the ability to understand film as both sound and image. Theoretical concepts from the deconstructionist philosopher, Jacques Derrida, are appropriated to create a new model that can be used for film analysis. This model attempts to treat film as audiovisual, and uncover specifically, a way in which sound and image can be understood and examined together, resulting in a proliferation of available readings and meanings from the film text. Two ‘transitional’ films from 1927, The Jazz Singer, and Sunrise, along with synchronised sound tests fr...

Review of "Behold This Dreamer!: An Autobiography," by Fulton Oursler, edited and with commentary by Fulton Oursler, Jr. (Little, Brown, 1964).  Charles Fulton Oursler (1893-1952) -- journalist, best-selling author, playwright, screenplay writer, and magazine editor -- opened his autobiography this way: "I was born poor and I earned a good living; I was unschooled and I found knowledge; I was an agnostic and found the way to God." He tells that story in a rich autobiography which also profiles Baltimore and New York society from the nineteen-teens to the 1950s.

The brochure Ein Blick auf die grossen Erfindungen des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts: I. Die Zukunft des elektrischen Fernsehens, published in 1893 by Maximilan Plessner,
Captain (ret.) in the Royal Prussian Army, is one of the most unknown documents of the early history of television. It has never been quoted in the recent literature on this period,
and after two years of research André Lange has identified only one existing copy in the Österreichische Zentralbibliothek für Physik (Wien). Only two quotations of the
brochure are known, and both dated from 1898: in "Jan Szczepanik und Maximilian Plessner. Der Erfinder des Telektroskops und sein Vorläufer", Vom Fels zum Meer,
Stuttgart, Mai 1898, pp. 160-165, and in B. SCHÖFFLER, Die Phototelegraphie und das elektrische Fernsehen, W. Braumüller, Wien, 1898, p. 27. Although Plessner’s
contribution to the history of television can be considered as minimal, this brochure is of great interest, as demonstrated by Nils Klevjer Aas’ abstract and comments.

With the creation of the Kinetoscope, American inventor Thomas Edison produced the very first "moving picture" films. The subjects of those first films reveal the general interests of popular culture at the turn of the 20th century. These interests include  cock fights, Oriental belly dancing and traditional Native American dancers. One of the first films Edison ever produced depicted Indigenous men, women and children performing what is commonly known as "The Ghost Dance." While this movie is regarded as a gem in the historic crown of film, it obscures the bloody lineage associated with this very particular Native American dance. Due to various federal and state bans, Indians were not allowed to practice their religious rituals, violating this ban was punishable by death. Edison's film depicts a ritual that had been outlawed just a few years earlier, additionally, the very performance of this dance just two years prior to the film had resulted in the deaths of over 300 Sioux Indians. This writing investigates the power of entertainment as a tool for shaping consensus, and dictating stereotypes and expectations of those we consider cultural "others."

In August 2005, I travelled to work at Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between FGCU and Unitec New Zealand. This report reflects on my experiences teaching at FGCU, my visits to several sites of techno- logical innovation such as the NASA Kennedy Space Centre, and my experience of two extreme weather events: Hurricane Katrina, and Hurricane Wilma.
FGCU is a state university, recently established, and located between Fort Myers and Naples, Southwest Florida. The Southwest Florida region is growing at a very fast rate, on account of its attractive (warm and sunny) climate, and the recreational resources (fishing, water sports, The Everglades) of the Gulf of Mexico. Accordingly, the university is developing at a fast rate. FGCU is planning for an enrollment of 15,000 students within the next 10 years. There is a substantial building programme, funded partly by the state of Florida, and partly through donors. The multi-million dollar donations seem to me extraordinary generous given the young age of the university: the donations do not come from wealthy retiring alumni - there are none yet!

This article presents a new discovery, based on a text published in a local newspaper in Split, Dalmatia in late 1892, which confirms the hypothesis of multiple versions of Edison and Dickson’s early Kinetoscope films, in particular, in regards to the Blacksmiths subject. Furthermore, it elucidates the relationship between Edison and announcements of initial moving image shows in Dalmatia and the region, to demonstrate how the inventor’s name and fame were frequently associated with the invention of moving image technology. While establishing transnational and transatlantic connections via print and visual media, the article provides further impetus for early cinema scholars to look beyond established figures and narratives, and consider the development of moving images in interstitial spaces around the world such as the Balkans.

This essay separates the facts and rumors surrounding the six times that Mark Twain's voice was recorded, reviews the imitators and impersonators who were active during his lifetime (and Twain's opinion of one of them) and connects one of them directly to Hal Holbrook's incomparable impersonation of Mark Twain. New evidence is presented that answers the question of whether Twain's famous drawl was genuine or part of his stage persona, and new documentary evidence is also presented that establishes exactly how slowly (words per minute) he spoke. This 20,000 word essay concludes with why Mark Twain's physical voice is essential to an understanding of his writings in a way that does not apply to any other American author. The talk I gave on this topic for the Mark Twain House & Museum "The Trouble Begins" series can be viewed on Youtube. Click the "file" link on this page to view that talk.

... Copyright dupes: piracy and new media in Edison v. Lubin (1903) !" Peter Decherney W riting in 1926, film historian Terry Ramsaye ... Looking for an illustration of its new motion picture technology for a promotional article in Harper's Weekly, the Edison Company printed the entire ...

This blog post examines three early films from the 1890s and 1900s - one by the Edison Co and two by Georges Méliès - that use the Middle East as their subject, specifically focusing on sex, violence, and modernity. For more, please visit the link to Tozsuz Evrak.

In 1876Thomas Alva Edison opened his so-called invention factory on a hill in Menlo Park overlooking the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks. Edison assembled a team of chemists, engineers, and mechanics with the expressed purpose of pursuing patents. Between 1876 and 1882 they filed more than 300 patents, including the phonograph. After seeing an electric dynamo in 1877 on a visit to the William Wallace and Sons brass and copper foundry in Connecticut, Edison and his team began work on producing a practical incandescent light. The chief problem
was finding a material for the filament that would not burn up when an electrical current was run through it. On the night of October 22, 1879, one of Edison’s workers, a mechanic named Charles Batchelor, was testing different materials for the filament encased in a vacuum glass bulb attached to an eighteen-cell battery. When he tried a particular kind of carbonized thread, the bulb glowed for fourteen and a half hours.

Edison realized that the incandescent bulb would only be a novelty unless a way was found to deliver electricity to homes and factories. So Edison moved his operations from Menlo Park to New York City, where he established the Edison Electric Illuminating Company in December 1880. There he developed large steam-powered dynamos to generate electricity and an underground distribution system to deliver electricity to his customers. Edison built electrical power plants in other cities across the country, including Paterson, New Jersey. Paterson was by then a center for silk production. While the mills were powered by steam, electric lighting was superior to gaslight in these fire-prone places.

However, there were social implications for technological development, as subsequent events in Paterson exemplified. In the 1870s, the mills in Paterson began using power looms, which could be worked by teenage girls and women. They worked long hours and were paid less money than men. Many of the silk workers in Paterson were highly skilled immigrants, including northern Italians and Polish Jews from textile centers in Europe. There was
a militant tradition among these immigrant workers, many of whom had socialist and anarchist political views. In 1910, Paterson broad-silk manufacturer Henry Doherty increased the loom assignment of his weaver from two to four looms. The weavers went on strike, but they were ordered back to work by their union. In January
1913, Doherty’s workers again went on strike, this time with the support of the radical Industrial Workers of the World, also known as the Wobblies. Wobblie leaders “Big Bill” Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, who had led a successful strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912, came to Paterson. Local officials considered them outside agitators and had them arrested. New York intellectuals from Greenwich Village, including Margaret Sanger, Jack Reed, and Mabel Dodge, attempted to aid the strikers’ families by placing their children in homes in New York and organizing a pageant in Madison Square Garden to raise relief funds.Notwithstanding these efforts, the strikers eventually returned to work. They continued to work ten hours a day,
but they had succeeded in preventing the increase loom assignments from being implemented.

To view the video go to:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_h5DHn8PRIv-tN2pKUHv_g