Edison Silhouette Ads
By Doug Boilesen, 2020
Edison used silhouettes in 1906 and 1907 in advertisements telling stories of the phonograph providing home entertainment befitting a king; entertaining and thereby keeping the man of the house at home; and even John Philip Sousa admitting (according to Edison) that "people will no longer go to concerts if they can have music in their own homes so easily and as cheaply as they can with the Edison Phonograph." It was Sousa, of course, who in April 1906 had called phonograph music "canned music" in his Appleton's Magazine article "The Menace of Mechanical Music").
Silhouettes had been a popular art form in the United States during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The following Edison phonograph advertisements are examples of "silhouttes" in popular culture featuring black cut-out images on white paper.
Edison Ad, Ainslee's Magazine, 1900 (PM-0938)
