On this Day February 11, 1847

February 11 is the birthday of Thomas Alva Edison, inventor of the Phonograph

 

Suggested celebration: Apple pie and a glass of milk or cup of tea

 

"Edison the Man" 1940 advertisement in Saturday Evening Post featuring apple pie, a glass of milk and the Edison tinfoil Phonograph (known as the "Brady" Phonograph) (1)

 

Edison's love of pie is well known to Friends of the Phonograph and was captured in the 1940 movie Edison the Man.

Many people, however, don't know that Edison had a very defined philosophy about eating.

Laurie Carlson writes about Edison's eating habits in Thomas Edison for Kids - His Life and Ideas and notes the following:

"He took pride in eating small amounts at meals and believed that Americans could cut down their food intake by two-thirds". Quoting Edison: "They do the work of a three-horse-power engine and consume the fuel which should operate 50-horse-power engines."

"What was Edison's favorite food for most of his life? Apple dumplings, or apple pie with a glass of milk."

The suggestion of a cup of tea for the Edison birthday menu comes from "Thomas A. Edison and his Inventions" by James Baird McClure, 1879 which describes Edison dining at Delmonico's and simply having a "piece of a pie and a cup of tea."

 

Movie still from the 1940 MGM film "Edison the Man" with Spencer Tracy and Rita Johnson (in Edison's laboratory)

(1) Brady Phonograph is the name commonly given to the second model of the tin-foil phonograph that Edison was seated with when he had his photograph taken in Mathew Brady's Washington, D.C. studio on April 19, 1878.

 

Edison: Boyhood and Teen Years

Find out how young Thomas Edison’s early years, as portrayed through reenactments, helped him to gain confidence as an aspiring inventor in this video adapted from AMERICAN EXPERIENCE.

 

Edison FACTOLAS

FACTOLA: Edison was responsible for introducing "Hello" as the way to answer the phone. For more information see "Hello or Ahoy?"

FACTOLA: The shortest appearance of Edison in a surviving movie is one second. The movie was the 1915 Edison 20-minute silent film 'drama' titled "Voice of the Violin." (See Phonographia's "The Voice of the Violin" for more details about that one second.)

FACTOLA: A recording made of Thomas Edison (c. late October 1888) can be heard on the record "Around the World on the Phonograph" and is believed to be the earliest existing recording of Thomas Edison's voice. The record format is an Edison yellow paraffine cylinder and it's located in the collection of the National Park Service's Very Early Recorded Sound page (NPS object catalog number: EDIS 566) and is available for listening HERE.

FACTOLA: Edison was one of the most recognized names of his time. The Phonograph alone made his face, trade-mark, and signature a popular culture fixture with its countless advertisements, newspaper articles, products, and ephemera. Multiply that by all of his other inventions and consumer products which leveraged his name and his fame in popular culture surely is in the top five. Despite the Wizard of Menlo Park's life-long fame and his 1,093 patents he has been attributed to have said:

"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything." — Thomas Edison (as quoted in Golden Book (April 1931), according to Stevenson's Book of Quotations (Cassell 3rd edition 1938) by Burton Egbert Stevenson - LibQuotes also references Golden Book, April 1931, however, this quote is not included in Stevenson's Book of Quotations 5th edition, 1946).

FACTOLA: Thomas Alva Edison died at 3:21 AM on October 18, 1931, at his estate, Glenmont, in West Orange, New Jersey. Edison's 'last breath' is on display at the Henry Ford Museum.

"This test tube was one of several that Charles Edison noticed standing open in a rack in the bedroom in which his father had just died in 1931. The attending physician was asked to seal the tubes, one of which Charles later sent on to Henry Ford who kept it with other Edison mementos at his home, Fair Lane." (Source: The Henry Ford).

 

FACTOLA: According to various sources, including the book "Edison: Inventing the Century" by Neil Baldwin, hours before his death, Edison emerged from a coma, opened his eyes, looked upwards and said "It is very beautiful over there." (Source: The Wall Street Journal and NPR "Steve Jobs And His Last Words" by Eyder Peralta, October 31, 2011.

 

FACTOLA: Edison was not impressed with the Arc de Triomphe. "I always see beside it another and greater arch, thousands of feet high, made of phosphate of the bones of victims sacrificed for Napoleon's personal glory." (Source: Edison, Morris, Edmund, 2019, Random House, New York).

 

FACTOLA: Thomas Edison's 1899 interview - And life hereafter?

"Who knows? I don't" says Edison.

"If I could solve the riddle of this life I might have some ideas about the next. Oh, I don't know...I know something about science -- about steam and iron and electricity -- but this matter of destiny -- why we came here and where we are going -- is beyond my ken." The Phonoscope, June 1899

 

A Happy Birthday pin issued for Edison's 75th birthday

 

LISTEN HERE to the Friends of the Phonograph Happy Birthday Song!

 

For more information about Edison and his other inventions and patents, see the Wikipedia article for Thomas Alva Edison which begins:

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman, who has been described as America's greatest inventor.

For a complete list of Edison Companies, see the Thomas A. Edison Papers courtesy of Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences.