The Mail-Journal, Volume 16, Number 15, Milford, Kosciusko County, 2 May 1979 — Page 16

THE MAIL-JOURNAL — Wed.. May 2. 1979

16

Edison - 1879-1979 They called him ‘Wizard’

By JOHN T. CUNNIGHAM Seldom given to unlimited praise, much less exaggeration, Jhe Scientific American in December 1878, spotlighted the emerging myth of Thomas Alva Edison by unabashedly hailing him as “one of the wonders of the world” as well as “the greatest inventor of the age. ” Edison then was only 31 years old, a largely self-taught extelegrapher; a man of few social graces and an inventor whose genuine greatness still lay well in his future He headed a very small research laboratory in an obscure town called Menlo Park, N.J. in 1878 his fame already was echoing around the world. The ecstatic praise of the Scientific American and other leading publications stemmed largely from a single invention — the phonograph Journalists flocked to Menlo Park and left to write sensational stories of “the New Jersey Columbus, or. in the nickname that stuck, “the Wizard of Menlo Park Edison was good copy. Myths and legends thereafter followed Edison all of his days, many of them started by himself, for he was often something of a

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clown in the presence of the public and usually a colorful boaster in front of the press His “official”’' biographies, some endorsed by himself, picked up the legends and expanded them In time it became nearly impossible to separate act from fiction in Edison's personal life. Edison himself scoffed at the name “wizard.” preferring to treat listeners with such homilies as “invention is one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration" or “there is no expedient to which man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.” Even as he uttered such bromides, he tried to make himself more mysterious through commonplace legends con cerning his own past. The years have so entwined the real Edison with the mythical “wizard" that he often emerges as less than he would in a straight recounting of his contributions to the world Fiction pales beside Edison's actuality. Thomas Edison was the inventor of the phonograph He was the man who perfected the electric lamp and devised much of the means of generating and distributing electrical power He became the dominant name in

motion pictures His 1,093 patents ranged from the storage battery to scores of telegraphic improvements; from a “writing pen” to a magnetic ore separator; from a “talking doll to dozens of improvements on the telephone. If Edison could be measured only in terms of contributions to the economy and to life styles, consider a world without the electric lamp, practical electric power, the phonograph (or sound recording), the movies, radio, television and, by extension, TV commercials. Linking radio and television to Edison is not just another farfetched invention of Edison worshippers. Early in his 1879 experiments with filaments for a practical incandescent lamp. Edison noticed the strange phenomenon of current being transmitted through space without wires. He called it "the etheric force," and without knowing it, had discovered the forerunner of w hat w ould become radio and TV transmission The myths endure — that he had only a few weeks of schooling, that he became deaf when an irate employer pulled his ears, that he seldom slept Edison was careful to see that few' persons ever really knew him in his lifetime; it is not strange that for decades he has been buried under layers of near fiction. Few biographies have been written about Edison, despite his contributions to the world. Each new biographer dutifully records that he has looked “for the first time” at Edison's vast legacy of papers. In truth, no one has ever looked at all ot Edison's papers and other artifacts. A recent survey showed that

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there are millions of pages of Edison materials available around the nation. A project currently is underway to sort that vast store of Edisonia It is conservatively estimated that it will take at least 20 years and $5 million to bring order out of the mass of material Perhaps, by the year 2000 or so. the real Edison will emerge, and perhaps then the nations academicians and scholars finally will pay attention to this giant of an inventor. Few scholars have ever bothered with Edison, possibly because in life Edison flaunted his own lack of formal timing in front of the academic community at every opportunity. Thomas Edison needs to be separated from the legends, so many of which number among his own unpatented inventions Few men have affected the world more — in science, in invention, in the performing arts, in the electronic media, in the movies, in the preservat.fci of beautiful sounds! in the advancement of education The problem may be that Edison is almost too big for any book or any movie, much less a Ph D thesis. Perhaps television could do so, as it so effectively chronicled the Adams family saga However, no in-depth treatment is in prospect for the life and legacy of the man who made TV possible. Edison: man or myth.’ He would laugh at the question, for he always very much enjoyed being both. Damages reported at Epworth Forest Damage to a church auditorium and a theft from a summer cottage at Epwbrth Forest were reported to Kosciusko County Police recent ly. Audry Thompson reported to police, a 7’- horsepower

Evinrude outboard motor was taken from a locked shed next to her summer home in Epworth Forest, North Webster County Patrolman Gerry Moser found that the lock was forced open on the shed.

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A fire extinguisher was shoi by vandals on the stage at the Epworth Forest Church auditorium, also within the past week No items were missing from the church, according to County Patrolman Ron Robinson .

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