Thomas Edison
My task in providing a list of additional resources for
anyone interested in learning more about Thomas Edison
has been made incredibly easy by the work of Paul Israel,
the author of this issue’s article, and his colleagues
at The Thomas A. Edison Papers Project at Rutgers University.
Staff members of the Edison Papers project have been working
for thirty years to locate, identify, and publish the
writings of this great inventor. Dr. Israel himself is
the author of the newest and most definitive biography
of Edison:
Israel, Paul. Edison: A Life of Invention.
New York: John Wiley, 1998.
This webpage lists the publications and planned publications
of the project:
http://edison.rutgers.edu/editions.htm
The editors have already published five volumes of
Edison’s works:
The Papers of Thomas A. Edison. Ed. Reese
V. Jenkins, Robert Rosenberg, Paul Israel, et al. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. 5 vols to date.
And the Edison Papers website makes available digital
images of a substantial proportion of the materials
in the project’s comprehensive microfilm edition:
http://edison.rutgers.edu/digital.htm
You may want to supplement these with some other books
that focus on specific aspects of Edison’s career
and on his conception of a working laboratory and laboratory
team at Menlo Park:
Millard, A. J. Edison and the Business of Innovation.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
Friedel, Robert D., and Paul Israel with Bernard S.
Finn. Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention.
New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986.
Phillips, Ray. Edison's Kinetoscope and Its Films:
A History to 1896. Westport, C.T.: Greenwood Press,
1997.
Pretzer, William S., ed. Working At Inventing:
Thomas A. Edison and the Menlo Park Experience.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. A series
of essays on Menlo Park, its organization, and its contributions.
These books focus on Edison’s role in making the
production of electricity a public utility:
Munson, Richard. From Edison to Enron: The Business
of Power and What It Means for the Future of Electricity.
Westport, C.T.: Praeger Publishers, 2005.
Wasik, John G. The Merchant of Power: Samuel Insull,
Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Beyond this, you can’t do better than to go to
the “Learning Resources” webpage of the
Edison Papers Project itself. This wonderful guide to
the study of Edison in particular and American technology
and science in general is largely the work of Theresa
M. Collins, the Associate Director of the Edison project.
You’ll find links to Edison documents selected
by the Edison staff for classroom use; “Virtual
Exhibits and Explorations” links to worthwhile
relevant websites mounted at other sites; and even “Science,
Technology, Engineering & Mathematics Lessons”
for grade levels K-12:
http://edison.rutgers.edu/curriculum.htm
Follow through on all the links here – there’s
something for everyone. You and your students will be
especially captivated by American Memory’s “Inventing
Entertainment” website which allows you to play
Edison recordings and motion pictures deposited with
the Library for copyright purposes more than a century
ago:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edhome.html
