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History's Agenda
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History's Agenda
Thomas Edison: Part 1 - "The Wizard Of Menlo Park"
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Thomas Edison didn’t just invent. He performed. Historian Jack Stanley joins us to unpack the side of Edison most biographies smooth over: the theatrical, image-aware operator who knew how to turn a technical breakthrough into a world-stopping moment. We talk about what Jack learned from deep research in Edison’s notebooks and private library, plus stories passed down by people who actually knew the family, including insights from Theodore Edison.
We dig into the early phonograph story with the kind of detail collectors love: the tinfoil era, why “Mary Had a Little Lamb” was a practical choice, and how people still confuse tin foil with modern aluminum foil. Then we follow Edison onto the train to New York, where he drops the phonograph on a Scientific American editor’s desk and lets the machine introduce itself. That single piece of showmanship helps ignite the “Wizard of Menlo Park” legend and starts a decades-long obsession with sound recording, control, and public attention.
From there, we widen the lens: rivalry with Bell and Tainter, Edison’s communications work that points toward the microphone and vacuum tube, and the overlooked “etheric force” experiments that foreshadow wireless radio and Marconi. Finally, we bring it home for collectors with real-world guidance on playback and preservation, including why some early disc records should never touch an acoustic needle. If you care about Thomas Edison, antique phonographs, wax cylinders, early records, or audio preservation, this one is a deep well.
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Meet Historian Jack Stanley
SPEAKER_01We are so lucky to have Jack Stanley today with us, a marvelous historian. Uh historian uh specialized in knowing about Edison.
SPEAKER_00I worked with them in in 1995 to 1990 1994 to 1996.
SPEAKER_01I was a fairly good.
SPEAKER_00And then I worked and then I worked at the the Menelo Park Museum for about nine years. And independently, I've just done a lot of different researches on on Edison. Did a lot of programs for like the History Channel and stuff like that on Edison and and babbled.
SPEAKER_01Well I could I could tell you our listeners want to hear you babble a lot because you babble better than we do.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_01So we have met online uh you know, basically my relatively new experiences with collecting antique photographs, and Jack has been kind enough to to appear for us. And and just a little background, uh, some of you may be aware that we did a recording yesterday. We didn't like the way the sound came out, so we're here doing it again. So uh on that note, Jack, the floor is yours. Where do you want to start?
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Thank you very much. It's always good for second chances, as the old saying goes. Let's hope it's better because I deleted all the other ones. Yes. Hey, when you make a recording, you make about two or three, and then one of them's bound to be good. It's a pleasure to be here with the uh program. And uh Thomas Edison's a fascinating subject. And so often we we look at Edison very much like a cardboard cutout. He doesn't seem to have much of a personality. He's busy inventing and blah, blah, blah, blah. But there's so much more to him. And I was very fortunate to be able to go through a lot of his notebooks, through his personal papers, through his private library, through many of the papers of Charlie Hummel, um, and get to know Edison a little differently, and also know people who knew him, uh, which was very fascinating for me. When I was very young, I got to know Theodore Edison and Harry Fioretti, who used to work with Theodore. And they all taught me stories about Edison and things that were fascinating about him, and in the case with Theodore, his father, which was kind of interesting because it was fun for me years ago when I used to talk to kids and whatever. I used to sit there and say, A friend of mine's a friend of mine was Edison, Edison's son. So it's like a I'm talking about a friend of mine's father, you know. It's kind of made it like a little bit of all in the family, as it were.
SPEAKER_01That it is quite amazing when you think of it.
SPEAKER_00It is. It was it was really kind of cool. I used to talk to him on the phone quite a bit. I was introduced to him by Lee Munzick, who uh was a collector and no longer with us. But I uh I knew Lee, and a lot of times he'd be on the phone with Theodore, and he would pass the phone over to me, and then we'd just sit there and chit-chat for a little bit. I probably annoyed the living daylights out of him. You know, I was very young and full of questions. Of course, the questions I had were nothing like the questions I would have now. I have so many things I wish I could have asked. But I always remember one thing that's kind of fascinating, especially for collectors who love cylinders. I started asking questions about how did you transfer the cylinders electrically at the Columbia Street Studios? And he said, Why are you interested in cylinders? When we made them, we couldn't give them away. And that was his response to that. He he didn't like cylinders. He thought it was a waste of time. And he was more interested in radio and also electronics and many other things, and he had his own company called Calibron Industries, which was really cool. It was right across the street from where his laboratory was in West Iron. But as a collector,
Edison’s Theatrical Personality
SPEAKER_00as a researcher into Edison, I found that one thing about Thomas Edison that's so important and so often left out of the equation, and that is that he was very theatrical. He loved theater. In fact, he he entertained thoughts of becoming an actor when he was younger, and he used to love to do the latest dances from shows for his friends when he was young. But must have been in the blood to be uh theatrical. And the thing that's most fascinating about inventors, a lot of times inventors and researchers are a rather dry lot, and they're not exactly exciting people to talk to or listen to. Edison was a three-ring circus, and he went out of his way to make sure that everything he talked about was rather theatrical. And it had a profound effect because by doing so, he became as much immersed into the research, into the invention, as the very invention itself.
The First Phonograph Moment
SPEAKER_00When you think of like the phonograph, when the phonograph was invented in well, it was first used December 6, 1877, tinfoil phonograph, you know, put together by Cruzi and Bachelor, by the way. Incidentally, they were working on it the night before, and you know, the one thing you gave to Edison, you know, uh was a working model. How do you make it work? You test it. And of course, they tested the phonograph the night before. And they they actually made some recordings on it before it went to Edison. But those were not the first official recordings. And you can actually go back further because they were practicing on wax paper and all kinds of stuff. But the interesting thing is, December 6, 1877, Mary had a little lamb, a little piece of practical poetry, uh was put onto the the uh tinfoil. A lot of times people today get confused. They think that aluminum foil is tinfoil. It's very, very different. Tin foil is very thick, very heavy, very malleable, and very easy to smooth out. Aluminum foil is very much the different thing, a different animal. And aluminum foil back in Edison's day was valuable. It was worth more than gold. You know, it's an interesting little thing that the capstone on the top of the Washington monument is made of aluminum because it was such a rare metal, something we don't think of very often. But nonetheless, they made that recording on December 6th, 1877.
SPEAKER_01Can I just ask you uh uh about the recording for a minute? Do you do you think he was very specific about choosing that nursery rhyme? Uh because was he a very religious man? No.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01No, because I've I've read versions where they say that the nursery rhyme, the lamb, is really the lamb of God in the nursery rhyme. And that's the relationship.
SPEAKER_00I will tell you that in Edison's private writings, you'll discover that's not the case at all.
SPEAKER_01Right. I I I'm just curious, they that gets thrown around a lot out there. And I didn't realize it until after we got finished last night, I I started researching Mary Had a Little Lamb, and that and that's what came out.
SPEAKER_00Well, at the time he had little kids and he was leading reading a lot of nursery rhymes and stuff like that. And and it's a very interesting point, just to jump away from this just for a second. A number of years later, when Alexander Graham Bell and Tainter and Chick Chister Bell gets to get together and kind of reinvents the phonograph to a degree, they said, We will not use a nursery rhyme, and they used Shakespeare because they thought that the nursery rhyme was just kind of like foolish. And they wanted to show how much classier they were. But nonetheless, they made the recording on December 6, 1877, and everyone was quite amazed. And
Scientific American And Instant Fame
SPEAKER_00the interesting thing and the theatrics of Edison are what follows the following day. The following day he's on a train for New York City with a prerecorded cylinder on that tinfoil machine. And he goes to the offices of Scientific American. And as Edison always liked to tell the story, he said, I walked into the office of the editor, smiled at the editor, flopped the phonograph down in his desk, and turned the crank. And the phonograph introduced itself to the editor. Asked to the health of the editor, told the editor it was feeling fine, and bid the editor a fine good day. Now what a great way to introduce a machine by that talks by letting the machine that talks introduce itself. Pure unmitigated theater. When and of course, the editor did exactly what Edison expected the editor to do. After he got off off the floor after hearing that, he wrote about it. And before long, the entire world is talking about Thomas Edison. And within a short time, the phonograph and its development and its absolute wonder causes Edison to be called the wizard of Menelope Park. Nothing else causes that. It's the phonograph, which Edison considered his favorite invention, and perhaps one of his most original, if not the most original. And uh it becomes a vocal of his life. He spends the next half century playing with it. And uh of course, today we collect those wonderful things that uh Edison developed, and that was his baby, and he guarded it like a jealous father, and he would listen to music, and he said, That music does not go on my phonograph. And it's fascinating when you read that stuff because he did look at the phonograph like his child, and he guarded it. And he guarded it perhaps a little too much, and of course he picked all the music, which was absolutely frightening at times. But that's another story altogether. But I went through tons and tons and tons of his reviews on records. I went through lots of his notebooks, I went through lots of his papers, I went through his private books in his private library. And when he got into Grove's dictionary of music, holy cow, he went wild. He had notes everywhere and comments and a lot of not too favorable comments on composers, musicians, etc. And it's it was actually a fascinating journey for me. And a learning experience that I'm amazed that I was able to do it. You know, I don't know if you could do so much today. I used to go to the room in which Edison wrote those notes, room number twelve in the laboratory. And I used to spend hours sitting in there going through the books, and then I'd pile them back up, and then the next day, that evening there'd be another pile, and I'd just go through them and go through them and go through them, copy some stuff, and it was really an adventure. And I told them I don't want to go where the great developments took place. I want to see the stuff that was every day. I wanted to see what he was like when things weren't, you know, at the at the peak. And it was fascinating to see. I mean, he'd throw in jokes, he'd draw pictures, he would sit there and complain that he's not the Bank of England to lots of people who would be asking for money or spending money, what in the way he would look at it is foolishly. And a lot of that had to do with who he was recording. And he listened to them and he said, This person's terrible, this person's rotten. If if these people like this music, they'll like smallpox. I mean, that's the kind of stuff he would write. And this would often go to the office and it would be typed up. And also you had a music committee, and eventual time, it's a bunch of yes men, to be perfectly honest. Edison would listen to the same music as the music committee. The music committee would say, This is fantastic. Edison said it's rotten, and then they repeat, it's rotten. That's the way it would work. Very rarely would they ever dare go against Edison because he was the Lord and Master, he was the king, he was the chief, he was the judge, and he was the executioner. So there was an awful lot there.
SPEAKER_01It's difficult when you have a man like that that's so larger than life.
SPEAKER_00Yes, indeed. And perhaps one of the more difficult things about Edison was Edison himself and Edison's understanding of himself. He'd been told from the time he was in his twenties that he was the greatest person in the world, that he was the smartest person, the greatest inventor, the greatest this, the greatest that. So when he decided this was it, well, he's the greatest man around, a great thinker, the great inventor. And he didn't have a problem sticking to what he thought was right. And eventually what happens? And I think it's a fascinating story, and it would be interesting to go into this deeper, that Edison changes the world so much that eventually he doesn't fit in the world that he creates. Interesting. True. It's a fascinating thing to see. So that's a little bit of explaining Edison a little bit. As I said, theater is a lot. You know, when they
The Myth Splits From The Man
SPEAKER_00go to visit him on his birthday, the press said, How do you feel? He said, That's a hell of a question to ask an old man. Or if he was in a good mood, he'd say feeling fine as silk and do a high kick in front of him. It would vary depending on his moods, but nonetheless, everything that he did had a little spark of theater in it. He loved theater. He went to see theater. He was at the opening day at the Metropolitan Opera House with his first wife. And so theater was important, and eventually, if you think about it, he eventually got to star in his own show called Me. And everybody came to see him, and he would say what he thought, and they would say, Oh, this is wonderful, Mr. You know, Mr. Edison, whatever. An interesting thing is that as he got older, the man and the myth really started to separate. Now when he was 29, 30, 31 years old, he was up all the time, constantly working, barely sleeping. When he was 65 years old, that's not the case. You can't do it. Eventually your body's gonna give out. And his wife, Mina, she laid down the law because he was a diabetic, by the way. Right. And he also was having a number of problems, and she said, This is what's going to happen. You're going to have your breakfast, you go to work. You're gonna work there, you can have lunch, then you're going to work there until a certain time, and the car will come to get you. If you are not on the car, I will be on the next car. She basically, she basically tells him, you know, you have to kind of follow these rules. And by doing so, he slowed down and it prolonged his life. I mean, he probably would not have lasted as long. And that that's his second wife, right? Second wife, Mina. Right. His first wife dies very young. Very young. I was just gonna say that. And it's kind of sad because he had three children with his first wife, and he was so busy. He was constantly working, he was constantly involved. They became secondary, and it was it was really hard for them to deal with, and they always remained secondary. It's interesting. Even after he remarries, his second family always took precedence. And I remember Theodore talking about working in building one in West Orange, and he had all kinds of equipment and everything else. And in building number four, all the way in back under a light bulb was Thomas Edison Jr. It's kind of sad. There's a lot to that whole story. I'm not going to get into it because there's just so much. But uh, they were six children all together, three from the first and three from the second, and they couldn't have been more different. Um they're their raising, their families, their mothers. They didn't have a mother, really, that first batch. She died so young. Enough of that. But um once again, Edison is the showman, and Edison made inventing almost like a a a sport in a sense. People would sit there and watch and see all the stuff he was doing. And he made it interesting. Most inventors don't make their inventions interesting.
SPEAKER_01So he invents the phonograph, but and there's a couple other tin foils and phonographs that get made, correct? And then somewhere along the line, he moves on to the light bulb. Yes. And then what brings him back? Talk about the showman and and and the competition of it all. What brings him back to start focusing on the phonograph again?
SPEAKER_00Well,
Rivalry With Bell And New Tech
SPEAKER_00Alexander Graham Bell and Chick Chester Bell and Charles Tainter, they came out with the wax cylinder.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Edison went bonkers. And not only that, they called their machine a graphophone, which is phonographs boonerized. And it was done just to annoy Edison. And it did. He went crazy. But you have to remember Bell had a little bit of a problem with Edison before because Edison was interested in trying to find a way to communicate via wires. And Bell was trying to record sound, and each invented what the other wanted to do, and each never forgave the other for doing it. And so Edison worked very hard to improve the telephone, which he did, and Bell worked very hard to improve the phonograph, in which he did. And I I I don't think that there was any great love between both of them. They weren't they were not exactly warm and fuzzy with each other. I mean, Edison developed a carbon button transmitter. Later, Berliner does that, but Edison does it earlier. In fact, telephone mouthpieces years ago had to have the patents of all the people involved. I mean, it was Edison, Berliner, Lake, and Bell. And so you had all these various patents all over the place. You needed a lot of space for it. But the carbon button micro uh transmitter eventually leads to the microphone, if you think about it. And of course, Edison develops the Edison effect bulb, which eventually leads to the vacuum tube. And there's another thing that we never talk about with Edison, and I never mentioned it last time, and that was something called etheric force. And they discovered something that they didn't understand at all, that they could send sparks back and forth through the air to different receptors. And Edison called it etheric force because it went through the ether. And eventually they were sending out setting up poles with metal receptors and senders and sending them a hundred feet back and forth. What this will become is radio. But it's so far before. I mean, this is so early. This is the time of Custer's last stand, just to give you an idea of how long ago this is. And so he was working with Western Union at the time, and they said we're a wired company. We don't need any of this nonsense. And so he drops it. But he does eventually give the patents for two things. First was the signal tower, which everything was connected to, and also the the device itself, which was rudimentary, very rudimentary. But he gave them both to a fellow named Marconi. And Marconi came to visit Edison one day and he put it very simply. He said, I went to see Edison about the patents. And he said he made me a cheese sandwich and gave me the patents. And that was that was the end of the whole thing. And so he got the thing for the tower, which was very important in Wireless. So, in a sense, you might say in Newark, New Jersey, the first wireless signals were sent. Something they don't advertise or think about, but that's the very important thing. It happened in his factory in in Newark, New Jersey, very early on. And it was advanced in uh Menlo Park. They even tried a flying machine. It blew up. It didn't go anywhere. Happens. Happens. He said, I burnt up one of my employees. Because they were using gun cotton in the uh the engine and it uh had problems. So now let's just talk about collecting a little bit here. I know
A First Record Sparks Collecting
SPEAKER_00I was this is a program about collecting, but I did want to share a little bit about Edison because he's such a fascinating, interesting, and colorful individual. For me, I s I have it right here. This is my first record. What is that? It is a piece of crap, metal-based acetate record. I got it in 1969 in school. We were doing show and tell. I brought in stuff about Washington's headquarters, and another kid was fishing with his father in Port Everglades. This was in Florida, and they fished up this record. I played it, it's four drunks trying to sing. It's really bad. And uh I was so taken with it, I traded all the stuff with Washington's headquarters for the record. And I've had that ever since 1969, and this is what caused this illness. I always like to find the cause of the illness itself. And uh since that time, which now is what, 56 years, I have been fascinated in sound recording, in edison. In recording. Actually, while working in Menlo Park, I developed what was called the Edison Recording Project and followed the ideas of Edison with the phonograph, creating the great people of our time. And I was able to record president, I was able to call record senators, Academy Award winners, great singers, astronauts, men that walked on the moon, you know, lots of amazing people. And all of these people made cylinders. And it was very fascinating and interesting thing just to mention to you, real quick, is with this recording project that is now being run by Wyatt Marcus, by the way. I'm sort of like his his Man Friday now. I kind of work with him. He I know I know he's fairly obsessed with recording. Oh, I know. And he has taken it taken it way beyond what I did. And I'm very, very proud of him. I'm very, very proud and very honored to be involved with him.
SPEAKER_01He tells me everybody everybody should have a recorder. And I don't know. I think it's true. Except for the tinfoil replica I have.
SPEAKER_00That would be a little difficult. But the interesting thing is when you do this, when you bring a phonograph with a wax cylinder with a recording horn in front of an individual who has spent their life in front of a microphone. They're fascinated because they've never done it before. And they start having fun and they start giggling and laughing and telling you stories. It's a it's a wonderful, if you think uh a little psychology, if you think about it, it it they forget who they are and they just kind of relax and talk. I mean, President Ford was telling me all about his father's paint store and what it was like as a waiter in a Hungarian restaurant. I mean, stuff he would never, ever, ever talk about. But he just sat down, we just had conversations about all different kinds of things. Walter Cronkite talked about his grandparents having Edison machines and his parents having Victor machines. But wherever he was, he had to wind them. And and Buzz Aldrin started talking to me about his father, who worked with Billy Mitchell, when they were trying to develop air power instead of battleships. It was fascinating. It was uh really interesting to hear some of the stuff he was talking about. All of these people, it was like about 25 or 30 of them, we recorded, and of course, Wyatt has added to that list, and I'm hoping that Wyatt's gonna add tons to the list, and in time I'm hoping he'll pass it on to another, and they'll continue this, and it'll be a wonderful archive of voices recorded in the most of unique fashions, and that's sort of like the magic of it all. Is it on what? True.
SPEAKER_01It's definitely magical. The whole thing when you put that cylinder on and you drop that reproducer on there, and you hear the sound, whether it's on an ancient, I have a branded gem that sounds like an old phonograph's supposed to sound, and I don't know. I just love to play that one. And why it I don't know what kind of reproducer on it is, why said it was the first one he'd ever seen like that, and he had to manufacture something to make it work, but and it really only plays brown wax, which is interesting, but it's it's really it's really an amazing time. And I I think about my first thing was was I got lucky and purchased Edison Standard in an auction. I it was a gamble, I put a small bid in, nobody else bid, and I ended up with it. But it came with a reproducer horn, and I said reproduction horn, and I was like, Well, I don't want a reproduction horn, so I started looking at other auctions, and I saw one in Massachusetts that had a repro a uh original horn, but it was with a whole bunch of other hordes. So I ended up getting it, and I and I got some um, as a matter of fact, I think I got this red one in back of me and some others, a couple others like it, just different coloring, and a couple some of the the short 10-inch cones and and also a um a listening tube. So now I have these hordes that don't have photographs. Well, there's only one thing to do. Exactly. Exactly what happened. Exactly what happened.
SPEAKER_00Go on your way.
The Internet Changes The Hobby
SPEAKER_00There's there's lots of machines. In fact, you know, it's an interesting thing with collecting now. The internet has totally changed the hobby. Yeah. In so many different ways. When I first started collecting, I mean, machines were very expensive. And they say, well, this is very rare. There's very few like that, and you wouldn't see them anywhere. Now with the internet, you know, you go onto eBay and type in Edison Phonograph. Right. Oh my god, they're all over the place. And Victor machines. I can remember when I first started collecting at the Salvation Army, they had Victrolas lined up, and they were $25 each. Because nobody wanted them. Is it all for the everybody wanted them, and now it's sort of going the other way again. People want the smaller machines, they don't want the bigger ones. Yeah, I think we just go through cycles, we go through phases. You know, it's interesting also, I got to talk to a lot of old recording artists. And I I talked to Joe Smith. I used to go visit him at the Englewood Actors Home. He was in the group Smith and Dale. Dr. Krank had I got a headache and it hurts when I do this. Um, that thing. And he was also in the Avon Comedy 4 that started recording, I believe, in 1912. And he told me all about what it was like in the studio, what it was like to sing in the tube, as he called it. And he had a Victrola in his room. And I would bring some records and he had some records, and we would sit down and listen. He would tell me stories about the people that were singing. That was like, you know, primary information. I mean, he was right there. And he was the the last one I could really talk to. There were a few others, but he was just very good at explaining things, and he taught me an awful lot. I used to do his routine with him sometimes, the Smith and Dale thing. If you've ever seen the the the Neil Simon play, The Sunshine Boys, that's based on Smith and Dale. Is it? Yeah. It's just an interesting thing. Now, just a couple of other things about for me, I don't have too many machines. I have some. Nothing earth rattling rare, but I collect records. I'm more into the records. And I like really early, like Berliner, Zonophone, Climax, stuff like that. And you don't see that very often. No. They're quite rare. But to me, that's the fascinating thing. The technology, the things that they were trying to do, how they got things that I mean, climax was totally illegal. Zonophone wasn't far behind, actually.
SPEAKER_01I have uh I have some of those. I have zonophones, but I don't I don't have any Berliner records. I mean, I have early early Victor records.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you'll get some Berliners. Actually, the interesting thing is the the Climaxes and the early Zonophones are rarer than the Berliners. Are they? Because Berliner was the big company, if you think about it, and they made the most. Climax was in vogue for about a year, and they were totally illegal, and it was not as big a show. The Zonophone, which what was it called? The Universal Talking Machine Company. Right, correct. They were kind of like small potatoes comparatively to Berliner as well. But of course, Berliners put out of business by a bell tainter patent for a cylinder machine, which is amazing. Update did this. The lawyer for Columbia, his name was Philip Moro, he developed a uh an argument against Berliner. There was a patent for Bell Tainter that went that a needle is moved by a groove. And what that meant is that it was a floating reproducer and there was a groove screw behind the cylinder machine. And that needle would follow that groove. And so he said, Well, look at the Berliner record. I put a needle on the groove of the record, and it follows the groove. And with that very liberal interpretation, he's able to force an injunction on Berliner and basically cease all actions. Really quite amazing. I don't know why Edison didn't say, I don't know how much he charges, but I'm going to hire this lawyer. He should have done that.
SPEAKER_01I'm guessing Edison probably didn't like lawyers. He didn't like anything he couldn't do himself.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, but he had some lawyers, but he lost a number of cases, which is the cylinder machines lose the N gate. That was due to a battle over lawyers, and he lost.
SPEAKER_01Is that is that the when they would come up with separate models for New York, or is that something else?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell That's something else. There was there was the N gate itself is I think on the Model C's basically it's removed. And that was due basically because he lost the uh the war on that one. And that caused a whole big change in the design of the machines.
SPEAKER_01Right, because the Model C's are also the ones that were sought could be sold in New York. It's interesting that it would be all in one.
SPEAKER_00I think I think it had I think it was in New York, the uh court case, I think it was if I recall. I got there's so many different things in my head, sometimes they all get confused.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's interesting. He also had a lot of things going on. I've always been interested in in how he makes progressions, how he like fights off isn't as much as competition or isn't as much as how he wants to be succeed financially in the marketplace. It seems to me it's more about that he wants everyone to know whatever he does, he could do better than anybody else.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And underline that, please. Twice. And you know, and then first a couple of interesting things, just uh to kind of close this out.
The Image Machine And Diamond Discs
SPEAKER_00I talked to a lot of people who saw Edison in action and knew Edison, and uh and people also wrote about it. And as I mentioned before, the man and the myth kind of separated. And Edison, a lot of times in those later years, would be at his desk working on stuff or writing some stuff, and an assistant would come in and say, Mr. Edison, the press is here. And at his desk, he kept the jar of dirt. And when the press was gonna come in, he got the jar of dirt or took a little dirt and mess himself up a little bit, mess up the hair a little bit, and then he would sit there and have this faraway look like he was thinking and inventing. And they would walk in and they would be amazed. Because here was this great genius. Look at how dirty he is. He's been busy working and thinking. He probably hasn't slept in three days. He was so good at creating that image. That's fascinating. And you know, people today have created images, and it's it's something once they create it, they work very hard to keep. And Edison was able to keep that image throughout his life. And that's that's really quite incredible when you think about it, because he was a hero to grandparents and grandchildren. Right. You know, if you think about it, because his time, basically in the 1870s, up to like 1930, we're talking a period of 60 years, you know, and he was in the news all the time. The press came to see him and said, What do you think of this? What do you think of that? You know, no matter if he knew a lot about it or not, he would pontificate about it. And he would talk about it. He would put on his show. He also had a very interesting thing just to mention, and that was when he was doing the Diamond Disc.
SPEAKER_01I was just gonna ask you about that.
SPEAKER_00Oh. He did his commandments for the Diamond Disc and the recording program. I think there was eleven of them. Perhaps one of the most remarkable and kind of crazy was we don't need the name of the artist on the record. The tune will sell itself. If anybody should have understood star power, it should have been Edison. Because he was a product of it. That's so important. And of course, that blew up in his face because everyone's saying, Who the hell is it? It was stupid. Mel Quartet.
SPEAKER_01You know, I'll still say who the I still say who the hell is it when you look and he has those etched records and you're like kind of turning it in the light because you can't read it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and they got worse. Once World War I started, they couldn't get the chemicals from Germany. And so they had to synthetically try to develop it, and it was never as good. And those records became noisier and noisier and noisier. And that was all at the time of those tone tests when they were doing those at the height of the tone test, which did not use those records. They used specially pressed records that were heavily lacquered, and they were made to be played once or twice. And it's impossible for an acoustic phonograph to imitate a person. But they taught their musicians, their performers to sound like a phonograph. And that's what they did. They sang like the phonograph voice. They never sang full voice, and it was done in a theater where there were acoustics and echoes and this, that, and everything else. The entire stage was filled with flowers, plants, and pictures, everything to kind of distort the situation and kind of take your eyes away from things. Of course, Theodore told me he went to a tone test and he had a little trouble telling, which was what? Kind of an interesting thing, but it was a hell of a show, and they sold a lot of records and a lot of machines by doing it. So speaking of that, what was the first machine you bought?
What We Collect And How We Play
SPEAKER_00First machine I ever bought?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I didn't buy it. I worked for it. Better yet. I mowed I moved the lawn and I got a Victrola six with a broken spring, and it was absolutely beat the daylights. And I didn't know the first thing about phonographs. And so I tried to fix it. And the more I tried to fix it, the more I screwed it up. Story of my life. And basically I learned how to operate, work, and fix the machines by destroying this one. And eventually I discovered crazy glue, and I crazy glued a lot of it together and I got it working. It was like, and and I, you know, over the years things went. I don't have any of those machines anymore. I don't even have a disc Victor machine except for way in the back there. You see, I have a Victor P, which I got, and I started winding it, and the crank, I could only go so far, and I'm not sure if I should do it tighter or not. I'm a little leery of springs. I've never been good with springs. I don't like to touch them. But the interesting thing about that P is it's so remarkably early. I I looked on the database for Victor Machines, and I think the earliest Victor P listed there is number six seven six thirty four. It's right at the very, very beginning. And uh it's really neat. And someday I will get it all going. I guess maybe I'll get the guts and wind it more and see what happens.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna have Joe reach out to you about the spring. I mean, he sold me my pee, and he has another pee already. So we were just talking about them. I don't I don't know why, because I I I somewhat wonder that they were so made of leftover parts.
SPEAKER_00And yeah, I I I think it's a little bit of this, that, and everything else, especially the earliest ones. Right. I have no idea. You know, and it's it's all brass inside. Excuse me. It's all brass inside. Interesting. It's it's fascinating, and I think I'd like to get it going. I think I'd rather have a later upside horn machine rather than a P, but we'll go to that later, I guess.
SPEAKER_01I guess my favorites to play uh an a Victor is I have a Victor 5 that run that Joe actually worked. It runs beautifully, rebuilt the reproducer, and I had John Duffy restore the horn because it was dented and he polished it, so it looks amazing. Then I have two xenophones. I think they're called parlors, one's rear horn, one's side horn. And I have that I really love too is the uh Columbia, and it's just a fabulous machine. So the Columbia BI is also a magnificent machine. I have a BI and a BNW. BNW has a huge polished horn on it, and the BI has a not the improved, the regular one, has a brushed horn on it, and it just wines and plays and sounds great.
SPEAKER_00So I have only a a handful. I have in Edison, I have an Amberola 5, an Amberola 75, and an Amberola 30. Um and an early home, a suitcase home.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I have one.
SPEAKER_00A fireside and a gem, a maroon gem. I loved my maroon gem. It's so pretty. I see you playing all the time, I'm jealous.
SPEAKER_01I have a black one with the black boards.
SPEAKER_00I gave that to Wyatt. Wyatt, Dr. Wyatt worked on it, did a spring transplant, and uh and I love that machine. It was obviously well taken care of. I mean, it's not scratched up or anything, it's still got all the everything together. The horns never hold up. The horns always are flaking and whatever for those I see. And the horn I have is repainted. But I'll tell you, I like the I like the uh yours is a two-piece horn though, right?
SPEAKER_01Or is it a one-piece? Two-piece. Yeah, I have a one-piece. Um in black.
SPEAKER_00In black. I see. Okay. And and the other things I have, uh I have Columbia. I have a Columbia AT and a Columbia Eagle, and then I have a couple of portables. MV88A, a 101, and a 102. And I'll tell you, the the 101 and the 88A are remarkable sounding machines.
SPEAKER_01I have a 102.
SPEAKER_00I've I've got a 102, but it's always been a little problematic. It always has trouble keeping speed.
SPEAKER_01It's funny, I I saw a woman who was from England and she had listed her records on um, I think it was Marketplace, so for like 50 bucks. So she wasn't far from me. I went over to her house, and after I bought them all, she said to me, uh, I said to her, What did you play these on? She goes, Oh, I have this old, you know. And she brought down the machine, it was a 102. And I said, How much you want for it? She goes, fifty bucks, and I bought it. So, you know, it's just the way sometimes you have to ask. Sometimes you gotta search and you never know what people have until you get there because you go there for one thing and you see some other thing. A lot of times you go, Oh, this was my dad's, he's passed away, you know, he loved it. I have no use for it. You get that get that a lot.
SPEAKER_00Interesting thing is like I don't play uh the Victor Columbia or any of the early records on an early machine. I always play them electrically. I see you do that. I do that because you can replace the needles and stuff like that, but you can't replace the records. The records are so rare. And so I do my best to baby them and kind of beat up 1910 records or 1915, 1920 records. That's fine on an outside horn machine or a Victor machine. But I would recommend to anyone who has very early early disc records. Don't play them on the early machines. You will destroy them. It's a it's a cutting lathe. It's a nail. I mean, let's face it. These are these are like nails without heads, you know. They used to say in the Berliner advertisements, if you cannot find a needle, use a three penny nail. That tells us a lot.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I I have no choice. I have to I have to play. I don't own electric anything other than my computer and half my other things.
SPEAKER_00Okay, well, that's fine.
SPEAKER_01I don't know.
SPEAKER_00That's your prerogative. That's New York.
SPEAKER_01I enjoy the that uh step back in history.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Fully and totally appreciate that. I do that with the cylinders. Of course, there's no other play if I had an electric thing, or you know, Don Wilson developed that wonderful electrical cylinder player, but uh it's way past my ability to purchase. It's too expensive.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00But uh I try to play them on the original stuff, the the cylinders and stuff like that. And the discs on the portable occasionally. But uh any of the early stuff, once again, I I stay away from, I shy away from it.
SPEAKER_01I love to re because I have st I have cylinders that I bought are still in boxes. You know, I'm trying to go through in now and and go through them. And labeling's impossible, but I wouldn't want to alter whatever condition it's in. But I put them in in a cubicle and then have a list of what's in that cubicle, and hopefully I'll I'll go and look for it. But I really enjoy reaching in to the back and grabbing a cylinder and putting it on and figuring out what the heck is this. You know, you'll have two vaudeville people going around about something you can't even comprehend. Because it's so ancient. So ancient.
SPEAKER_00This is true. I mean, it's it's fascinating. And and and I guess we've probably reached that period of time that we've kind of come to. I don't know if we've gone past forty-five minutes or so. Yeah, uh yeah, we're that's okay.
Preservation As A Chain Across Time
SPEAKER_00But I think uh a great way to maybe close and segue this is as a collector to you and to everybody here that hears this, you know, you are very important because what you are doing is preserving. Preserving something that's so special and so important that will be so appreciated by generations yet unborn. That's so vitally important. And every person in the future is saying thank you to you for preserving this because it's so easy for this stuff to just get lost and damaged. And you are the caretakers. We don't really own these, we kind of rent them, you know, you might say. And we kind of foster them, take care of them, look after them, and then hand them on to the next generation who does the same. And that's something really special because it allows a continuity because we can share history with our great great grandparents, and we can unknowingly share history with our great great grandchildren. We will all experience the same thing, we will all hear the same thing. And that's something truly remarkable, truly special, and it makes what we do all the more important.
SPEAKER_01We're a chain, we're a link in the chain of preservation.
SPEAKER_00Yep, we are, indeed. And that's that's something really special. And it's not just with recordings, think about it. All various parts of history. When you preserve history, when you save history, when you share history, you're giving new life to history. And giving that new life to history is so vitally important. That's why people write books and and and share and collect. And I hope to see this hobby continue, and I know it will. It will change in various degrees over the various years, but there will still be in the days when probably eventually when we're flying around in vehicles, there will be somebody sitting there with a Victor Six saying, listen to Caruso, listen to this, look at this Berliner. Wow, it's amazing. It was recorded 300 years ago, and that's that's gonna be the future, and it's gonna be a fascinating future.
SPEAKER_01It's funny you say that because I've been trying to arrange a not only a demonstration, maybe a lecture and uh a um and a display of some of the ancient uh I call them ancient ancient phonographs, as well as the recordings of like Caruso uh to these present-day opera goers. And I've been working on that and I'm waiting for it to come to pass. And I'll let you'll be one of the first people I tell, because I was lucky enough that the person I have to deal with has a original Edison ticker tape machine. So when I said the word Edison, they were like, Oh, I have a ticker tape machine. Wow.
SPEAKER_00So that's something you don't hear very often. Yeah. You know, something there's something else to mention about the recording, and there's something really interesting about it when you compare today with the way recording is done.
Recording Then Versus Recording Now
SPEAKER_00You know, we have 66 channels or whatever it may be. We have all kinds of mixers, this, that, and everything else. In the early days of recording, you had to have the talent, the ability, and basically the wherewithal to start in a song and go all the way to the end of a song and sing it perfectly. That's a lot harder to do than many realize. And I doubt, I doubt that a lot of people today who are performers would be very content with a situation like that, that they'd have to sing perfectly all the way through, because a lot of times it's a mix. They take about 40 recordings and they find the best parts and they they stick it together. Sometimes the greatest artist is the recording engineer, you know. But I think it's a very important fact, especially when you think of opera, and they try to compare the early opera singers to modern opera singers. They were working under a totally different set of rules. First off, the clock. You had so much time, which meant you had to speed up a lot. You had to leave out parts, and you could not blast, which meant if you were going to sing a high note, you didn't face the horn, you looked up, then you look back at the horn. When you sang soft, you moved forward. When you sang real loud, you moved back. It was it was Congo dance in many respects in front of that horn. I talked to Louise Homer's daughter once, and she told me that her mother used to joke about the first rigoletto quartet with Abbott, herself, Caruso, and Scotty, and they recorded it in 1907, and they each were taking their turns moving forward, backing up, bending down when the orchestra was playing. She said it was incredible. It was like a dance routine, because there's no way to monitor, to mix it, to to blend it. The blending all had to be done before the horn. And so we really have to take our hats off to these early artists, to these early recording engineers. And you cannot, I repeat, you cannot truly compare what they did with what is done today, because they were doing it under circumstances that were so incredibly trying. Amazing. I think that's a good place to leave it.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Sounds like a good place to go. I uh I hope you're gonna come back again, Jack.
SPEAKER_00I'll be happy to join you anytime you like. Program Starting Things Off. We'll break the champagne over the bow and we'll start things off.
SPEAKER_01So for those of you that listened to the entire uh episode, we appreciate it. Uh so thank you all for listening. Thank you, Jack, and we'll see you on the next episode. Take care. Thanks. Bye.
