Thomas Edison

Letter from Thomas A. Edison to Henry Bentley, Menlo Park, April 9, 1878.

Edison promises that the next "baby" he gets will not be contracted so as to deprive Bentley of the use of it to "exhibit to those mild and genial quakers." He tells Bentley that he has gotten the carbon telephone 10% louder and the prospect is "indefinite."

Letter from Thomas A. Edison to Henry Bentley, May 5, 1878.

Edison assures Bentley that he will get the phones, and discusses the possibility of a phone at the Exhibition. He asks Bentley not to do anything regarding the embossing machines; Mr. Orton wasn't aware that they'd never been tested, and Edison states that he will take the matter up when time permits. Beneath the arc over the characters at the top of the letter, Edison squeezes in a small note saying that he cannot respond to all of his mail as he gets 80 letters a day. Edison began his scientific career with chemical experiments as a boy, going to work as a telegraph operator in the Midwest, and then opening an "invention factory" in Menlo Park at which he invented the carbon telephone transmitter (1876), the phonograph (1877), and the improvements necessary for the widespread implementation of the incandescent lamp (1879). He relocated in 1887 to West Orange and founded a company that later came to be known as General Electric.