Webnotes 2-1 to 2-4

Webnote 2-1   |   Webnote 2-2   |   Webnote 2-3

Webnote 2-4

Webnote 2-1

Sources of information about Edison and the Menlo Park lab:

• Baldwin, Neal, Edison: Inventing The Century, (New York: Hyperion, 1995).
• Friedel, Robert, and Paul Israel, with Bernard S. Finn, Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1986).
• Israel, Paul, Edison : A Life of Invention, (New York : John Wiley, c1998).
• Jeffrey, Thomas E. et. al. (eds.), Thomas A Edison Papers: A Selective Microfilm Edition Part 1 (1850-1878) and Part 2 (1879-1886) (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1985-)
• Jehl, Francis, Menlo Park Reminiscences, three volumes, (Dearborn, MI: Edison Institute, 1936, 1938, 1941).
• Jenkins, Reese V., et. al., The Papers of Thomas A. Edison, volume 3, Menlo Park: The Early Years, April 1876 - December 1877, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
• Millard, Andre, Edison and the Business of Invention, (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990).
• Pretzer, William S. (ed.), Working at inventing: Thomas A. Edison and the Menlo Park Experience (Dearborn, MI: Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, 1989
• Reich, Leonard S., The Making of American Industrial Research: Science and Business at GE and Bell, 1876 - 1926, (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1985).
• Rosenberg, Robert A., et. al. (eds.), The Papers of Thomas A. Edison, volume 4, The Wizard of Menlo Park: 1878, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

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Webnote 2-2

Portions of Edison's notebooks can be found in both the microfilm and book editions of The Papers of Thomas A. Edison.  See more complete citation in webnote 2-1 above.

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Webnote 2-3

The drawing of an air bubble in the platinum filament, which Edison observed under a microscope, is significant because it led him to believe that he could increase the strength of the wire if he could remove the bubbles.  This, he reasoned, could be done if he kept the filament in an evacuated bulb.  He then developed a very efficient vacuum pump, which later became critical for his experiments with carbon.

Sources of information about Edison's electric lamp invention:

• Bright, Arthur A. Jr., The Electric-Lamp Industry: Technological Change and Economic Development from 1800 to 1947, (New York: MacMillan Co., 1949).
• Friedel, Robert, and Paul Israel, with Bernard S. Finn, Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention, (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1986).
• Jehl, Francis, Menlo Park Reminiscences, three volumes, (Dearborn, MI: Edison Institute, 1936, 1938, 1941).
• Howell, John W., and Henry Schroeder, History of the Incandescent Lamp, (The Maqua Co., 1927).
• Rosenberg, Robert A., et. al., The Papers of Thomas A. Edison, volume 4, The Wizard of Menlo Park: 1878, (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).
• Schroeder, Henry, History of Electric Light, (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1923).
• "The Story of the Evolution of the Edison Incandescent Lamp, I," and "The Columbia Incandescent Lamp Company Case," in Electrical World, 22 April 1893, V.21, #16, p.291.
• "The Story of the Evolution of the Edison Incandescent Lamp, II," in Electrical World, 29 April 1893, V.21, #17, p.315.
• "The Oconto Incandescent Lamp Case," in Electrical World, 15 July 1893, V.22, #3, p.45.

• United States Patent #223,898 to Thomas A. Edison, 1879.

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Webnote 2-4