Industrial Research 



31 



in Edison's laboratory for a period during the World 

 War, has said that although the method of continual 

 search and trial underlay much of Edison's work, how- 

 ever, it is a mistake to thmk that all Edison's work was 

 carried on by this search and trial method. Back of 

 everything which he did or ti'ied there was always an 

 idea. The startmg point was always the need of 

 accomplisliing some purpose, the second stage seemed 

 to be the suggestion of various ways of accomplishing 

 that purpose, and the final stage consisted in trying 

 out these suggested solutions in as thorough and sys- 

 tematic a manner as possible in order to find the best.'- 

 Such a procedure can be found in any industrial re- 

 search laboratory today. 



Previous to the move to Menlo Park most of Edison's 

 inventions were made in the field of telegraphy, but 

 the 5 years of feverish activity after the move were to 

 produce the phonograph, the carbon telephone, the 

 chalk telephone, and the incandescent light. 



A description of the steps involved in each of the 

 hundreds of experiments dm-ing the long search for a 

 suitable incandescent lamp may give some idea of the 

 care and patience demanded of Edison and his helpers : 



First the raw mateiial for the filament had to be chosen. . . . 

 The second step was the preparation of the raw filament. This 

 work Edison always did himself. Third, each filament had to 

 be carbonized, a process he attended to personally on the experi- 

 mental lamps. . . . Fourth, Kruesi supplied the copper wires, 

 on the end of which short pieces of platinum had been twisted. 

 Fifth, Boehm blew the glass stem, inserting in it the copper- 

 platinum wires. Sixth, after being carbonized the filament was 

 placed on the glass stem of the bulb. This delicate task (which 

 sometimes took two or three days) was always performed by 

 "Batch" in Edison's presence. Seventh, Boehm inclosed the 

 stem with its filament within the fragile shell cf a glass bulb. 

 Eighth, I placed the bulb on the vacuum pump and began 

 evacuating the air. . . . Ninth, after the vacuum was obtained, it 

 was always Edison who drove out the occluded gases and 

 manipulated the lamp. . . . Tenth, when the lamp was finished, 

 it was given a life test. . . . (Lastly) after the lamp, good or 

 bad, had finished its test he breaks it open and takes it to 

 the microscope to study the filaments, seeking the reason for 

 the failure of the slender black thread-like substance." 



Such labors occupied the days and nights until New 

 Year's eve, 1879, when the public witnessed the demon- 

 stration of a new system of electric illumination. 

 While scientists were accusing him of "the most airy 

 ignorance of the fundamental principles of both elec- 

 tricity and dynamics" and demonstrating the impos- 

 sibilities of any general system of illumination based 

 upon the incandescent lamp, Edison solved the prob- 

 lem by painstaking research. Before many indus- 

 tries had even given thought to research, Edison was 

 keeping 75 men busy conducting experiments, designing 

 and building new electrical apparatus for them, and 



« Compton, K. T. Edison's laboratory in war time. Scima, 75, 71 (Januar>- 15 

 1932). 

 " Menlo Park reminiscences, pp. 344-346. See footnote 49. 



devising methods of measurements so that ho could 

 make the use of electricity practical. Sir James Jeans 

 in his presidential address before the British Association 

 for the Advancement of Science tried to give some idea 

 of what such efforts meant to industry when he said, 

 "Let us also remember that the economic value of the 

 work of one scientist alone, Edison, has been estimated 

 at thi'ce thousand million pounds." '* 



By 1881 Edison was living in New York because of 

 his new business interests. Activities at Menlo Park 

 soon ceased as one by one the men in the laboratory 

 left to assume new responsibilities in the rapidly grow- 

 ing electrical industry. A new laboratory was estab- 

 lished at Gocrck Street and a dozen men, "mostly 

 college graduates worlcing for glory and not pay," were 

 kept busy there testing and improving Edison's new 

 dynamos. 



While at Menlo Park Edison had devoted himself to 

 his experiments and had given little thought to the 

 problems of manufacturing the products which his ex- 

 periments had made practical. In 1886, however, he 

 built a much larger laboratory at Llewellyn Park and 

 determined to develop there a "large industry to which 

 a thoroughly practical laboratory would be a central 

 feature, and ever a som-ce of suggestion and inspira- 

 tion." " 



Another intensely active period in Edison's life fol- 

 lowed the opening of the new laboratory. He gave his 

 attention particularly to the development of his phono- 

 graph, motion picture camera, storage battery, and dic- 

 tating machine, while a rapidly expanding manufactur- 

 ing plant turned out the products perfected in the lab- 

 oratory. In 1917 he left his interests in the hands of 

 others and served the government for 2 years on prob- 

 lems created by the war. But in 1919 he was again 

 back in his laboratory where in 1929, 2 years before his 

 death, he was still workmg 16 to 18 hours a day. 



The laboratory at West Orange now has a staff of 107 

 persons and continues to serve as the center of research 

 and development for the various interests of Thomas A. 

 Edison, Inc. 



Acheson and Carborundum 



In the fall of 1880, a young man, jobless but with a 

 keen interest in electricitj^, arrived at Edison's labora- 

 tory at Menlo Park. A white lie got him on the pay 

 roll. After a short time in the drafting room, E. G. 

 Acheson was placed in the original experimental depart- 

 ment at $7.50 a week. Soon he was in the lamp fac- 

 tory learning all the details in preparation for arrang- 

 ing the exhibit of Edison's electrical inventions at the 

 International Exposition in Paris. After the Exposi- 



M Jeans, Sir James. Presidential address. British Association tor tlic .Advance- 

 ment of Science, Report, 1934, p. 18. 

 " Edison: his life and inventions, vol. 2, p. 369. See footnote 50. 



