By the end of 1875 Thomas Alva Edison had to buy land in the rural belt of Menlo Park, New Jersey. The landlord of Bank Street house, Newark where he had his lab had filed a suit against Edison. In Menlo Park the construction work was overseen by Samuel Edison, the father of Thomas Alva Edison and he had provided financial help too. In his Newark lab Edison had done some good work in upgrading telegraph equipment that were greatly appreciated professionally and commercially. But economy was not sound. To cut down on heavy house rent Edison had opted for his own Menlo Park laboratory. In his own lab Edison was destined to make great discoveries and inventions. In 1873 Edison had gone to England to tour that country and there he learnt a very valuable person regarding experimental labs and workshops.
He observed that the manufacturers of scientifc instruments in Europe were very practical and sensitive about solving problems efficiently and economically. It became evident to him when the undersea cables developed snags in transmitting fast signal pulses and automatic telegraphy recording became problematic. The answer was in proper research in electric and chemistry in tendem. Having learnt the lesson Edison set up a lab in his machine shop that dealt with all systems of electric implements with ample stocks of chemicals available for needed experiments.
In the Menlo Park building an extensive laboratory was set up on the top floor. On the first floor Edison set up a fine workshop with the best machine tools. In this initial setup Edison had a line up of expert machinists and experimenters who also shifted to Menlo Park works to work for him. They included Charles Bachelor, John Crusoe Fred Autt, Charlesworth, James Adams etc. who were big names in their own specific fields. This big team worked alongside Thomas Edison, now a 39 year old adult who had one hundred U.S. patented inventions in his name. Edison was not satisfied with that. He had set an ambitious target of one ordinary inventions every ten days and a big invention in every six months.
In the first year of Menlo Park a target was set to develop multi-dimensional telegraphy for Western Union. Edison met Western Union president Mr. Orton and requested for one hundred Dollar weekly stipend for the upkeep of his machine shop. The meeting took place in January 1877. In March 1877 a written contract was signed and Thomas Edison transferred all the rights of his telegraphy works to the company in return for the weekly $100 stipend for the machine shop. Meanwhile, the Western Union asked Edison and his researchers to concentrate on the development of talking telegraph which actually meant the device which later came to be known as telephone. The telephone had been invented by Graham Bell in June 1877 Although Bell invented device was carrying the sound across clearly yet due to the electric disturbances of noisy city were not allowing the telephonic signals go much further. The sound also got distorted or mixed up with other sounds. To get the clear sound Edison decided try his own idea. He remarked, “Mister Bell! You may have developed the principle of this device before me, the proposition of which was easy. In this situation I shall have to work with correct principle with a difficult proposition.’
It appears that the research on the multi-dimensional telegraphy had been abandoned or suspended to concentrate on telephone research as Edison’s pilot project. In the autumn on 1878 Edison developed a transmitter device which was like a small carbon button. It was a very ingenious invention that would be used extensively and prove the talent of Thomas Edison as genuine. And it compensated his earlier failure. Years back in 1873 when Edison was working on the cable telegraphy he had developed a high capacity ‘Resistance Rheostat’ made of carbon filled in a glass tube. But in the cable experiments that rheostate did not prove very useful. But in the case of the telephone that sensitiveness was needed. Although it took Edison a full year to develop it further for the telegraphic use yet his hard work paid and he came up with a practical device.
Alongside his telephonic research work Edison invented a phonograph which made him famous world over. In the beginning telephone was basically a device telegraph companies used internally to get the messages to their operators for onward telegraphic transmission. Its biggest drawback was that it did not keep any recorded proof of the message delivered. The conversation took place too fast to be written down. To remove this shortcoming Edison visualised a device that could receive the messages and record them to be replayed for later write down. The idea was discussed by Edison and his associates. Suddenly they realised that in the process unwittingly they had thought of recording sound instead of telephone messages. Thus, while working on telephone Edison visualised phonograph and worked on it for the next five months. In early December of 1877 Thomas Edison gave demonstration of his ‘Talking Machine’ (phonograph) in the office of Scientific American, New York city.
Edison and his supporters set up a new form and tried to gain commercial benefits from the magic device but little rewards came their way as it was yet in early prototype stage. Ten years later Edison again tried to push his phonograph and succeeded in establishing it in sound recording industry. Phonograph made Thomas Alva Edison a famous scientific name all over the world. The people started calling him ‘The Magician of Menlo Park’. During his telegraphy days Edison had developed a very friendly relationship with press media and it continued to be cordial. The press always lauded his achievements, projected his positive image and that also proved helpful in creating an extraordinary personality in him.
