The Phonograph - 3

The Phonograph - 3

"For a long time some people thought there was trickery. One morning at Menlo Park a
gentleman came to the laboratory and asked to see the phonograph. It was Bishop
Vincent, who helped Lewis Miller found the Chautauqua I exhibited it, and then he asked
if he could speak a few words. I put on a fresh foil and told him to go ahead. He
commenced to recite Biblical names with immense rapidity. On reproducing it he said: `I
am satisfied, now. There isn't a man in the United States who could recite those names
with the same rapidity.' "
The phonograph was now fairly launched as a world sensation, and a reference to the
newspapers of 1878 will show the extent to which it and Edison were themes of universal
discussion. Some of the press notices of the period were most amazing--and amusing. As
though the real achievements of this young man, barely thirty, were not tangible and solid
enough to justify admiration of his genius, the "yellow journalists" of the period began
busily to create an "Edison myth," with gross absurdities of assertion and attribution from
which the modest subject of it all has not yet ceased to suffer with unthinking people. A
brilliantly vicious example of this method of treatment is to be found in the Paris Figaro
of that year, which under the appropriate title of "This Astounding Eddison" lay bare
before the French public the most startling revelations as to the inventor's life and
character. "It should be understood," said this journal, "that Mr. Eddison does not belong
to himself. He is the property of the telegraph company which lodges him in New York at
a superb hotel; keeps him on a luxurious footing, and pays him a formidable salary so as
to be the one to know of and profit by his discoveries. The company has, in the dwelling
of Eddison, men in its employ who do not quit him for a moment, at the table, on the
street, in the laboratory. So that this wretched man, watched more closely than ever was
any malefactor, cannot even give a moment's thought to his own private affairs without
one of his guards asking him what he is thinking about." This foolish "blague" was
accompanied by a description of Edison's new "aerophone," a steam machine which
carried the voice a distance of one and a half miles. "You speak to a jet of vapor. A friend
previously advised can answer you by the same method." Nor were American journals
backward in this wild exaggeration.
The furor had its effect in stimulating a desire everywhere on the part of everybody to see
and hear the phonograph. A small commercial organization was formed to build and
exploit the apparatus, and the shops at Menlo Park laboratory were assisted by the little
Bergmann shop in New York. Offices were taken for the new enterprise at 203
Broadway, where the Mail and Express building now stands, and where, in a general
way, under the auspices of a talented dwarf, C. A. Cheever, the embryonic phonograph
and the crude telephone shared rooms and expenses. Gardiner G. Hubbard, father-in-law
of Alex. Graham Bell, was one of the stockholders in the Phonograph Company, which
paid Edison $10,000 cash and a 20 per cent. royalty. This curious part- nership was
maintained for some time, even when the Bell Telephone offices were removed to Reade
Street, New York, whither the phonograph went also; and was perhaps explained by the
fact that just then the ability of the phonograph as a money-maker was much more easily
demonstrated than was that of the telephone, still in its short range magneto stage and
awaiting development with the aid of the carbon transmitter.
The earning capacity of the phonograph then, as largely now, lay in its exhibition
qualities. The royalties from Boston, ever intellectually awake and ready for something
new, ran as high as $1800 a week. In New York there was a ceaseless demand for it, and
with the aid of Hilbourne L. Roosevelt, a famous organ builder, and uncle of ex-President
Roosevelt, concerts were given at which the phonograph was "featured." To manage this
novel show business the services of James Redpath were called into requisition with great
success. Redpath, famous as a friend and biographer of John Brown, as a Civil War
correspondent, and as founder of the celebrated Redpath Lyceum Bureau in Boston,
divided the country into territories, each section being leased for exhibition purposes on a
basis of a percentage of the "gate money." To 203 Broadway from all over the Union
flocked a swarm of showmen, cranks, and particularly of old operators, who, the seedier
they were in appearance, the more insistent they were that "Tom" should give them, for
the sake of "Auld lang syne," this chance to make a fortune for him and for themselves.
At the top of the building was a floor on which these novices were graduated in the use
and care of the machine, and then, with an equipment of tinfoil and other supplies, they
were sent out on the road. It was a diverting experience while it lasted. The excitement
over the phonograph was maintained for many months, until a large proportion of the
inhabitants of the country had seen it; and then the show receipts declined and dwindled
away. Many of the old operators, taken on out of good-nature, were poor exhibitors and
worse accountants, and at last they and the machines with which they had been intrusted
faded from sight. But in the mean time Edison had learned many lessons as to this
practical side of development that were not forgotten when the renascence of the
phonograph began a few years later, leading up to the present enormous and steady
demand for both machines and records.