Bibliography of Works on Thomas A. Edison

Full Bibliography of Works on Thomas A. Edison

Biographies

The standard biography is Paul Israel, Edison: A Life of Invention (New York: John Wiley, 1998). A good older biography is Matthew Josephson, Edison: A Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959; reprint New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1992). Two other biographies that focus on Edison's personality and family relations are Robert Conot, A Streak of Luck (New York: Seaview Press, 1979) and Neil Baldwin, Edison: Inventing the Century (New York: Hyperion, 1995). A short biography is Martin V. Melosi, Thomas A. Edison and the Modernization of America (Glenview, Ill.: Scott, Foresman/Little, Brown Higher Education, 1990). Byron Vanderbilt, Thomas Edison, Chemist (Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1971) looks at Edison's career from the standpoint of chemistry. Wyn Wachhorst, Thomas Alva Edison: An American Myth (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1981) is not a biography but does examine how his life was reflected in books and the popular press. The official biography is Frank L. Dyer and Thomas C. Martin, with William H. Meadowcroft, Edison: His Life and Inventions 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Bros., 1910; rev. ed. 1929). A good children's biography is Gene Adair, Thomas Alva Edison: Inventing the Electric Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). An excellent collection of documents with a brief biography of the inventor is Theresa M. Collins and Lisa Gitelman, Thomas Edison and Modern America: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Beford/St. Martin's, 2002).

Menlo Park Laboratory

William S. Pretzer, ed., Working at Inventing: Thomas Edison and the Menlo Park Experience (Dearborn, Mich.: Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, 1989; Baltimore: reprint edition, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002); Paul Israel, "Inventing Industrial Research: Thomas Edison and the Menlo Park Laboratory," Endeavor 26 (2002): 48-54; Portia Dadley, "The Garden of Edison: Invention and the American Imagination," in Francis Spufford and Jenny Uglow, eds., Cultural Babbage: Technology, Time and Invention (London: Faber & Faber, 1996): p.81–98; David A. Hounshell, "Edison and the Pure Science Ideal in 19th-Century America," Science 207 (1980): 612-17.

West Orange Laboratory

Andre J. Millard, Edison and the Business of Innovation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1990); W. Bernard Carlson, "Building Thomas Edison's Laboratory at West Orange, New Jersey: A Case Study in Using Craft Knowledge for Technological Invention, 1886–1888," History of Technology 13 (1991): 150-67.

Edison in Fort Myers

Tom Smoot, The Edison's of Fort Myers: Discoveries of the Heart (Sarasota, Fl.: Pineapple Press, 2004); Olav Thulesius, Edison in Florida: The Green Laboratory (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 1997); James D. Newton, Uncommon Friends: Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1987).

Poetry

Blaine McCormick, Innumerable Machines in my Mind: Found Poetry in the Papers of Thomas A. Edison (Westbrook, Maine: Moon Pie Press, 2005). Moon Pie Press

Edison Family

Paul Israel, "An Inventor's Wife, Mina Edison," Timeline 18 (May–June 2001): 2–19.

Telegraphy

Paul Israel, From Machine Shop to Industrial Laboratory: Telegraphy and the Changing Context of American Invention, 1830–1920 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).

Electric Pen

Jill E. Cooper, "Intermediaries and Invention: Business Agents and the Edison Electric Pen and Duplicating Press," Business and Economic History 25 (1996): 130–42.

Telephony

W. Bernard Carlson and Michael E. Gorman, "Thinking and Doing at Menlo Park: Edison's Development of the Telephone, 1876–1878" in Pretzer, Working at Inventing and "A Cognitive Framework to Understand Technological Creativity: Bell, Edison, and the Telephone" in Robert J. Weber, Inventive Minds: Creativity in Technology (New York and Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992).

Phonograph

Edward Jay Pershey, "Drawing as a Means to Inventing: Edison and the Invention of the Phonograph in Pretzer, Working at Inventing; Paul Israel, "The Unknown History of the Tinfoil Phonograph," NARAS Journal 8 (Winter–Spring 1997–98): 29–42; George Tselos and Douglas Tarr, "The Napoleon of Invention," NARAS Journal 8 (Winter–Spring 1997–98): 13–27; Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999); Leonard DeGraaf, "Thomas Edison and the Origins of the Entertainment Phonograph," NARAS Journal 8 (Winter–Spring 1997–98): 43–70; DeGraaf, "Confronting the Mass Market: Thomas Edison and the Entertainment Phonograph," Business and Economic History 24 (1995): 88–96; Emily Thompson, "Machines, Music, and the Quest for Fidelity: Marketing the Edison Phonograph in America, 1877–1925," Musical Quarterly 79 (Spring 1995): 131–71; Emily Thompson, "Is It Real or Is It a Machine?" American Heritage of Invention & Technology 12 (Winter 1997): 50–56; Marsha Siefert, "Aesthetics, Technology, and the Capitalization of Culture: How the Talking Machine Became a Musical Instrument," Science in Context 8 (Summer 1995): 417–49; John Harvith and Susan Edwards Harvith, eds. Edison, Musicians and the Phonograph: A Century in Retrospect (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987). An older history of the phonograph industry is Oliver Read and Walter L. Welch, From Tin Foil to Stereo: The Evolution of the Phonograph (Indianapolis: Howard Sams & Co., 1976).

Electric Light and Power

Robert Friedel and Paul Israel, with Bernard S. Finn, Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1986); Bazerman, Charles, The Languages of Edison's Light (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999); Thomas Parke Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880–1930 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); Hughes, "Edison's Method" in William B. Pickett, ed., Technology at the Turning Point (San Francisco: San Francisco Press, 1977): 5–22; Hughes, "The Electrification of America: The System Builders," Technology and Culture 20 (1979): 124–61; Walter G. Vincenti, "The Technical Shaping of Technology: Real-World Constraints and Technical Logic in Edison's Electrical Lighting System," Social Studies of Science 25 (Aug. 1995): 553–74; Robert Fox, "Thomas Edison's Parisian Campaign: Incandescent Lighting and the Hidden Face of Technology Transfer," Annals of Science 53 (1996): 157–93; Brian Bowers, "Edison and early electrical engineering in Britain," History of Technology 13 (1991): 168–80; Bowers, "Edison and Hopkinson: Transatlantic Relations in Electrical Engineering in the Early 1880s" in Monique Trédé, ed., Électricité et électrification dans le monde (Paris: Presses Univ. de France, 1992); Leonard Reich, "Edison, Coolidge, and Langmuir: Evolving Approaches to American Industrial Research," Journal of Economic History 47 (June 1987): 341–51. On the battle of the systems see Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Rage to Electrify the World (New York: Random House, 2003); Mark Essig, Edison & the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death (New York: Walker & Co., 2003); Richard Moran, Executioner's Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair (New York: Knopf, 2002);W. Bernard Carlson and A. J. Millard, "Defining Risk within a Business Context: Thomas A. Edison, Elihu Thomson, and the A.C.-D.C. Controversy, 1885–1900" in B. B. Johnson and V. T. Covello, eds., The Social and Cultural Construction of Risk (Boston: Reidel Publishing Co., 1987): 275–93; Paul A. David, "The Hero and the Herd in Technological History: Reflections on Thomas Edison and the Battle of the Systems," in Patrice Higgonet et al., eds., Technology, Growth, and Economic Development since the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1991): 72–119; David, "Heroes, Herds, and Hysteresis in Technological History: Thomas Edison and 'The Battle of the Systems' Reconsidered," Industrial and Corporate Change v. 1, no. 1, 1992, p. 129–80; Hughes, "Harold P. Brown and the Executioner's Current: An Incident in the AC-DC Controversy," Business History Review 32 (1958): 143–65; Andre Millard, "Thomas Edison, the Battle of the Systems and the Persistence of Direct Current," Material History Bulletin 36 (Fall 1992): 18–28; Terry Reynolds and Theodore Bernstein, "The Damnable Alternating Current," Proceedings of the IEEE 64 (1976): 1339–43; Terry Reynolds and Theodore Bernstein, "Edison and the 'Chair,'" IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 8 (1989): 19–28.

Motion Pictures

W. Bernard Carlson and Michael E. Gorman, "Understanding Invention as a Cognitive Process: The Case of Thomas Edison and Early Motion Pictures, 1888–91," Social Studies of Science 20 (1990): 387–430; W. Bernard Carlson, "Artifacts and Frames of Meaning: Thomas A. Edison, His Managers, and the Cultural Construction of Motion Pictures," in Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, eds., Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992): 175–98; Charles Musser, Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Musser, Thomas A. Edison and His Kinetographic Motion Pictures (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press for the Friends of Edison National Historic Site, 1995); Musser, Edison Motion Pictures, 1890–1900: An Annotated Filmography (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997); Beth Singer, "Early Home Cinema and the Edison Home Projecting Kinetoscope," Film History 2 (Winter 1988): 37–69. Also useful for detail, though rather polemical in its interpretation, is Gordon Hendricks, The Edison Motion Picture Myth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961).

Ore Milling

W. Bernard Carlson, "Edison in the Mountains: The Magnetic Ore Separation Venture, 1879–1900," History of Technology 8 (1983): 37–59; Michael Peterson, "Thomas Edison, Failure," American Heritage of Invention & Technology 6 (Winter 1991): 8–14.

Cement House

H. Ward Jandl, et al, Yesterday's Houses of Tomorrow: Innovative American Homes 1850–1950 (Washington D.C.: Preservation Press, 1991): chap. 4; Michael Peterson, "Thomas Edison's Concrete House," Invention and Technology 11 (Winter 1996): 50–56.

Storage Battery

Richard H. Schallenberg, Bottled Energy: Electrical Engineering and the Evolution of Chemical Energy Storage (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1982); W. Bernard Carlson, "Thomas Edison as a Manager of R&D: The Case of the Alkaline Storage Battery, 1895–1915," IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 7 (Dec. 1988): 4–12.

X-Rays

George D. Tselos, "New Jersey's Thomas Edison and the Fluoroscope," New Jersey Medicine 92 (Nov. 1995): 731–33.

Patents

Paul Israel and Robert Rosenberg, "Patent Office Records as a Historical Source: The Case of Thomas Edison," Technology and Culture 32 (1991): 1094–1101.

Edison Questionnaire

Paul M. Dennis, "The Edison Questionnaire," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 20 (1984): 23–37.