Chemistry Chronicles

Edison’s Ears MARK S. LESNEY

“The ‘Chemist’ of Menlo Park” may have gone ly apt to focus on inventions based on conducting information and sound, from deaf as a result of his youthful experiments. the telegraph to the telephone to the . any budding chemists play with with his printing press and laboratory mate- As for the chemistry laboratory, it chemistry sets when they are rials. But not, according to several accounts, returned to the basement of the Edison Myoung. But Thomas Alva Edison before severely boxing young Edison’s ears. home. But it would be reborn in full did one better: He played with full-blown His travails on the railway helped grandeur some 15 years later, when Edison explosives in a jury-rigged laboratory in form part of the mythos of Edison. Not built the first major industrial research the back of a working railway baggage only were they featured in the famous 1940 laboratory at Menlo Park, NJ, in 1876, car. Some historians believe his eventual movie, Young Tom Edison using monies he had amassed as the inven- deafness was an indirect consequence of (starring ), tor of several major improvements on the this pronounced and precocious inter- telegraph. est in chemistry. But whatever the result to his hear- Lux and Pluck ing, these early chemical experiments Of course, Edison is most famous for helped launch Edison on a career of lighting up our lives. But rather than invention unparalleled in modern histo- being a problem in physics, according ry. Edison only published one scientif- to biographer Byron M. Vanderbilt, ic journal paper, and yet the discover- “There was more chemical know-how ies he and his co-workers made, many employed in the development of the of them in chemistry, were presented incandescent light than there was to the world in 1093 U.S. patents. knowledge of electricity and electrical engineering.” Boxed Ears? Critical to this endeavor was the From an early age, Al, as he was called development of the first carbon fibers, in his youth, was interested in chem- and the first demonstration that carbon istry. He purchased chemicals from could be heated to produce yellow light the local pharmacy when he was 10 and (above 2000 °C) without breaking down. experimented with building chemical Edison’s development of this illumi- A replica of Edison’s baggage-car print shop and batteries. Partly to support his chem- chemistry lab is displayed at the nating invention in 1879 at the Menlo istry hobby, Edison became a newsboy Depot Museum, part of the Port Huron (MI) Park laboratory led him to considerable on the Grand Trunk Railroad that ran Museum. (Inset: Edison at age 14.) fame and fortune—which he used to between Port Huron and Detroit. further his research ambitions, parlay- He was soon selling candy and sand- they contributed one of the many possi- ing fortune into lab equipment and fame wiches as well as papers to train passen- ble explanations for his deafness. (Edison into a lure for eager investors. gers. He obsessed over steam locomotives himself claimed it was the result of a Besides the remarkable array of inven- and telegraphs, and devoured books on conductor having helped him onto a moving tions that proceeded from Menlo Park, the chemistry from the Detroit Public Library. train by grabbing him up by his ears—also chemical laboratory had a few very basic He began his own newspaper on a print- portrayed in the movie). More medically things in common with today’s most ing press that he kept in a baggage car, plausible explanations point to the fact modern chemistry labs. In fact, in summa- and by age 14, he had a functional chem- that his deafness appeared to have been rizing the contents and condition of ical laboratory for his private experiments an outgrowth of hearing problems appar- some of Edison’s remaining notebooks, set up in the baggage car as well. ent in early childhood, possibly a result archivists commented that “most of the In the summer of 1862, when he was of a family history of mastoiditis. experiments are chemical in nature and a 15, a sudden shift of the baggage car as Whether the result of a chemistry exper- number of pages appear to have been the train was rolling along broke a bottle iment gone awry or from bad genetics, damaged by chemicals.” of yellow phosphorus sticks immersed in Edison claimed his deafness was no disabil- Using the monies amassed from the water—exposing them to air and starting ity. Instead, it let him concentrate more Menlo Park research, and the new confi- a fire. Luckily, the small fire was soon extin- easily because he was able to tune out dence of hungry investors, Edison estab- guished, but the enraged conductor threw the rest of the world. And several biogra- lished his more extensive industrial labo-

PHOTO COURTESY OF PORT HURON MUSEUM; INSET PHOTO COURTESY OF THE U.S. NATIONAL PARK SERVICE PARK OF THE U.S. NATIONAL COURTESY INSET PHOTO OF PORT HURON MUSEUM; COURTESY PHOTO Edison off at the nearest station, along phers believe that it made him particular- ratories at West Orange, NJ. At the time,

©2003 AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY MAY 2003 TODAY’S CHEMIST AT WORK 39 in the late 1880s, it was the largest private sophisticated instrumentation). His compa- laboratory in the United States. ny was also one of the first manufactur- The Quotable Edison At West Orange, Edison recapitulated ers of batteries relying on nickel–lead the chemical laboratory from Menlo Park chemistry. In an interesting irony of histo- “Opportunity is missed by most people in a much grander form. As described by ry, despite his being the great friend of because it comes dressed in overalls and Andre Millard: “The chemical laboratory Henry Ford, one of Edison’s greatest ambi- looks like work.” takes up the whole west wing of this [orig- tions was to develop a battery that would inal] plan, a measure of Edison’s love of enable the smokeless electric car to “I have not failed 700 times. I have not chemistry and its importance in the dominate the market over the obnoxious failed once. I have succeeded in prov- application of science to industry.” The gasoline varieties. ing that those 700 ways will not work. chemical laboratory would ultimately have Electrochemistry was also at the heart When I have eliminated the ways that its own site (known as Building 2). It includ- of the chemical telegraph’s printing process, will not work, I will find the way that ed a balance room and lines of shelves and Edison worked eagerly to improve it. will work.” containing bottles of chemicals. There were From the use of a flour-and-water base to so many chemicals that ultimately the front stabilize the chemical paper used in of Building 3 would hold the overflow. telegraphy instead of starch that cracked commercial success, in this and other organ- The companion laboratories were dedicat- and flaked, to the development of sophis- ic chemistry investigations, he managed ed to electricity and metallurgy. ticated new chemistries for the paper itself, to achieve several minor firsts. Edison received patent after patent in this Edison was also a pioneer in the produc- A Battery of Ideas area. In one example, he patented a process tion and molding of plastics, quickly recog- If one had to narrow down the field of for using ferricyanide of potassium (red nizing the benefits of Bakelite for commer- chemistry in which Edison was most active, prossiate of potash) rather than ferro- cial products such as the Edison Voicewriter electrochemistry would be the obvious cyanide (yellow prussiate) as the solution and the Ediphone. choice. Many of Edison’s youthful experi- for the chemical paper. ments and those he conducted through- And then, as if in competition with The Edison Effect out his career pertained to the develop- himself, he submitted another patent on Many historians of technology consider ment and use of batteries. chemical paper where “I make use of a that the “real” Edison Effect might not Better batteries were a necessary accom- tincture of logwood to moisten the paper. be the physics phenomenon that bears modation to invention in this era, because I find that with an iron pen a mark is made his name, but rather the transformation of most useful electricity, such as that used upon the paper when the current passes. science and invention into a modern, almost for the telegraph—Edison’s first love— There is no mark when the electric circuit uniquely American mode of entrepre- is broken. Logwood is particularly sensi- neurship and industrialization. His 1093 tive to color in the presence of iron, and U.S. patents represent not only his own A Sweet Idea the electric action develops the color”(U.S. personal genius, but the effectiveness of Patent 160,404). the cadre of workers he assembled in an During his studies on telegraphy paper Logwood was a well-known commer- industrial research laboratory—first creat- Edison discovered that paraffin-coat- cial dye of the time made from the Central ed at Menlo Park and later perfected at ed paper, although not ideal for use as American tree Haematoxylon campechi- Edison Laboratories in West Orange. It a perforated telegraph tape, was an anum. Its tincture, oddly enough, was was so forward-looking and transformative excellent wrapping for candies and other developed in 1839 for use as a therapeutic that many consider him to be the Henry foodstuffs—thus he is credited with for angina—a mark perhaps of Edison’s Ford of modern science, streamlining and inventing “waxed paper”. characteristic empirical method, so organizing applied scientific research into famously shown in his trial-and-error an almost assembly-line process, with efforts to develop the incandescent chemistry so often at its core. came from chemical batteries, not from light (worshipfully portrayed in the 1940 generators. In fact, it wasn’t until Edison’s sequel Edison the Man, starring Spencer Further Reading own labs improved the dynamo, and one Tracy), which had him try every avail- Israel, P. Edison: A Life of Invention; Wiley: New of his former workers, Nicholas Tesla, went able material or compound under the sun York, 1998. Vanderbilt, B. M. Thomas Edison, Chemist; Amer- on to create a system by which electrici- when he was looking for an answer to a ican Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1971. ty could be easily distributed from central vexing problem. Millard, A. Edison and the Business of Innova- sources, that our modern power grids for Later in his life, Edison’s chemical inter- tion; The Johns Hopkins University Press: Balti- manufacturing became available. Until then, ests extended to an attempt to isolate and more, 1990. batteries were at the heart of chemical improve rubber, including his patented The Thomas Edison Papers; http://edison.rutgers. telegraphy—itself the heart of the global process for chlorinating rubber. This edu. communications system. research was tied to wartime shortages, Edison improved the copper–zinc which led him to determine—in yet anoth- Mark S. Lesney is a senior associate editor galvanic battery and developed the first er wide-ranging empirical onslaught— of Today’s Chemist at Work. Send your commercial alkaline storage battery (a fore- the rubber content of a host of plant comments or questions about this article to runner of the kind that run our electric species, eventually fixating on goldenrod. [email protected] or to the Editorial Office toys and cameras, not to mention more Although his rubber work was never a address on page 3. ◆

40 TODAY’S CHEMIST AT WORK MAY 2003 www.tcawonline.org