World Citizen

Thomas Alva Edison approached Death's door last week at Llewellyn Park, West Orange, N. J. as another great citizen of that State, Dwight Whitney Morrow, passed suddenly through. All summer he had been failing. At 84 he suffered from diabetes, Bright's disease, uremic poisoning and stomach ulcers. As those ailments of age dragged him down, he repeatedly spurted away from them, repeatedly got back at his work. Last week he became mentally drowsy, sank rapidly. On Monday, his physician could not promise his six children and Mrs. Edison more than two days before a crisis. The Pope twice cabled from Rome to inquire the patient's condition, not because Mr. Edison was a Roman Catholic (his son-in-law John Eyre Sloane is one) but because all men had long honored him as a world citizen.

Edison's heritage was that of Protestant Western Reserve. He professed no religion, avowed himself a Free Thinker. A sardonic writer once pictured Edison at the Gates of Heaven. Said the Scientist to St. Peter: "I gave the world . . . good light, cheap light. Is it my fault they used it to ... make a cheap bazaar out of every street? ... I gave them the phonograph, so that every man, woman and child might know the glory of great music. . . . Yet today I am afraid there is less music in the heart and mind of the common man. ... I gave them the motion picture . . . and millions of minds were . . . trivialized and anesthetized by that endless nicker of ... venality. . . ."

But Thomas Alva Edison would never have uttered those words. He did not stand off and criticize the men of his era. He exemplified to the highest degree such U. S. qualities as the following:

Practicality. When as a boy he hawked newspapers and fruit and played with chemicals on a Michigan train, he spilled some burning phosphorus. An irate conductor gave the amateur chemist such a box on both ears that his deafness is partially ascribed to it. Thus he developed an interest in aural matters which eventually led to the telephone, dictograph, phonograph, talking cinema. Hence a slight interest in music: "I think the best music is that which has a tempo which corresponds to half of our heart-beat." For other cultural or even gustatory enjoyments he had no interest because no time. In his later years he lived principally on fruit, tapioca and milk. He once spoke of ". . . philosophy and the rest of that ninny stuff."

When a Congressional committee turned down his vote-recorder because Congressmen preferred the roll-call, he vowed: "I will never invent anything that isn't wanted again." Thus when he came accidentally across wireless waves, he took out a patent but, seeing no use at the time for this "etheric force," forgot it until he sold his right to Marconi in 1903. A need was his cue to start working; as when his friend. Rubberman Harvey Firestone sent to Liberia for materials. Forthwith Edison started his last experiments: U. S. rubber production from golden rod.

Perseverance. To get a light-filament he carbonized thousands of materials-- shreds from a fan, red hair from an assistant's beard. Thousands of invention ideas he tried, worked on, cast aside. He said that when an experiment seemed impossible of solution, that was the time to show interest, not discouragement. His was a standard phrase of the era: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."

Naivete, First words the first phonograph spoke were:

Mary had a little lamb. Even in old age, his mind seemed as fresh, eager and naive as that of the 12-year-old lad who had started hustling. He chortled before telling a joke. With innocent seriousness he would enter a public discussion with such pronouncements as "Prohibition is eternally correct." His love of asking questions was fully expressed in the terms of his scholarship examinations to choose youngsters to carry on his work (TIME, Aug. 12, 1929; Aug. 11, 1930).

Parks, Florida. When he sold his stock-ticker for $40,000 in 1870, he set up a laboratory in Newark. Later, he moved to Menlo Park, N. J. and still later to Llewellyn Park. He also established a winter laboratory at Fort Myers, Fla. In these places he worked on:

Carbon telephone transmitter.

Multiplex telegraphy.

The mimeograph.

Basic principles of radio.

The phonograph.

The dictograph.

Incandescent electric light.

Cinema and talking cinema.

In the production and use of these articles, world investments total more than $15,000,000,000. They have changed the course of this civilization. The places where they were created are thus historic buildings and Motorman Henry Ford has transported the inventor's oldtime laboratory whole, set it up at Dearborn, Mich. for his Edisonia Museum. Even Mr. Edison's footprints are preserved in the cement approach. In Llewellyn Park, N. J. Edison's busiest factories are. There during Wrartime he helped the U. S. develop sound submarine-detectors and chemicals for which the nation had been dependent on Germany.

Jubilee. That the sardonic writer may have been just, though badly characterizing, was suggested during the Golden Jubilee of the electric light bulb two years ago. The common man in many a land shut off his electric light and sat quietly in darkness for three minutes to honor Thomas Alva Edison, and doubtless had many a thought for which there had not been time before. When the world's lights, cinemas and roar commenced again, common men displayed their bad taste by effusions which culminated in George Michael Cohan's song which said:

"What a man he is,

What a grand old 'wiz'!"

Mr. Edison loved it all. He said: "I was simply overcome. ... I moved as if in a dream."

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