Full Bibliography of Works on Thomas A. Edison
Click here for a bibliography of published works by and about Edison, 1862–1898.
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). Randall Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World (New York: Crown Publishers, 2007) examines Edison's role as both inventor and cultural icon. 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). Thomas E. Jeffrey, From Phonographs to U-Boats: Edison and His "Insomnia Squad" in Peace and War, 1911–
1919 (Bethesda, Md.: LexisNexis, 2008) examines a period in Edison's career largely neglected by biographers and historians. Two recently published collections of historic photographs are Leonard DeGraaf, Historic Photos of Thomas Edison (Nashville: Turner Publishing Co., 2008) and Edward Wirth, Thomas Edison in West Orange (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2008).
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): 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
Michele Wehrwein Albion, The Florida Life of Thomas Edison (Gainesville: Univ. Press of Florida, 2008); 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; Carlson and Gorman, "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 and 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 (1992): 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.
