[D8751AAE], Letter from George Edward Gouraud to Thomas Alva Edison, November 19th, 1887
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Title
[D8751AAE], Letter from George Edward Gouraud to Thomas Alva Edison, November 19th, 1887
Editor's Notes
"I have your letter about Phono. patents, which is very satisfactory. I am trying to see what we can do about reinstating the borad claim in this country; but here, I fear, we must depend upon your new patents. Please, on receipt of this, dictate to your stenographer a few lines giving me the latest news in connection with your progress. I have heard nothing since I left, except that the factory is proceeding satisfactorily, and that you hope to have the first machine over here before Christmas. It would be a grand idea if you could send me your Christmas or New Year's greeting in the first Phonogram. I hope you have seen your way to a double-discourse cylinder, so as to at one talk make duplicate records. No doubt you will be able to do this, and the importance of it is incalcuable, as really the only possible objection to the machine for commercial purposes as it stands is that the temptation to use it would, be so great because of the ease and economy of time, that phonograms would frequently be sent without keeping copies Could not there be a second cylindar parallel to the first with a bifurcated tube connecting with a single tube to the mouth? I throw out this suggestion as you asked me to make any suggestions that occurred to me. ## The report of the Evening Post interview is being widely circulated in this country, and narly everybody I meet asks me if it is true. ## I hope you are as far advanced in your preparations toward making the phonograms by the machinery you explained to me as you are in making the phonographs, also the phonogram cases or envelopes. I know you attach more importance to the value of the machine for office work, dictation, &c. but I think the larger field is by the post, and a safe envelope is of especial importance; but even if you are right and I am wrong, the value of such correspondence as may be carried on socially across the seas will, as an advertisement, be incalcuable, -- far more impressive upon the imagination than mere ability to dictate a letter to the machine and have it written off by someone in the same room."
Author
Recipient
Date
1887-11-19
Type
Folder/Volume ID
D8751-F
Microfilm ID
120:282
Document ID
D8751AAE
Publisher
Thomas A. Edison Papers, School of Arts and Sciences, Rutgers University