The Thomas A. Edison Papers Digital Edition

This scrapbook covers the period of the 1860s and 1870s and contains a mixture of newspaper clippings, circulars, illustrations, mementos, and experimental tapes and discs for the automatic telegraph. Most of the earlier material consists of clippings relating to American politics in the 1860s. There are several clippings of anecdotes and verse, many of a humorous or sentimental nature. One newspaper clipping reports a theft from the firm of Edison and Murray; another describes Edison's experimentation with etheric force. Among the mementos is an invitation from Mrs. Thomas A. Edison to a masquerade party scheduled for Edison's twenty-eighth birthday. Other materials relate to automatic, printing, and multiple telegraphy and the electric pen. Included are photographs of the electric pen and a recording telegraph, along with electric pen samples and advertisements for Edison's inductorium (an electromedical device for administering electric shocks). Thirteen pages of this scrapbook are printed with electrotypes of technical illustrations. Approximately 50 pages of this unnumbered book have been used.