The Thomas A. Edison Papers Digital Edition

This collection contains notebooks, reminiscences, and other documents by engineer and businessman Charles Sumner Tainter (1854-1940). Along with Chichester Bell, cousin of Alexander Graham Bell, Tainter invented an improved phonograph in 1886 and organized the American Graphophone Co. a year later to promote his invention. The one selected item is an article entitled "The Graphophone," which originally appeared in the July 14, 1888 issue of Electrical World. The article was written in response to a paper by Edison associate Ezra T. Gillland, read before the New York Electric Club and published in the May 19, 1888 issue of Electrical World. An inscription on the first page of Tainter's article indicates it was to be inserted at page 88 of his 105-page typed memoir entitled "The Talking Machine and Some Little Known Facts in Connection with Its Early Development."

A finding aid to the archival collection can be found at the Smithsonian Institution Archives Center website.