The Thomas A. Edison Papers Digital Edition

This folder contains correspondence and other items that do not relate directly to any of the 57 numbered research projects in the collection. The documents cover the years 1917-1918. The correspondents include William H. Meadowcroft, Edison's personal assistant; Charles B. Hanford, a retired Shakespearean actor who served as Edison's assistant during his stay in Key West, Florida; and New Zealand-born physicist Sir Ernest Rutherford. The letters from Hanford to Meadowcroft discuss the experiments conducted by Edison and his assistants at Key West, as well as numerous personality conflicts involving naval officers and civilian experimenters. Included is a lengthy discussion of the enmity between Lt. J. N. Patton, the former commander of the USS Sachem and its new commander, Lt. Warren S. Harris, together with a complaint that Patton and his second officer Brown "both hated Mrs. Edison and tried to take their spite out on me." There is also mention of the deaths of Meadowcroft's mother and wife, who both passed away in March 1918. The letter to Rutherford encloses brief descriptions [not found] of Edison's work on an underwater projectile, range finder, and night glass.

In addition to the correspondence, there are two reports by Absalom M. Kennedy of sound detection experiments conducted aboard ship, probably near Sandy Hook, New Jersey. These reports are related to the research recorded in Kennedy's notebooks, Navy and Wartime Research Experiments, Notebook Series and in Underwater Sound Detection Reports (1917), Naval Consulting Board and Wartime Research Papers. Also included is a telegram from Meadowcroft to Edison regarding tests of a "bomb formula" and a "gas formula" by chemist Ludwig F. Ott. These tests may be related to the oleum research discussed in Report 41.