The Thomas A. Edison Papers Digital Edition

These letters to and from Nathaniel Lord Britton, director of the New York Botanical Garden, cover the years 1916 and 1927. The correspondence from 1916 relates to the efforts of the Motion Picture Division of Thomas A. Edison, Inc., to secure the cooperation of educational and scientific institutions in producing films suitable for children. After division manager Leonard W. McChesney was rebuffed by the Botanical Garden, Edison intervened personally in an unsuccessful attempt to change the position of the Board of Governors, which could not see the value in motion pictures of plants. To make his point, Edison offered a drawing of a pitcher plant capturing an insect. The letter from 1927 pertains to a proposed plant-gathering expedition in the Southwest, to be undertaken by Joseph Nelson Rose of the Smithsonian Institution.