Thomas Edison – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

Our country is a better place because of Horace Greeley

A rare 1872 presidential campaign banner for Horace Greeley and Benjamin Gratz Brown sold for $38,750 at a November 2018 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In his autobiography, Horace Greeley made a critical observation when he wrote: “Having loved and devoured newspapers, I early resolved to be a printer if I could.” Not only was he able to fulfill his resolution, but a strong case exists that he was probably the preeminent printer/editor of the 18th century, easily surpassing Ben Franklin, James Gordon Bennett and the other prominent American editors.

Newspapers had started as a modest sideline for printers before they evolved into a potent force leading the inexorable push in support of American independence. It is telling that the founders, who debated for months over the construction of the Constitution and made many compromises in the process, easily agreed on the value of a free and independent press. The very first Amendment to this sacred document guaranteed freedom of the press and it is still the first one to be defended yet today without any controversy. In addition, the Postal Service Act of 1792 established generous subsidies to ensure widespread circulation (under the law, a newspaper was delivered to subscribers for only 1 penny up to 100 miles away).

As a child, Greeley (1811-1872) demonstrated a remarkable affinity for the printed word. He learned to read by age 3, and polished off the entire Bible two years later before starting on John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress – a Christian allegory (1678) cited as the first novel written in English. This purportedly was followed by the Arabian Nights.

He had an encyclopedic memory crammed with dates, facts and significant events. Children with these mental abilities typically had little time for physical ability and Greeley was no exception. He was of little use in planting crops, tending animals or simply cavorting with other children. However, he was so obviously intelligent that a wealthy neighbor offered to send him to the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy and then on to college. The Greeley family refused to accept any form of charity and Horace became even more determined to be successful.

In 1826, he accepted a position as a printer’s apprentice and in his spare time he read his way through the town’s public library. By 1831, he had migrated to New York City, trying his hand at various jobs involving printing, but with only modest success. Within three years, he was able to publish the first issue of The New-Yorker, an inexpensive literary magazine that failed during the Panic of 1837.

Undaunted, in 1840 he borrowed $1,000 and with the remnants of The New-Yorker started the now famous New-York Tribune. His timing was perfect and the Tribune was a success nearly from the first issue. Greeley had developed a revolutionary credo that was quickly adopted by the masses … the simple premise that newspapers should be printed to both entertain and inform the entire community. His competition had adopted a style that was limited to narrow petty issues, private interests and too many advertisements for shady schemes.

Greeley’s success as a publisher was primarily due to his bold thinking, daring imagination and total rejection of the stifling precedent that was so common. He literally invented the modern-style newspaper, much as Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. Those countless hours of reading had given him a discriminating taste and an eye for superior printing that hadn’t existed.

For three decades in the middle of the 19th century (1840-70), his pen produced a virtual torrent of essays, articles and books that earned him a reputation as a highly respected printer/editor in the newspaper vortex of New York. Inevitably, politics became his area of expertise, altering the form and content in new and exciting ways. Many believe he personally created modern journalism, proclaiming, “He chases rascals, not dollars.”

He was described as having a weird appearance … tall and angular with a head, torso and limbs that didn’t match. This was a perfect match for the range of topics he eagerly promoted: socialism (hiring Karl Marx to extoll the virtues), vegetarianism, agrarianism, feminism (he supported black suffrage but not for women), temperance and anti-trust (60 years before Teddy Roosevelt). He was anti-slavery but not for abolition, and was willing to let slave states secede at will (they will come back … no need for war).

This whole story came to an end in 1872 when he felt compelled to challenge President Ulysses S. Grant. Despite being one of the founders of the Republican Party, he had exposed a devastating list of crimes, corruption and incompetence that Grant had to be held accountable for. In a twist, the Democrats – who didn’t have their own candidate – nominated Greeley as a Liberal Republican!

Greeley died 30 days before the election and Grant had a reasonable second term.

Our country was a better place because of Horace Greeley.

This strange-appearing man – who managed to make Abraham Lincoln look debonair, who was too frightened to play baseball, yet who had the temerity to mingle with frenzied crowds taunting him after he paid the bail for Jefferson Davis after the Civil War – set a standard for personal ethics that still stands, although lost in the mist of history.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

We owe Thomas Edison, Henry Ford a debt of gratitude

This uncanceled Edison Phonograph Works stock certificate is dated 1888, the very year the company was founded, and was issued to “Thomas A. Edison.” It was sold at an April 2012 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

On Monday, Oct. 21, 1929, the Edison Institute was dedicated in Dearborn, Mich. It was to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first incandescent light bulb that Thomas Alva Edison had invented and the strong friendship between Henry Ford and Edison. Although it was a relatively small group that joined in, it was loaded with luminaries: John D. Rockefeller, Orville Wright, Will Rogers, Marie Curie and, of course, Henry Ford and Edison, who was 82 years old.

President Herbert Hoover’s speech stated: “Every American owes a debt to him. It is not alone a debt for great benefactions he has brought to mankind, but also a debt for the honor he has brought to our country. His life gives confidence … our institutions hold open the door of opportunity … to all that would enter.” The ceremony was broadcast on radio and listeners were asked to keep all their electric lights off until a switch was flipped at the event.

One week later, the stock market was in a state of chaos as a series of events led to the Great Depression.

Ford (1863-1947) had grown up on a rural farm in Michigan and, like virtually every other American, was captivated by the remarkable inventions Edison was cranking out. Eschewing farm work after his mother died, he inevitably went to work at his hero’s company – Edison Illuminating Company – as an engineer.

Ford rose through the ranks to Chief Engineer, which allowed him more personal time to work on developing his version of an automobile. In 1896, at age 33, Ford developed his first experimental car, called the Ford Quadricycle. Edison had been working on an electric car and when the two men finally met, Edison reputedly slammed his fist on a table and exclaimed, “Young man, you have it!” He encouraged Ford to continue his development and this started a longtime friendship between the two geniuses.

Ford eventually developed his Model T, a series of improvements (not inventions) to the combustion engine, and a continuous assembly line. Introduced in 1908, the Model T would be extremely successful, eventually becoming one of the top-selling cars of all time. With the steering wheel on the left side, it is estimated that over 75 percent of everyone who learned to drive did it in some version of the Model T.

Along the way, Ford pioneered the eight-hour workday, reduced the cost from $850 and raised worker wages to $5 a day so they could afford to buy a car. He became a rich and successful businessman with a passion for collecting historic objects. President Wilson convinced him to run for the Senate since he was for peace and a Democrat, but he lost. After his death in 1947, the Edison Institute was renamed the Henry Ford Museum.

Today, the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation includes Greenfield Village, a tour of the massive Ford Rouge factory, and even a dedicated IMAX theater. The museum has an astonishing collection of Americana, with over 200 cars, JFK’s limousine from his trip to Dallas, the bus Rosa Parks made famous, Lincoln’s rocking chair from Ford’s Theater, Edison’s laboratory, the Wright Brothers’ bicycle machine shop, steam engines and other historic items depicting the history of America.

The Henry Ford Museum is the largest indoor/outdoor museum in the United States, with over 1.7 million visitors a year. Somewhere in this vast collection of truly famous objects is a small test tube with Edison’s last dying breath. Ford convinced Edison’s son to hold a mask over Edison as he was dying and capture/cork the “last breath.” Whether it does or not is irrelevant. The fact is that there are a number of similar test tubes that were filled in the room when Edison actually did die. The Ford example represents the genuine friendship between these two remarkable men and the wheelchair races on their adjoining estates in Florida, the hunting trips that included Harvey Firestone and President Harding, and their quest for knowledge that makes our lifestyle so much better even today.

They were both deeply flawed men who have slowly melted into history, but President Hoover was right. We do owe them a debt a gratitude and can overlook some or most of their egregious sins as the famous door of opportunity is still wide open, as we see every day.

Twain’s Era Marked America’s Emergence on the World Stage

An 1876 first edition, first printing of Mark Twain’s *The Adventures of Tom Sawyer* sold for $13,750 at an August 2015 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

American writer and satirist Mark Twain was born on Nov. 30, 1835 – exactly two weeks after Halley’s Comet made its appearance. In his 1909 biography, he wrote, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt, ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks, they came in together, they must go out together.’” Twain died shortly after the comet returned.

Twain – real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens – co-wrote a novel with his friend Charles Dudley Warner titled The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today. It was the only time Twain wrote with a collaborator and it was supposedly the result of a dare from their wives. Whatever the truth, the novel lent its name to the post-Civil War period, which has become widely known as the Gilded Age. The novel skewered that era of American history because of the widespread corruption and materialistic greed of a few at the expense of the downtrodden masses.

From a purely economic standpoint, the period of 1870-90 was when the United States became the dominant economy in the world. For the majority of recorded history, China and India were the global powerhouses, with 70 percent of world GDP. Economic output, up until about 200 years ago, was largely driven by large populations of people. But with the industrial revolution, followed by the information revolution, the significance of mere huge populations declined. While Europe was going through its resurgence following the Dark Ages, the Asian superpowers were divided into small kingdoms fighting each other.

Factors contributing to the post-Civil War growth were primarily in the North as industrial expansion surged while the slave-labor system was abolished and cotton prices collapsed. New discoveries of coal in the Appalachian Mountains, oil in Pennsylvania, and iron ore around Lake Superior fueled the growth of the United States infrastructure. Railroad systems more than tripled from 1860 to 1880 – concurrent with the Transcontinental Railroad (1869) that linked remote areas with the large industrial hubs; along with commercial farming, ranching and mining. London and Paris poured money into U.S. railroads and American steel production surpassed the combination of Britain, Germany and France. Technology flourished with 500,000 patents issued for new inventions and Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla electrified the industrial world.

Capital investment increased by 500 percent and capital formation doubled. By 1890, the United States surpassed Britain for manufacturing output and by the beginning of the 20th century, per-capita income was double that of Germany or France and 50 percent higher than Great Britain.

Then, inexplicably, Europeans started a world war and 20 years later, both the European and Asian nations started another global conflict. The United States strategically entered both wars late, preserving our capital, military and human resources. Excluding a few ships here and there (e.g. Pearl Harbor), we kept 100 percent of our domestic infrastructure intact. Excluding 9/11, we have probably damaged more of our own cities in domestic protests and rioting than all foreign enemies combined in acts of war.

As Pogo wisely observed, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Thomas Edison Embodied the American Spirit of Stick-to-itiveness

A signed photograph of Thomas Edison taken inside his Menlo Park Laboratory, circa 1887, sold for $3,734.38 at an October 2010 Heritage auction.

By Jim O’Neal

In April 1983, my Frito-Lay team toured a research laboratory in Delaware to view their facilities and new product development using polypropylene in our packaging systems. At one point, the national sales manager prodded their head scientist about the possibility of speeding it up and, memorably, the reply was a curt “We don’t schedule inventions.”

At the time, it seemed like a profound statement to me, but that was before I got to know Thomas Edison via his writings and others stories about his fabled career.

Edison’s invention factories were not torn over the merits of applied science versus basic research. They were always about applied research, but with a vengeance! “I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and invent it,” Edison said. And did he ever. When he was finished, he would have 1,093 patents in his own name alone, more than any other American in history.

His second patented invention, a stock market ticker, sold for $40,000 in 1869. The sale provided the money for a workshop in Newark, N.J., where he and a small group of workers produced stock tickers, ink recorders and typewriters for automatic telegraphy. In 1876, he moved the shop 12 miles to Menlo Park, where the first of the invention factories was built. The lab and workers were just a hundred yards from Edison’s home.

It was an eclectic group from all over the world: a German glass blower, an English mechanic, mathematicians, carpenters, and draftsmen. Menlo Park became the best private laboratory in the country. The atmosphere Edison created encouraged independent, creative thinking. “There ain’t no rules around here. We’re trying to accomplish something.”

He could be authoritarian and cranky, and set impossible deadlines, since he was there shoulder-to-shoulder with employees 18 hours a day for extended times. Balancing work and personal lives was not as issue; creation was. His approach to failure was the antithesis of other corporations that flourished and failed. “If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I now know 10,000 ways not to do it.”

The indefatigable nature of Edison and his workers was exemplified by the search for material that could make a durable filament essential to the incandescent light bulb. After trying numerous promising candidates, on Oct. 22, 1879, they tested carbonized cotton thread. It would glow for 13½ hours without bursting into flame, the common problem with all light bulbs at the time. Problem solved.

What a difference those invention factory ideas meant to our young nation: a viable incandescent light bulb, cylinder phonographs, nickel-iron-alkaline storage batteries, the electric pen for a mimeograph, the Ediphone, the Kinetoscope, etc. Edison even created inventions that improved other inventions: a simple carbon button transmitter for the mouthpiece on AGB’s telephone … eliminating the need to shout to be heard.

Edison was a charter member of that self-taught group that fervently believed that “if this doesn’t work, we’ll just try something else.” Edison may not have defined genius as 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration, but he certainly proved, without a doubt, that “Genius is hard work, stick-to-itiveness, and common sense.”

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell]