(Copyright 1997, 2000, 2010, 2019, and 2022 by René Rondeau. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the copyright holder, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.)
Thomas Edison, the "Wizard of Menlo Park," ranks among the legends
of American history. Such now-commonplace items as the phonograph, the movie camera, and even the vacuum tube (which later evolved through transistors
into microchips) owe their conception to Edison's inventive genius. Thomas Edison's
story is well-known, if now embellished by the haze of myth. However there is another
Thomas Edison whose story is tragic but virtually unknown -- Edison's first-born
son, Thomas A. Edison, Junior.
Tom Junior is a bit of an enigma. Most Edison
biographies mention him only in passing, and no one has ever attempted a serious
study about Edison's first son and namesake. It would be an understatement to say
that Thomas A. Edison, Jr. was a complex and troubled individual.
Thomas
A. Edison, Jr. was born on January 10, 1876 to Edison's first wife, Mary Stilwell.
Like most fathers of the Victorian era, Edison was not actively involved in the upbringing
of his children. But Edison's remoteness went even further than the typical father
of the times, and his daily contact with his son was minimal. After Mary's death,
when Tom Jr. was only 8, the younger Edison was largely raised by relatives while
his father worked impossibly long hours. In his teenage years Tom Edison Junior lived
in boarding schools, where he was a mediocre student with few friends.
During his exile at school Tom Junior maintained a close relationship with
his stepmother, Edison's second wife Mina Miller Edison. His correspondence hints
that his infatuation with Mina may have not have been just the healthy admiration
of a son to a mother, but that's perhaps understandable when you consider that when
Tom was a teenager, stepmother Mina was in her mid-twenties — barely older than he
was. On the other hand, his profusions of love could also stem simply from his loneliness
and sense of isolation. Mina did her best to play the role of an understanding mother
but made little headway in breaching the gulf between father and son.
At
the age of 17 Tom Junior quit school and went to work for his father at his mining
operation in Ogden, NJ. However, he was given only menial jobs. He still had little
contact with his father, toward whom he grew increasingly bitter and hostile. He
continued to live at the mine even after it was shut down in 1895.
It is
easy to imagine what a difficult time Tom Junior had when he was growing up. Motherless
at an early age, with a remote and unloving father, he was also burdened with the
fact that everyone held very high expectations of the boy who carried the same name
as his world-renowned father. Unfortunately, Junior did not have the same temperament
nor intelligence, and was an immature, sickly, and sensitive boy who tried, as he
reached adulthood, to mask his insecurities with bravado — and alcohol. In reading
an extensive private correspondance he maintained with a school friend when he was
in his early twenties, a distinctly psychotic element in his personality becomes
obvious. Tom Junior was not well, physically or mentally.
In 1899 Tom Junior
married a young actress named Mary (aka Marie) Touhey, a chorus girl on the New York
stage with a reputation as a lush and a low-life. The courtship was brief but the
marriage was even shorter. They returned separately from their honeymoon and immediately
announced their separation. Ironically, Mary criticized Tom for being a drunkard.
Despite their short marriage she took every advantage of Tom's name, until her unexplained
death in early 1906 at the age of 27.
His name, of course, was golden, and
once he was of age it didn't take long for other unscrupulous people to capitalize
on it. Tom Junior became the figurehead for many enterprises. It was a heady experience
but one which ultimately made his inadequacies even more obvious. Starting in the
late 1890's he was the ostensible head of such companies as the Thomas A. Edison,
Jr. Chemical Co. (makers of "Wizard Ink" tablets as well
as the "Magno Electric Vitalizer", a patent cure-all for
everything from rheumatism to deafness), the Edison Jr. Electric Light and Power
Company, the Thomas A. Edison, Jr. and Wm. Holzer Steel Process Company,
and the Thomas A. Edison, Jr. Improved Incandescent Lamp Company. "The Brain
of Edison Has Achieved Another Triumph" and "The Latest Edison Discovery"
were typical of the misleading advertising claims used by these companies.
The notoriety fueled his false feeling of importance and he concocted all sorts of
wild ideas, none of which came to fruition. As his father said of him, "his
head is now so swelled that I can do nothing with him, he is being used by some sharp
people for their own ends. I could never get him to go to school or work in the Laboratory,
he is therefore absolutely illiterate scientifically or otherwise."
Despite his hostility, Tom Junior still emulated his father to such a degree that
his handwriting, and even his signature, were modeled very closely after the elder
Edison. His spelling and grammar, however, were terrible.
By the turn of
the century the situation was out of control. Tom Jr. was passing bad checks, drinking
heavily, and was under investigation for mail fraud. The Edison name was being used
for all sorts of shady enterprises. Edison finally went to court and obtained an
injunction to forbid his son from using his name in commercial enterprises, and legally
disowned him for a short time. In 1903, however, Edison's lawyer negotiated a peace
treaty between the estranged father and son, by which Edison agreed to give Tom Junior
an allowance of $35 a week (raised to $50 in 1906) in return for which his son was
to stop using the famous Edison name altogether. (Ever the control freak, the senior
Edison required his son to sign receipts for each weekly allowance payment.)
For several years Tom Junior lived under a pseudonym, calling himself Burton Willard
or Thomas Willard. Edison set his son up on a mushroom farm in New Jersey, where
Junior lived with his second wife Beatrice as he sank deeper and
deeper into alcoholism, depression and ill health.
Tom Junior didn't give
up his dreams of grandeur during this time, however. He still aspired to be a great
inventor like his father, and he did manage to set up a tiny laboratory. His new
ambition was to create an improved automobile carburetor, and with the generosity
and indulgence of family friend Henry Ford he worked on this invention whenever he
was not consumed by drink or depression. Unfortunately this was not very often, as
can been inferred from the many letters Tom's ever-supportive wife wrote to Ford (archived at the Benson Ford Research Center in Dearborn, MI).
"Tom has suffered most pathetically with his head almost the entire week,
and has spent nearly all of this time on the couch. ...Poor boy, he sobs by the hour,
he is so discouraged." It took Tom seven years to finally complete his invention,
the "Ecometer", which was a dismal failure in the market.
In the mid-1920's he tried to salvage his wasted life, and thanks to his
half-brother Charles he managed to get a menial job in the Edison laboratory. After
their father's death in 1931 Charles promoted Tom to a position of some authority,
at the same time appointing him to the board of directors of the
various Edison companies. Tom had finally attained some of the importance he craved,
but it wasn't to last very long.
On August 25, 1935 Thomas A. Edison, Jr.
died under an assumed name in a hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts. Although some
Edison biographers contend that he committed suicide, others blame heart disease.
The circumstances of his death are curious but there is no evidence that it
was self-inflicted. Tom was travelling from Charles Edison's estate in Lake Sunapee,
NH back to his home in East Orange, NJ. when he stopped in Springfield along with
two companions. He registered under the name J.J. Byrne, ostensibly "to avoid
public notice." Allegedly he was already feeling ill upon his arrival, and a
doctor was called for. He died only a few hours later, with his death certificate
listing the causes as "Coronary Thrombosis, Pulmonary Edema (terminal), Sudden
death." It was a tragic end to a tragic life. Whether there was actually anything
sinister that was covered up by cooperative authorities can never be known, and the
controversy continues to brew in Edison biographies. Like so much of Tom Junior's
life, his death remains shrouded in mystery.
Tom Junior once wrote "if
my name was Smith — I would be a rich man today." While that boast is another
sign of his unfounded bravado, one has to wonder how his life might have differed
it he hadn't been burdened with one of the most famous names in the world.
