Andrew Carnegie

Birth: Nov. 25, 1835DunfermlineFife, ScotlandDeath: Aug. 11, 1919LenoxBerkshire CountyMassachusetts, USABusinessman, Industrialist, Philanthropist. He is best known as the founder of what is now USX Corporation. Born in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1848 his family immigrated to the United States and settled in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. He went to work at age 13, first as a mill hand, then as a telegraph messenger boy, learned telegraphy on his own time. After becoming a full time telegraph operator in 1851, he was hired at the age of 17 as a personal telegrapher and secretary to the local division superintendent of the Pennsylvania Railroad, having earned a reputation as the best telegraph operator in town. He soon became the superintendent's right hand man, and in 1859 Carnegie took over the superintendent's job at age 24. In 1865 he resigned from position to devote himself to the bridge business, which he was confident would boom after the Civil War with transcontinental railroads being built and the railroads in the South being reconstructed. He founded the Keystone Bridge Company and was awarded several major contracts to build bridges across the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. In 1867 he moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to New York City, New York and made regular trips to Europe to sell bonds to finance his bridges. In 1869 he met influential investment banker Junius Morgan (J. P. Morgan's father) in London, England. With Morgan's help, he placed issues for various bridge construction projects and several railroads. Carnegie had entered into the iron business as early as 1861 and rapidly expanded by acquiring additional companies and new partners. His aim was to ensure his Keystone Bridge Company a reliable and cheap supply of iron beams and plates -- in short, vertical integration. Because of his experience on the Pennsylvania Railroad, he was convinced that the American railroads were going to switch to from iron rails to steel rails as soon as they were cheaply available. The newly developed Bessemer steelmaking process showed promise for making low-cost steel rails possible for the first time. During his tour of the Bessemer plants in England during 1872 Carnegie resolved to build a brand new, large plant devoted solely to making Bessemer steel railroad rails. This was to be The Edgar Thomson Works, completed in 1875. He became the chief salesman for the endeavor, and used his contacts with the railroad leaders in the United States to sell them his Bessemer steel rails, so the business became an immediate success. In October 1883 Carnegie bought the Homestead Works from a group of Pittsburgh investors, which was a highly efficient steel rail works that had been plagued with labor troubles for some years. Carnegie expanded the plant and installed large new open hearth furnaces and by 1885 converted Homestead to rolling beams and angles in order to diversify his products. By this time the sheer size and complexity of the business had grown to the point that Carnegie felt the need to have a single top manager to oversee all the mills. He had long admired Henry Clay Frick's abilities from past associations with him in the coke business. To obtain Frick's help with the management of his diverse steel interests, he brought him into the partnership in 1886. In 1892 Frick persuaded Carnegie to merge all the Carnegie steel interests into one vast company – Carnegie Steel. It was formed on July 1, 1892. Carnegie owned 55%, Frick 11%, industrialist Henry Phipps Jr. 11%, and nineteen others 1% each. The remaining 4% was held in reserve to reward top performers in the plants. The same day that Carnegie Steel came into existence, a strike began at Homestead. Carnegie and Frick agreed upon a two-point plan before Carnegie left on a long vacation to Scotland. First, the wage scale would be lowered; and second, Carnegie Steel would no longer recognize the Amalgamated union as the bargaining agent. Frick was left in charge and ultimately emerged victorious but at a very high personal price both for himself and Carnegie. He broke the union and the men were eventually forced to sign individual labor contracts in order to return to work. By 1900 Carnegie Steel was an industrial colossus. It was vertically integrated controlling its own ore, coke, limestone, and shipping facilities on the Great Lakes and from the Great Lakes to Pittsburgh. Despite prosperity, a rift grew between Carnegie and Frick, which eventually resulted in Frick's departure. In the end Carnegie's desire to finally retire himself produced the famous handwritten sales offer of $480,000,000 to J.P. Morgan and the formation of the United States Steel Corporation (now USX) in March 1901. He created seven philanthropic and educational organizations in the United States, including Carnegie Corporation of New York, and several more in Europe. One of Carnegie's lifelong interests was the establishment of free public libraries to make available to everyone a means of self-education. There were only a few public libraries in the world when, in 1881, Carnegie began to promote his idea. He and the Corporation subsequently spent over $56 million to build 2,509 libraries throughout the English-speaking world. During his lifetime, Carnegie gave away over $350 million. He died in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1919. 

Jay Cooke

Birth: Aug. 10, 1821Death: Feb. 18, 1905Union Civil War Financier. Jay Cooke was born in Sandusky, Ohio. The family estate was named Ogontz in honor of an Indian chief who once lived on the same land. The limestone dwelling overlooked Sandusky Bay and Lake Erie. Jay's father, Eleutheros Cooke a lawyer, and mother Martha Caswell, were well educated easterners and very active politically. They braved a difficult journey from the east before settling in the untamed region around Sandusky in 1827. Eleutheros went on to serve in Congress as a Whig. The area was a paradise of teeming deer, waterfowl and fish. While growing up here, Jay developed his lifelong passion for hunting and fishing. His early education was mainly from home schooling. At age 14, he began work at a Sandusky dry goods store where he became the head clerk while the owner taught him business and financial procedures. Then barely sixteen, a job led him to St. Louis and employment with Seymour & Bool where he earned an unheard sum of $600 a year. He was on his way at age 18, landing a clerk position with the banking firm E.W. Clark & Company which five years later led to a full partnership. Upon retirement, Cooke founded his own banking house known as Jay Cooke & Company of Philadelphia. His Bank was chosen by Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase (former Ohio senator and governor) to issue United States bonds to finance the Civil War. He raised over a billion dollars with the sale of various types of treasury bonds which allowed the Union to finance the war providing horses, guns and supplies while paying the men until victory over the South was achieved and the Union restored. In the postwar, Cooke became interested in the development of the Northwest and his bank financed the construction of the Northern Pacific Railway which was his undoing. In advancing money for the project, funds were lacking and during the Panic of 1873, the project was suspended with Cooke himself forced into bankruptcy. However, some six years later, he was again solvent and managed to meet all the financial obligations incurred during his insolvency. He was a Philanthropist on a grand scale, with the Episcopal Church receiving the bulk with donated funds for the construction of a number of churches. One is located at Put-in-Bay, Ohio. Legacy...He was the creator of municipal bonds. The practice where bankers stabilize the price of new bond issues and still used today by investment institutions was pioneered by Cooke. His residency and construction of a palatial home in Cheltenham Township, Pennsylvania which he dubbed Ogontz (Ohio Indian Chief) after his boyhood home in Sandusky influenced the naming of many area Philadelphia landmarks. Two decades later, the estate and dwelling became the exclusive Ogontz School for Girls and the surrounding area became the city of Ogontz, Pennsylvania. Ogontz Avenue is a main avenue transecting the city of Philadelphia. The Jay Cooke Elementary School in the Logan section of the city bares his name and further away near Duluth, Minnesota lies the jewel of state parks: The Jay Cooke State Park, originated from land donated by the Northern Pacific Railroad, which Cooke owned. However, the Cooke Castle in Ohio is the ultimate; Cooke constructed the many room limestone dwelling on Gibraltar Island located in the harbor of South Bass Island on Lake Erie, which he purchased. He and his family spent every summer here until his death The island has the highest land elevation in the Put-In-Bay area which became the lookout point for Commander Oliver Perry in the fight against the British during the War of 1812 when he and his men defeated a fleet of British vessels during the famous Battle of Lake Erie. Today, Gibraltar Island and the Castle belong to Ohio State University and is a lake laboratory for the purpose of teaching, learning and research. The Castle is a Federal Historical Site and is currently being refurbished. Many books pertaining to Jay Cooke and his financial expertise has been written, but the best was "Jay Cooke, Financier of the Civil War" author E.P. Oberholtzer published in 1907. (

John Jacob Astor

ASTOR, John Jacob, American merchant: b. Waldorf, Baden, near Heidelberg, 17 July 1763; d. 29 March 1848. He came to America in 1783, where his elder brother had settled and invested his savings in the fur trade. In 1784 he went with a cargo of furs to London; sold them and formed connection with fur houses there, and as his capital increased, made annual trips to Montreal, buying furs there and shipping them direct to London, as Canada was allowed to trade only with the mother country. In 1794 Jay's treaty removed this embargo, and Astor, then in London, at once made a contract with the Northwest Company of Montreal and Quebec (then the magnate of the Canadian Northwest fur trade), imported furs from Montreal to New York, and shipped them to all parts of Europe and China. The surrender of the lake posts under the treaty also greatly extended the trading limits, and Astor in a few years became one of the leading merchants and capitalists of the country, having a quarter of a million in 1798, and double that a few years later. In 1807 he embarked in direct trade with the Indians by way of the Mohawk, and with the English fur companies; but found the American trade chiefly monopolized by the Mackinaw Company, and knowing our government's desire to keep its home trade in home hands, proposed with its protection to accomplish this himself. In 1809 he secured a New York charter for the "American Fur Company," but the War of 1812 suspended operations, and after it a government prohibition of British fur trade in the United States broke up the company. Meantime a grander scheme had been initiated. Sir Alexander Mackenzie, after crossing the continent far north in 1793, had suggested establishing a line of trading posts from ocean to ocean, with terminal, coast and island stations, to draw all except the Russian fur trade into one channel. Lewis and Clarke's transcontinental expedition in 1804 proved its practicability on American soil, and Mr. Astor evolved the plan of distributing such posts along the Missouri and Columbia rivers, with a central station at the mouth of the latter, where all the peltries from the interior and those gathered by coasting vessels were to be collected and taken by a yearly ship to Canton, loading in return with Chinese goods. A later development was to operate a line of ships from the Pacific coast to the Chinese and East Indian ports, with a Hawaiian island for an intermediate port. The Russian Fur Company had already complained to the United States of the casual American trading vessels selling liquor and firearms to their Indians; the American government had consulted Astor for a remedy and his idea was to abolish this irresponsible trading by making his yearly supply ship take its place. To prevent ruinous competition he offered the Northwest Company a one-third interest in the enterprise; but they declined it and sent a company to seize the mouth of the Columbia before his party could arrive. He succeeded in spite of them, however, in planting a settlement, which was named Astoria; but on the breaking out of the War of 1812 the English seized it. It reverted to the United States by the Treaty of Ghent, and Astor wished to revive the project, but the government was cool, and he dropped it, still however, buying his furs direct and trading with many countries, more particularly China, at that time the best fur mart in the world. He also made large amounts by buying depreciated government securities, which afterward commanded a considerable premium. But his chief investment was the one which has founded the family greatness on a rock. Foreseeing the immense growth of New York city, he bought large tracts on Manhattan Island far beyond the then city limits, taught his son to invest his accumulations in the same way, and established the system of handling them described under Astor Family. In 1827 he and his son William, who had been his partner since 1815, withdrew from the China trade and formed the American Fur Company, chiefly managed by the great expert; but a few years later he retired from business altogether, thenceforth devoting himself to his investments, and devising, in consultation with others, plans for a public library suggested by Washington Irving, — afterward the Astor Library, for which he left $400,000 in his will. He made gifts and bequests to other objects; among them $50,000 for a school for poor children and a home for the indigent aged in his birthplace, Waldorf, called the Astor House. He was much more than a great trader: he had a breadth of conception, a combined energy and patience of execution, a mastery of detail, a retentiveness of memory and a sagacity of judgment, which in the opinion of his intimates would have raised him to greatness in any line. He left two sons, William B. and John Jacob, and three daughters.

John Pierpont (J.P.) Morgan

John Pierpont (J.P.) Morgan was born in Hartford, Connecticut on April 17, 1837. His father, Junius Spencer Morgan, was a prosperous financier, with holdings in America and Europe, who taught his son from an early age how to manage the family assets that he (J.P.) would someday inherit. J.P. was a willing student. J.P. was educated at Boston's English High School, and then he enrolled in Germany's prestigious University of Gottingen. By the time he was 15, J.P. had traveled throughout much of Europe, and had already begun collecting art, which would remain a passion throughout his life. When he was 20, he graduated from Gottingen, and returned to New York to begin his career in finance. He started as an accountant for Duncan, Sherman & Co. in New York City. This position provided a good base for J.P. Morgan's introduction into the world of banking and finance, especially because of its ties to the powerful London firm of George Peabody & Co. As the Civil War broke out, Morgan joined his father's financial ventures, and operated out of both New York and London, all the time increasing his personal holdings. From 1864 to 1871 he was an increasingly influential member of the firm Dabney, Morgan & Co., and in 1871 he became a partner in Drexel, Morgan & Co. In 1895, this firm became J.P. Morgan & Co., and was recognized here and abroad as one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world.As J.P. Morgan's fortune grew, he continued to make investments and acquisitions. He funded Thomas Edison throughout the 1870's and 1880's, and laid the financial foundation for Edison Electric Company. When many small companies and railroads ran into tough times after the Civil War, Morgan saw opportunities and acquired those with potential. By the mid 1880's, he had significant railroad holdings, and owned some 5,000 miles of rail by 1900. He consolidated and restructured many of his rail companies, bringing his own regulations and standards to an industry that the government had failed to regulate. Morgan's rail holdings included the New York Central, New Haven and Hartford, Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania, Reading, Erie, Southern, Chesapeake and Ohio, and the Northern Pacific systems. The rails and trains, of course, required huge quantities of steel. Knowing this, Morgan founded and acquired huge steel-making operations, in effect owning the steel operations that supplied his rail companies with their steel. In 1901 he established the U.S. Steel Company by merging Carnegie Steel Works and several other steel companies into the dominant steel producer in the country.Morgan's realm expanded into many other areas in the financial and industrial worlds. He acquired and/or financed shipping interests, coal mines, insurance, and communications industries, and he provided financial backing for the U.S. government itself. He backed an 1895 government bond issue of $62 million dollars, and in 1901 he secured a $50 million dollar American issue for the British war loan. In the early 1900's he provided backing that assisted the U.S. Treasury in stemming a stock market panic. And, of course, anyone with as much power and influence as J.P. Morgan is bound to attract his share of detractors. He was investigated by the U.S. House of Representatives, and he testified in his own defense, denying charges of undue influence in his control of the country's industries and financial institutions. In spite of the allegations of reform-minded crusaders and muckrakers, J.P. Morgan continued to be America's foremost financier throughout his life.Morgan's personal wealth was enormous, and during his life he used substantial portions of his wealth in philanthropic endeavors. He donated to charities, churches, hospitals, and schools. He also accumulated a huge collection of art. When he died in 1913, much of his collection went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The Life of Thomas A. Edison

 of the most famous and prolific inventors of all time, Thomas Alva Edison exerted a tremendous influence on modern life, contributing inventions such as the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, and the motion picture camera, as well as improving the telegraph and telephone. In his 84 years, he acquired an astounding 1,093 patents. Aside from being an inventor, Edison also managed to become a successful manufacturer and businessman, marketing his inventions to the public. A myriad of business liaisons, partnerships, and corporations filled Edison's life, and legal battles over various patents and corporations were continuous. The following is only a brief sketch of an enormously active and complex life full of projects often occurring simultaneously. Several excellent biographies are readily available in local libraries to those who wish to learn more about the particulars of his life and many business ventures [see Bibliography].Edison's Early Years (TOP)Thomas A. Edison's forebears lived in New Jersey until their loyalty to the British crown during the American Revolution drove them to Nova Scotia, Canada. From there, later generations relocated to Ontario and fought the Americans in the War of 1812. Edison's mother, Nancy Elliott, was originally from New York until her family moved to Vienna, Canada, where she met Sam Edison, Jr., whom she later married. When Sam became involved in an unsuccessful insurrection in Ontario in the 1830s, he was forced to flee to the United States and in 1839 they made their home in Milan, Ohio.Thomas Alva Edison was born to Sam and Nancy on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. Known as "Al" in his youth, Edison was the youngest of seven children, four of whom survived to adulthood. Edison tended to be in poor health when young.To seek a better fortune, Sam Edison moved the family to Port Huron, Michigan, in 1854, where he worked in the lumber business.Edison was a poor student. When a schoolmaster called Edison "addled," his furious mother took him out of the school and proceeded to teach him at home. Edison said many years later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me, and I felt I had some one to live for, some one I must not disappoint."(1) At an early age, he showed a fascination for mechanical things and for chemical experiments.In 1859, Edison took a job selling newspapers and candy on the Grand Trunk Railroad to Detroit. In the baggage car, he set up a laboratory for his chemistry experiments and a printing press, where he started the Grand Trunk Herald, the first newspaper published on a train. An accidental fire forced him to stop his experiments on board.Around the age of twelve, Edison lost almost all his hearing. There are several theories as to what caused his hearing loss. Some attribute it to the aftereffects of scarlet fever which he had as a child. Others blame it on a conductor boxing his ears after Edison caused a fire in the baggage car, an incident which Edison claimed never happened. Edison himself blamed it on an incident in which he was grabbed by his ears and lifted to a train. He did not let his disability discourage him, however, and often treated it as an asset, since it made it easier for him to concentrate on his experiments and research. Undoubtedly, though, his deafness made him more solitary and shy in dealings with others.Telegraph Work (TOP)In 1862, Edison rescued a three-year-old from a track where a boxcar was about to roll into him. The grateful father, J.U. MacKenzie, taught Edison railroad telegraphy as a reward. That winter, he took a job as a telegraph operator in Port Huron. In the meantime, he continued his scientific experiments on the side. Between 1863 and 1867, Edison migrated from city to city in the United States taking available telegraph jobs.In 1868 Edison moved to Boston where he worked in the Western Union office and worked even more on his inventions. In January 1869 Edison resigned his job, intending to devote himself fulltime to inventing things. His first invention to receive a patent was the electric vote recorder, in June 1869. Daunted by politicians' reluctance to use the machine, he decided that in the future he would not waste time inventing things that no one wanted.Edison moved to New York City in the middle of 1869. A friend, Franklin L. Pope, allowed Edison to sleep in a room at Samuel Laws' Gold Indicator Company where he was employed. When Edison managed to fix a broken machine there, he was hired to manage and improve the printer machines.During the next period of his life, Edison became involved in multiple projects and partnerships dealing with the telegraph. In October 1869, Edison formed with Franklin L. Pope and James Ashley the organization Pope, Edison and Co. They advertised themselves as electrical engineers and constructors of electrical devices. Edison received several patents for improvements to the telegraph. The partnership merged with the Gold and Stock Telegraph Co. in 1870. Edison also established the Newark Telegraph Works in Newark, NJ, with William Unger to manufacture stock printers. He formed the American Telegraph Works to work on developing an automatic telegraph later in the year. In 1874 he began to work on a multiplex telegraphic system for Western Union, ultimately developing a quadruplex telegraph, which could send two messages simultaneously in both directions. When Edison sold his patent rights to the quadruplex to the rival Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Co., a series of court battles followed in which Western Union won. Besides other telegraph inventions, he also developed an electric pen in 1875.His personal life during this period also brought much change. Edison's mother died in 1871, and later that year, he married a former employee, Mary Stilwell, on Christmas Day. While Edison clearly loved his wife, their relationship was fraught with difficulties, primarily his preoccupation with work and her constant illnesses. Edison would often sleep in the lab and spent much of his time with his male colleagues. Nevertheless, their first child, Marion, was born in February 1873, followed by a son, Thomas, Jr., born on January 1876. Edison nicknamed the two "Dot" and "Dash," referring to telegraphic terms. A third child, William Leslie was born in October 1878.Edison opened a new laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ, in 1876. This site later become known as an "invention factory," since they worked on several different inventions at any given time there. Edison would conduct numerous experiments to find answers to problems. He said, "I never quit until I get what I'm after. Negative results are just what I'm after. They are just as valuable to me as positive results."(2) Edison liked to work long hours and expected much from his employees."Interior of Edison's Machine Shop where his experiments are conducted." The Daily Graphic (New York), April 10, 1878.In 1877, Edison worked on a telephone transmitter that greatly improved on Alexander Graham Bell's work with the telephone. His transmitter made it possible for voices to be transmitted at higer volume and with greater clarity over standard telephone lines.Edison's experiments with the telephone and the telegraph led to his invention of the phonograph in 1877. It occurred to him that sound could be recorded as indentations on a rapidly-moving piece of paper. He eventually formulated a machine with a tinfoil-coated cylinder and a diaphragm and needle. When Edison spoke the words "Mary had a little lamb" into the mouthpiece, to his amazement the machine played the phrase back to him. The Edison Speaking Phonograph Company was established early in 1878 to market the machine, but the initial novelty value of the phonograph wore off, and Edison turned his attention elsewhere.Edison focused on the electric light system in 1878, setting aside the phonograph for almost a decade. With the backing of financiers, The Edison Electric Light Co. was formed on November 15 to carry out experiments with electric lights and to control any patents resulting from them. In return for handing over his patents to the company, Edison received a large share of stock. Work continued into 1879, as the lab attempted not only to devise an incandescent bulb, but an entire electrical lighting system that could be supported in a city. A filament of carbonized thread proved to be the key to a long-lasting light bulb. Lamps were put in the laboratory, and many journeyed out to Menlo Park to see the new discovery. A special public exhibition at the lab was given for a multitude of amazed visitors on New Year's Eve.Edison set up an electric light factory in East Newark in 1881, and then the following year moved his family and himself to New York and set up a laboratory there.In order to prove its viability, the first commercial electric light system was installed on Pearl Street in the financial district of Lower Manhattan in 1882, bordering City Hall and two newspapers. Initially, only four hundred lamps were lit; a year later, there were 513 customers using 10,300 lamps.(3) Edison formed several companies to manufacture and operate the apparatus needed for the electrical lighting system: the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, the Edison Machine Works, the Edison Electric Tube Company, and the Edison Lamp Works. This lighting system was also taken abroad to the Paris Lighting Exposition in 1881, the Crystal Palace in London in 1882, the coronation of the czar in Moscow, and led to the establishment of companies in several European countries.The success of Edison's lighting system could not deter his competitors from developing their own, different methods. One result was a battle between the proponents of DC current, led by Edison, and AC current, led by George Westinghouse. Both sides attacked the limitations of each system. Edison, in particular, pointed to the use of AC current for electrocution as proof of its danger. DC current could not travel over as long a system as AC, but the AC generators were not as efficient as the ones for DC. By 1889, the invention of a device that combined an AC induction motor with a DC dynamo offered the best performance of all, and AC current became dominant. The Edison General Electric Co. merged with Thomson-Houston in 1892 to become General Electric Co., effectively removing Edison further from the electrical field of business.An Improved Phonograph (TOP)Edison's wife, Mary, died on August 9, 1884, possibly from a brain tumor. Edison remarried to Mina Miller on February 24, 1886, and, with his wife, moved into a large mansion named Glenmont in West Orange, New Jersey. Edison's children from his first marriage were distanced from their father's new life, as Edison and Mina had their own family: Madeleine, born on 1888; Charles on 1890; and Theodore on 1898. Unlike Mary, who was sickly and often remained at home, and was also deferential to her husband's wishes, Mina was an active woman, devoting much time to community groups, social functions, and charities, as well as trying to improve her husband's often careless personal habits.In 1887, Edison had built a new, larger laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. The facility included a machine shop, phonograph and photograph departments, a library, and ancillary buildings for metallurgy, chemistry, woodworking, and galvanometer testings.While Edison had neglected further work on the phonograph, others had moved forward to improve it. In particular, Chichester Bell and Charles Sumner Tainter developed an improved machine that used a wax cylinder and a floating stylus, which they called a graphophone. They sent representatives to Edison to discuss a possible partnership on the machine, but Edison refused to collaborate with them, feeling that the phonograph was his invention alone. With this competition, Edison was stirred into action and resumed his work on the phonograph in 1887. Edison eventually adopted methods similar to Bell and Tainter's in his own phonograph.The phonograph was initially marketed as a business dictation machine. Entrepreneur Jesse H. Lippincott acquired control of most of the phonograph companies, including Edison's, and set up the North American Phonograph Co. in 1888. The business did not prove profitable, and when Lippincott fell ill, Edison took over the management. In 1894, the North American Phonograph Co. went into bankruptcy, a move which allowed Edison to buy back the rights to his invention. In 1896, Edison started the National Phonograph Co. with the intent of making phonographs for home amusement. Over the years, Edison made improvements to the phonograph and to the cylinders which were played on them, the early ones being made of wax. Edison introduced an unbreakable cylinder record, named the Blue Amberol, at roughly the same time he entered the disc phonograph market in 1912. The introduction of an Edison disc was in reaction to the overwhelming popularity of discs on the market in contrast to cylinders. Touted as being superior to the competition's records, the Edison discs were designed to be played only on Edison phonographs, and were cut laterally as opposed to vertically. The success of the Edison phonograph business, though, was always hampered by the company's reputation of choosing lower-quality recording acts. In the 1920s, competition from radio caused business to sour, and the Edison disc business ceased production in 1929.Other Ventures: Ore-milling and Cement (TOP)Another Edison interest was an ore-milling process that would extract various metals from ore. In 1881, he formed the Edison Ore-Milling Co., but the venture proved fruitless as there was no market for it. In 1887, he returned to the project, thinking that his process could help the mostly depleted Eastern mines compete with the Western ones. In 1889, the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Concentrating Works was formed, and Edison became absorbed by its operations and began to spend much time away from home at the mines in Ogdensburg, New Jersey. Although he invested much money and time into this project, it proved unsuccessful when the market went down and additional sources of ore in the Midwest were found.Edison also became involved in promoting the use of cement and formed the Edison Portland Cement Co. in 1899. He tried to promote widespread use of cement for the construction of low-cost homes and envisioned alternative uses for concrete in the manufacture of phonographs, furniture, refrigerators, and pianos. Unfortunately, Edison was ahead of his time with these ideas, as widespread use of concrete proved economically unfeasible at that time.Motion Pictures (TOP)In 1888, Edison met Eadweard Muybridge at West Orange and viewed Muybridge's zoopraxiscope. This machine used a circular disc with still photographs of the successive phases of movement around the circumference to recreate the illusion of movement. Edison declined to work with Muybridge on the device and decided to work on his own motion picture camera at his laboratory. As Edison put it in a caveat written the same year, "I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear."(4)The task of inventing the machine fell to Edison's associate William K. L. Dickson. Dickson initially experimented with a cylinder-based device for recording images, before turning to a celluloid strip. In October of 1889, Dickson greeted Edison's return from Paris with a new device that projected pictures and contained sound. After more work, patent applications were made in 1891 for a motion picture camera, called a Kinetograph, and a Kinetoscope, a motion picture peephole viewer.Kinetoscope parlors opened in New York and soon spread to other major cities during 1894. In 1893, a motion picture studio, later dubbed the Black Maria (the slang name for a police paddy wagon which the studio resembled), was opened at the West Orange complex. Short films were produced using variety acts of the day. Edison was reluctant to develop a motion picture projector, feeling that more profit was to be made with the peephole viewers.When Dickson aided competitors on developing another peephole motion picture device and the eidoloscope projection system, later to develop into the Mutoscope, he was fired. Dickson went on to form the American Mutoscope Co. along with Harry Marvin, Herman Casler, and Elias Koopman. Edison subsequently adopted a projector developed by Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins and re-named it the Vitascope and marketed it under his name. The Vitascope premiered on April 23, 1896, to great acclaim.Competition from other motion picture companies soon created heated legal battles between them and Edison over patents. Edison sued many companies for infringement. In 1909, the formation of the Motion Picture Patents Co. brought a degree of cooperation to the various companies who were given licenses in 1909, but in 1915, the courts found the company to be an unfair monopoly.In 1913, Edison experimented with synchronizing sound to film. A Kinetophone was developed by his laboratory which synchronized sound on a phonograph cylinder to the picture on a screen. Although this initially brought interest, the system was far from perfect and disappeared by 1915. By 1918, Edison ended his involvement in the motion picture field.Edison's Later Years (TOP)In 1911, Edison's companies were re-organized into Thomas A. Edison, Inc. As the organization became more diversified and structured, Edison became less involved in the day-to-day operations, although he still had some decision-making authority. The goals of the organization became more to maintain market viability than to produce new inventions frequently.A fire broke out at the West Orange laboratory in 1914, destroying 13 buildings. Although the loss was great, Edison spearheaded the rebuilding of the lot.Detail of Thomas A. Edison's 70th birthday, in Edison Amberola Monthly, March 1917, p. 9. In picture: Mr. R. A. Bachman, Mr. Henry Ford, Mrs. Edison, Mr. Charles Edison, and Mr. C. H. Wilson.When Europe became involved in World War I, Edison advised preparedness, and felt that technology would be the future of war. He was named head of the Naval Consulting Board in 1915, an attempt by the government to bring science into its defense program. Although mainly an advisory board, it was instrumental in the formation of a laboratory for the Navy which opened in 1923, although several of Edison's suggestions on the matter were disregarded. During the war, Edison spent much of his time doing naval research, in particular working on submarine detection, but he felt that the navy was not receptive to many of his inventions and suggestions.In the 1920s, Edison's health became worse, and he began to spend more time at home with his wife. His relationship with his children was distant, although Charles was president of Thomas A. Edison, Inc. While Edison continued to experiment at home, he could not perform some experiments that he wanted to at his West Orange laboratory because the board would not approve them. One project that held his fascination during this period was the search for an alternative to rubber.Henry Ford, an admirer and friend of Edison's, reconstructed Edison's invention factory as a museum at Greenfield Village, Michigan, which opened during the 50th anniversary of Edison's electric light in 1929. The main celebration for Light's Golden Jubilee, co-hosted by Ford and General Electric, took place in Dearborn along with a huge celebratory dinner in Edison's honor attended by notables such as President Hoover, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., George Eastman, Marie Curie, and Orville Wright. Edison's health, however, had declined to the point that he could not stay for the entire ceremony.For his last two years, a series of ailments caused his health to decline even more until he lapsed into a coma on October 14, 1931. He died on October 18, 1931, at his estate, Glenmont, in West Orange, New Jersey.