IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2021 - 14

Book Review
Book Review
Edison-Edmond Morris (Cambridge,
MA, USA: MIT Press, 2018, 800 pp.)
Reviewed by Eric P. Wenaas
 Edison, by author Edmond Morris, is the
latest of a number of biographies penned on inventor
Thomas Alva Edison that date back to 1910,
when Frank L. Dyer, Thomas C. Martin, and William
Meadowcroft teamed up to write the first authorized
biography of Edison, Edison: His Life and Inventions,
with collaboration, approval, and some text written
by Edison himself.1 Ever since that time, many biographies
on Edison have been written-with no fewer
than five serious biographies published since 1995.
This recent publishing activity is quite an evidence
of a strong and continuing interest in Edison and his
inventions that resulted in 1,093 U.S. patents-not to
mention the 500-600 patent applications that were
either abandoned or unsuccessful. It also begs the
question, " What is new in Morris's book, Edison? "
The first thing you will note is that Morris has
introduced a new literary device akin to the prolepsis,
in which a scene temporarily jumps the narrative
forward in time. Only Morris moves the whole book
ahead in time so that the first chapter of the book
(Morris uses the word " Part " in lieu of " Chapter " )
covers the period from 1920 to 1929 when Thomas
Alva Edison is an old man, and the last chapter of the
book covers the period from 1860 to 1869 when Al
Edison (the name used in his youth) is a young lad.
Chronological order is finally restored in the Epilog,
which addresses Edison's death in 1931.
The order is hopelessly confusing because many of
his inventions from his early days are mentioned early
in the book, which covers events later in his life, but
1Edison's biography published in 1910 was revised by the same authors and
published in 1929, which also had inputs from Edison.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2021.3077038
Date of current version: 3 June 2021.
14
0278-0097/21©2021 IEEE
they are not defined and discussed until later in the
book, which covers events earlier in his life. Confused?
For example, we learn in the first chapter that Edison
believed " the 'etheric force' spark " was one of five genuine
scientific discoveries he made during his lifetime.
However, we have no idea what the etheric force was
until the sixth chapter where it is finally explained.
To assist the reader in determining what year it is on
any given page, Morris has placed the year at the top
of the right-hand page (recto) in which the activities
described on the two opposing pages occur. While
this is helpful, the reader is also reminded just how disjointed
the text is. The years are going forward in time
within each chapter, but there is a huge discontinuity
on the first page of the following chapter, which is situated
backward in time by 20 years. For example, the
year appearing on the recto at the end of Chapter 2 is
1919, but with a flip of the page, the reader is taken back
to the year 1900, the year in which Chapter 3 begins.
" Well, " you say, " Why not read the book backward? "
That may help, but it doesn't always work. For example,
if you read the last chapter first (when Edison was a
child), you will encounter this as the very first sentence:
" In his third year, Alva Edison's memory began to retain
the fragmentary impressions of the work that composes
the blur of infancy. " Well, who was Alva Edison? Thomas's
father? Nowhere in this chapter does it say that
Thomas was called Alva or Al as a child. That information
appears in a footnote on the very first page of the
preceding chapter, which would be the second chapter
you would read by beginning with the last chapter:
" At this stage in his life Edison was called 'Alva' by his
parents and Al by friends. His earliest signed letter,
dated 10 August 1862, is signed 'Alva'. " This is not the
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