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Review
| Thomas Edison and Modern America: A Brief History with Documents, by Theresa M. Collins and Lisa Gitelman. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002. 221 pp. $14.95, paper.
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| Since 1993 the Bedford Series in History and Culture (BSHC) has published a number of sophisticated primary source collections on an impressive range of historical topics. Thomas Edison and Modern America is a stimulating addition to the collection, one that examines technology and its place in the Progressive Era even as it questions the heroic image of Edison the inventor and the tendency to see technological progress as predetermined and linear. This volume thus introduces students to the complex relationship between culture, society, and technology, and the historiographic problems that scholars continue to experience in understanding Edison's life and work. |
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Edison and Modern America follows the organizational scheme used in other BSHC volumes. The editors, who have both edited the Thomas A. Edison Papers, begin with a brief overview of Edison's life, significant cultural changes in the U.S. just prior to and during the Progressive Era, and the interpretive problems surrounding Edison's biography and public image. They devote the main body of the text to a wealth of primary source documents organized according to biographical, technological, and social themes. Short editorial introductions to the documents help students place the visual and written materials in broader historical contexts and pose interpretive questions for student consideration. The volume then concludes with a chronology of Edison's life, further questions of a more synthetic nature, and a short bibliography of primary and secondary sources, thus making the volume a useful starting point for student research papers. The overall design encourages students to develop their own interpretations of the sources, thus introducing them to the historian's craft. |
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The collection's strength is in the broad diversity of primary sources offered and the issues that Collins and Gitelman raise for student discussion. This is no mere biography of Edison the "Great Inventor." The sources include selections from Edison's memoirs, diaries, notebooks, and letters, as well as accounts of Edison and his inventions as presented by the popular media. We thus witness Edison fashioning his own self image—sometimes in contradictory ways—just as the press was turning him into a media hero. Laboratory records by Edison and his assistants chart the development of the phonograph and the use of electricity, while newspaper and magazine articles bear witness to the intense speculation surrounding the social effects Edison's inventions would create. Samples from Edison's correspondence demonstrate his activities as fund raiser and businessman, and help to illustrate the profound interrelationship between technology and business. The realities of the market place meant that Edison often had to create markets for his inventions even as they were in development, but it is evident from the selections that there were significant differences of opinion over how the new technologies should be used. In particular, the development of the phonograph both as a business machine and as a source of entertainment should prove stimulating for students, who are immersed in the contemporary popular entertainment industry. Other themes that should prove conducive to classroom discussion include the public understanding of technology, the creation of the inventor as a public symbol, and the complex social realities created within the laboratory environment. I had hoped that the documents would also cover Edison's involvement with the U.S. war effort during World War I (Edison's strained relationship with the military administration and academic scientists would have made for interesting discussions), but the depth of material already provided makes this a minor gap. |
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The BSHC editors suggest that volumes in the series are "short enough...to be a reasonable one-week assignment in a college course." (p. v) I have found in my own use of other volumes, however, that a week is not enough for students to explore the documents with sufficient depth. College students new to historical interpretation, in particular, find the rapid succession of short documents in collections like this confusing and sometimes fail to distinguish between the editor's introductions and the primary documents themselves. Proper instruction takes care of the problem, but it does require time and sometimes considerable patience. While inexperienced students will need a deliberate introduction to the sources, advanced history students will find more topics to discuss than can be accommodated in a one-week period. However used, Edison and Modern America can provide a substantial and provocative introduction to its subject. Courses in the history of technology and courses on the social and cultural history of the United States will benefit from the range of sources and topics presented. With this and another recent volume on the Scope's Trial the BSHC is starting to address the rich, yet largely neglected, historiography devoted to the history of technology and science. |
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| University of North Florida |
David A. Reid |
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