.
To casual visitor the first view this heterogeneous collection quite
bewildering, but more mature examination resolves itself into natural
classification-as, for instance, objects pertaining various animals, birds, and
fishes, such skins, hides, hair, fur, feathers, wool, quills, down, bristles, teeth,
bones, hoofs, horns, tusks, shell; natural products, such woods, barks, roots,
leaves, nuts, seeds, herbs, gums, grains, flours, meals, bran; also minerals great
assortment; mineral and vegetable oils, clay, mica, ozokerite, etc. Dyer and Martin describe
.. Several substances related phonograph records
were present this store room this time, including clay, asphalt, waxes, resin,
and pitch. This myth was passed
on the first interpret the laboratory; Norman Speiden told visitors that Edison promised dollar any
laboratory employee who could name something that was not the store room. The stock room was one part the publicity campaign.
Building Stock Room, Period II: 1901-1914
Dyer and Martin’s 1910 account the stock room does not differ much from
Dickson’s report the 1880s.Edison determined have within his immediate
reach the natural resources the world.445
445 Dickson and Dickson, The Life and Inventions Thomas Alva Edison, 290.
The lists materials delivered the new laboratory indicate wide diversity of
materials, including peacock feathers and sea horses, and also true that in
the blizzard 1888 laboratory employees Fessenden and Aylsworth were able to
survive the laboratory eating supplies found the storeroom...
There are some indications that there was more than one stock room the
laboratory and possible that some the exotic materials used electric light
and phonograph experiments might have been stored elsewhere.the famous stock-room, about which much has been written and invented... was
said that Edison defied anyone name one substance, organic inorganic, that
could not found his stock room.tend forget that shows the lasting power and importance Edison’s self
promotion. Here was born showman who needed attract publicity the
facility had constructed was going acquire the research contracts he
needed survive.446 Yet the
location the stock room defines its purpose source materials used the
machine shops, and these materials were primarily tools and pieces metal.
446 Supplies found Lab Notebook N-88-06-01.it not surprising find the stock-room
not only museum, but sample-room nature, well supply department. Its
fame arose from the fact that Edison planned repository some quantity,
great small, every known and possible useful substance not readily perishable,
together with the most complete assortment chemicals and drugs that experience
and knowledge could suggest. the line of
130
. Lab Oral Histories, 1973,
Columbia Oral History Project, 33.12; blizzard story from Fessenden, "The Inventions of
Reginald Fessenden," Radio News (August 1925)
