wrote Bergmann that "our pioneering and
experimental period now over and are going for cost
Q
reduction.
. For the bulk the
labor force, the work was shifting production engineering." The continuing problems with the disc machine
spoiled this schedule, but production the Edison disc
phonograph was the first priority when the Works reopened in
1915.5
The fire was therefore major turning point from the
engineering and manufacturing standpoints. Edison had anticipated this
shift early 1910 when development work the three major
businesses— phonographs, batteries, and motion pictures— were
well underway.
The company told the Internal Revenue Service that the
pre 1914 period was the "development" stage, when Edison,
"being more interested the perfecting the product"
7
directed the resources his enterprise towards research. This not
to say that experimenting ended the laboratory that the
experimental period the disc was over. was now most concerned with the manufacture and
marketing the new products, and the focus the laboratory
turned from research supporting manufacturing. prepared concentrate the
manufacture the new products. new
era the history the laboratory was beginning. the end January 1915, the first disc was produced
in the storage battery factory opposite the laboratory.
TAE Inc.
After the fire 1914, TAE Inc. also became the
symbolic watershed between period intense development and
a period manufacture which followed
