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in the twentieth, keeping busy with financial negotiations
and litigation. Yet the prewar years the Edison organization
remained small-scale; the accounting department was centered on
. The accounting
department labored the herculean task bringing all
bookkeeping functions under one organization, and providing the
information needed coordinate production and sales. The market for phonographs covered all
corners the country and the National Phonograph Company
supported newspaper and magazine advertising national
basis.
The advertising department coordinated the promotion of
Edison products nationwide. This
department was become vitally important the hierarchy of
managers grew and made more decisions the organization;
their need for information grew and did the accounting
department. the twentieth
century the Edison myth was promoted for the same ends but a
much larger scale.
The growing size the operation, the diversity of
products, and the sheer number transactions carried out by
the Edison enterprises demanded centralized administration of
bookkeeping and information gathering. Edison had been his own promoter in
the nineteenth century and had taken the work very seriously.
The laboratory still played significant part moulding the
public's impression Edison and his work. Marketing consumer durables brought Edison's name into
millions households and the advertising department worked to
keep his name, picture, and signature the public mind
