Thomas A. Edison Papers project hits the halfway mark
Archived article from Oct 20, 2003
By Sue Burghard Brooks
Thomas Alva Edison was the leading inventor and innovator of the 19th century, founder of enterprises from the electrical industry to sound recording and motion pictures, and holder of 1,093 U.S. patents. He left behind an enormous collection of papers preserved in the archive at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, N.J.
Twenty-five years ago, on Nov. 3, 1978, Rutgers, the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution and the New Jersey Historical Commission united to undertake an ambitious project: to collect, select, edit and publish — in book form, on microfilm and online — the correspondence, laboratory notes and technical business records of the nation’s most prolific inventor.
Now entering its silver anniversary year, the Thomas A. Edison Papers project has reached its halfway mark and will likely celebrate its completion around its golden anniversary of 50 years.
To help support this massive undertaking, the project recently received a $230,000 National Endowment for the Humanities matching grant, requiring that the project raise an equal amount of funds on its own. This grant is one of the first under President George W. Bush’s “We the People” initiative. The initiative, launched in September 2002 and supported by $100 million from Congress over the next three years, aims to fund grant applications that explore significant events and themes in our nation’s history.
The project is also preparing to embark on a capital campaign to raise the funds that will take the Thomas A. Edison Papers project to completion. “We depend on the generous support of individuals, and of foundation and corporate donors, whose gifts will enable us to preserve one of the nation’s greatest national treasures,” said Edison Papers director and research professor Paul B. Israel, who has been with the project for 22 years. Israel is the author of “Edison: A Life of Invention” (John Wiley & Sons Inc.).
Originally, the magnitude and organizational complexity of the archive deterred researchers from diving into this treasure trove of resources. There were ledger volumes, pocket notebooks, unbound scraps of paper, correspondence, notebooks, scrapbooks and more. Researchers estimated that 1.5 million pages were in the archives in West Orange, and the project was scheduled to last 20 years.
Editors have since unearthed some 5 million pages of Edison-related materials in the archives, as well as thousands of documents in more than 100 repositories and private collections. The Edison Papers project has already published four of a proposed six parts of the microfilm edition, and four of an estimated 15 book volumes. Israel hopes to complete the microfilm edition by 2010 and anticipates the books might take another 20 to 25 years.
“We had a big milestone in 2000 with the launch of the digital edition on our Web site,” Israel said. The site, edison.rutgers.edu, comprises digital images of the first three parts of the microfilm edition plus documents from various repositories. There are 180,000 document images and a searchable database of 118,500 document records and 18,500 names.
|
