TLS signed “Thos. A. Edison,” one page, 8.5 x 10.75, From the Laboratory of Thomas A. Edison letterhead, July 18, 1916. Letter to J. B. Taltavall care of the Telegraph and Telephone Age. In full: “I am in receipt of your favor of the 15th instant, which has had my careful attention.
I have not been receiving visiting parties of late, but am going to make an exception in the case of the Old Time Telegraphers and the United States Military Telegraphers, to whom I now extend a cordial invitation to visit me on Wednesday, September 27th next.
I will arrange to have our friends shown some of the plant, and also to provide entertainment, including lunch. As to the arrangement of the details I will ask you to get in communication with Mr. Meadowcroft at my office. I shall be glad to see my old friends and former associates when they come out here on this visit.”
Letter is affixed to an identical size sheet. Intersecting folds, two through a single letters of signature, scattered creasing, wrinkling, and light overall toning, light pencil remnants, and small area of paper loss to top edge, otherwise very good condition. Edison’s umbrella signature is strong.
Edison’s love of—and admiration for—the telegraph dated to his teen years, when, in 1862, he saved a child from being struck by a train. The child’s father, showing his appreciation, taught young Edison to use the telegraph—a skill he used not only in the workplace but also to relay covert messages for the Union during the Civil War. It was generally felt by members of the US Military Telegraph Corps that their service was ‘unhonored and unthanked’ by the government, but Edison was more than willing to remember his colleagues. A decade before extending this invitation, Edison was a guest at a 25th anniversary union of telegraph operators—a gathering in which the inventor spent hours honoring autograph requests. It was the harrowing memory of that encounter that prompted Edison to extend this invitation to his lifelong friends on his own terms. Pre-certified PSA/DNA and RRAuction COA.
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