Upcoming 1890 Edison Trial Evidence auction

[Chip Crider]

Thanks for the compliment Bill, I didn't think anyone appreciated my efforts in amassing and preserving early electric light and power history.  Yes, I thought the transcripts were a good find and now I'm kicking myself for not picking up the McKeesport transcripts several years ago when they were available.  I thought they would be boring.

My intent in posting was to speak out against the speculative conjecture that in my opinion was rampant here, not to influence any bidders.  And I don't think my postings affected the outcome one bit and here's why:
1. This bulb site is visited by serious bulb collectors and, as I have recently learned, most of them who would be in a position to buy had come to the same conclusions on their own weeks ago. 
2. The great white hunters who might buy something like this as a trophy for their office lobby wouldn't visit this site, even if they won the auction.  They are interested in show, not details, collecting and history; just show.
3. This is why the auction didn't end in a sale (yet) in my opinion:
  a. A ridiculously high reserve.
  b. The decisions on the part of several individuals to claim this is an evidence collection rather than a light bulb collection with some absolutely killer early bulbs, a few of which were used as evidence in the USEL case and a few others that were used as patent exhibits and maybe as evidence in earlier cases.
  c. The selected means of sale - overseas auction house with a large buyer's premium plus double tax jeopardy (VAT and state sales taxes in the US).  Combined, this would have cost some qualified US bidders almost 30% of the hammer price.  That alone depresses bids.
4. Had the reserve been reasonable, the market would have set the price based on the value of the early bulbs, not on the value as alleged evidence. 

I have heard from a handful of you and no one has suggested that I'm even the slightest bit off base.  I also have been hearing of even more Edison effect tubes.  Yet another one with a private collector, one that was destroyed by accident in the 70's and... one with platinum clamps.  That would predate everything above.  I know who the collector is that has that bulb and I'm assuming that he is a regular reader of these forums.  So please, post a picture of your tube.  And I still haven't checked with any of the museums.

Unfortunately, the human side of this story is probably one side that we will never hear.  For fun, consider the following: if your ancestor was an player in one of the most important inventions in world history and you had a box of historical items that were his would you

a. Carefully select a museum and donate them to preserve your family's legacy for future generations.
b. Sell them to the highest bidder, thus potentially allowing them to be separated and disappear into collections far from public view.
c. Not be learned about your ancestor's contributions and sell them to the first guy who came along and said they weren't worth much.
d. Die without any heirs having never gotten around to doing anything with them.
e. Throw them out.
f. Give them to someone who was interested whom you thought had a good chance of preserving them.

Interesting questions.  What would you do???

[Chip Crider]

A little clarification here.  A couple of you gave me the email of the purpoted owner of the platinum clamped bulb mentioned above.  I was able to contact him and he is unwilling to even confirm or deny that the bulb exists let alone supply a photo. So, to avoid speculative conjecture, I'll have to say that, for now, the bulb does not exist.  An Edison effect bulb with those clamps does seem to be slightly out of sync with the known time line yet I've seen other artifacts that seem to be out of sync as well.  An example is a bulb with copper plated clamps and an Edison wood screw base.
I have seen 3 of those.  At any rate, with experimental bulbs it is hard to say what might have been used.  When working at  a frantic pace in the laboratory one often has to utilize what is handy and just move forward.

[Bill Anderson]

News Flash:? The highest bid on the bulbs was 95,000 pounds (approximately $ 190,000 dollars). I bet the reserve was 100,000 pounds.

I received an e-mail from Christie's that they are accepting private bids in an effort to conclude a sale.



Here's a press article:

Edison's light bulbs fail to fetch reserve price at Christie's auction

Washington, Dec 16(ANI): A box containing 23 light bulbs used to prove that Thomas Edison was the inventor of the electric light bulb in a trial in 1890, ten years after he obtained his US patent for the invention, failed to sell at an auction on Wednesday.?
?
 Christie's auction house put the bulbs under the hammer in the first-ever dedicated sale of scientific artefacts in London. The auction house expected to raise between 200,000 pounds to 300,000 pounds from the sale of the light bulbs. However, the highest bid came in at just 95,000 pounds ."They're incredibly important in the history of invention," Nature quoted Christie's Matthew Paton, as saying.

The wooden box of samples, assembled for a court case in 1890 which upheld Edison's patent, contains unique surviving examples of early bulbs by Edison and his contemporaries, believed long since lost or destroyed. It was found in a house in America three years ago. The box and its extraordinary contents, in perfect condition except the two bulbs broken in court so their construction could be examined.

One of the bulbs proves that Edison invented a working diode 21 years before John Ambrose Fleming patented it. In the 1870s Edison was one of several engineers working on incandescent filament light bulbs. Joseph Swan patented his in Britain in 1878, and Edison obtained U.S. patent 223,898 for his in 1880. (ANI)

[Chip Crider]

Well, that's good news that the auction is still alive.

I have been continuing my investigation into the Edison effect bulbs.  A helpful tube collector has referred me to a book "The Saga of the Vacuum Tube" first printed in 1943 by Tyne.  Another helpful collector emailed me scans but for some reason I am unable extract them in order to post them.  The relevant pages are 30 -35.  It states that Edison's first experiment in this area was Feb. 13, 1880 and the notebook sketch does NOT show a pointed electrode in the horseshoe. That time is the era of platinum or nickel clamps. The picture on page 32 shows the Edison effect bulb that I saw 33 years ago.  It has a collector plate in the middle of the horseshoe.  Later on in the article it mentions two things that happened at the 1884 Electrical Exhibition in Philadelphia (which ran from Sept. 2 to Oct. 11 according to official catalog).  First, the Edison experiments were discussed and that Preece returned to England with several tubes that Edison had been using in his experiments - these must be the very tubes that I posted pix of earlier.   The copper plated clamps on these bulbs and the auction bulb are appropriate for the period 1881 to 1884 (Howell and Schroeder book).   Second, it is stated that Edison exhibited an indicator (i.e. meter) that used this bulb.  Now I have never come across any other evidence that this indicator ever became a product.  If it did, I would imagine that it would have been transferred to Bergmann & Co. for manufacture.  Edison's patent for the Edison effect tube was applied for Nov. 15, 1883 and it was to be used as an indicator.  The Howell note says the auction tube was used in 1883.  Once again, observe that the auction tube has a base which would not be typical of an experimental tube based on the 3 other examples that I have unearthed so far.  And the base is what we call and 1884 base - you will see on page 186 in the Howell and Schroeder book that the plaster ring was omitted in 1884.  In the Schroeder book written earlier you can read the photo caption and calculate the same date.  You will also see that the Howell note was written much later in time.  He even has trouble fixing the date of the 1894 bulb exactly. 

All that being observed, my opinion is as follows:
a. The auction bulb was made in 1884, not 1883 (Howell's memory was not exact after many years)
b. Both the Preece bulbs and the auction bulb were made about the same time.  Without specific page reference to the Edison notebooks showing a bulb with a socket AND a pointed electrode, I do not see how one could claim any one of them was earlier than the other.
c.  Given the much more finished appearance of the auction bulb and the fact that it has a base and that he base was of the style not used until 1884 -- I think the auction bulb was made for use in the prototype indicator that was shown at the 1884 Electrical Exhibition.  That would make it a unique relic in its own right.  After all, other bulbs in the Howell box were marked as having been at the 1884 Exhibition.

Tim, if you have the Tyne book, please post scans of pages 30-35.

When i get some time I will examine my electrical journals to see if any plates of Edison's indicator were shown.

[Tim]

Tim, if you have the Tyne book, please post scans of pages 30-35.

From Gerald F.J. Tyne's book Saga of the Vacuum Tube, Chapter 2, pages 30 thru 35:
Even as Hittorf pursued his scientific researches, the characteristics of a kindred device were being investigated by those in the engineering field, beginning with Thomas A. Edison. In 1879 Edison succeeded in making a commercially practicable incandescent lamp. While practicable, it was far from perfect. Edison soon observed that as the time of operation increased, the light output of the lamp was reduced by a blackish deposit on the interior of the glass bulb. He found this deposit to be carbon and theorized that by some electrical process carbon had been removed from the filament and carried to the wall of the bulb. He called this process "electrical carrying," and he initiated a series of experiments to find a way to prevent its occurrence. The first experiment was undertaken on February 13, 1880, and Edison's notebook record of it is shown in Fig. 2-1. Other experiments followed, involving multiple auxiliary electrodes of different materials, magnets, and so forth.

In the course of these investigations, two other things of importance were observed. First, in some instances there was found on the glass, in the plane of the filament, a line on which the deposit was very light. Such a bulb is shown in Fig. 2-2. Second, the leg of the filament which was connected to the positive pole of the supply circuit was the one which "cast the shadow." It appeared as though the opposite leg, which was connected to the negative pole, was throwing off minute particles of filament material which traveled outward in straight lines and were deposited everywhere on the glass except where it was screened by the positive leg of the filament.

In order to study this condition further, Edison had made some lamps which contained a metallic shielding plate between the legs of the filament. One of these bulbs is shown in Fig. 2-3. Edison found that when this plate was connected to the positive leg of the incandescent filament a current would flow across the vacuous space; no current would flow if it was connected to the negative leg. Edison thought this device could be used to indicate variations of potential on a lighting circuit by measuring the current in the plate-filament circuit. The notebook record of his instructions for such a trial is shown in Fig. 2-4. The arrangement worked satisfactorily,[1] and Edison applied for a patent on his "Electrical Indicator" on November 15, 1883. In this patent he noted that "This current [across the vacuous space] I have found to be proportional to the degree of incandescence of the conductor [filament] or the candlepower of the lamp."[2]

The International Electrical Exhibition was held in Philadelphia in the fall of 1884, and Edison's indicator lamp was on display. In connection with this exhibition the newly formed American Institute of Electrical Engineers held its first meeting. At Edison's request Professor Edwin J. Houston presented a paper entitled "Notes on Phenomena in Incandescent Lamps."[3] In this paper Houston referred to the peculiar high-vacuum phenomena observed by Edison in some of his incandescent lamps and described some of Edison's experiments.

Among those present, and taking an active part in the discussion which followed the presentation of the paper, was William Preece (later Sir William Preece, engineer-in-chief of the British General Post Office), who was extremely interested in this new phenomenon. He announced that he intended to exercise his "persuasive eloquence" upon Edison to induce him to give him one of these lamps, and said, "When I go back to England I shall certainly make an illustration before our Society there, and then make careful inquiry into it."[4] How he succeeded and what he did will be told later.

Edison formed the New York Edison Illuminating Company to carry out his system of incandescent lamp lighting. In 1881 he organized the Edison Electric Light Company of London for the same purpose. Early in 1882 John Ambrose Fleming (who was later knighted) was appointed electrician to the new London company and later became its scientific adviser. He was thus brought into close touch with the many problems which arose in the use of incandescent lamps. He, like Edison, noted that when the lamps were discolored in service there was frequently a line of less discoloration on one side, in the plane of the filament. This he termed a "molecular shadow." His first mention of it came in a paper read before the Physical Society of London on May 26, 1883.[5] This paper was more or less a brief summary, to precede a full discussion, which was not presented until some two years later, on June 27, 1885.[6]

In the interim, Preece had returned from the United States with the fruits of his persuasive eloquence, in the form of several Edison-effect lamps. He duplicated Edison's experiments and made quantitative measurements of the Edison effect, presenting the results to the Royal Society on March 26, 1885.[7] It is in this paper that the expressions "blue effect" (later blue glow) and "Edison effect" first appear.[8] Preece observed that in the presence of the blue effect (caused by the ionization of residual gas in the bulb) current could be caused to flow in either direction across the vacuous space. He also confirmed Edison's observation that the current through the vacuous space was proportional to the degree of incandescence of the lamp. This last observation had been, of course, given in Edison's application for a patent, which was issued on October 21, 1884.

It is uncertain how Fleming first learned of the Edison effect: it may have been from Preece, from the Edison patent, or from some other publication. But apparently after his 1885 paper, mentioned above, he began to study the Edison effect in his work on molecular shadows. On February 14, 1890, he presented a discourse before the Royal Institution entitled "Problems in the Physics of an Electric Lamp."[9] He again discussed molecular shadows and the reason for their formation. He also reviewed the work of Edison and of Preece and showed that a single Clark cell (electromotive force = 1.43 volts), if connected with its positive pole to the cold electrode, was capable of sending a sensible current across the vacuous space.

On March 27, 1896, Fleming reported to the Physical Society of London the results of his further work along these lines.[10] He further demonstrated that even if the lamp filament was energized by alternating current of 80-122 cycles per second, the current flowing in the circuit to the cold electrode was unidirectional, regardless of which side of the filament was connected through the galvanometer to the cold electrode; that is, the lamp functioned as a rectifier.[11] There the matter rested for a number of years.

[Tim]

So, I heard the trial evidence lamps went to the auction block for a second time around.  Does anyone know if they sold?  What?s the status?  Anyone know?