CONTENTS OF SMALL CHEST RECEIVED BY THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION FROM MRS. LAURA F. TAINTER, 1950
Typed manuscript—"Memoirs of Charles Sumner Tainter" (plus many photostats of notes and articles) 4½ inches thick, pp. 1-71 to about 1878, pp. 1 to 104 to factory at Bridgeport, some pages missing.
Box—containing handwritten notes for "memoirs" includes copies of text of above (less photostats); copies of short biography; agreement creating American Graphophone Co.; letter of election to life membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Binder—exhibits of Tainter drawings in American Graphophone Co. vs. Edison Phonograph Works., vol. 1, U. S. Circuit Court, New Jersey.
Folder—clippings and photostats relating to the machines deposited in Smithsonian.
Certificate of appointment "Officer de l'Instruction publique," France, October 31, 1889, for exhibition of Graphophone, Exposition Universelle, 1889.
Framed photo of Berliner & Tainter, 1919.
Photo of Tainter, 1919.
Separate package containing gold medal, certificate, Panama-Pacific Exposition, San Francisco, 1915; gold medal, certificate, Exposition Internationale Electricite, Paris, 1881.
Footnotes:
[1] Charles Sumner Tainter (1854-1940), "The talking machine and some little known facts in connection with its early development," unpublished manuscript in the collections of the U. S. National Museum.
[2] One of the most interesting prophecies was written in 1656 by Cyrano de Bergerac, in his Comic history of the states and empires of the Moon:
"'I began to study closely my books and their covers which impressed me for their richness. One was decorated with a single diamond, more brilliant by far than ours. The second seemed but a single pearl cleft in twain.
"'When I opened the covers, I found inside something made of metal, not unlike our clocks, full of mysterious little springs and almost invisible mechanisms. 'Tis a book, 'tis true, but a miraculous book, which has no pages or letters. Indeed, 'tis a book which to enjoy the eyes are useless; only ears suffice. When a man desires to read, then, he surrounds this contrivance with many small tendons of every kind, then he places the needle on the chapter to be heard and, at the same time, there come, as from the mouth of a man or from an instrument of music, all those clear and separate sounds which make up the Lunarians' tongue.'" (See A. Coeuroy and G. Clarence, Le phonographe, Paris, 1929, p. 9, 10.)
[3] Tainter retained a lifelong admiration for Alexander Graham Bell. This is Tainter's description of their first meeting in Cambridge: "... one day I received a visit from a very distinguished looking gentleman with jet black hair and beard, who announced himself as Mr. A. Graham Bell. His charm of manner and conversation attracted me greatly...." Tainter, op. cit. ([footnote 1]), p. 2.
[4] A. G. Bell apparently spent little time in the Volta Laboratory. The Dr. Bell referred to in Tainter's notebooks is Chichester A. Bell. The basic graphophone patent (U. S. patent 341214) was issued to C. A. Bell and Tainter. The Tainter material reveals A. G. Bell as the man who suggested the basic lines of research (and furnished the money), and then allowed his associates to get the credit for many of the inventions that resulted.
[5] Tainter, op. cit. (footnote 1), p. 3.
[6] Ibid., p. 5.
[7] Ibid., p. 30.
[8] As quoted by The Washington Herald, October 28, 1937.
[9] Tainter, op. cit. (footnote 1), pp. 28, 29.
[10] The basic distinction between the first Edison patent, and the Bell and Tainter patent of 1886 was the method of recording. Edison's method was to indent the sound waves on a piece of tin-foil (wax was included as a recording material in his English patent); the Bell and Tainter improvement called for cutting or "engraving" the sound waves into a wax record, with a sharp recording stylus.
The strength of Bell and Tainter patent is indicated by the following excerpt from a letter written by a Washington patent attorney, S. T. Cameron, who was a member of the law firm which carried on litigation for the American Graphophone Co. The letter is dated December 8, 1914, and is addressed to George C. Maynard, Curator of Mechanical Technology, U. S. National Museum: "Subsequent to the issuance of the Bell and Tainter patent No. 341214, Edison announced that he would shortly produce his 'new phonograph' which, when it appeared, was in fact nothing but the Bell and Tainter record set forth in their patent 341214, being a record cut or engraved in wax or wax-like material, although Edison always insisted on calling this record an 'indented' record, doubtless because his original tin-foil record was an 'indented' record. Edison was compelled to acknowledge that his 'new phonograph' was an infringement of the Bell and Tainter patent 341214, and took out a license under the Bell and Tainter patent and made his records under that patent as the result of that license."
Transcriber's Note:
Additional spacing after some of the quotations is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text.