Edison: His Life and Inventions

by Frank Lewis Dyer; Thomas Commerford Martin

"In looking back on those days and scrutinizing them through the years, I am impressed by the greatness, the solitary greatness I may say, of Mr. Edison. We all felt then that we were of importance, and that our contribution of effort and zeal were vital. I can see now, however, that the best of us was nothing but the fly on the wheel. Suppose anything had happened to Edison? All would have been chaos and ruin.. To him, therefore, be the glory, if not the profit."

The foregoing remarks of Major Eaton show authoritatively how the much-discussed delay in litigating the Edison patents was so greatly misunderstood at the time, and also how imperatively necessary it was for Edison and his associates to devote their entire time and energies to the commercial development of the art. As the lighting business increased, however, and a great number of additional men were initiated into its mysteries, Edison and his experts were able to spare some time to legal matters, and an era of active patent litigation against infringers was opened about the year 1885 by the Edison company, and thereafter continued for many years.

While the history of this vast array of legal proceedings possesses a fascinating interest for those involved, as well as for professional men, legal and scientific, it could not be expected that it would excite any such feeling on the part of a casual reader. Hence, it is not proposed to encumber this narrative with any detailed record of the numerous suits that were brought and conducted through their complicated ramifications by eminent counsel. Suffice it to say that within about sixteen years after the commencement of active patent litigation, there had been spent by the owners of the Edison lighting patents upward of two million dollars in prosecuting more than two hundred lawsuits brought against persons who were infringing many of the patents of Edison on the incandescent electric lamp and component parts of his system. Over fifty separate patents were involved in these suits, including the basic one on the lamp (ordinarily called the "Filament" patent), other detail lamp patents, as well as those on sockets, switches, dynamos, motors, and distributing systems.

The principal, or "test," suit on the "Filament" patent was that brought against "The United States Electric Lighting Company," which became a cause celebre in the annals of American jurisprudence. Edison's claims were strenuously and stubbornly contested throughout a series of intense legal conflicts that raged in the courts for a great many years. Both sides of the controversy were represented by legal talent of the highest order, under whose examination and cross-examination volumes of testimony were taken, until the printed record (including exhibits) amounted to more than six thousand pages. Scientific and technical literature and records in all parts of the civilized world were subjected to the most minute scrutiny of opposing experts in the endeavor to prove Edison to be merely an adapter of methods and devices already projected or suggested by others. The world was ransacked for anything that might be claimed as an anticipation of what he had done. Every conceivable phase of ingenuity that could be devised by technical experts was exercised in the attempt to show that Edison had accomplished nothing new. Everything that legal acumen could suggest—every subtle technicality of the law—all the complicated variations of phraseology that the novel nomenclature of a young art would allow—all were pressed into service and availed of by the contestors of the Edison invention in their desperate effort to defeat his claims. It was all in vain, however, for the decision of the court was in favor of Edison, and his lamp patent was sustained not only by the tribunal of the first resort, but also by the Appellate Court some time afterward.

The first trial was had before Judge Wallace in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, and the appeal was heard by Judges Lacombe and Shipman, of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals. Before both tribunals the cause had been fully represented by counsel chosen from among the most eminent representatives of the bar at that time, those representing the Edison interests being the late Clarence A. Seward and Grosvenor P. Lowrey, together with Sherburne Blake Eaton, Albert H. Walker, and Richard N. Dyer. The presentation of the case to the courts had in both instances been marked by masterly and able arguments, elucidated by experiments and demonstrations to educate the judges on technical points. Some appreciation of the magnitude of this case may be gained from the fact that the argument on its first trial employed a great many days, and the minutes covered hundreds of pages of closely typewritten matter, while the argument on appeal required eight days, and was set forth in eight hundred and fifty pages of typewriting. Eliminating all purely forensic eloquence and exparte statements, the addresses of counsel in this celebrated suit are worthy of deep study by an earnest student, for, taken together, they comprise the most concise, authentic, and complete history of the prior state of the art and the development of the incandescent lamp that had been made up to that time. [22]

[Footnote 22: The argument on appeal was conducted with the dignity
and decorum that characterize such a proceeding in that
court. There is usually little that savors of humor in the
ordinary conduct of a case of this kind, but in the present
instance a pertinent story was related by Mr. Lowrey, and it
is now reproduced. In the course of his address to the
court, Mr. Lowrey said:
"I have to mention the name of one expert whose testimony
will, I believe, be found as accurate, as sincere, as
straightforward as if it were the preaching of the gospel. I
do it with great pleasure, and I ask you to read the
testimony of Charles L. Clarke along with that of Thomas A.
Edison. He had rather a hard row to hoe. He is a young
gentleman; he is a very well-instructed man in his
profession; he is not what I have called in the argument
below an expert in the art of testifying, like some of the
others, he has not yet become expert; what he may descend to
later cannot be known; he entered upon his first experience,
I think, with my brother Duncan, who is no trifler when he
comes to deal with these questions, and for several months
Mr. Clarke was pursued up and down, over a range of
suggestions of what he would have thought if he had thought
something else had been said at some time when something
else was not said."
Mr. Duncan—"I got three pages a day out of him, too."
Mr. Lowrey—"Well, it was a good result. It always recalled
to me what I venture now, since my friend breaks in upon me
in this rude manner, to tell the court as well illustrative
of what happened there. It is the story of the pickerel and
the roach. My friend, Professor Von Reisenberg, of the
University of Ghent, pursued a series of investigations into
the capacity of various animals to receive ideas. Among the
rest he put a pickerel into a tank containing water, and
separated across its middle by a transparent glass plate,
and on the other side he put a red roach. Now your Honors
both know how a pickerel loves a red roach, and I have no
doubt you will remember that he is a fish of a very low
forehead and an unlimited appetite. When this pickerel saw
the red roach through the glass, he made one of those awful
dashes which is usually the ruin of whatever stands in its
way; but he didn't reach the red roach. He received an
impression, doubtless. It was not sufficient, however, to
discourage him, and he immediately tried again, and he
continued to try for three-quarters of an hour. At the end
of three-quarters of an hour he seemed a little shaken and
discouraged, and stopped, and the red roach was taken out
for that day and the pickerel left. On the succeeding day
the red roach was restored, and the pickerel had forgotten
the impressions of the first day, and he repeated this
again. At the end of the second day the roach was taken out.
This was continued, not through so long a period as the
effort to take my friend Clarke and devour him, but for a
period of about three weeks. At the end of the three weeks,
the time during which the pickerel persisted each day had
been shortened and shortened, until it was at last
discovered that he didn't try at all. The plate glass was
then removed, and the pickerel and the red roach sailed
around together in perfect peace ever afterward. The
pickerel doubtless attributed to the roach all this shaking,
the rebuff which he had received. And that is about the
condition in which my brother Duncan and my friend Clarke
were at the end of this examination."
Mr. Duncan—"I notice on the redirect that Mr. Clarke
changed his color."
Mr. Lowrey—"Well, perhaps he was a different kind of a
roach then; but you didn't succeed in taking him.
"I beg your Honors to read the testimony of Mr. Clarke in
the light of the anecdote of the pickerel and the roach."

Owing to long-protracted delays incident to the taking of testimony and preparation for trial, the argument before the United States Circuit Court of Appeals was not had until the late spring of 1892, and its decision in favor of the Edison Lamp patent was filed on October 4, 1892, MORE THAN TWELVE YEARS AFTER THE ISSUANCE OF THE PATENT ITSELF.

As the term of the patent had been limited under the law, because certain foreign patents had been issued to Edison before that in this country, there was now but a short time left for enjoyment of the exclusive rights contemplated by the statute and granted to Edison and his assigns by the terms of the patent itself. A vigorous and aggressive legal campaign was therefore inaugurated by the Edison Electric Light Company against the numerous infringing companies and individuals that had sprung up while the main suit was pending. Old suits were revived and new ones instituted. Injunctions were obtained against many old offenders, and it seemed as though the Edison interests were about to come into their own for the brief unexpired term of the fundamental patent, when a new bombshell was dropped into the Edison camp in the shape of an alleged anticipation of the invention forty years previously by one Henry Goebel. Thus, in 1893, the litigation was reopened, and a protracted series of stubbornly contested conflicts was fought in the courts.

Goebel's claims were not unknown to the Edison Company, for as far back as 1882 they had been officially brought to its notice coupled with an offer of sale for a few thousand dollars. A very brief examination into their merits, however, sufficed to demonstrate most emphatically that Goebel had never made a practical incandescent lamp, nor had he ever contributed a single idea or device bearing, remotely or directly, on the development of the art. Edison and his company, therefore, rejected the offer unconditionally and declined to enter into any arrangements whatever with Goebel. During the prosecution of the suits in 1893 it transpired that the Goebel claims had also been investigated by the counsel of the defendant company in the principal litigation already related, but although every conceivable defence and anticipation had been dragged into the case during the many years of its progress, the alleged Goebel anticipation was not even touched upon therein. From this fact it is quite apparent that they placed no credence on its bona fides.

But desperate cases call for desperate remedies. Some of the infringing lamp-manufacturing concerns, which during the long litigation had grown strong and lusty, and thus far had not been enjoined by the court, now saw injunctions staring them in the face, and in desperation set up the Goebel so-called anticipation as a defence in the suits brought against them.