Thomas Alva Edison Jr.

Thomas Alva Edison Jr. around 1900

Thomas Alva Edison Jr. (Born January 10, 1876 in Menlo Park , New Jersey ; † August 25, 1935 in Springfield , Massachusetts ) was an American inventor and a tragic figure of American popular culture .

Childhood and youth

The eldest son of the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison stood in the shadow of his famous father all his life. He was born to Edison's first wife, Mary Stilwell, who died in 1884; Edison jr. grew up mostly in the care of relatives, as his famous father showed him little personal interest. Edison Jr. grew up without his own intervention. already as a child considerable fame, as his name was made the main character of a long series of trivial adventure novels (Th. A. Edison Jr. Stories) by a group of authors working under the pseudonym Philip Reade , which had no relation to reality, but very much in the USA have been successfully marketed. Edison jr. spent his youth in various boarding schools, where he was considered a mediocre student and could hardly live up to the enormous expectations that were placed on him - certainly influenced by the booklets. His relationship with his father was extremely bad, probably due to the fact that he was said to be intimate with his father's second wife, his stepmother, who was only slightly older than himself.

First marriage and useless inventions

At the age of 17, Edison Jr. left. the school. The son's excessive drinking and mental health problems led his father to send him to work in a mining company in Ogden , New Jersey . In 1899 Edison married Jr. the actress Mary Touhey; the couple separated after a few weeks. Mary Touhey Edison tried her best to capitalize on her prominent surname until she died in unexplained circumstances in 1906.

Edison jr. meanwhile tried without real success to follow in the great footsteps of his father and finally to present the ingenious inventions that the dime novels ascribed to him for years. Result was one under the name Wizard Ink distributed water-soluble ink in tablet form and as a Magno-Electric Vitalizer designated Elektrisiergerät that advertising as remedies touted against a variety of diseases, even though it was totally ineffective. At least in the development of this apparatus, Edison jr. to have actually been involved; In the following years, however, miracle drugs and unusable electrical devices sold under his name came onto the market in increasing numbers, which aroused the reasonable suspicion that Edison jr. "Lend" his name to third parties for money for advertising purposes.

Second marriage and death

Edison Jr.'s attempts were more serious. in the field of metallurgy . A new type of steelmaking process, which he developed in collaboration with his uncle William Holzer, turned out to be technically feasible after long experiments; The joint-stock company that was then founded to exploit the invention and whose main investor was a financier from Boston, however, found no buyers for the process. After a few months, the company went bankrupt. Edison Sr., who feared for the good reputation of his own company empire, then forced his son to refrain from any further business use of his family name. Edison jr. had to use the pseudonym Burton Willard instead of his name in public affairs for several years . His father gave him a modest 1903 apanage and asked a guest on a mushroom growing farm in New Jersey are available. In 1906 Edison married Jr. his second wife Beatrice Heyzer, a trained nurse who succeeded in at least temporarily relieving her prominent husband from alcoholism and depression. Despite his repeated failures, Edison Jr. In the following years he did not stop trying to achieve real fame with his own inventions. For several years he worked on a new type of carburetor for automobiles, which was to be marketed under the name Ecometer , but which did not meet with any interest in the auto industry ; Even Henry Ford , who was personally acquainted with Edison , declined to use the system after a few negative tests.

When Edison sen. from the mid-1920s gradually withdrew from the management of his company empire, succeeded his half-brother Charles, Thomas A. Edison jr. to get a representative but influential position in the company management, which was worth enough to enable him a befitting existence.

On August 25, 1935, Thomas A. Edison Jr. found dead in a hotel room in Springfield, Massachusetts , which he had recently rented under an assumed name. Whether it was suicide or a natural cause of death was never finally clarified.

literature

• Neil Baldwin: Edison: Inventing the Century, Hyperion, 1995, ISBN 0-7868-6041-3 .