thomasedison

Another Bain photo (damaged) of this event:

I started the Sloane biography for Wikipedia on December 21, 2008‎. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Eyre_Sloane

Sound chap This Mr Swan...

"... Swan's demonstration of the light bulb at a lecture in Newcastle upon Tyne on 18 December 1878, before its invention by the American Thomas Edison ..." Now consider the idiocy of this. Swan demonstrated the light bulb, so he invented it. OK so the filament was a bit naff, and it was hard to achieve a good vacuum. Thomas Edison cannot have invented it AFTER Swan had already demonstrated it. Give Edison the credit for improving it, and creating a production line for its manufacture, but please, do not fall into that Transatlantic error of thinking Edison invented the light bulb. He did not.

Timothy Jones thanks. We've reworded the caption - we certainly don't believe it was Edison who invented the lightbulb!

Fella on the right there showing off his fine evening wear.

On June 8, 1915. a Chinese trade delegation visited Thomas Edison in Llewellyn Park, West Orange, New Jersey, where he lived. There were 18 in the delegation, with three secretaries. Some of them are indentifed in this new york times account: query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9902E6D81338E6...

Pennyrichardsca found this account of the trip in Electrical World Magazine:

"The commission spent the entire day of June 8 at the plant of Thomas A. Edison, Inc., traveling in a special train directly to the establishment. The members of the commission were received by Mr. Edison in the laboratory and were then taken by Mr. M. R. Hutchison, chief engineer, on a tour of the buildings. The morning was spent in the Edison Storage Battery Company building. The members of the commission and the large party accompanying them were entertained at lunch and afterward viewed educational, comic and talking moving pictures. The guests also saw a demonstration of the machine that records telephone conversations."
books.google.com/books?id=Z2sfAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22J.%20H.%...

Thanks to both of you for this excellent research into the visit by the trade commission. We'll add some of this information to the record the next time we update.