Thomas Edison’s Spooky Invention Leaves Us With the Chills

But have you heard about his electric pen or his tinfoil phonograph? Well, even the greatest minds don’t succeed every time. Few, however, have gained as much fame as the “monstrosity” that nearly tarnished his career.

Edison has tremendous determination. If he had an idea for a new product, he would not give up on it until he completed the task. He followed every idea through to its very end, and this worked out well for him. But that very determination led him to spend time on inventions that ended up as failures.

It is hard to imagine a person with this much brainpower and the determination to envision and create items for daily use that no one had even imagined. However, there was one area in which he was no genius.

“He was much better at producing technology marketed by either others or for other producers.” This is why those 1,093 patents filed also contained some oddities. And some of those were actually called “monstrosities.”

Paul Israel explains,  “Edison saw ways to learn, to gain knowledge,” Paul Israel wrote, “But commercial failures, of which the toy doll was clearly one, sometimes they don’t really go anywhere.” Again, Edison’s failure to appreciate the importance of marketing was disastrous.

That is why inventions like the electric pen (which was overly powerful and tore paper) and an electric vote recorder (which politicians feared would interfere with their political shenanigans) did not succeed. Perhaps, though, his most bizarre idea was the creation of a toy. That did not go well at all. 

As we will see, Paul Israel was right: Edison’s brain was built for science rather than marketing. Since he never tried to figure out what people wanted, his boondoggle of the toy doll almost ruined the Edison Phonograph Toy Manufacturing Company. The company ended up over $50,000 in debt because of the dolls.

Those of us who remember the TV program The Twilight Zone might say she looked like a character in one of Rod Serling’s episodes. However, Edison had another plan for the doll, and it involved her being the perfect vessel for another invention.

It was Edison’s intention to stick this device inside the doll and enable that toy to talk. He imagined a whole line of toys that could talk, sing, or just make noises. Today we are used to talking toys, but at that time, it didn’t go so well.  

The dolls did indeed “speak.”  The problem was the quality of the recordings. Their renditions of familiar nursery rhymes like “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Jack and Jill” had a haunting, eerie quality to them that was sure to frighten children.

One press piece, in a  1888 newspaper, titled its article  “The Wonderful Toys Which Mr. Edison is Making For Nice Little Girls.” With that kind of coverage, Edison was hoping that by buying their daughters the talking doll, the parents would be enchanted with the phonograph’s abilities.

So these were the world’s first recording artists, and it was part of Edison’s genius that he invented a way to record voices. Today, recording artists are commonplace, but back in the 19th century, this had never been done before.  It was pure magic to the little girls and their parents that the dolls could actually talk.

The fact is that even though they recorded their sweet voices, the recordings made by the machine were not that lovely. In fact, they were a bit rough and scary. And that’s not all that was wrong with the toy doll invention.  

What was worse? The voices coming from the dolls’ tummies were full of static and unclear. Imagine a little girl winding up her doll, expecting to hear a sweet nursery rhyme. What came out of the doll sounded like a frightened child crying for help.

Edison received a letter from a big toy company, Horace Partridge & Co., in April of 1980. The company stated that many dolls were being returned to the stores. It was apparent to the company which distributed the toys that something was very wrong with this doll.

In addition, some did talk, and then the voice inside got fainter and fainter until it stopped. It wasn’t long before word got out that the wondrous doll invented by the famous Thomas Edison was a failure. Many little girls’ hearts were broken when their parents decided to return the new toys.

The Washington Post even printed a sarcastic headline about Edison in 1890:   “Dolls That Talk: They Would Be More Entertaining if You Could Understand What They Say.” Consumers had taken to mocking the great genius, which didn’t sit well with the man himself. Edison decided to do something drastic.

Nevertheless, Edison did not consider this incident a complete failure. His characteristic drive kept him going; he had learned to look at “failures” as mere steps to eventual success.  He is quoted as saying that people who are considered failures are those who actually come very close to success, and then give up.   

Edison immersed himself in finding a way to fix the voice and re-releasing the doll in an improved state. He was determined not to give up until he figured out how to improve the sound emanating from the doll. However, he failed to take into account one rather major issue.

Well, consider that in the 1890s ten dollars was extremely pricey; in fact it is comparable to at least $290  in today’s economy. Now we think that you’ll agree that the price was outrageous. Clearly, Edison was going to have to find a way to decrease manufacturing costs or lower the shelf cost some other way.

A curator at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Carlene Stephens, a specialist in technology, explained that the doll was indeed a brilliant idea. However, she said,  it was never viable for the commercial market. 

Let’s just remember that most of Mr. Edison’s work was highly successful and significant in terms of technology and quality of life around the world.