Thomas Edison's Ghost Telephone

[Hottius Maximus]

My interest in the paranormal has led me to a bizarre story: that is, Thomas Edison had supposedly been working on a telephone to talk to spirits on the other side. If anyone could've done it, it would have been Edison. Does anybody here on the board know what prompted him to do this, assuming that the tale is factual? How did he hope to accomplish this? Was Edison one to attend seances? Does anybody know how far Edison actually got in his quest to do this or why he may have abandoned this project?

[Bryan Ekers]

I thought he was just going to stick his head under the ground and yell.

[hussain1987]

Afterlife is Truth. UFO’s are Truth. Intelligent beings live inside all planets including Moon, Earth etc.
The sad fact is that those in power know it all, hide it from us all who have right to know. Shame to so called intelligent humans.
Never mind what they do. You still can have faith and progress!!!

[twickster]

Moved from Cafe Society --> GQ for a factual description of Edison's actions.

hussain1987, if you want to discuss your own beliefs about psychic phenomena, please start a new thread in Great Debates.

[dolphinboy]

I have heard this also, but according to this it was never true.

Remember that during Edison's time séances were common, and lots of people were trying to communicate with the dead, most of them hucksters.

I heard somewhere that Marconi was trying to create a radio that would be sensitive enough to hear the voices of the dead. I don't know whether that is true either, but it makes a good story.

[Lazlo]

First, a real scientist would have had to do it so Edison could steal it.

[TriPolar]

Originally Posted by Lazlo

First, a real scientist would have had to do it so Edison could steal it.

That's unfair. We're not talking about Bell here. A real scientist would have to do it for Edison, believing he would be paid more than he'd actually receive.

[Koxinga]

If it were possible, George Westinghouse would also have done it, and Edison would have gone around saying that Westinghouse's phone led to demonic possession.

[Chronos]

It wouldn't be necessary for a real scientist to do it. Tesla could just do it instead.

[Senegoid]

Originally Posted by Koxinga

If it were possible, George Westinghouse would also have done it, and Edison would have gone around saying that Westinghouse's phone led to demonic possession.

Who could have known (at the time) whether A/C or D/C would be the way to go?

[Koxinga]

Originally Posted by Senegoid

Who could have known (at the time) whether A/C or D/C would be the way to go?

Maybe they could find out by electrocuting an elephant.

Originally Posted by Chronos

It wouldn't be necessary for a real scientist to do it. Tesla could just do it instead.

In fact, the project sounds a bit more up Tesla's alley, dontchathink?

[eburacum45]

Originally Posted by Koxinga

Maybe they could find out by electrocuting an elephant

That would have been a trunk call, presumably.

[Gyrate]

Originally Posted by dolphinboy

I heard somewhere that Marconi was trying to create a radio that would be sensitive enough to hear the voices of the dead. I don't know whether that is true either, but it makes a good story.

The story I heard was that Marconi was trying to pick up sounds from the distant past - not the dead talking, but people talking a long time ago who were now dead.

[Mijin]

The following link is a response to an Edison-bashing article but is an eye-opening read in its own right. Like most people I initially believed the legends of Edison as super-inventor, until it was widely debunked, but unfortunately the common debunk goes too far and needs to be tempered also.

nikola-tesla-wasnt-god-and-thomas-edison-wasnt-the-devil/

(obviously this is a hijack, but its in the same context as most of the responses in this thread)

[kayaker]

Originally Posted by Senegoid

Who could have known (at the time) whether A/C or D/C would be the way to go?

Malcolm and Angus Young?

[Revtim]

Originally Posted by eburacum45

That would have been a trunk call, presumably.

Wow, did you make a telecommunications joke? I may have been the only person to get it, since I used to work in the field.

[Edward The Head]

History Detectives did a piece on a PsychoPhone that they thought was a device Edison invented to record the afterlife. Honestly I can't remember how it turned out, but there's a video in the link.

[cornflakes]

Originally Posted by eburacum45

That would have been a trunk call, presumably.

Originally Posted by Revtim

Wow, did you make a telecommunications joke? I may have been the only person to get it, since I used to work in the field.

Gee, you two make a twisted pair....

[Gray Ghost]

Not an answer to the OP, but if the OP is interested in the paranormal and Thomas Edison, I think s/he'd like the novel, Expiration Date, from Tim Powers. The ghost of Thomas Edison plays an integral role in the plot. Slow-starting---it is Tim Powers, after all---but a decent read.

[TriPolar]

Originally Posted by Gray Ghost

Not an answer to the OP, but if the OP is interested in the paranormal and Thomas Edison, I think s/he'd like the novel, Expiration Date, from Tim Powers. The ghost of Thomas Edison plays an integral role in the plot. Slow-starting---it is Tim Powers, after all---but a decent read.

Also an episode of the Simpsons.

[johnpost]

it's conceivable that he would work on a ghost phone. his other inventions had ghostly applications.

phonograph to record and preserve ghostly sounds.
telegraph improvements to spread the news of ghost sitings quickly.
electric light to not get caught in the dark by ghosts.
movie camera and projector to preserve ghost images.
chair with extra rear tilting legs, to sleep sitting up for faster escape from ghosts.
electric hammer to rapidly beat ghost with as he was older and had less strength.

[yabob]

Originally Posted by Revtim

Wow, did you make a telecommunications joke? I may have been the only person to get it, since I used to work in the field.

Nope. So did I.

[Drunky Smurf]

Originally Posted by yabob

Nope. So did I.

Same here and I never worked in the field..

[TriPolar]

Originally Posted by Drunky Smurf

Same here and I never worked in the field..

Me too. And though I've had some overlap with the telecommunications field, I didn't hear it there. It's pretty common in general culture, though probably less so in the modern cellular era.

[Alka Seltzer]

Yes, it's true. Edison designed the phone so he could learn authentic Kung-Fu from Native American spirit guides, and thoroughly kick Tesla's ass.

The myth may come from an interview Edison gave to Scientific American, where he was asked whether his device could communicate with spirits.

So popular were such ideas that Thomas Edison was asked in an interview with Scientific American to comment on the possibility of using his inventions to communicate with spirits. He replied that if the spirits were only capable of subtle influences, a sensitive recording device would provide a better chance of spirit communication than the table tipping and ouija boards mediums employed at the time. However, there is no indication that Edison ever designed or constructed a device for such a purpose.

If Edison's reply was sincere, it seems he believed in or did not discount the possibility of the existence of ghosts. Or possibly he just spotted another marketing opportunity....

Originally Posted by Drunky Smurf

Same here and I never worked in the field..

Likewise. Most people have heard of a trunk call, even if technically they aren't quite sure what it is.

[yabob]

One can find this rather amusingly hyperbolic article from "Modern Mechanix", Oct. 1933:

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/ediso...t-experiments/

What it boils down to is a claim that Edison thought that if spirits existed, they would manifest some physical presence which could be detected. So he set up a beam projector and and a photocell in room with mediums summoning spirits, and waited for the spirits to register by crossing the beam. They didn't.

[Hypno-Toad]

Originally Posted by cornflakes

Gee, you two make a twisted pair....

It was quite an exchange.

[furryman]

Originally Posted by johnpost

it's conceivable that he would work on a ghost phone. his other inventions had ghostly applications.

phonograph to record and preserve ghostly sounds.
telegraph improvements to spread the news of ghost sitings quickly.
electric light to not get caught in the dark by ghosts.
movie camera and projector to preserve ghost images.
chair with extra rear tilting legs, to sleep sitting up for faster escape from ghosts.
electric hammer to rapidly beat ghost with as he was older and had less strength.

Considering that 50% of the movies I watch have dead people starring in them it must have worked.

[John Bredin]

Originally Posted by Edward The Head

History Detectives did a piece on a PsychoPhone that they thought was a device Edison invented to record the afterlife. Honestly I can't remember how it turned out, but there's a video in the link.

I remember that one: it wasn't intended to be a talk-to-the-dead device but was a phonograph-like device that would repeat self-improvement mantras while the sucker subject slept.

Oh, and I got the trunk call reference only because I read a Hercule Poirot mystery where a person inadvertently reveals that they had spent significant time in America though they denied (or didn't reveal) it by referring off-hand to a long-distance phone call as such (US usage) rather than as a trunk call (UK usage).

[Musicat]

Originally Posted by Revtim

Wow, did you make a telecommunications joke? I may have been the only person to get it, since I used to work in the field.

Was that a magnetic field?

[yabob]

BTW, in the late 19th and early 20th century, belief in spiritualism was not that uncommon. Believers included some rational scientific types such as William Crookes, Alfred Russel Wallace and Lord Rayleigh. And some hardheaded industrialists such as Henry Ford. The whole thing appealed to the mind set of educated Victorians, and the popularity survived into the 20th century.

(It was Ford, BTW, who insisted on capturing Edison's last breath in a glass tube, providing a plot point for the Tim Powers novel mentioned above.)