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Mucker - From TAE, Inc. to NPS:
Harold Anderson (1895-1988)
Harold Stephen Anderson was born
on May 6, 1895 in Thompsonville, Michigan. After graduation from high school,
he attended Harvard University, receiving an A.B. degree in 1917. That
summer Harold Anderson joined the 15th U.S. Engineers Regiment and spent
the next year and a half repairing railroad lines in France. Returning
to the United States in mid-1919, Anderson was hired as a stock record
clerk for the Cushman and Denison Manufacturing Company in New York City.
Upon news of his father's death in June of 1920 Anderson returned home
to Michigan for six months. He then traveled back to New York and was rehired
at the same firm as a purchasing agent where he remained for three years.
He married Dorothy Josephine Holland in April 1921 and their first two
sons were born in 1922 and 1924.
In November 1924, after the sale
of Cushman and Denison to a competitor, Harold Anderson passed the TAE,
Inc., application questionnaire and was hired as Inspector in the Disc
Record Manufacturing Division. He later moved to the advertising department
of the radio and phonograph divisions where he remained until the complete
withdrawal of TAE, Inc., from those businesses in 1931. Soon afterward,
Harold Anderson was named Treasurer of the newly formed Calibron Products,
Inc., a company established by Theodore Edison to keep some of his late
father's employees and engineers working together on research projects.
In 1939, Anderson transferred to
the Research Department, General Division of TAE, Inc., and, along with
other duties, began taking on a curatorial role in the Edison Laboratories.
Harold Anderson was officially named Museum Curator in 1948 when the laboratory
buildings were turned over to the Thomas A. Edison Foundation. Harold Anderson
remained museum curator through the 1956 takeover by the National Park
Service until his retirement in the 1970s. In 1969, Anderson was presented
with a U.S. Department of the Interior Citation for Meritorious Service
for thirty years service as Museum Curator.
Mucker and Edison's right hand
man: Charles Batchelor (1845-1910)
Charles Batchelor, one of Edison's
closest laboratory assistants and business partners during the 1870s and
1880s, was born in London on Christmas Day, 1845, and grew up in Manchester.
Trained as a mechanic, he was sent to the United States in 1870 to install
machinery at the Clark Sewing Thread Mills in Newark, New Jersey. There
he met Edison and joined the inventor in his Newark shop, later moving
with him to Menlo Park.
Charles Batchelor worked with Edison
on numerous technologies including telegraphy, telephony, electrical lighting,
and the phonograph. A gifted experimenter, he was Edison's "hands," testing,
tinkering with, and improving the models and apparatus built for Edison
by John Kruesi.
Charles Batchelor undertook several
overseas assignments for Edison. In 1879, he went to London to supervise
technical operations of the Edison Telephone Company of Great Britain,
but he was taken ill there and returned to Menlo Park. Two years later
Batchelor installed a model of an electrical lighting station for the Paris
Electrical Exposition of 1881. He stayed on in the city for three years
to manage the recently-founded Société Continentale Edison
which controlled Edison's lighting patents; technicians trained there built
central stations throughout Europe.
Along with other Edison assistants
such as Samuel Insull, John Kruesi, Francis Upton, and Edward H. Johnson, Charles
Batchelor was an investor in Edison manufacturing enterprises, beginning
with the Edison Electric Light Company (1878), and continuing with the
Edison Lamp Company (1880), the Edison Machine Works (1881), which Batchelor
managed between 1884 and 1888, and the Edison General Electric Company
(1888). It was through their positions as both investors in, and employees
of, these concerns that Edison and his men derived much of their income.
When Edison relocated his experimental
laboratory to West Orange, New Jersey, in 1887, Charles Batchelor supervised
the construction of the buildings. Later, Batchelor became Treasurer and
General Manager of the General Electric Company (which succeeded the Edison
General Electric Company in 1892). Following his retirement from that position,
Charles Batchelor returned in 1899 to assist Edison with his ore milling
project, regularly inspecting the Ogden plant and reporting his findings
to Edison.
Charles Batchelor was President of
the Taylor Foundry Company at the time of his death, New Year's Day, 1910.
images and information provided by
the National Parks Service
©Mary
Bellis
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