Mr. Edison And The Royal Ontario Museum
by Bill Pratt
Now
what
could
Thomas
Edison
have in
common
with the venerable
old Royal Ontario Museum?
For those
of
you
unacquainted
with the ROM, it is a very large
complex
situated
in
Toronto,
Canada,
and
modelled
after
the
British
Museum
in
London
and
the
Metropolitan
Museum
in
New
York.
In the case of the ROM,
however,
as
well
as
housing
Art
and
Archaeology
collections
(Greek
&
Roman,
Egyptian,
West
Asian,
Far
Eastern,
European,
Canadiana,
Textile, etc. departments), it also
displays
Natural
History
collections
(Botany,
Geology,
Minerology,
Vertebrate
and
Invertebrate
Paleontology,
Ichthyology,
Herpetology, etc.)
It
was first
opened to the public in
1914,
expanded
a decade later
and
again
in the early
1980's
when
a
large curatorial
complex
was
added
to
centralize
the
storage
and
research functions of the museum.
Besides its permanent displays,
it has
active
outreach
programs
and
puts
on
several
major
special
exhibitions
each year.
But all that doesn't get us
any
closer
to
the
connection
with
Thomas Edison!
Now,
it
is
certainly
not
uncommon
today
to
see
phonograph
and
record
collections
housed
in
museums.
Period
room settings with
contemporary phonographs to add the
authentic
touch
have
become
standard
fair
in
small
museums
across
the
country.
The
ROM,
however,
does not have a collection
of phonographs or records,
nor
do
its period settings generally
go as
late as the turn of the century.
It
does
house
a
most
important
collection
of
music
scores
and
musical
instruments
acquired
from
R.
S.
Williams,
chief distributor
of Edison's products in Canada.
And
in its Ethnology
Department resides
a Columbia Eagle Graphophone,
which
was used by an Ethnologist in the
early
years
of
this
century
to
record
native
Indian
speech,
and
several
boxes
of
indecipherable
brown
wax
cylinders
from
those
experiments.
But this
does
not
explain the connection with
Thomas
Edison.
The
ROM
and
Mr.
Edison
actually got together
back in
1918
when the first overtures were made
to
place
an
Edison
phonograph
in
the museum.
As you might expect in
a
museum,
very little
is
ever
thrown
away
and
the
central
Registration Department was, almost
instantly,
able
to
produce
the
original
correspondence
on
this
transaction - a letter from Mr.
H.
G.
Stanton,
Vice
President
and
General Manager of R. S. Williams
&
Sons
Co.
Limited
to
Mr.
C.
T.
Currelly,
founding director of the
ROM.
Recently
one
of
our
members,
Domenic
Dibernardo,
spotted
the
wonderful picture of the phonograph
which
had
been
presented
to
the
museum actually
being
used in the
galleries.
This
was printed
in
a
1919 issue of the trade publication
Edison Diamond Points.
The caption
read:
"Any Edison is wonderful enough
to deserve a place in a museum,
of
course,
but it
seems
a
rather
unusual
place
for it,
doesn't
it?
(This
was
1919
remember!
-ed.)
Because
we
usually
think
of
things
in
museums
as
being locked up in
glass cases and labeled
"Don't
Touch!"
-
and
that
would be
most
inappropriate
treatment
for an Edison.
"This
isn't
that
sort
of
museum,
however,
as
you will
see
from
the
picture.
The
children
are
from
Toronto
schools,
and come to the museum
regularly
as
part
of
their
school
work.
The
Edison is
used
in
classes
in
Musical
composition,
History,
and
so
forth,
and
is
proving
invaluable in revivifying these
subjects for children."
The
picture shows
an
Edison William
and Mary Official Laboratory Model Diamond Disc phonograph,
a
model
of
robust
appearance
and
a
natural
for
classroom use.
It is interesting
that
the
more
common
and,
to
my
mind,
even
sturdier-looking,
Chippendale
Model
250
was
not
chosen.
Perhaps,
since it
was
a
gift,
Edison felt the William and
Mary carried
a bit
more prestige
value.
In Mr. Currelly's reply to the
offer
of
the
phonograph,
also
preserved in the museum's files, he
remarks
that
Mr.
Edison
had
"presented
the
big
Museum
in
Cleveland
with
a
very
fine
instrument,
and
a
good collection
of discs.
This is
used
between
addresses
when
the
instructors
noticed that the classes which were
being taken
around showed signs of
becoming
wearied.
They
were then
taken over and given
a few minutes
of music,
and the effect,
I
have
been told,
was
magical,
both with
grown-ups
and with children.
"We
are
very grateful to
you
for giving us this opportunity to
try the
experiment here.
We will
try to give
you as clear
a report
of its
success as possible, for it
may be that this may work out as an
important
educational
feature
for
the Public Schools."
I
did
some
sleuthing
to
determine whether the
ROM still
had the
phonograph
and discovered
that it
had
been
given
to
the
Sombra
Township
Museum in 1961.
I
spoke
to
one
of
the
founding
directors
of that local
museum to
see
whether
the
phonograph
was
still
performing
its
magic
for
them.
I
was told that it is
on
permanent display in the downstairs
parlour
of
Sombra
House,
an
1883
historic house located
on the St.
Clair
River,
20
miles
south
of
Sarnia.
The director was delighted
to
learn
of the history
of their
machine
and
said
that
she
would
check,
when the house opened again
for the
summer season, if it still
carries its inscription "Presented
to
the Royal Ontario Museum of
Archaeology
by
Thomas
A.
Edison,
September 1918."
My
appreciation
to
Domenic
Dibernardo
who kindly loaned
me his
original
Edison
Diamond
Points
publication
which
contained
the
photograph of the ROM's
Diamond
Disc
machine
and to Earl Mathewson
and
Batten
Graphics
who
provided
their time and expertise to achieve
an
excellent
reproduction
for
use
in the newsletter.
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