11: Thomas Edison maybe killed a guy and other enlightening Edison tales
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Hi friends, I hope you're having a wonderful day today. My name is Bailey Sarian and this is the Dark History Podcast. Welcome! If you're a curious cat like myself, then let's go on a journey together and learn something new, shall we?

got my dark history book here. So we're going to bust it open and learn about lights today. Oh yes. Lights. Okay. Listen, I was sitting down, right? I was sitting minding my own business and I was thinking lights, lights. Isn't it weird? Like when you kind of like think about it, we take them for granted. Lights, groundbreaking. They give us light and

So I don't know if you guys know this, but I know when I was in school, I was told that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb. I mean, that's who I get my electric bill from Edison. So like there's gotta be some truth in there, right? But I had heard rumors that Thomas Edison actually didn't invent the light bulb. So then that got me thinking, you know, if he didn't invent the light bulb, then who did? So naturally I went down my Google rabbit hole and it turns out

He did, but like he also didn't at the same time. He was literally like the Steve Jobs of the 1800s or like whenever this took place, but he was like the Steve Jobs of that. Thomas Edison just showed up one day with his dad jeans, white Velcro sneakers and was like, hey, I got an idea. Light, you know, it's going to come out of a bulb. Fucking get on it. Bye. You know, he told the people like make it happen and then just left. That's what he did. So, yeah.

He had everyone else pretty much doing it for him, and he just took all the credit for it. Super iconic. And rumor has it, some of his best ideas were stolen from people he may or may not have even killed.

Like he was good when he started out, but then, okay. Thomas Edison was really good, really smart. I'm not gonna discredit him in any way, shape or form. But as time went on, money always seems to corrupt people. I mean, one of his best scientists, he fried off his arm because of Mr. Edison's ideas. Hello, like would you give up your arm or your life for your boss? No.

Please, we are too busy. We've got shit to do. To be honest here, Edison wasn't the worst guy ever, but he wasn't really that truthful. Again, we're taught that Edison was this scientist, but he was just like another mean businessman who wanted to make money. Same shit, different era. So hop off the Edison hero worship train and all aboard the train that's duct taped together and looks very questionable. Okay, let's get into the story, shall we? Let me open up my book.

What secrets is it going to tell us today? Lots. Lots. Okay. So let's start at the beginning. You know, Thomas Edison. Where did he come from? Well, he was born Thomas Alva Edison and he was born in Milan, Ohio. Yes, Ohio.

All the way back in 1847. Thomas, he was the youngest of seven. And as a boy, he was described as being like a funny little child who loved being alone. Not funny in a fun way. It was like funny, like, you know what they say in the South? You know how they're always like, oh, bless his heart. Oh, bless their heart. It was kind of like that. Like, he's a bit funny, if you know what I mean.

It was kind of like an insult. This kid, he was way more interested in steam engines than normal kid shit, like recess and playing tag. I don't know. He spent a lot of time alone in his room and taught himself how to make his own chemistry lab, printing press, and telegraph equipment. By the way, we're gonna be talking a lot about telegraphs in this episode. It was one of like his biggest things. Basically, it was a way to send text messages over a telephone wire with like beeps, beeps and that kind of stuff.

Kind of like Morse code. And back then, that was a major form of communication. Now the fact that he created one as a child is insane, right? A lot of people call him funny and weird, but he was freaking smart, this guy, okay? And I mean, wow, right? Because when I was a kid, okay, I was practicing making out with my shower wall.

I know, laugh all you want, but I know I'm not alone in that. I was in the shower just making out with my wallet, just practicing for my Prince Charming one day. You know, I don't know. I'm sure someone else out there listening probably did it too. I'm sure my wall would give me five stars. Thank you so much. Now, as you might be able to imagine, a kid who doesn't spend much time socializing is...

maybe kind of bad at socializing. And Edison, he was bad at socializing. He was described as kind of having like a lack of charm and a gruff manner, which is, you know, normally how you describe your possessive ex-boyfriend or something, not a 12-year-old boy. And this fueled his lifelong obsession with experimentation and science. He would rather just spend time in his lab than interacting with people.

which makes sense. I get that. I do that with makeup. Like I haven't left this room in weeks, you know? It's fun. Why talk to people? Just be alone with my thoughts and my stuff. It also didn't help that he was hard of hearing. So Thomas was born half deaf in one ear and fully deaf in another. And sometimes he would use that as a reason to not interact with people, hide away in his lab and just focus on his work. He even said he liked using his partial deafness as a way to avoid people.

In 1854, the Edison family moved to Michigan, but Thomas only briefly attended school. The thing is, there really wasn't like any schooling available when he moved to Michigan. His mom tried homeschooling him, but he was smart on his own. You know, he was like building stuff. He built his own telegraph machine. So school wasn't really his main priority because his family was kind of poor. So school...

It was great and all, but like basically he just wanted to get a job. I mean, he's super smart. He can get a job and financially, I don't know, take care of the family.

It was around age 11 that he decided, you know what? I just want to skip junior high completely. I've spoken to like a career coach and I'm just ready to join the workforce. I don't need school. Which I totally get that. Like junior high sucks, doesn't it? It does. So he shifted his focus to helping his father grow and sell produce for work. He was immediately interested in making money. And soon after he got a job as a train boy on a Michigan railroad. And you might be wondering, well, what the heck is a train boy? How?

Half boy, half train? No, no. It's basically just a kid who walks up and down the passenger train, the aisle, you know, and then sells things like newspapers, magazines, candy, cigarettes, stuff like that. So what he did was he would send the headlines of the newspapers he was selling ahead to the next train stop

So the big crowd of people waiting for the train would all be buzzing around about the headlines and they couldn't wait to buy the newspaper. It was like clickbait before clickbait was a thing. Whatever, you get it. And then when he got to the train stop, he would jack up the price of his papers more and more. So he was just making huge profit at like every stop. Good for him, you know? Great.

Scamming people, we love that. Tommy wanted to invent stuff. I mean, he was a natural at tinkering with electronics, but he was also smart about it. And he realized like, "Hey, people with money, they will pay for this stuff, especially if I do it better than anyone else." Inventing was great and all, but Tommy liked creating his own market. Plus he had discovered at a young age the power of communication and press. And more importantly, that there was money to be made there.

We'll see all of these themes come up a few times, but we think of him as like this great inventor when really he was just a great businessman. I don't want to say just a great businessman. He was a great businessman, an average inventor, and he also had a below average personality. But who didn't in like the, what year is this? 18 something? I'm sure people weren't like freaking amazing. Should we go on a break?

We should go on a break. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

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Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

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That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Dark History. By the age of 16, Tommy got a job as a telegrapher. His job was to send and translate telegraphs as well as fix the machines when they were broken. This paid Tommy's bills, but it would allow him to tinker with the machines so that he can kind of learn how they worked and just learn the technology in general. And his skills were getting better and better.

So he got really good at messing with these machines that he eventually decided to leave his job and just become a full-time inventor. Tommy's first invention was, that's my drum roll, the electric vote recorder. Yeah, it wasn't sexy. I don't know if it was supposed to be sexy, but maybe it was sexy.

I guess it just depends on who you ask. He got his first patent with the idea of speeding up the voting process for senators in Congress. Now, the thing is, the machine, it took too long to set up that people would literally change their minds on who they were going to vote for. Now, they didn't want people changing their minds. It just wasn't worth it. So it really never got used.

And it certainly was not a moneymaker at all. And this was an important lesson for old Tommy because he realized that like, if he's gonna be an inventor, he needs to invent stuff that's gonna make him money. Not necessarily because the world needs it. Blurring.

So one thing I should mention about the business of invention is that it's a lot of passing things back and forth. For example, like let's say Joey, the lighting guys that you guys all roasted, he creates the PC computer and I create the MacBook. They are different, but they serve a similar purpose, do they not? Let's say Amanda makes a mirror and I make a mirror with lights on it with like a magnetic attachment for your phone.

Mine is better and everyone wants mine. So Amanda, she's like,

That was Tommy's whole approach to inventing. He wanted the credit for everything. And the only way to do this was to get the patent for everything. So his goal was just to improve, I'm using quotes here, every single thing he could find and then outsell every other invention similar to his. So he was just like a one-upper essentially. And if you wanna make money at this time, you pack your bags and you head to the Big Apple. You wanna make something of yourself, kid?

You wanna see your name in the lights? Well, first thing you gotta do is invent a light bulb.

Now, Tommy would do just that later on. But this is where like it literally all begins. So it's 1869 in New York City. I feel like all of our stories kind of take place in New York City, right? Isn't that funny? It's not. Now that Tommy was not a mere telegrapher and a full-blown freelance hotshot inventor, he could get his foot in the door with some big names. He started inventing products for Western Union and formed a few businesses that were set up to be little like invention laboratories.

so he could hire people to invent for him while he came up with the ideas. Because of his work as, you know, inventing and doing shit,

Tommy was able to meet the people known at the time as the movers and shakers of the telegraph industry. The biggest names in science, the people above the people, you know? It made it so that he was able to create a few businesses that dabbled in telegraph machinery. This is when he started work on his first successful invention, the Universal Stock Printer.

Wait, no, I'm sorry. He actually didn't invent that. Yeah, you know, he actually improved it. He improved it and put his name on it. So he credited, he was credited as the inventor. The machine was pretty simple and it doesn't exist now, but it just helped with like updating prices and train arrival times a lot faster. It doesn't really matter how it works. The takeaway is that Thomas now had a laboratory and a successful invention bringing in money.

Yes. This is the point in the story where Edison starts to wolf of Wall Street his way into the world of inventing. Now, if Edison were alive today, he would essentially be Jeff Bezos going to the moon. Well, he didn't go to the moon. I'm sorry. He just like went up and then came back down. What was that? What was the point of that? Anyone? Okay. Anyways. So, you know, there are people in the tech industry. They're just putting out app after app.

app after app because right now we're just living in the wild west of app developing and there's a ton of money to be made and a ton of power if you do it correctly especially if you have your eye on being like the next Facebook but back then electricity was a brand new technology and the person who controlled it would have like would have major power and major money I mean this is a time when things like needed to be invented I mean they had electricity but nothing to use it on

Now, what were they gonna use it for? Communication? Power for houses? Business transactions? The answer is yes to all of it. It was a brand new industry ripe for the taking. And a lot of people had the job of inventor in the hopes of inventing the next great thing that everybody would want. Ooh, I just thought of a new game we can play, a dark history game. Take a shot every time I say inventing.

You might die, but it could be fun. Tommy was so obsessed with inventing and telegraphs that when he got married, he had kids and he nicknamed his kids Dot and Dash because of Morse code. Isn't that kind of fun? That's cute. They had a third kid and his nickname was... I'm doing Morse code, you get it? I'm just kidding. He didn't have a nickname because Dot and Dash were taken and honestly, it's for the best. His personal life at this time was just a little different, okay? He would drink...

"pints of warm milk every few hours." Yeah, this was literally the only thing he drank. Warm milk, no water. And he would only eat six ounces of regular food per meal. So that's like barely any food, you know? He was basically on a diet of milk, room temperature milk. And it was believed that milk was super healthy, but he took it like to the next level. He was dedicated to the milk. Probably 'cause he didn't have a fridge.

Probably because he didn't have a fridge. It didn't exist yet. Oh, it makes sense now. Maybe he wasn't that weird. He just liked milk. We don't judge here. Also, Mr. Edison, he claimed to work 50 hours at a time, not per week, in a row. You know? Yeah. So he would take like random naps whenever he felt like it or just whenever he needed it, I guess. But then this got me thinking. When you think back to your great-grandparents or your grandparents and

they would work like 50 hours in a row. I mean, they're always bragging about how hard they had to work, but don't let us in on like, how did they actually do it?

Grandma, was it drugs? Was it drugs, grandma? As you can imagine, living like this is not healthy and it can lead to pretty erratic behavior. Historians note that his mood was disastrous and that he was absent-minded with his wife and emotionally abusive to his children. Super fun. I guess there was even a time where on the 4th of July, he would light fireworks and throw them at his kids.

Thanks, Dad. You know, wow, cool. The milk wasn't working, and he seemed to be not the best father. Great. Sleep is important, people. It makes a big difference. You need at least seven to nine hours. I'm personally practicing sleep hygiene, and you should, too.

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Your cash back really adds up. After years hunched over on his workbench in his little laboratory, Tommy stacked up some cash from quote unquote his inventions and he was ready to expand to a bigger laboratory. He decided to upgrade. It's time to upgrade and he builds one in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Now it's important to know where this was because it became his nickname, the Wizard of

of Menlo Park. So here, Tommy got together with the best scientists and experimenters money could buy. First invention they put together was the tin foil phonograph. Ooh, the tin foil phonograph. What's that?

I don't know. You'll notice a lot of things Edison invented were the foundation for things that we have today. So even though it's still not here, it was a big deal when it came out. So why was the phonograph a big deal? Well, it was the first machine that could record and reproduce sound. Okay. So to us, that may sound a little basic, but this led to the record player, which led to tapes, which led to CDs, which led to digital music.

No phonograph, no iPods, you know? Plus, this technology was used in radios and telephones. So this was, again, a huge deal and the foundation to a lot of things we know today. Some historians think that this invention is why we're able to even have this technology in our phones today. And he did all of this by the age of 31. Basically, the machine looked like a little soda can and it would like

it would spin with a cone near it. And as it spun, it would go through the cone and it would basically play music that way. Later on, it would be simplified and become like what we know today as the record player. So this machine, it was a huge hit and it got him invited to the White House.

They're like, yeah, we want to talk to you, man, and congratulate you. And he's like, yeah. So he went there and then he became internationally famous, right? Because everyone is like, this is amazing. We can hear music. Wow. So the first recording done on this machine was of Tommy himself singing Mary Had a Little Lamb. They would literally scream and sing into it. It's so funny. I watched this video on how they use it and they're like turning it and they're like, Mary.

We had a little lamb. It's, I cry laughed. It was, we're spoiled today, I know. I'm aware. But hold the phonograph, Mr. Edison. America believes you invented this. I mean, I thought that too. I thought that all damn day while I was researching this. But nay nay.

In fact, a man named John Kruse that worked for Thomas Edison was actually the one who invented this device. Edison designed it with his team, but John is credited as the one who like really made all of Edison's wildest dreams come true.

Historians say that if any of the things John made didn't work out, it's not because they were badly made, it's because that they were just straight up bad ideas. So if his ideas were good ones like the phonograph, John would prove it.

And then Tommy would take the credit. Great. To him, life was a competition and he would do anything to beat his competitors and make more money. His competitiveness is why he was always pushing his employees. He was a workaholic and he wanted to be able to say, "Look, I made this crow first." You know? Oh, there's a crow next to me if you're listening to this on the podcast. There's a crow next to me, so that might not make sense, but you know what I'm saying. He wants credit.

Do you know what I wish Edison would have invented? Something to help get rid of cramps. How come no one's coming up with these ideas? Hello, cramps have been around for a hundred million years. Why have we not found out like, what can we, we need some kind of invention to just get rid of them. Am I right? Edison, get on it. Oh wait, you're dead. Sorry, man.

Anyhow, there's no better example of his competitiveness than the contest he had with another company called Volta. Yeah, Volta. They had a way cooler name than Edison Electric, honestly. Real creative, Tommy. Edison, great. Anyway, let me tell you about Volta. They tried to improve Edison's tinfoil phonograph. And once they started trying to improve it, Edison also started trying to improve it. Yeah.

Yes. Volta's improvement was called the perfect graphophone, which when you think about it, it's kind of funny because graphophone is just phonograph backwards. Phonograph, graphophone?

Yeah, they're not very creative. Okay, they just like flip-flop everything. Great. Petty. Love it. The main difference was that they used a wax cylinder to record sound instead of the tinfoil one. It doesn't really matter all that much, but the point is Edison was so mad that they were trying to improve and capitalize on his device that he took them all the way to court so that he could make sure he was credited as the inventor on the patent.

So I know you're probably thinking that something more dramatic was gonna come out of that statement I just made, but you see Edison, he was getting like a taste of how people were gonna start coming for his throne as like the big time electronics inventor. It was just like a little taste of his own medicine. At this point, Edison is at the peak of his career. And the next things that happened for him, they all just kind of happened at the same time, or at least like there's a bunch of overlap going on. So I'm just like gonna tell you about some stuff

that I found to be interesting, you know, but it's not exactly a straight line. It just, it will get really confusing. Look, I'm trying to make this simple, okay? History is hard to simplify, but I'm trying my best. Edison, most famous for the light bulb, right? People won't shut up about the light bulb. It's just like, wow, light bulb. By now, this may not be a surprise to you, but it was not his invention.

Electric lighting already existed in the 1800s, but it was really sketchy because it was super unreliable, it could easily lead to fires, and it was hella expensive.

Edison was interested in his technology because he saw the potential of it. Candles sucked, people were over it. Electricity was the hot new industry. And if there was a way to use electricity to see at night and like make it available to everyone, he knew not only is everyone gonna use it, he's gonna be rich, like super rich. Yeah.

When Edison had this idea, he was like, you know what? Light, we're going to do it. Get to work on it, is what he said to his workers. Get on it. Make a light bulb. Great. Now, there had been a lot of other people who had been experimenting with electric light. The first instance is all the way like almost 80 years previously. It was like in 1802, way before even Edison was born. It was not bright at all. And it really didn't last that long. And it was completely, it was a complete

completely different setup than what we know as today a light bulb looks, you know? I never thought in a million years I'd be sitting talking about history 'cause like I was a straight C, kind of D student and here I am. Like dream big, you guys. Dream big, you know what I'm saying?

Anyways, light bulbs. Several others worked on the technology before Edison even started on it, but nobody really had perfected it. So there was this man named John Starr, which honestly, great name for a light bulb, right, Starr? That's great. But he came the closest to...

Well, inventing light. Because he patented the design and he had like a little twisty wire inside the light bulb that would allow it to glow. It's called a filament. It's still there, I believe. I don't know. But that was basically the main piece that people were trying to invent that would make it work. Anyway, sadly, Star died. Okay, he died. And his design didn't become commercialized yet. Bummer.

The other issue everyone was having when trying to invent this thing was that if air was getting into the glass bulb, then it would make the electricity get too hot because fire needs oxygen and the bulb would like burn out super fast. Does that make sense? But then the big breakthrough or light bulb moment. Ooh.

Joke, you know, if you want to call it that. It happened when a man named Joseph Swan developed a strong enough filament and vacuum pump that would seal the air to create the first version of the modern light bulb in 1878. So what do you think Edison did? He's like, a light bulb? Hmm.

I'm gonna improve it. Improve it. If you've been following along, it basically means just slapping his name on it, you know? So at this point, he was getting very, very good at improving things. It seems very minor, like a bunch of "let's fix this here" and "let's tweak this here." But the short of it is Tommy's light bulb was genuinely better than Swan's. Even if Swan made it first, Tommy did do it better.

Tommy saw the light bulb as revolutionary technology that literally everyone would want. And it was cool as shit, you know? Like light from electricity? Yes, please. No more burning your eyebrows on candles. Let's go. Let's go. We probably would have light technology without Edison, but maybe it would look different, you know? Like his competitiveness, it drove the entire industry. Like today, with computers and the apps and...

What else are they making? Stuff that's important. You know? Cool. So, anywho, in 1880, both men filed patents for what is basically the same damn thing.

Tommy, he didn't deserve a patent, but since his was better, he took Swan all the way to court. He sure did. We don't know much about the actual court proceedings, but how it ended was Tommy made a settlement with Swan where the two of them, they went into business together. He was like, hey, join me or I'm going to bury you in cement. I'm just kidding. But am I? I'm just kidding. I gotcha. But I might.

LOL, you know? So now Tommy was not only internationally famous, but he was internationally successful. And there is a big difference, okay? Sometimes fame brings you success. Like in Edison's case, he built himself a reputation pretty early on as an inventor, but really he just like knew a lot of other good inventors. And he was good at picking and choosing what ideas he wanted to capitalize on.

I mean, he was a really good businessman, okay? Despite this, he became known by the press as the inventor of the age. I mean, this allowed him to basically go wherever he wanted in life unquestioned, right? He was not only world famous,

was popular with journalists because of all the jobs he had before. And they constantly fond him and showered him with adoration for what a perfect genius he was. So this is how we end up with the idea that Thomas Edison was the inventor of literally everything. And America was more than happy to claim this brilliant man as their own.

But really, the reason he was so successful isn't because he was some lone genius. It's because, again, he had the best talent money could buy working in Menlo Park with him. And with big money comes lots of success. With lots of success also comes big expectations. And sometimes Tommy Boy's ideas were a bit too big to pull off. And the results would be tragic. Tragic.

So sorry.

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Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow. Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp.

Visit BetterHelp.com slash Dark History today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Dark History. 1895, a German scientist was experimenting with a tube that was filled with gas and electricity, and he noticed, like, there was this creepy green light coming out of it. Yeah, you know, what the German scientist stumbled on was a form of radiation that was able to pick up on things that couldn't be seen by the naked eye.

It turns out he had accidentally invented the world's first x-ray machine. I love great accidental inventions.

Amazing. Now, if you've ever had an x-ray, you know it's a whole production, okay? You have to put on like this special heavy muumuu. It's filled with lead because x-rays are very radioactive. You have to protect your special bits, your bits and pieces. If they get too much radiation, you could get cancer. They could shrivel up. Stuff could fall off. You know, it's just bad. Well, back then,

They had no idea what they were dealing with. They were just thrilled to be able to see through skin and look at bones. Ooh, you know? I mean, it's pretty incredible when you think about it. I'm still impressed when I go to the dentist and they could see like fricking all my teeth. It's insane. It's insane. They could see everything. It's wild.

Really? At this time, they barely had regular pictures. Well, that's not true. They had pictures, but they couldn't see phones yet. These guys were in the electricity business. So at this point, they really believed electricity could do anything. It can light your house. It can play back voices. It can even keep your food cold. You can even look at your insides, you know? Oh, it's so great.

So this German scientist basically looks at this as a new toy, version one of one, just playing with it, hogging it, snuggling it at night, you know. He even showed off his fancy new machine by making an x-ray of his wife's hand that showed her her hands had bones inside. And it even showed off her wedding ring.

And he's like, look what I can do, you guys. You know, he's just showing everybody they're losing their minds. People's heads are exploding. They're like, oh my God, like, what is that, bones? You know, like, that's, I mean, that's gotta be wild. That's gotta be wild. And you know who else loved it? Do you know who else loved it? Our boy, Thomas Edison. He loved it. He loved it. He's like, what a great idea. Can I see that really quick? Yeah.

He saw this as a chance to, again, make some money. He could improve it, make it a little bit better, even though it's somebody else's idea. So he's fiddling around with it and he's essentially making his own. He combined it with his own fluorescent lamps and started working on his own freaking version of the X-ray.

He's a little stealer. One of Edison's workers was named Clarence Daly, and they were super interested in like this x-ray project. They're like, "Hey, can I get in on that? That looks fun. What is that?" And he would spend hours testing out the machine with his own hand.

you know, his literal hand. So remember, they didn't know like the effects of x-rays yet. So he, I'm laughing because it's just like poor guy, you know, because he was literally exposing himself, his hand to harmful radiation. Okay. But his work paid off, I guess, big time.

It created sharper images than the German scientist and it was just all around better. So Edison wants to show off this X-ray machine. He's all excited, super jazzed about it. So he takes it to an electricity exhibition in 1896. Now there are people lined up because they got word of this X-ray machine and they want to see their bones. They're like, oh my God, I want to try this. So they line up, showing off their bones and

they don't even realize they're exposing themselves to insane amounts of radiation. Whoops, you know, LOL. About four years later, after more testing, Clarence started to show signs of radiation poisoning. He had skin lesions, his hair was falling out, his hands were like super swollen and it was really painful, poor guy. And these are just like the short-term effects. So what they do to deal with the pain

He was like, "You know what? My left hand hurts. Let me start practicing on my right hand instead. Like that's probably better." So he just switched hands. Smart, you know? At night he would sleep with his hands in water just to stop the burning. I mean, how much did Edison need before telling this poor guy to stop? He's like literally burning his poor hands off. Poor guy. I'm sorry, Clarence.

But the work, it had to go on and the x-ray machine just kept getting more and more popular. But Clarence's condition, it was getting worse and worse. He eventually had to have his own skin grafted onto his hands from his legs. And when cancer appeared on his left arm, the only option was to have it removed. Yeah, the whole arm, the whole arm had to go. Bye. Not only that, he loses an arm. He also had to remove four fingers from the right hand.

So I think, you know, that was enough to get Edison's attention. Finally, Edison let him stop working. But honestly, it was too late at this point because a year later, Clarence died from skin cancer. Sadly, he was only 39 years old. Shortly after his death, Edison stepped away from the x-ray project. And when someone later on in his life asked, like, hey, what happened to the x-ray thing? Like, why'd you stop? Edison said, quote, I'm afraid of them.

I mean, yeah, it's pretty scary to watch your lead scientist on a huge project just deteriorate like that right in front of your freaking face. And he waited until he died until he actually like stepped away. Instead of perfecting this hugely helpful technology, I mean, the x-ray would go on to revolutionize the medical field. Edison decided, you know what?

I'm gonna put my brakes on that. I don't want any part of it, you know? It had a huge potential to help people, but he was more interested in making money and something as dangerous as x-ray was probably not going to be a path to more fame and success. He didn't want to tarnish his reputation by putting more people at risk while perfecting this technology. So I guess, good, he didn't want to harm more people, right?

But it seems like with his determination to perfect everything, he seemed to really miss the opportunity to help on this one, I would say. I guess it's good that he didn't patent it because others picked up research and we eventually ended up with the x-ray technology we have today. Imagine if he treated the x-ray like the light bulb. What would happen? I don't know. But you know what did have money in it? Something that really caught Edison's eyes? Wealth.

It was movies. Oh, that's right, baby. Are you listening? Movies. Tommy was gonna be on the silver screen. A Hollywood princess. We should pause for an ad break. I know, a lot of ad breaks. I see you guys complaining about it, but you're not paying the bills around here. These ads are. We've got people to pay, air conditioning to run, cameras to use. I mean, come on, give me a fucking break.

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Edison shifted his focus back to phonographs, like the little tin can speaker thing. He was like, okay, enough of this horrifying hand cancer machine. Let's go back to some of my greatest hits, right? He wants to play it safe and he wants to do what works or at least what he knows works. And now the technology was a little more advanced. It allowed him to expand his factory and staff to the entertainment sector, right?

So his phonograph machine started using records, as we know them today, and he started manufacturing and selling it for home use. So in trying to make something for a little bit of cash, he accidentally created the entire recording industry.

Oopsies, you know? But you're welcome. And since he had all of these materials focused on creating quote unquote entertainment, it made sense for him to start working in the new industry of movies. At this time in 1887, movies, they weren't being made in Hollywood like they are today. Not even in Hollywood. Isn't it like Atlanta? What is it, Atlanta?

Isn't that where they make movies now? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because it's not like that, okay? There are many instances throughout history of film where somebody is credited as being the first to make a movie or film, you know? But most historians agree that the very first film was actually made not in Hollywood, but in France. Oui, oui.

by a man named Louis Le Prince. Oh yes. Now you're probably asking, okay, who the hell is Louis Le Prince? Like, come on, Bailey. Here's why I'm bringing him up. There's a rumor, some rumor, there's some drama, some jealousy going down, okay, that Edison may have killed Louis. Mm-hmm. No, this is not murder mystery makeup, my friends, but it kind of sounds like it. Thomas Edison may have killed a man out of jealousy.

I know, let's get into that because that's kind of juicy. Louis was a man in France who spent a lot of his youth hanging out at the studio of a family friend who was a pioneer in the photography field. He thought it was like really cool and he started this lifelong obsession with photographs and later he would go to England and learn how to make his own pictures. But by the 1880s he created a camera that was successful in stringing like all these images together and create what we now know as a movie.

He did this over half a decade before Thomas Edison would, and so he patented this invention and filmed the first motion picture in 1888. Now, you're probably wondering, if Louis invented movies, then why don't we know this? Why don't we know about him, you know? Well, this is the point where the story gets a little juicy. Super juicy.

You see, Louis was supposed to show his movies to the public in September of 1890, and then he just never showed up. It was weird. In fact, Louis went missing altogether after his brother had dropped him off at the train station. Literally, poof, vanished, gone. They never found him. Many have speculated on his fate, but he's never been found.

Very mysterious. Now, this was a highly competitive time. Movies were new and had the potential to become basically the biggest thing since the light bulb. So, of course, somebody says light bulb and Tommy's like, did somebody say light bulb? That's my thing. You know, I'm the most famous person alive.

Nothing is more important than the light bulb, nothing. There are a few theories as to what exactly happened to Louis. Some say that his brother tried to kill him for inheritance money. I mean, their mom had just died, so this is a possibility, but Louis' widow had a different theory, that Louis was murdered by a competitor. Mm-hmm.

And who was Louis' biggest competitor? Well, that would be none other than Mr. Thomas Warm Milk Edison.

Now, here are the facts. Thomas was known to be overly competitive. He was pretty egotistical. And as we've seen time and time again in this story, he was willing to do whatever he could to make sure he could own the patent. So Louis' widow figured, hey, if he's willing to do that, why not take credit from everybody else that stood in the way of him owning the patent? You

You see, Tommy was obsessed with holding patents for stuff, as we've seen. To him, that cemented him as the official inventor and owner of the idea. And, I mean, he was kind of right. But Louis had a patent for a film camera and was ready to show it off to the world, right? So rumor was going around town that Tommy heard about this, that he had the patent, you know?

And Tommy would kidnap Louie to stop him from being able to claim that he had in fact invented motion pictures. She believed that he was holding Louie captive and would only release him if he let Tommy have the patent.

So this seems kind of random, but Edison had got into motion pictures while he was expanding his phonograph business. It was a smooth transition and he saw a lot of room for improvements that he could capitalize on. He was doing some cool stuff too. Like he had created a film studio where the roof opened up and allowed like sunlight to come in. Then the stage inside would move with the sun so the shadows were always in the same spot on camera.

The coolest studio didn't make you the inventor of the film camera though, you know? And that was Louis Le Prince's claim to fame. Some dispute the story because they say Edison didn't even know about Louis. He was so busy with all of his other business ventures and making money from them that like he didn't bother with other people's business like Louis. I don't know him.

And that might be true, right? It makes sense. But still, the press was interested in the story and Louis' family was dead set on pointing the finger at Edison. And honestly, it just kind of makes you think he had a motive.

You're probably wondering what happened to Louis. Well, his son, Adolf, not Hitler, don't worry, he spends some time gathering evidence on Edison. One of the main pieces of evidence was that Thomas claimed that he invented the version of the film camera, which was called the kinetoscope before Louis' camera. But Adolf, not Hitler, showed Louis' film had his grandma in it. Why is granny important, you ask? Because...

Grandma died in 1888. Thomas created the kinetoscope in 1891. If you know math, that's not adding up. Hmm. So Adolf, he goes on to defend his father's legacy and he takes us all the way to court and tries to prove that his father's company deserves the patent. Doesn't go so well. Well, Adolf loses the case because the two inventions were actually different in the eyes of the courts and Edison's kinetoscope maintains its patent.

After all this mess is over, Louis was never found and his son Adolph ended up beaten to death under mysterious circumstances. Please. So obviously, Adolph pissed somebody off. You know? That's kind of weird. Again, this was never officially verified in any way, shape, or form, but it does reek of, you know, spoiled milk.

Now, I'm not trying to say that Edison had Louis murdered, but I'm saying we don't know that he didn't have him murdered, if you know what I mean, you know? And Edison, like, randomly got involved with the cement industry shortly after the whole Louis debacle. Debacle? Debacle. Debacle.

You know, they were using cement to build stuff. And in my personal opinion, cement seems like a great place to hide a body. Why don't you say who's going to find it? How do you get to it? Where did it go?

Nobody knows. The only thing related to Louis Le Prince that Edison was affected by was his reputation. And even that was minor. There was no proof that he was involved in Le Prince's death, but the media was interested and it wasn't a good look for him. It was very bad PR. Edison was smart enough to mostly keep his distance from any potential scandals, you know? But he was also insulated by his fame. Like he was adored by the press and he could do no wrong. So honestly, if you're a fan of Edison,

If he wanted to get rid of someone, he could, allegedly, you know? But there is one thing we forget to credit Edison with, being a damn hazard in the workplace.

That's right. Thomas, he's really not like a villain that we normally talk about on the show. He's not pure evil, I'm sure. He was pretty damn smart. He's just your run-of-the-mill douchebag who made a lot of money. It's a bummer, but he's actually kind of a perfect example of, you know, an American businessman. Money no matter what, win at all costs. You have the ideas, but you get other people to actually execute those ideas of yours.

Now, the thing about this story that's actually amazing is that Tommy actually, he knew he wasn't a pioneer. No, seriously, he knew it. He said it to himself. Yeah, he did. He once claimed that he never had an idea in his life and that his so-called inventions already existed. He then admits that he created nothing because in his eyes,

Nobody creates anything. It's probably safe to say the one thing he did invent was hustle culture. And today in California, there's a city named Menlo Park. This city is like the center of the tech boom. It's where Apple, Google, and Facebook are based. It's an intentional nod to the inventor who started it all. Edison would die peacefully in his home at the age of 81 with a belly full of milk.

Since Edison's been around, companies have claimed ownership over their employees' intellectual property

Forever. And I get why. When you get hired to work for a company, you know, a lot of times you come up with this stuff and then the company gets to keep it. Thomas Edison was, he was kind of abusive to his kids. He was a neglectful husband. He drank warm milk. He invented stuff. And on top of that, he may have murdered someone, you know? And if he didn't, he definitely benefited from their murder or disappearance. Disappearance, I should say.

So take all that as you will, and maybe if you want, form your own opinion, you know? So what's our takeaway here? I don't know. Next time you hear a good idea, just steal it.

steal it and run with it and get a patent and make it your own. You might even end up in history books, but if you're not careful, you might even end up in my big book of dark history. You know, we might talk about you or something. I don't know. Just be a good person. It's not that hard. That's my review.

Anywho, I would love to hear your guys' thoughts. Do you know more about this? Let's continue the conversation over on social media using the hashtag dark history. Or how about hashtag warm milk Edison? Yeah?

No. Okay. Dark History. It works. Join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs and also catch my murder, mystery, and makeup which drops every Monday. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. You make good choices and I'll be talking to you next week. Bye. Thank you so much. Dark History is an Audioboom original.

This podcast is executive produced by Bailey Sarian, Chelsea Durkin from Slash Management, and Fannie Badri from Wheelhouse DNA.

Produced by Lexi Kiven, Daryl Christon, and Spencer Strassmore. Research provided by Tisha Dunstan. Writers Jed Bookout, Michael Oberst, Joey Scavuzzo, and me, Bailey Sarian. Today's historical consultant, Dr. Michael Landis and Maria Lewis. Author of Louis le Prince.

And again, me, I'm your host. Welcome. Hi, Princess. Just Princess. Just call me Princess Bailey Sarian.