Is Edison Murder Charge a "Phone" Phoney?

Update at Bottom

A patent email list to which I subscribe (I often write about intellectual property) had mentioned an article that appeared in the magazine Materials Today about the alleged murder of the real inventor of movies, Louis Le Prince, who was the first to record moving images on film. But on reading "evidence" that

Author Atreyee Gupta reports on research by a University of New York graduate student, Alexis Bedford, who supposedly claims to have found evidence in Edison's own handwriting that he at least had knowledge of LePrince's murder:

As Bedford relates it, he was turning over some papers on Thomas Edison's work with lighting methods when he stumbled across a dilapidated leatherbound book. The book would turn out to be one of many notebooks in which Edison was fond of jotting down ideas and test data. "Leafing through it," explained Bedford, "I merely thought I'd find perhaps some interesting and as yet unknown processes that Edison had tried in the laboratory. I never thought I would stumble upon this!" He had found a small entry dated September 20, 1890 by Edison's own hand which read, "Eric called me today from Dijon. It has been done. Prince is no more. This is good news, but I flinched when he told me. Murder is not my thing. I'm an inventor and my inventions for moving images can now move forward."

Supposedly Bedford was granted permission to get the document authenticated by historian Robert E. Myre at New York University, who eventually said that it was an authentic entry in Edison's own hand.

But this startling story could well be a fake. Look at the language "Eric called me today from Dijon." In 1890? The first transatlantic telephone call happened in 1918. In the parlance of the time, he might have been "cabled" or someone might have "telegraphed," but not called. Next: "Murder is not my thing." My thing? How 1960s/1970s can you get? Searching at nyu.org, I found a David Myre and a Greg Myre, but not a Robert E. I didn't find a listing for an Alexis Bedford, either.

I've got an email in to the magazine's editor and assistant editor and am interested to see if this item even ran in the publication, or whether the entire thing was faked from first to last. If by some chance it is real, I'll see if they can put me in touch with the author. But the longer I look at this, the farther I feel my leg being stretched.

Updated: 16-6-08, 1:07 pm EST

I finally reached Katerina Busuttil, assistant editor at Materials Today. Apparently the magazine had run a scientific writing contest. Here is what she said about this, the winning entry:

We cannot confirm it truth or false. But we thought it was a good piece of writing and we chose it as the winner. It was just a good piece of writing, which is why it won the competition.

Although this is a peer-reviewed journal, because they treated the piece as pure opinion, they did not investigate its veracity.

Let's recap on the truth issue (which took one reading and a few checks on the web, plus some added telephone calls for additional checking):

• The first transatlantic telephone call happened 1918. This incident supposedly happened in 1890 and referred to a phonecall between France and the US.


• At the time, people would have referred to being cabled or telegraphed, not called.


• The research supposedly happened at the New York Library - presumably the New York Public Library. Yet the archives of the Edison National Historic Site - all 5 million pages - rest at Rutgers in New Jersey. According to the NYPL's web site, there are 64 collections that have a mention of "Edison," but none are collections of his papers


• Only an idiot would have written in his journal about his involvment in a murder conspiracy. Edison was no idiot.


• I've found no evidence of a Charlene Edmonds employed at the New York Public Library.


• There is no "University of New York," although New York University and State University of New York (SUNY) both exist.


• There is no Robert E. Myre employed at New York University, according to someone in the administration who looked up the informaiton. Because of legal restrictions, the person could not say whether an Alexis Bedford was enrolled as a graduate student studying chemistry and photography.


• I went to the suny.edu web site, checked online for the name Myre, and found no search results. Checking on Google, I looked for SUNY combined with either "Robert E. Myre" or "Robert Myre". The one match I got was for someone who graduated in 1962 and was in Sigma Phi Epsilon.


• The magazine cannot pass on the author's contact information, though said they would forward an email seeking to reach her.

In short, this seems like a completely fabricated story with no more relation to the truth than a goat has to a guppy: any connection would be purely accidental.