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Good Wishes Telephoned Across the Continent to Famous Inventor

Special to The New York Times

WEST ORANGE, N.J., Oct. 21. - This was "Edison Day" at the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, where Mr. and Mrs. Edison are guests, and to celebrate it here a telephone connection was made between Mr. Edison's home and the fair grounds. While the inventor, aided with a special sound amplifier, listened in San Francisco, a long message from Miller Reese Hutchinson, Superintendent of the Edison Works, was transmitted by Mr. Edison's own phonograph.

The message congratulated Mr. Edison on the thirty-sixth anniversary of his invention of the incandescent light, and told him that several hundred of his friends had gathered in his home to do him honor.

Mr. Edison's reply was received by his latest invention, the telescribe, and later every one in the room received a cylinder on which the words of the inventor had been transcribed automatically.

Among those who journeyed to Edison's home and found the streets about it lighted by 5,000 candle-power lights, while immense searchlights played on it from the roof of the laboratory, were: Charles and Theodore Edison, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas A. Edison, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. William Edison, the last two being children by the inventor's first wife; John B. Miller, brother of Mrs. Edison; Charles Edison Poyer, a nephew of the inventor; Mr. and Mrs. Henry Nicholl of New York, Mrs. Nicholl being a sister of Mrs. Edison; Dr. Peter Cooper Hewitt, Spencer Miller, and Dr. Elmer L. Sperry of the Naval Advisory Board, themselves inventors; Benjamin S. Whitehead of Newark; Captain George E. Burd, U.S.N.; Charles Wirt of Philadelphia; M.F. Moore of Rosell, an electrical expert; T. Comerford Martin and Edward H. Johnson of New York, Mr. and Mrs. Frank A. Potter of East Orange, Dr. G.F. Kunz, Mrs. and Mrs. George Merck of Llewellyn Park, Dr. and Mrs. John H. Bradshaw of Orange, and Mrs. William G. Bee, whose husband was at the other end of the wire with Mr. Edison.

Among the old associates of Mr. Edison were George F. Morrison of Harrison, general manager of the Edison Lamp Works; Dr. Frank A. Sprague of New York, Sidney B. Payne of the General Electric Company of Schenectady, J.C. Walker, lighting expert; Charles Bradley, William J. Hammer, Charles L. Clarke, John Ott of West Orange, who has been with Mr. Edison forty years, the longest term of any in his employ.

Others included Dr. Schuyler S. Wheeler, President of the Crocker Wheeler Company; W.H. Coade, also of that company; Mr. and Mrs. W.P. Hutchinson of Mobile, Ala.; Mr. and Mrs. Tebbetts, also of Mobile; the Rev. Dr. Stephen Joseph Herben, pastor of the Orange Methodist Church supported by the Edisons; Gerrard S. Swope, Vice President of the Western Electric Company; Frederick A. Stevenson, general superintendent of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company; Henry F. Thurber, Vice President of the New York Telephone Company, and the corps of engineering experts at the Edison works.

The wire worked perfectly and the voices of all those who spoke were heard distinctly. Mr. Edison's voice preserved all its characteristics in the transmission over 3,400 miles, and those who knew him instantly recognized the speaker. Mr. Edison, in turn, assured those in this laboratory that he heard perfectly. Mr. Edison then said:

"It may seem strange to those who know of my work on the telephone carbon transmitter that this is the first time I have ever carried on a conversation over the telephone. Trying to talk 3,400 miles on my first attempt at a telephone conversation seems to be a pretty big undertaking, but the engineers of the Bell System have made it easier to talk 3,400 miles than it used to be to talk thirty-four miles. In my research work I have spent a great many years listening to the phonograph, but it gives me a singular sensation to sit here in California and hear the phonograph over the telephone all the way from Orange, N.J. I heard the record of Hutch's talk very plainly. I should now like to hear a musical record."

"That's fine," he said, after a record had been played. He was asked to play the record back from San Francisco and a machine at that end was started and the West Orange audience heard the music.

After several had spoken to Mr. Edison he was compelled to leave to attend a dinner in his honor at the exposition. Earlier he had had a private conversation with his son Charles.