Skip to main content

Thomas A. Edison Inc. - Edison Portland Cement - Transferred to Thomas A. Edison, Inc. - Stock Certificate

Inv# AG1217   Stock
Thomas A. Edison Inc. - Edison Portland Cement - Transferred to Thomas A. Edison, Inc. - Stock Certificate
State(s): New Jersey
Years: 1900-1920's
Stock Transferred to "Thomas A. Edison, Inc.". (Not signed). Edison merged 40 companies into this one company. Beautiful stock with a young portrait of Edison by American Bank Note. Stub at left border. Excellent Condition. Great!!!

Thomas A. Edison, Incorporated (originally the National Phonograph Company) was the main holding company for the various manufacturing companies established by the inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison. It was a successor to Edison Manufacturing Company and operated between 1911 and 1957, when it merged with McGraw Electric to form McGraw-Edison.

The National Phonograph Company was incorporated on 27 January 1896. It was restructured and reincorporated as Thomas A. Edison, Inc. on 28 February 1911. Edison Manufacturing Company also became a division of Thomas A. Edison, Inc. at this time.

The company had an industrial research laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey where up to 200 people were employed in the "rapid and cheap development of inventions." Frank L. Dyer was president until December 1912, when Thomas Edison took over the position himself. C.H. Wilson, general manager, was also vice president from 1912. Edison resigned as president in August 1926 in favor of his son, Charles Edison, and became chairman of the board.

The company had divisions handling different products such as phonographs, Ediphone, and storage batteries. One of the first products were Blue Amberol cylinders and the Amberola player, an early sound recording medium and player. This was followed by the Edison Diamond Disc. In 1915 the soprano Anna Case and contralto Christine Miller showed in a tone test at the West Orange lab that there was no difference between their live voices and Diamond Disc recordings of their voices. Other Edison companies were absorbed in the years that followed, including Edison Phonograph Works (28 August 1924), Edison Storage Battery Company (30 June 1932) and Emark Battery Corporation (30 December 1933).

In the 1920s the recording company began to lag in technical innovation, and also failed to attract recording stars of the same quality as its rivals Victor and Columbia. An attempt to market a long playing record in 1926 did not succeed, and the company did not begin recording electrically (with condenser microphones) until mid-1927, two years after the rest of the industry had adopted the process. In 1928 the company finally moved into radio with the purchase of the Splitdorf Radio Corp. On 1 November 1929 Edison halted production of records apart from dictation records made by the Voicewriter division. In the late 1920s the "Edicraft" line of high-quality consumer appliances was developed at the laboratory and manufactured by Thomas A. Edison, Inc. Production of appliances was discontinued in 1934 due to lack of demand for luxury goods during the Great Depression.

Max McGraw, founder and president of McGraw Electric, had always been an admirer of Thomas Alva Edison, and had his picture hanging in his office. In 1956 he arranged a meeting with his son Charles Edison, former Governor of New Jersey and Secretary of the Navy, to discuss merging their two companies. They spent a few days at the Broadmoor resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado and came to an agreement. The merger was effective 2 January 1957. The combined company was named the McGraw-Edison Company. Max McGraw would joke after the merger that his name now appeared before Edison's on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Edison Portland Cement Company was a venture by Thomas Edison that helped to improve the Portland cement industry. Edison was developing an iron ore milling process and discovered a market in the sale of waste sand to cement manufacturers. He decided to set up his own cement company, founding it in New Village, New Jersey in 1899, and went on to supply the concrete for the construction of Yankee Stadium in 1922.

In 1881 Edison formed the Edison Ore-Milling Company and tried for many years to make that business a success. The demand was not existent, though new technological innovations that Edison brought to the industry the company could not compete with operations in the Midwest. Despite continual investment, with Edison selling shares in General Electric, the company suffered huge losses. Eventually, the ore-crushing technology was sold to other mine owners.

The manufacturing process used by the Edison Ore-Milling Company produced a large quantity of waste sand which he would sell to cement manufacturers. The properties of the fine sand were particularly suitable for concrete, leading to a harder, more durable product. In 1899, Edison decided to join the cement business, reusing some of the technology he had developed for ore-milling.

Edison made significant improvements to the production process of cement. His mill in the valley of the Delaware River in New Jersey featured the first long, rotating kilns in the world. While the standard length was between 60 and 80 feet, Edison's kilns were up to 150 feet. To improve his financial stability he licensed the kilns to other manufacturers, but this helped his competitors to improve their production. Eventually, the industry became saturated and Edison's business was not particularly profitable.

Somewhat ahead of his time Edison believed that concrete would have a wide range of applications, but in the early 20th century its production was not sufficiently economical. He envisioned a future with concrete houses filled with concrete furniture, refrigerators, and pianos. While none of these items were made Edison did create concrete phonograph cabinets. Edison investigated the use of formwork molds that could repeatedly be used to create concrete houses, experimenting in 1910 by casting a garage and a gardener's cottage at his mansion in New Jersey. He decided to donate the patented information to qualified builders rather than charge for it, generating significant publicity in the process.

Philanthropist Henry Phipps Jr. saw the potential of these affordable houses and considered them to be the solution to New York's housing shortage. He had already invested $1 million into affordable housing projects by setting up Phipps Houses, an organization that continues to this day. Phipps declared his intention to build an entire city for working-class families using the concrete casting technique but Edison was never able to provide the plans.

One of the main difficulties facing the project was its complexity. Each house would be constructed using a mold that comprised 2,300 pieces, and the cost to a builder purchasing the molds was excessive. Nonetheless, some houses were built when investor Charles Ingersoll financed Frank Lambie's plans. Lambie constructed several concrete houses in Union, New Jersey, where they are currently still in use.

The Edison Portland Cement Company was barely surviving financially until a new contract was won in 1922. Production began on the original Yankee Stadium on May 5, 1922, and was completed in just 284 working days. Built in The Bronx, New York City, New York, the stadium was home to the New York Yankees until 2008. During the course of the construction 45,000 barrels of cement, 30,000 cubic yards of gravel, and 15,000 cubic yards of sand were mixed by 500 men who produced 35,000 cubic yards of concrete. When the building underwent renovations from 1973 the walls were left untouched because Edison's concrete mix was seen to be hard and durable enough to remain intact.

The stadium was closed for several years of renovations from 1973, reopening in 1976. From then it remained in use until 2008; the new Yankee Stadium opened the following April. The original was demolished in 2010.

The company only lasted a few years after the construction of the Yankee Stadium, falling victim to the Great Depression.

Read More

Read Less

Condition: Excellent

A stock certificate is issued by businesses, usually companies. A stock is part of the permanent finance of a business. Normally, they are never repaid, and the investor can recover his/her money only by selling to another investor. Most stocks, or also called shares, earn dividends, at the business's discretion, depending on how well it has traded. A stockholder or shareholder is a part-owner of the business that issued the stock certificates.

Item ordered may not be exact piece shown. All original and authentic.
Price: $180.00