Piano Video Lesson: Hear Thomas Edison's Piano

Robert Estrin:
Welcome to livingpianos.com. I'm Robert Estrin with such an exciting discovery for you. This, believe it or not, is the piano owned by Thomas Edison. This piano was bought by Thomas Edison in 1890. It's a Steinway Model B. Notice it has 85 keys, as many Steinways did at that time. And the piano has had some restoration, but is largely original in the case and other artifacts about it that are so fascinating, you're not going to believe it.

Robert Estrin:
Now, everybody knows that Thomas Edison and then it's a light bulb, but he also invented the phonograph and it all grew from technologies from the telegraph. And we have an expert that's going to be here later to tell you more about that. But first I'm just going to play a little bit on this piano for you so you can hear this instrument. Then I'm going to call in the person who found this piano and the home that I'm sitting in. And that will be in just a moment. Listen to this instrument from 1890. And this instrument was perhaps the first piano ever recorded. Now we get to hear it with modern recording and a little bit of WC, the first woman of doctor gratus at Parnassus.

Robert Estrin:
So there's a little bit of history. Now I want you to listen to a recording made on perhaps this piano from the 1800s. Listen to a little bit of this on the original photograph of Edison on the wax cylinder recording.

Robert Estrin:
So you can hear quite a difference in the recording quality, but isn't it remarkable that the recordings could be made so long ago? So what's unbelievable, sitting next to this piano of Thomas Edison, I've actually got the original invoice here that you can see from 1890 from Steinway, and a letter that Thomas Edison wrote to Steinway from the laboratory of Thomas A. Edison, Orange, New Jersey, June 2nd, 1890, Steinway and Sons. "Gents, I've decided to keep your grand piano. For some reason unknown to me, it gives better results than any so far tried. Please send bill with lowest price. Yours, Thomas A Edison." Is that unbelievable?

Robert Estrin:
Well, you might wonder where this piano came from, and I'm very, very pleased to be introduced to you someone who you may have seen before here in living pianos.com, the Steinway Hunter, Bob Friedman, who located this piano and whose home in upstate New York I am in right now. Bob, it's a pleasure to have you here.

Bob Friedman:
Well, thank you. I live here and it's nice that you came to visit me.

Robert Estrin:
Absolutely. I'm so used to saying that to guests, but here we are in your place.

Bob Friedman:
In our place with Mr. Edison's piano.

Robert Estrin:
Now, a lot of people might not know that you are the Steinway hunter who've perhaps found and sold more Steinways than perhaps anyone ever. I don't know if that's true, but it's arguably true. Wouldn't you say?

Bob Friedman:
I'd say that I haven't stopped for close to 50 years now. So if I get up to bat every day and do this until the big leagues close, then maybe that will be true.

Robert Estrin:
Well, I know there's so many great stories in the Steinway Hunter, your book, which is a fabulous read. But tell us about this. How did you come upon this piano?

Bob Friedman:
Interestingly enough, it was put online on an estate sale.com in Huntington Long Island.

Robert Estrin:
Did they even know what they had?

Bob Friedman:
They knew what they had, but they didn't know the value in the history of the instrument. And after all the research was done and all the paperwork was confirmed that it was Thomas Edison's piano, the one that was in his laboratory music room for... well, from 1890 when he purchased it new from Steinway until 1929, I bought the piano.

Robert Estrin:
There you go. And what are your plans with this? I know here it is in your living room, which is awesome. But I know that you have so many pianos coming and going, over there is an unbelievable Sohmer, you've never seen anything like it. It might be in a future Living Piano's video. I can't even describe what that piano is, but I wonder what your plans are. This should be in a museum or something, shouldn't it?

Bob Friedman:
We're hoping to do a Smithsonian documentary and then to try and find a home for it in a special place in some museum that will like to house the piano.

Robert Estrin:
That would be awesome. I understand The New York Times was here and also did a write up on the piano?

Bob Friedman:
We made some discoveries about the instrument. Thomas Edison was nearly a hundred percent deaf and the only way he could hear his instruments in his music boxes were to bite into the instrument. It just so happens that Edmond Morris, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning biographer and did the last biography in 2019, he completed it on Thomas Edison, wrote in his book that Edison would bite his piano also. And the proof was really not out there, but it was, I can't say hearsay, but it was information that he'd researched over his life and he put it in his book.

Bob Friedman:
Well, we made that discovery, or should I say a very good associate of mine who is a historian for Edison, found the bite marks in the piano right there. And I called up James Barron, who's a staff writer for the New York Times, a very well-known staff writer. And the minute he heard that, he said, "I'd like to do a story on the piano."

Robert Estrin:
Absolutely, and a lot of people might not realize it. The reason why he would bite it is because sound travels through solid much, much more readily than through the air. So your teeth are a fantastic conductor of sound because it seems kind of crazy. People think, "Why would he bite his piano and his phonograph?" That's the reason.

Bob Friedman:
Well, he actually took a picture of my wife Ronnie and Charles, the person who discovered it, and myself with a piece of wood in between the bite marks here and the piano and played the piano. And it goes up into your head. Your head feels like a tuning fork.

Robert Estrin:
Yes, exactly right.

Bob Friedman:
It's really amazing. And that's how Edison heard his pianos.

Robert Estrin:
Thank you so much, Bob, for inviting me in for one thing and allowing me to play this historical piano. I appreciate it.

Bob Friedman:
Thank you Robert, I appreciate it also.

Robert Estrin:
And we'll continue on here.

Bob Friedman:
We're having a good time here.

Robert Estrin:
Great, so we also have today a wonderful historian who knows a tremendous amount. He's a musician and he's a piano technician. And he also has an incredible, awesome collection of early phonographs going back to the 1800s. And he can tell us a little bit about the technology. And because he has the unique perspective of piano technician and also Edison historian, he's going to shed a lot of light. So I'm really pleased to present to you Charles Frommer, who's going to tell us more about this piano and the technology of the time. Charles, thanks so much for joining us today.

Charles Frommer:
Thanks for having me.

Robert Estrin:
You prepped this piano and I'm loving what you did on this.

Charles Frommer:
Than you.

Robert Estrin:
It sounds amazing, for an instrument from 1890 is pretty incredible.

Charles Frommer:
It was a pleasure to work on, and the story goes that Bob had me come in to tune Thomas Edison's piano. I was very excited because...

Robert Estrin:
That doesn't happen every day, huh?

Charles Frommer:
No, and I've been a fan of recording history and an interested party since I was a kid.

Robert Estrin:
And you have quite a collection of phonographs. What's the oldest recording gear you own?

Charles Frommer:
My oldest piece of recording equipment is an 1898 Berliner gramophone, which was sort of the competitor to the cylinder phonograph at the time.

Robert Estrin:
Got it, a lot of people don't-

Charles Frommer:
Kind Mac and PC style.

Robert Estrin:
Right. A lot of people don't know that the precursor to the disc were the cylinders.

Charles Frommer:
Yes.

Robert Estrin:
And the reason why discs went out is just you could store them more easily is the main thing. But it sounded... I mean was there any sonic advantage to the disc initially?

Charles Frommer:
It was more convenience. They were easier to manufacture because you could press them like pancakes. And they were easier to store. They were a little louder because you could laterally... I think the tech, I don't know exactly.

Robert Estrin:
More room for the grooves, huh?

Charles Frommer:
Well, yeah, but you had to space them right.

Robert Estrin:
Exactly.

Charles Frommer:
Everything has its limits. And Edison was correct in noting that the surface speed was constant on a cylinder, whereas on a disc, as it gets towards the inside, if the rotation is steady, you have less surface per time.

Robert Estrin:
Exactly.

Charles Frommer:
And the quality reduces.

Robert Estrin:
Absolutely, and we've even faced that with LPs.

Charles Frommer:
Yeah, I know they have EQ curves there.

Robert Estrin:
Exactly.

Charles Frommer:
Adapt, so Edison was fairly stubborn in his resistance to using disc technology. I think it was only 1911 or thereabouts that Edison yielded and made discs. And his discs were still different in that he continued his vertical cut technology-

Robert Estrin:
Right.

Charles Frommer:
... that were also part of the cylinder.

Robert Estrin:
Instead of the horizontal cut. The other thing that was interesting about Edison I've been learning is that he was more interested in the artists he chose, how well they reproduced on his technology, than the musical content. And indeed, on many of his cylinders, he wouldn't even put the names of the artists. He was more concerned with how these sounded, which is why you had mentioned that he recorded a lot of banjo because the transients could cut through-

Charles Frommer:
Yes.

Robert Estrin:
... the limitations of the recording medium.

Charles Frommer:
Banjos and wood blocks, the things that sounded like very quick with a quick decay. And the way there was actually a diaphragm that vibrated much like the surface of a banjo, and it was connected directly to the cutter, which would cut the wax-

Robert Estrin:
Right.

Charles Frommer:
... that made the groove. And there was no electronic interface in between up until about 1925. What I find interesting is you have a picture of Edison later in life listening to his assistant who's playing music. He was actually somewhat controlling of the music that he had on his label. He liked to choose what bands would record and what tunes would be recorded. I think his favorite song was, I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen. So there's a few of those. But he would sit and listen while somebody played.

Robert Estrin:
So we had a dental professional confirm that these are indeed teeth marks. Is that right?

Charles Frommer:
Yes. I didn't know what they were when I first saw them. I was just here to tune. And I was halfway through tuning it, and I noticed that these marks on the top... usually when a piano's been played by a professional, especially one who plays in the sharp keys, they'll be marks on the fall board.

Robert Estrin:
We've seen that a lot.

Charles Frommer:
What are these marks up here?

Robert Estrin:
Yeah.

Charles Frommer:
I was puzzled by this. And suddenly I remembered having read somewhere, I don't remember where, that Edison being almost completely deaf, would sink his teeth into the wood of his photograph to listen to records. And I thought, "That's what these are."

Robert Estrin:
Well, what's really remarkable is that although this piano had some restoration along the way with a new soundboard, new strings, hammers, damper felt, that had nobody got rid of this, and thank goodness-

Charles Frommer:
Thank goodness.

Robert Estrin:
... for that. So it has tremendous historic significance.

Charles Frommer:
Yes.

Robert Estrin:
And I've enjoyed playing it. It's a wonderful instrument. And I just want to thank both you and Bob for being able to experience this instrument and sharing it with everybody out there. Again, I'm Robert Estrin here at livingpianos.com, your online piano resource. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/thomas-edisons-piano/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---