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A St. Petersburg man who worked with Thomas Alva Edison fears that the prolific inventor is being forgotten.
By DAVID BALLINGRUD
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 10, 2001
In a faded, 1931 photograph, three men stand a bit awkwardly in the shade of a Florida banyan tree and smile into the camera.
They have come to Fort Myers to celebrate the birthday of a fourth man, seated before them.
Three of the four are among America's most famous, most successful sons: Henry Ford is on the left, Harvey Firestone is on the right, and inventor Thomas Alva Edison is the seated birthday boy. Firestone's son Roger, then 17, completes the picture.
Well, not quite.
In the photo's background there is a clapboard building, part of Edison's laboratory in Fort Myers. A very close look at a window in the building reveals something -- a human figure? -- behind the glass.
"That's me," says Azell Prince with a smile. "I was inside the lab that day, and I remember looking out the window as the photograph was taken."
Prince, a vigorous 87, lives in northeast St. Petersburg with Dorothy, his wife of 66 years. He owns and operates, with others in his family, the Galleries at Salt Creek, at 1600 Fourth St. S. But every year at this time, his mind turns to Edison, inventor of the light bulb and the phonograph and holder of more than 1,000 patents.
Prince believes, and he is probably right, that he is "the only man still living who had close personal contact with Thomas Edison."
Edison is a nearly forgotten man today, Prince says, "and that's a shame. Every year on his birthday (it is Sunday) I look for some mention of him and his accomplishments, but I don't find anything.
"He was a great man. We should do better remembering people like him."
Prince remembers.
It was the summer of 1930, and he had just finished high school in Fort Myers when his father, C.A. Prince, a chemist, went to work for Edison in laboratories in West Orange, N.J., and Fort Myers, where the inventor kept a winter home.
The need soon arose for someone to help maintain the records of the many experiments being conducted in the labs. When C.A. Prince suggested his son, Edison agreed.
In America, it was a time for inventors to shake hands with captains of industry. "In no other land or period in the history of the world did such an explosively expanding economy scatter the seeds of opportunity . . ." writes Robert Conot in his biography, A Streak of Luck; The Life and Legend of Thomas Alva Edison.
It wasn't just Edison's birthday that brought Ford and Firestone to Fort Myers that day in the spring of 1931. It was also rubber.
In 1922 the British and Dutch set off "an immense brouhaha" by combining to restrict rubber exports from Ceylon, Malaya and the East Indies, Conot writes. The plan, of course, was to drive up world prices.
Ford, Firestone and Edison rose to the challenge. Each put up $25,000, Prince says, to form the Edison Botanical Research Corp.
"At that time, that was a lot of money. Edison was concerned that we would be cut off from the world's supply of rubber," said Prince, "so we searched for a plant in this country that we could extract rubber from. We had people sending us plants from all over, and I think we tested every plant in this country.
"I had charge of the daily records of those experiments from 1930 to 1931."
Another of Prince's treasured photos, taken in the fall of 1930, shows the white-haired Edison seated at a desk in the foreground, seemingly going over some paperwork at Edison Botanical Research Corp. A few feet away in a lab coat, new hire Azell Prince gazes into the camera.
But Edison died on Oct. 18, 1931, only seven months after his photo was taken with Ford and Firestone. The experiments continued for a while, but results were unsatisfactory.
The lab's work had focused on goldenrod, Prince said, but that plant proved an "impractical" producer of rubber. Also, research into synthetic rubber was advancing. "We shut down in 1934," he said.
Prince went on to a job as paymaster for a construction company during World War II. Later he went to work for his father-in-law at Sinclair Oil, becoming branch manager for St. Petersburg and finally, the entire state.
"I retired in 1973; I haven't had a day off since," he said.
The great inventor was a formidable presence, he said.
"He was personable," Prince said. "Of course, he was stone deaf. We called him the old man. Not to his face of course. And we had to be careful, because we figured he could read lips."
Edison would "talk to his wife, Mina, in hand squeezes, a kind of code," Prince said. When the two were driven around Fort Myers by their chauffeur, Edison would signal to the driver by activating lights placed on the dash -- green for right turn; red for left.
Plagued by an ulcer, Edison drank a mixture of warm milk and pureed spinach. "He carried it around in a porcelain jug," said Prince.
On Feb. 10, 1931, the eve of his birthday, Edison was cabled this question:
"What do you think will make the world a better place to live in?"
Edison grabbed a pencil, and sent Azell Prince down to the Fort Myers Western Union office with his reply:
"I feel sure scientific advancement will make this world a better place for us all, because it leads to correct thinking," the inventor answered.
Then, ever the laboratory scientist, he added:
"Verifiable by experiment."
A few of Thomas Edison's inventions:
Phonograph
Incandescent lamp
The first commercial electric light and power system
An experimental electric railroad
Key elements of motion-picture apparatus
Improvements to the telephone transmitter to make a speaker's voice louder and clearer
The quadruplex, an improved telegraph that could send four messages at a time on a single wire
Equipment to process low-grade iron ore into high-grade ore for steel mills.
Sources: Britannica.com, World Book Online