Thomas Edison discovered three amazing keys to business success: hire people with different skills than you possess, employ others to multiply your expertise. . . and the company who has the patents wins.

Edisons purchased rights to the Phantoscope, producing the projector as a new Edison invention named the Vitascope. Exhibitors could choose films from the Edison Studio inventory.

He organised hundreds of inventors and craftsmen working in buildings, soon called ‘invention factories’.

Edison was titled by journalists ‘the wizard of Menlo Park’, as creations such as the phonograph were so startling, some thought only black magic could produce such amazing technology. This is difficult to imagine today, as we are surrounded by masses of sound devices but in an era when the only sounds came from nature, recorded sound was beyond belief.

In its early years, the phonograph was so startling and mystifying, it was even demonstrated personally to the US President and presented by spruikers in side-show alley tents, alongside other amazing sights, fakes and illusions.

Edison hated the time-consuming and expensive process of engaging patent attorneys, preparing the patent documents and applying but he knew exclusive patents guaranteed business. By patenting part of a process or design, Edison held the trump card, even if he was not the original inventor of the device.

For example, some of his patents supported and described a particular detail, like the shape of the light-globe envelope, or the method of making the envelope. One patent even covered the style and design of a wooden phonograph cabinet, right down to the ornate scrolled cut-outs.