New Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR Cover

I’ve refreshed the cover for Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR since I felt it needed a change. Here it is:

I took the photograph inside Edison’s Menlo Park lab at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.

Also just got word that The System- A Detroit Story and The Day Detroit Went Dark are ‘headed for retail’ on Audible.com. They should appear on Audible any time now. The covers had to change, since Audible requires square covers (just like CDs) instead of rectangles.

Edison’s Lab and Phonograph Prototype

We went to Greenfield Village on Friday September 28th and I specifically wanted to revisit Edison’s Menlo Park lab. A lot of structures in Greenfield Village were carefully moved from their original sites and re-erected by Henry Ford’s staff. This is partially true with Menlo Park. Edison built his lab in 1876 and it served as the vanguard of industrial research labs. Ten years later it was completely abandoned. When Ford wanted to move the lab to Dearborn, he and Edison went to Menlo Park to find the buildings in ruins. Here’s a picture of the partially abandoned lab taken in 1880.

 

Ford had his staff recreate the lab from original material salvaged from the site. The rest of the lab was reconstructed and completed using photographs and drawings as de facto blueprints. Here’s what Edison’s lab looks like now:

 

 

Here’s an early Edison phonograph:

 

 

I used this exact prototype in the first chapter of Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR. Note the delicate tin foil recording material on the right. The foil was wrapped around the recording cylinder and acoustic energy excited a diaphragm that held and vibrated a recording stylus in its center. The vibrating stylus etched the tin foil. When played back the etchings excited the diaphragm and reproduced the recorded sound.  I’m still amazed that this all-mechanical device worked as well as it did.

 

Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR Free Download

Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR will be a free download tomorrow (July 1, 2012) on Amazon.com.

Get it here: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Edison-RESURRECTOR-ebook/dp/B008BB99FW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339708745&sr=8-1

Edison’s Electric Pen

Here’s Edison’s electric pen that Dr. Charles Brunson modified and used on Evelyn Barker in Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR.

Brunson’s pen was modified to probe areas of the brain, specifically pain and pleasure areas. Edison was shocked that his invention was used for such dark purposes. Brunson uses the pen on Evelyn in the chapter, The House on Ridge Avenue and Notebook #10.

Edison’s electric pen was a commercial flop but it found new life as the go to device for tattoos.

Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR Free Download on June 17th

Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR is a free download today on Amazon.com. Here’s the link to the eBook:

http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Edison-RESURRECTOR-ebook/dp/B008BB99FW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339708745&sr=8-1

Historical Characters in Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR

Here’s a list of the historical characters that appear or are mentioned in Thomas Edison:  RESURRECTOR

Thomas Edison           – Inventor

Henry Ford                     – Industrialist

John Jacob Astor         –  Financier

Andrew Carnegie          – Steel magnate

George Westinghouse  – Industrialist

Harry Houdini                – Illusionist

P.T. Barnum                   – Promoter

Ulysses S. Grant           – General and President

Albert Einstein              – Physicist

Nikola Tesla                   – Inventor

J.P. Morgan                   – Financier

Alessandro Volta           – Physicist

William Kemmler       – Convicted murderer

Charles Durston            – Warden of Auburn Prison

T.E. Roosevelt               – President and adventurer

William Rontgen            – Physicist

Sarah Jordan                – Proprietress

Topsy the Elephant       – Electrocution victim

John Wilkes Booth        – Assassin

Arthur Dendy                 – Professor of biology

Clarence Dally               – Menlo Park experimenter

Johnny DeBella             – Philanderer

Albert Khan                   – Detroit based architect

Sir Walter Drake           – Profiteer

Salon Tatin                   – Aircraft designer

Louis Paulhan              – Aircraft designer

 

Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR Released

Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR was released on Amazon.com last night. I’d like to thank all my friends for their warm support.

Here’s the advertising teaser:

An electrocution…

A otherworldly voice on an early recording…

A psychic engineer…

A murdered heiress…

A secret lab hiding machinery to resurrect the dead…

A modern day practitioner of ancient Egyptian black magic…

The plan is in place, but something goes horribly wrong…

It starts with a strange voice on an early recording. Realizing the voice comes from the spirit world Thomas Edison builds a communication device called the Dead Phone, and it works. Edison reasons that if can communicate with the dead, why not bring them back? With the help of a young psychic engineer Edison builds a Resurrection Tube and Transfer Machine that reanimates fresh corpses and transfers spirits into their newly restored bodies. Meanwhile a modern-day practitioner of Egyptian black magic waits to extract his revenge and restore an evil Egyptian god to life…and let chaos reign over the Earth.

Unleash the Underworld with Thomas Edison in

Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR

 

Here’s the link to Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Edison-RESURRECTOR-ebook/dp/B008BB99FW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339708745&sr=8-1

Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR First Chapter

The first chapter of Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR is posted on the John Silver Books website. Here’s the URL: http://johnsilverbooks.com/?page_id=61

Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR

Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR is, for all intents and purposes, complete. I’ll spend the next four weeks polishing the manuscript before release. Here’s a photo of all of the old drafts and research notes.

Thomas Edison RESURRECTOR Release Date

The release date for Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR is JULY 31, 2012 on Amazon.com, priced at $2.99.

Chapter 1 will be published at http://johnsilverbooks.com on JULY 22, 2012.

Edison’s early prototype drawings of the Dead Phone, Transfer Machine and Resurrection Chamber will appear sometime in early July, 2012.

“I believe that if our personality survives, then it is strictly logical or scientific to assume that it contains memory, intellect and other faculties and knowledge that we acquire here on this earth. Therefore, if personality exists after what we call death it’s reasonable to conclude that those who leave the Earth would like to communicate with those that they have left here. I am inclined to believe that our personality hereafter will be able to affect matter. If this reasoning be correct, then, if we can evolve an instrument as delicate as to be affected, or moved, or manipulated by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when completed, ought to receive something from the other side.”

Thomas A. Edison

..AND WHY NOT BRING THEM BACK…