The Invention Thomas Edison Couldn't Sell

 

When we think of Thomas Edison, we usually think of the light bulb, the phonograph, or perhaps the motion picture camera. But Edison's first patented invention had nothing to do with any of those things. In fact, it was an invention although it was brilliant, no one wanted it. It was never even mass produced. 

Young Edison

On October 13, 1868, a 21-year-old Thomas Edison signed a patent application for an Electrographic Vote-Recorder.  It was designed to make vote counting in the legislature go quickly. Each desk would have a switch. The congressman toggled to yes or no as a bill was brought up for roll-call vote. Their vote would go across an electric wire, like a telegraph works, to a main console where it would be recorded beside their name. Quick and efficient.

His first invention came from his work life.

Edison was working as a telegraph operator when he came up with the idea.  Telegraphs would send messages over electrically charged wires. Not only was he an operator but he spent hours tweaking the system so the messages moved faster across the nation. Some areas of  the country had delays. The operators worked to ensure messages arrive swiftly.  He envisioned other ways to use electricity to save time. The Electrographic Vote-Recorder seemed like a great solution to getting more done during legislative sessions around the country.

Roll call votes were often a long, time-consuming process. When a roll-call vote was required, each legislator's name was called individually. The member would announce his vote, and someone would record it. With dozens—or even hundreds—of legislators involved, the process could take considerable time.

Edison's Electrographic Vote-Recorder was designed to eliminate that delay. His fellow telegraph operator, Dewitt Roberts, invested $100. Once they had a working prototype, Roberts took it to Washington D.C. And demonstrated it. The idea of instantly recording and counting votes was a technological advance beyond its time in 1868.

Edison believed legislators would welcome it.

However, he was about to learn an important lesson about inventing—and about politics.

The legislators understood something the young inventor had overlooked: a slow vote wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

A roll-call vote gave legislators time.

It gave members an opportunity to argue with one another, persuade colleagues, negotiate, delay a measure, or perhaps change someone's mind before the final tally.

What Edison saw as efficiency, politicians could see as a loss of valuable persuasion time. No one was interested. It was a working invention that was beyond its time.

Edison learned a valuable lesson from his unsaleable invention

It became a cornerstone for every invention he patented in the future. His invention had to solve a problem people actually wanted solved. The voting machine did not make Edison rich. It wasn't adopted by Congress, and it never became a commercial success.

As history shows us, Edison didn't give up. Lightbulbs, phonographs, even motion pictures brought him fame and fortune because they were things people were willing to buy. Eventually he became America's most prolific inventor.

A hundred years later

Edison was trying to automate legislative voting in 1868. Congress didn't adopt an electronic voting system for the House of Representatives until 1973—more than a century after Edison's first attempt.

Learning from this failure as a 21-year-old made all the difference in his future success. His brilliant mind turned to inventing things people were wanting to use, enjoy or felt they needed.

Can you list any other inventions Edison patented?

Sources:

Thomas Edison Papers — Rutgers University

The actual 1869 U.S. patent

Edison's 1869 Electrographic Vote-Recorder Patent No. 90,646

.Edison Papers — Patent history ,October 13, 1868 — Edison signed the application, October 28, 1868 — application filed. June 1, 1869 — patent issued as U.S. Patent No. 90,646.

 Library of Congress — Edison and Failure

Library of Congress — Thomas Edison and Learning Through Failure

 The Henry Ford — actual patent model

The Henry Ford — Edison's Electrographic Vote Recorder Model

 

Cindy Ervin Huff, is a multi-published award-winning author in Historical and Contemporary Romance. She’s a 2018 Selah Finalist. Cindy has a passion to encourage other writers on their journey. When she isn’t writing, she feeds her reading addiction and enjoys her retirement with her husband of 50-plus years, Charles. Their favorite retirement pastime is visiting historical sites and enjoying live theater. Visit her at www.cindyervinhuff.com.

 

Angelina's Resolve's e-book version is on sale for 99 cents until tomorrow October 18^th. Click here.

 

IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH (Part 5)

By Catherine Ulrich Brakefield

In my September 16th blog post, “Courage More Exhilarating than Fear” Eleanor and Franklin chose not to divorce, to mend their differences, and live with each other’s faults. Now with this new disease, polio, raising its ugly head, Eleanor urged Franklin not to give in to self-pity, and continue his political career.

Eleanor worked diligently to help her husband win the governorship of New York. With the help from her grassroots connections, Franklin was elected governor of New York in 1928.

Now that he was elected, Eleanor’s duties and workload doubled. She had promised to be his eyes and feet. This did not come easy. She loved helping her husband however, she missed being as close to her children as she once was. Meeting people and being involved in projects daily took its toll.

She pressed on and earned many strong supporters, one of whom was newspaper reporter Lorena Alice Hickok, he had earned the nickname “Hick.” His endorsement and encouragement helped Eleanor start writing the column, My Day.

Through her column, she encouraged her readers to write to her. She received hundreds of thousands of letters and did her best to reply to them.

Eleanor felt Americans’ needs deeply and heard their voices. Nor was she shy, nor did she hesitate to whisper her information into the ear of the governor.

Franklin listened to her. After all, she had known him longer than any of his constituents. Franklin knew he could trust her more than anyone else.

Her work as a grassroots activist and settlement worker was an asset. Her enthusiasm, zeal, and dedication allowed Franklin to see, through his mind’s eye, New York’s problems clearly and what needed to be done for the suffering citizens.

October 29, 1929, came in with a punch in the gut to every American. The stock market crash on October 29th, was known as Black Friday. This depression continued through the late 1930s and as I say in my novel Waltz with Destiny, wages remained low throughout the early 1940s.

Americans never experienced such want. History books would record this period as the Great Depression. No statesman had ever experienced a desolation of this magnitude. President Herbert Hoover did his best. But it was time to give someone else a chance to help those floundering in the sea of depression America found itself swimming in.

As I explained in Destiny of Heart, those who owned their homes often rented out rooms to pay for their taxes. Those who did not own their homes were sometimes forced to pack up what belongings they could on their automobiles, live out of them or find a place to live and work.

Whenever people are caught in the throngs of confusion, the ugly head of socialism and communism will rear its deceptive head. Widespread unemployment and poverty prompted the attraction of Marxism. Many viewed socialism and communism as a remedy for their woes and economic struggles. Little did anyone know how treacherous these ideologies were. Nor that in the 1940s World War II would awaken the world to the need to fight for the very freedom they once took for granted!

When the presidential election season rolled in, Franklin’s bold words “there is nothing to fear but fear itself” gave hopeless Americans new hope in Franklin’s “New Deal,” which Eleanor’s influence helped her husband draft. This “New Deal”, propelled Franklin into the presidency in 1936.

Eleanor would write in My Day, “We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face…we must do that which we think we cannot.”

Waltz with Destiny: Esther (McConnell) Meir finds herself in a story-book romance that swirls into a rendezvous with destiny when Eric Erhardt is swept up into Hitler's diabolical war. Eric wages his battle for survival as a rifleman in the 34th Infantry Division traveling up the boot of Italy—.

"…of Waltz with Destiny… I was reading Capt. Kimble’s words about D-Day… the music I had going started playing “God Bless the USA.” Goose bumps popped up all down my arms and legs, and I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes. The message of the Destiny series is even more applicable to today than when it first released…" Debra B.

Catherine is the award-winning author of Wilted

Dandelions, Swept into Destiny, Destiny’s Whirlwind, Destiny of Heart, Waltz with Destiny, and Love's Final Sunrise. She has written two pictorial history books, The Lapeer Area and Eastern Lapeer, and short stories for Guideposts Books, CrossRiver Media Group, Revell Books, and Bethany House Publishers. Catherine and her husband of fifty-three years live on a ranch in Michigan and have two adult children, five grandchildren, four Arabian horses, two dogs, two cats, one bunny, and six chickens. See CatherineUlrichBrakefield.com for more information.

See previous Roosevelt posts for previous references of these blogs.

Civil War Nurse Clara Jones: An Angel in the Storm

by Sherry Shindelar

Women Volunteering at a Philadelphia Hospital during the Civil War 
(photo courtesy of the Library of Congress)

Twenty-eight year-old grammar school teacher, Clara Jones, couldn’t stand the thought of sitting idly by while men were serving and dying on the battlefield for their country. A strong supporter of the Union, she longed to “be in the midst of the distress … lending a helping hand to the poor fellows” instead of being “tied to school.”1

But as a single woman, she couldn’t afford to resign her position as a school teacher, so in her spare time, she threw herself into knitting socks for the soldiers since she couldn’t follow them to the battlefield. However, sewing and knitting weren’t sufficient. During the school summer break of 1861, Clara volunteered as a nurse in a Philadelphia area hospital, near her home in Germantown, PA, after wounded soldiers were sent there to recover. She couldn’t bear to think of men “dying without a friendly hand to minister to their necessities, tossing about in pain, and none to hold the cup of water to the parched lips.” Clara determined to do what she could to help care for them.

Civil War Nurses (Harpers 1862)

Clara didn’t give up on her dream, and she didn’t make excuses for why she couldn’t do what she felt called to do. She threw herself into serving with a passion. Every school break, she headed to a hospital to care for wounded and suffering soldiers. Serving in Philadelphia wasn’t enough. She volunteered on a hospital ship, in hospitals in Alexandria, VA, and on battlefields. And she wouldn’t take no for an answer, whether the no came from a hospital administrator, a doctor, army officers, or the Superintendent of Army Nurses Dorothea Dix.

Eager to be where most needed, she arrived in Gettysburg, July 19th, two weeks after the battle to work in a hospital of five hundred wounded, of which one hundred were Confederates. She devoted herself to caring for the neglected Rebs, who too often received very little care after an initial exam/treatment from a surgeon. Her heart went out to the dying who “were far from home and friends and no prospect of sending a message to a heartbroken wife or mother.”

Nurses and Wounded Solgiers at the Hospital Tents at Gettysburgh

A determined lady, Clara passionately pursued her calling. She persevered through moments/hours/days of disappointment, hardship, and frustrations, refusing to allow people or obstacles to get in the way of her caring for the wounded and dying soldiers.

Clara’s Civil War service continued until her sister became seriously ill in 1864, and then she devoted herself to caring for her until her death. This led to a new calling: being a mother to her sister’s three children. 

1All quotes are taken from a collection of Clara Jones’s letters held at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine located in Frederick, MD.

Sherry Shindelar

Originally from Tennessee, Sherry loves to take her readers into the past. A romantic at heart, she is an avid student of the Civil War and the Old West. Sherry is a multi-award-winning writer. She currently resides in Minnesota with her husband of forty-one years.

Connect with Sherry: website, newsletter, Amazon, FB, Goodreads

Texas Reclaimed

Can love blossom between a woman haunted by her family’s past and a man with a war-scarred heart?

Cora Scott is determined to hold onto her family's Texas ranch and provide a stable home for her young half brother, Charlie, despite the mounting challenges of post-Civil War frontier life. But when a scheming creditor threatens to seize their land, she must accept help from Ben McKenzie, a former Yankee soldier sent by her late brother. Though Ben's generosity and strength draw her, the man's private struggle she stumbles upon—too reminiscent of her father's alcoholism—makes her question whether she can trust her heart to him.

Ben McKenzie arrives in Texas intent on fulfilling his promise to his dying friend to protect Cora and Charlie. While using his inheritance to save their ranch, he battles not only the loss of their cattle but also his dependency on laudanum—a medicine that turned into a curse after his imprisonment at Andersonville. As his feelings for Cora deepen, he must choose between his promise to his father to take over their Philadelphia newspaper and his growing dream of a life with Cora in Texas.

Ice Cream and the Ice Cream Parlor by Denise M. Colby

How Did Ice Cream Come to Be?

Ice Cream has been noted to have been around since the middle ages with Italy taking the lead in the 17th century with a style we are more familiar with. When it spread north to France, they created a version made with egg yolks. As it came to America, I found in my research that Philadelphia was one of the places a new ice cream was created. A style with no eggs or egg whites only, and a pure vanilla sugar created by a James W. Parkinson.

(Side note: I found a recipe on a website by writer and historian Becky Diamond, where she shares more history about Parkinson’s ice cream, his vanilla, and the history of ice cream, if you are interested.)

 

Early Ice Cream Flavors
These nineteenth century ice cream flavors were quite different than what we eat today. Fruit flavors were the most common. In the 1840s and 1850s the most popular included vanilla, lemon, strawberry and pineapple. Which meant the flavor was vanilla and real fruit was layered on top, not necessarily mixed in.

 

Who Ate Ice Cream?

Ice Cream was the favorite dessert for many statesmen including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Ice cream also appeared in private parks in New York, Washington, and Columbia and also served as an upper-class dessert at dinner parties.

It wasn’t easy to keep. One needed ice and ice melted. As refrigeration grew, so did the popularity of ice cream.

The first hand-cranked ice cream freezer was invented in 1843 by Nancy Johnson. This made production faster and smoother.

The first ice cream plant went into operation in 1851. Jacob Fussell built the first commercial manufacturing plant, which dropped production costs and made ice cream even more accessible.

Bassets Ice Cream in Pennsylvania opened in 1861, and is one of the oldest continuously running ice cream companies.

All of these milestones created the opportunity for ice cream socials and the ice cream parlor.

Ice Cream Parlor History

It’s been noted that the first parlor came about in the 1600s in France. In the United States, the first was noted to have been opened in New York City in the late 1700s by a confectioner named Phillip Lenzi. He started serving the frozen treat at a counter at his sweets shop.

Ice cream saloons (later called parlors - because the term was a safer alternative for women than saloon) also became known as ladies cafes. Women weren't allowed in saloons and taverns. But this space they could frequent. That appeal is what drove owners to appeal to a more female audience. So they were designed as large spacious rooms with mirrors and bright gaslights.

 

Inside of Gunters (from an article by https://restaurant-ingthroughhistory.com/2012/08/19/ice-cream-parlors/)

Ice Cream Parlors were deemed safe, respectable, and alcohol free, so women could visit them without an escort. It was one of the first places women met in public. I love this picture below! Where I worked had a vibe like this.

 

We recently visited a deli, and they had tables with this design on them.

Exactly what the tables at the ice cream parlor I worked at had.

 

Besides a place for women, ice cream parlors soon became a destination for a courting couple (without family or a chaperone in attendance) because it was deemed safe.

That said, there was still one group of ladies that were not allowed the same freedoms in an ice cream parlor—schoolmarms. Female schoolmarms were not allowed to be courted (it was written in their contract) where their male counterparts could. Being seen alone with a man risked her moral reputation, which would cost her teaching job. This was well known and many busy-bodies watched closely just in case a young lady made the mistake of appearing with someone unrelated to her. She would be judged harshly if she did.

Why did I want to talk about ice cream?

I love ice cream. My first job was in an ice cream parlor that had a victorian design incorporated. I loved working there. It had a great ambiance.

As I've been writing my series with schoolmarm's, I couldn't wait to write a scene in a book with characters in an ice cream parlor. My latest novelette now has that scene in it. You can find out more about this free book on my website.

AN UNEXPECTED MARRIAGE PROPOSAL By Denise M. Colby

Tilly Johnson has only ever wanted one thing—to teach. Wishing to make a difference in her own one-room schoolhouse, she crosses the country to California to follow her dream. Railroad detective Grant Stone has purposely built his life on staying detached for reasons he can’t talk about. But he won’t sit by and watch when the stranded young woman whose name is on everyone’s lips needs assistance. Except the desire to protect her reputation leads to a marriage proposal he never intended to make…and a wife he never planned on wanting.

 

Denise M. Colby writes historical romance sweetened with faith, hope, and love. She finds history fascinating and contemplates often how it was to live in the 1800's. Her debut novel, When Plans Go Awry, is a 2025 Carol Award finalist. Sign up for her newsletter at www.denisemcolby.com or follow Denise on Facebook, Instagram, Bookbub, Pinterest, or GoodReads.

Keeping the Faith—and Keeping Cool: Church Before Air Conditioning

Imagine a July Sunday morning in a rural Kentucky church in the 1930s. Despite the heat, women wear their best Sunday dresses, while many of the men have put on white shirts, dark suits, and ties. Farmers who own no suit may have donned freshly pressed overalls and a plaid shirt.

Through the large, open windows, flies and an occasional bee buzz in and out. The preacher’s booming voice competes with the chirping of birds and the occasional creaking of a passing wagon. The still air inside seems hotter than outside, heavy with the scent of perfume and sweat.

And above it all comes another sound—the soft, steady flutter of dozens of cardboard fans moving back and forth throughout the congregation.

Miller Funeral Home in Ashland, KY,
sponsored this church fan depicting
Christ on the Mount of Olives.

By the late nineteenth century, advertising fans had become a familiar sight in American churches, and they remained common well into the twentieth century—especially in churches without electricity or air conditioning. A flat wooden handle was glued or stapled to printed cardboard, allowing the user to wave the fan to provide a cooling breeze. Three-panel folding fans with no handle were also produced.

Although Carrier Air Conditioning, founded in 1915, offered cooling mechanisms for industry, it wasn’t until the 1930s that window air conditioners became available—for a steep price. Many rural churches, especially in the South, did not have electricity available until decades later, and when they did, less expensive ceiling fans were the first choice to provide relief from the heat.

Some church fans with an advertisement on the back
were made in a three-panel folding style without
a wooden handle, like this one picturing
The Last Supper.

But the humble cardboard fans remain a vivid reminder of Sunday mornings before air conditioning changed the church-going experience.

Many featured religious artwork—Jesus, the Good Shepherd, praying hands, biblical scenes, flowers, or inspirational sayings. Others carried scenic or patriotic images.

The most interesting aspect was who paid for them. Fans offered inexpensive, useful advertising that could remain in the church for a long time. Funeral homes became especially associated with them, but banks, insurance agents, drugstores, grocery stores and other businesses advertised on them as well.

The religious picture faced the worshipper while the business advertisement appeared on the reverse. The arrangement could produce an amusing contrast. A worshipper might gaze at Jesus the Good Shepherd while the person in the pew behind stared at the name of a nearby funeral director.

This fan advertised a funeral
home in Chattanooga, TN.

During World War II, insurance companies and
banks often promoted War Bonds on the backs
of handheld church fans.

Today, those advertisements can be more than curiosities. Surviving fans may preserve the names, addresses, telephone numbers, and proprietors of funeral homes and other businesses that received little attention in newspapers or official records, especially in Black communities. A humble piece of cardboard intended to keep worshippers cool can therefore become a small historical document.

When I started looking for a fun memento to promote my historical novel, Moonshine River, I wanted something that might have been familiar to people living in my characters' world. A church fan seemed perfect, especially since one was used in a scene in the novel.

The fan I used to promote my novel was
reminiscent of church fans from the early
20th Century.

Do you remember seeing these fans in church or at other locations, or have you actually used one? And do you remember what was advertised on the back? I’d love to hear your stories.

Sources:

Fisk, Sammy, "OH032 Bobby Allen Oral History" (2025). Land Between the Lakes. 2. https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/oh-lbl/2

A time when hand fans cooled church-goers - Auction Finds

Holding on to Americana | Our State

Collection of church fans represents Southern hospitality

Air Conditioning History, Facts & Overview of Air Conditioners

Church Fans: Keeping It Cool Old School - WorthPoint

Curator's Corner - Preserving African American History and Material Culture: Church Fans

Multi-award-winning author Marie Wells Coutu finds beauty in surprising places, like undiscovered treasures, old houses, and gnarly trees. All three books in her Mended Vessels series, contemporary stories based on the lives of biblical women, have won awards in multiple contests. She is currently working on historical romances set in her native western Kentucky in the 1930s and ‘40s. Moonshine River, the first book in her Between the Rivers Legacy series, released in September 2026. Learn more and sign up for a free historical short story at www.MarieWellsCoutu.com.






She'll break the law to save her mother. He'll uphold it to save her soul.

After her father’s sudden death, Naomi Ross is left with an impossible choice: let her ailing mother go without desperately needed treatment—or take over the illegal whiskey business she never wanted.

Then Cullen Downs comes home.

Naomi has loved the preacher’s son since childhood, but Cullen is no longer the young man who left Golden Pond. Disgraced by his own mistakes, he’s returned determined to reclaim his faith and fight the liquor trade that nearly ruined his life.

That puts him squarely against the woman he can’t seem to stop loving.

With Prohibition crumbling and danger closing in from moonshiners, a corrupt lawman, and Chicago gangsters, Naomi’s desperate choices threaten more than her freedom. They could cost her Cullen—and the future she never dared believe could be hers.

In the rugged hills of Depression-era Kentucky, two people on opposite sides of the law must discover whether love can survive betrayal, whether good intentions can justify wrong choices, and whether God’s grace is big enough to redeem them both.