A machine to see spirits with

Did Thomas Edison build a spirit machine?

There are very few mysteries about Thomas Edison and the work he did. The man wrote everything down. He wasn’t that great at organizing it. Rutgers has spent years trying to sort it all out and many have searched for documents that are still missing. No one has found anything on a spirit phone or device to talk to the dead. The only thing there is are statements he made in interviews which he later rescinded and far more important his actions. I will explain later. 

First and foremost, you have to understand the man and how his mind worked. I have spent years studying his work, looking for clues to his spirit machine. I have made assumptions that turned out to be ludicrous which resulted in me preceding very cautiously since.  What I am about to say about the man, no one who knows his work and life will disagree with.  A bold statement but I will stick by it until a critic steps forward.  Thomas Edison’s life was all about why. He was driven by the need to know. He sacrificed family and health in the pursuit of knowledge, be it his or someone else’s.  He was fair when it was someone else’s as long as the other person could keep up. If they couldn’t, he had no problem continuing without them.. The word failure simply did not exist in his vocabulary. He said it himself many times, there were no failures, you simply eliminate things that don’t work.  The above two points are critical to this discussion.  Once a concept became part of his thought process he had to know why and he would do anything in order to figure it out.   

If you keep the above two concepts in mind, there is no doubt he did attempt to build   such a device.

Was he successful?  If he was, it was developed during the period Hutchison was his chief engineer. Did the two work on it together or did Edison do it on his own? If they did work on it together, both men carried the secret to their graves which indicates to me they were not successful or they simply did not understand what they were witnessing. There is the possibility that neither wanted to rock the boat. The nation was at war and challenging the religions of the world may have had devastating results. Edison knew first hand that the end of that war was not the end of the conflict.  Those who study Edison know what I am talking about. That is another topic.

Edison said a lot about the energy of living beings. He described Quantum mechanics in laymen’s terms at a time when we were on the verge of discovering subatomic particles. Energy is eternal. The question is, does the energy of a sentient being change form and lose its cohesiveness at physical death or does it continue on?  Edison said many times, that if God and spirit existed, science would be able to prove it someday. Keep in mind the why and his resolve. Those two things alone indicates he would have done the research if he could see a way to precede.  Edison also believed that, if the spirit continued on, it would reincarnate. He never directly came out and said that to my knowledge but he certainly hinted at it. Once again those who have studied his life will not argue with my conclusion.

The above covers the things he thought which I believe provides some very convincing evidence that he would have worked on such a device if he had any inkling of where to look.  So did he have an idea where to look? The answer is yes and that doorway opened for him in 1875 when he discovered what we now call the Edison effect, his only true scientific discovery. He discovered a New Force. Had he continued to call it a New Force until it was appropriately named the Edison Effect, I would not be writing this.  He didn’t. He suddenly changed the name to the Etheric Force.  I do not know why more people have not seen the significance of that change, especially those who understand the man as I do.  The man thought he might be witnessing spiritual energy. Why?  Here’s what’s even stranger. Think about how monumental that discovery must have been for him. Think about how he would work until he would literally pass out from fatigue when he was looking for answers to what he observed. Now tell me why he would disappear for three days and leave his assistant, Charles Batchelor alone with the experiments?  It was Thanksgiving but his family was a moot point when it came to his work. Where was he?  I believe he went to New York and visited Madame Blavatsky, the renowned theosophist. He did join her society and he did build a phonograph for her but a phonograph order would not have prompted the trip especially with a new discovery awaiting him in the lab.  For whatever reason, Edison believed he may have been witnessing spiritual energy and he wanted to talk to the leading spiritualist of that era about his discovery.  The first thing he did after returning to the lab was rename the New Force, the Etheric Force which led to problems with Western Union who wanted him working on other things.  No one knows for sure how much further he carried that research. There are a few records of him continuing to work on it. He eventually turned the work over to Marconi and we all now know, as did Edison, what he discovered   was not spiritual energy.

Does that mean he no longer believed in the possibility of spiritual energy? I seriously doubt it. He did not discover the next effect that led to the construction of his spirit machine. That effect was discovered a year after Edison discovered the Etheric Force by Brandes who  observed X-rays become visible in the eye if  enough energy is applied. This phenomena has not been heavily researched to this day. If spiritual energy exists this is where we will find it. I think so and I believe Edison thought so. It was one of the things that prompted his research into fluoroscopy. It explains why he almost went blind from X-ray exposure. It also explains why Clarence Dally received fatal doses of radiation to his hands. The common belief is Dally was fascinated with looking at the bones in his hands and that is simply ludicrous. These men were scientists. Scientists do not continue to experiment when they know what the results will be.  Dally received fatal doses of radiation while placing devices into the beam to control what Edison was seeing.  The damage being done prompted both men to stop. Unfortunately for Dally his exposure was too severe and he died from his exposure. Edison felt terrible but would that have been enough for him to stop experimenting? Not at all. He would simply have looked for another way to do it and I believe he did.  Keep in mind the why and the resolve.

So what was Edison seeing and how could he continue seeing it without destroying his or someone else’s health?  Edison had very little formal training but he was no stranger to light and how to manipulate it. He had built motion picture projectors. From this point on, this is merely conjecture on my part but I believe this is what the man did.  During this same time frame and as result of the  experiments Brandes did, the protein Rhodopsin had been identified in the eyes of all living beings. Rhodopsin allows eyes to function in low light level conditions but for some reason, no one knows why, it also responds to X-rays and a blue/grey color is transmitted to the brain. The amount of grey is dependent on the amount of energy in the beam. Too much energy and the protein is damaged instantly. There has yet to be any exhaustive research regarding this phenomena but try to think like Edison. Why would fill his mind, why do eyes have the ability to resolve X-rays when there is no apparent benefit from doing so?  I have looked for research that studies the eyes of cave dwelling creatures which no longer function. If they still retain the ability to resolve X-rays which would pass through any eyelid or membrane over the eye, it would add credence to the possibility eyes serve   another purpose than sight.   I have found no such research and I have found no record of Edison ever conducting any. 

In the same  vein, I have also  looked for research on people who have been born without eyes. All I have found is it is a very rare condition. So rare that it falls outside the bell curve for birth anomalies. An interesting fact in of itself. Would a baby born with no eyes  have a spiritual presence?  We sometimes  say people have no soul. The human organism would probably still function without one. Maybe we should test sociopaths for Rhodopsin deficiency. 

To solve the problem, Edison would have  built a device not dependent on anyone having to sacrifice his or her eyesight or risk cancer from over exposure. He had  the pieces. He was not a  trained scientist but he knew  a great deal about the properties of light. He had invented the light bulb and  projectors.  All he needed was crystallized Rhodopsin which was available. There may be records of  his purchasing it though I have yet to find any.   All  he had to do was place the  Rhodopsin  on  a clear medium no doubt suspended in a fluid similar to the  liquid in an eye encased  in a holding device. He  then would have aligned a X-ray generator with  a light projector so that both illuminated the Rhodopsin. Behind the Rhodopsin panel he would have  placed a  projector screen. The variables in this device are the intensity of the X-rays, the intensity of the projected light, the wavelength of the light and the tuning of of the X-ray generator. Today we would use  a signal grid  and  display the data graphically.   

What would we see if we built this?  If there was nothing unusual, we would see a steady  circle (assuming we were not  using beam formers on our X-ray device) with an intensity that  grows dimmer or brighter as  the energy is diffused on the screen. We would see noise  at low signal thresholds and that noise would be  totally random unless there were artifacts present  that are the result of other energy sources. What did Edison see when he looked at  the X-ray beam?  He looked  long  enough or  often enough  it almost cost him his eyesight.   Would this device emulate what he saw with his  naked eye? The only way to know that is to build one.  If we discover nothing  we have  eliminated one more thing that didn't work.