Thomas Edison's Spirit Telegraph

A look at an apparatus to contact the spirit world that Thomas Edison claimed to be working on, but which never surfaced.

In 1920, famed inventor Thomas Edison gave a series of interviews bragging about a device he was testing, a spirit telegraph, which spiritualists could use to give their seances a more scientific bent. Though he despised Ouija boards, table tipping, and other trappings of spiritualism, Edison believed that his new invention could determine whether the human personality persisted after death, once and for all. The only problem? The invention never materialized.

Highlights include: • Creepy uses for the phonograph • The "little people" or "life units" that make up our bodies • Electrocuting an elephant in Coney Island • A chapter of Edison's diary that his family had removed • Edison's ghost

Note: At 3:36-4:40 there're details of a person being executed via electric chair, and at 4:40-5:26 there're details of an elephant being electrocuted.

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