Francis Jehl
1860-1941
Francis Jehl went to work for Thomas Edison at his Menlo Park laboratory
in February, 1879. Beginning in 1937, he wrote a three volume book describing
his work under Edison and life in Menlo Park during the Edison years. Menlo
Park Reminiscences, by Francis Jehl, written in Edison's restored Menlo Park
laboratory, was published by the Edison Institute, Dearborn, Michigan (Copyright
1937-1941).
Francis Jehl
Jehl's book is filled with references to life in Menlo Park, the people
he worked with, and the way Edison conducted his staff in the lab. Some excerpts
from the book include:
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 The Work Gets Underway
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Life at Menlo Park (Part One)
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Ticker and Telegraph
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Life at Menlo Park (Concluded)
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Menlo Park in 1876 - Early
Experiments
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The Electric Railway (Part Two)
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The Carbon Shed
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The Electric Railway (Part
Three)
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The Speaking Phonograph - How
it was invented
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Workers in the Shop
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The Speaking Phonograph - Its
Development
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Edison's Office and Library
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The Edison Electric Light
Company
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Activities at Menlo Park - 1880
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Menlo Park in Autumn of 1878
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Second Demonstration at Menlo
Park
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The Loud Speaking Telephone
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A Visit from Sarah Bernhardt
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Work and Play at Menlo Park -
1879
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The Lamp - Beginnings of
Manufacture (Part One)
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A New Electric Motor
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The Lamp - Its Commercial
Manufacture (Part Three)
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Search for the Lamp Resumes
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Menlo Park in 1880
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A New Filament
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The Jumbo Dynamo - Its
Beginnings
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New Arrivals in December 1879
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The Jumbo Dynamo (Part Two)
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Getting Ready for the
Demonstration
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The Jumbo Dynamo (Part Three)
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The New Year's Eve
Demonstration
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Forty Years Later
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First Central Station
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The Final Chapter
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Conclusion
Page 1155-1156
(Editor's Note: On February 9, 1941, while he was at St. Petersburg,
Florida, resting and recuperating his strength, Mr. Jehl was unexpectedly
stricken and passed away. At a memorial on his passing, the Edison Pioneers
prepared and sent to all its members the following tribute to the distinguished
pioneer whose sincerity and enthusiasm for everything Edisonian had endeared him
to all who came in contact with him at Menlo Park.)
TRIBUTE OF THE EDISON PIONEERS
We hardly mourn his inevitable going so much as we rejoice
in pleasant memory at having been associated
with him in a great work for all
people under a great man
FRANCIS JEHL
at St. Petersburg, Florida
February 9, 1941
FRANCIS JEHL, one of the early Menlo Park 'boys,' was stricken on
Saturday, February 8, and passed away the following day. The end came at St.
Petersburg, Florida, where he had gone earlier in the winter in the hope of
regaining his health following many months of illness.
Funeral services were held at Holcomb Funeral Home, Flemington, New
Jersey, February 15. Interment was at Prospect Hill Cemetery, Flemington.
Mr. Jehl is survived by his wife; a son, Fred Jehl, of Budapest, Hungary,
and a sister, Mrs. Ernest Lallear, of Brooklyn, New York.
Born September 6, 1860 at 1329 Chisholm Street, New York City, Francis
Jehl while in his teens entered the employ of a law firm and it was through the
instrumentality of one of its partners, Grosvenor P. Lowrey, that he was later
to secure his chance with Edison. Study at Cooper Union and a year spent in the
Phelps Western Union shop gave the youth an urge to go further in the electrical
field and so it was that on February 28, 1879, Mr. Lowrey, prominent in the
early days of the Edison electric light, penned a letter to Mr. Edison (still
intact in the Edison records) in which an opportunity was sought for the
ambitious youngster among the inventor's growing group of assistants.
Thus in the fore part of 1879 the name of Francis Jehl was added to the
Edison pay roll at Menlo Park.
He was one of the laboratory assistants during the history- making days
of the incandescent lamp and the development of a complete system of generation
and distribution of electricity. From Menlo Park Jehl moved on to New York
where, at the Goerck Street Edison Machine Works, he set up and supervised a
testing room. Three years later, almost to the day on which Lowrey wrote his
letter of introduction, Mr. Edison assigned Jehl to a European trip in the
interest of the Edison system of electric lighting. More than forty years were
to elapse before Mr. Jehl was to return home.
From 1882 to 1897 Mr. Jehl went about Europe introducing the Edison
system. During this period he assisted in getting the works under way of the
French Edison company. Just prior to this Jehl had installed a meter department
at the English Edison company plant at Holborn Viaduct, which had but lately
been completed by Edward H. Johnson, general manager, and William J. Hammer,
chief engineer.
Among the prominent installations of that time was the plant installed
for lighting the famed Brunn Theater in Austria. Other similar installations
made under Mr. Jehl's supervision included that at Bucharest, Rumania. In 1883
Jehl opened an Edison exhibit at the Vienna Electrical Exposition.
At one time he was associated with the Hardtmuth Carbon Company of
Austria, following which he was for about seventeen years chief engineer of the
Budapest company. Stranded in Europe at the close of the World War, Mr. Jehl
finally returned to the United States in 1922. For a time thereafter he assisted
in the collection of Edisonia, most of which was later to form an important part
of The Edison Institute at Dearborn, Michigan.
When Henry Ford recreated the Menlo Park atmosphere in his Greenfield
Village he engaged Jehl to supervise the reconstruction of the old laboratory
and to become curator of the Edison collection, which post he retained until his
death.
Francis Jehl was an esteemed Member of EDISON PIONEERS.
SOURCE
Francis Jehl - An Obituary
A biographical sketch of Francis Jehl can be found
elsewhere, titled: "Web Sites of Interest." It is of interest to add
to that sketch, the contents of a newspaper article that appeared during the
week following his death (on Feb 9, 1941). The article is reproduced here
verbatim; the date of the article and the particular newspaper are unknown to
this writer. The article was written by Payson Jones and was accompanied by a
picture of Jehl looking at a replica of the famous Edison lamp of 1879. The
title of the article was: "Death of Jehl Ends His Story of Edisons'
Day�� Co-Worker, Who saw Birth of Electric Light, Failed to Finish
Third Volume." The text of the article follows:
"Was Edison nervous during the 'death watch'
test? Edison never was nervous!"
The speaker was Francis Jehl, the last survivor of
those who stood beside Thomas Alva Edison at Menlo Park, N.J., during the
forty-hour test which, on Oct 21, 1879, produced the modern incandescent
electric light. In one of the last interviews before his death, which occurred
in St. Petersburg, Fla., last Sunday, the eighty-year-old Mr. Jehl, born and
bred in old gas-lit New York, once more was telling the story of the inventor
who, he believed, was the greatest man in the world.
"Edison did more for humanity than all the
governments that ever existed," he said. "Edison gave man the courage
to go out and explore the domains which he opened for them to explore."
Mr. Jehl's skullcap was black, like the one Edison
wore. His hair was white, cropping out below his cap. He was gnarled, but his
eyes shone as he reminisced. When he said he would bring out the third volume of
his "Menlo Park Reminiscences" in 1941, "if I'm alive," his
voice was warm. About him there at Dearborn, Mich., was his sanctuary, Henry
Ford's restoration of the Edison laboratory at Menlo Park.
Devoted Life to Edison
Mr. Jehl had participated in one of the greatest
moments in history, and he was bent on telling the world that story. The first
two volumes of his book, unfinished at his death, have done much to perpetuate
the memory of Menlo park as any writing that has come off the press in recent
years. Mr. Jehl was a disciple of Edison and he passed his life in spreading the
gospel of the inventor.
Thousands here and abroad had heard Mr. Jehl's Edison
story. Among them in Berlin in the 1880's was Emil Rathenau, whom he knew as
"a poor man in a faded coat," but who was one of the greatest Edison
pioneers in Europe; also Professor Guiseppe Colombo, founder of the great
electrical system at Milan.
"In Vienna I was invited to court by the Emperor
Franz Josef, and had one of the greatest thrills of my life," Mr. Jehl told
the writer. "I spoke with him in the Hofburg Palace. It was like a
fairyland, filled with officers of the various regiments of the old
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Edison was a great man, the Emperor told me. He said
that when Edison invented the phonograph he had instructed his ambassador to
send him one right away. I spoke to him in broken German and told him about
Edison and his work."
Many years later, when he was in Budapest, Mr. Jehl
was decorated by order of the Emperor. Franz Josef, incidentally, must have been
more far-sighted than another Austrian of that day, Baron Rothchild, who had
written New York's August Belmont that the microphone, phonograph, etc., have
finally proved to be only trifles." The baron's letter, still unpublished,
was dated "Vienna 25th October 1878."
Child of Immigrants
Born of immigrant parents in New York's East Side, on
Sept. 6, 1860, Mr. Jehl made his way to fame, but not to fortune, through an
acquaintance with Grosvenor P. Lowrey, general counsel of the Western Union
Telegraph Company and a founder of both the Edison Electric Light Company and
the first Edison company in New York. Mr. Lowrey raised the cash funds with
which Edison began his electric light invention period at Menlo Park.
Mr. Jehl became Mr. Lowrey's office boy and his
protege, working in Mr. Lowrey's law offices. From Mr. Lowrey Mr. Jehl obtained
the letter of introduction, which, presented at Menlo Park, made him an Edison
pioneer. Never before published, this letter, dated at New York Feb. 13, 1879,
read in part:
"My Dear Edison:
"Can you make use of a sturdy strong boy about
sixteen years old who has been for several years in our office, and, upon my
recommendation, for nearly a year now in the Western Union Shops, under Mr.
Phelps.
"This young fellow is a German, named Francis
Jehl, and although he has a rather awkward appearance, and manners, and is
rather slow and might seem to some to be stupid, he is quite an intelligent,
industrious, faithful, honest and high-minded young fellow. He has always been
greatly interested in electricity, and while an office boy used to make magnets
and little electrical machines which he brought to the office. They were, of
course, only imitations of others, but showed a mechanical turn of mind, and a
strong love for the subject of electricity. We should have kept him as long as
he wanted a place, but his enthusiasm overcame him and he begged me to get a
place with Mr. Phelps.
"He has been kept at the most uninteresting work
(I think boring holes and washing bottles, and that sort of thing) and although
he would be perfectly willing to do that if he was surrounded by men or things
which interested him, he cannot do it there, for, he says, the men and boys are
all flatterers of the foreman and do not work honestly and right....I have
promised him to write to you.
"I do not think Francis' dissatisfaction of Mr.
Phelps is because of the meanness of the work which he is set to do, but
because, having entered the shop with a mind full of interest in the subject of
electricity, his hopes are disappointed and sickened by discovering that he
might as well be in a coal yard for any chance there is for him to hear of the
subject of electricity or to come any nearer to high mechanical work than
drilling holes and washing bottles.
"You will doubtless sympathize with and
understand this.
"Yours very truly,
"G.P.L."
[Edison understood. He put Mr. Jehl to work cleaning
and charging battery cells. But before the year was out he gave the boy his
imperishable moment, when the world's first successful incandescent electric
lamp flamed forty hours, and then flickered out.]
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