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ALS, one page, 5.75 x 9.25, personal letterhead, February 3, 1886. Handwritten letter to George Parsons Lathrop, in full: “Allow me to thank you for the very efficient results of your labors in the matter of the Railway Telegraph Company. The Company is to be congratulated on the reports, for which it is indebted to your skill.” In fine condition, with a small old tape stain to the top, and partial separations to the horizontal folds. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope.
George Parsons Lathrop (1851–1898) was an American poet, novelist, editor, and journalist whose professional association with Thomas Edison spanned at least a decade. Written just weeks before Edison's marriage to Mina Miller and as he prepared to establish his new laboratory at West Orange, the letter thanks Lathrop for his "skill" and "efficient" work on reports for Edison's Railway Telegraph Company, an enterprise devoted to developing systems for communicating with moving trains. Their professional relationship continued for years afterward: Lathrop interviewed Edison for Harper's Magazine in 1890, and the two later collaborated on the speculative fiction story In the Deep of Time (1896), published under Lathrop's byline. This letter documents an early stage of that enduring association while highlighting Edison's continuing efforts to advance railway telegraphy during the final years of the Menlo Park era.
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