SUNBURY - The Northumberland County Historical Society will host a heritage dinner Tuesday evening, Oct. 18, at the Hotel Edison to honor Thomas Edison's local achievements. Louis Carlat, of the Thomas A. Edison Papers Project at Rutgers University, will be the guest speaker.
The Thomas A. Edison Papers Project is one of the most ambitious editing projects ever undertaken by an American university. For decades, the five million pages of documents that chronicle the extraordinary life and achievements of Thomas Alva Edison remained hidden and inaccessible to members of the public. Since the massive project began in 1978, a team of editors/scholars has been turning this phenomenal collection of Edisonia into a premier educational resource. A major goal of the Edison Papers is to produce a selective 15-volume book edition of transcribed and annotated documents. The book volumes provide not only an overview of Edison's life and career but also significant resources for understanding the development of electrical and other technology, as well as the emergence of new technology industries.
The heritage dinner coincides with the release of Volume 7 of the 15-volume edition, which covers the period when Edison established the Edison Electrical Illuminating Companies of Shamokin, Sunbury and Mount Carmel and conducted his successful three-wire experiment in Sunbury on July 4, 1883, Edison registered 1,093 patents in the U.S. and about 200 more in foreign countries during his lifetime, a feat no one else ever accomplished.
The dinner, supported in part by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and the National Endowment for Humanities' We the People initiative on American History, is open to the public. Reservations are $30 for NCHS members and $35 for non-members. The menu for the evening will include a variety of Edison's favorite foods. To make reservations, call 286-4083 by Oct. 10.