?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
SEEKING A VEGETABLE FIBER TO PERFECT THE ELECTRIC LIGHT EDISON, THOMAS A. Letter Signed, to the Minister of Agriculture of Brazil ("Your Excellency"), requesting his support of John C[asper] Branner, whom Edison commissioned to discover a vegetable fiber in lush Brazil that would help perfect the electric light. 1 1/2 pages, tall 4to, written on the first and third pages of a sheet with a horizontal center fold, ruled paper, bold "umbrella" signature. With the original envelope, unaddressed. (RKM) [Menlo Park, NJ, circa December 1880]
"Permit me to recommend to your distinguished consideration the bearer of this letter, Mr. John C. Branner, my friend and co[-]laborer, a gentleman already known in your country in connection with the Imperial Geological Survey. "In my endeavors to perfect the electric light and bring it into practical everyday use, a certain kind of vegetable fibre has been found necessary. It is the thing most needed for the perfection of my invention, and believing your country to be the richest on the globe in natural productions, in my effort to obtain what I want Mr. Branner will explore Brazil. "Being convinced that the encouragement held out by your wise Emperor to all who visit Brazil in pursuit of science, will be ably seconded by his distinguished Ministers, I feel your Excellency will do all in your power to contribute to the success of Mr. Branner's mission. . . ." Edison sent agents to different parts of the world in search of a substance to use as a filament for the light bulb that would be long-lasting and that could be brought to market in abundant quantities at a reasonable cost, as the bamboo fibers available in the U.S. were not sufficient. John C. Branner, a naturalist and later president of Stanford University, was sent by Edison to Brazil and the Argentine Republic in 1880, where he discovered several better-performing fibers; none were used, however, partly because they proved too difficult to bring to market.
