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In writes:

[...]

Many yeards ago I read an article which stated that back in World War
One days President Wilson convened an advisory council composed of a
number of prominent Americans from different fields. Edison was a
member. Somebody suggested that Einstein would make a good addition to
the group. Edison's comment was something like "Somebody like Einstein
might be handy to have around in case somethimg needs to be figured
out."

w3rv

Sounds like an interesting story. No disrespect intended if I say that
it sounds apocryphal, though many credulous-sounding stories do
sometimes actually turn out to be true (see http://www.snopes.com for
the straight skinny on many of them). Perhaps the basic back-story is
true, but with one or more different players (see below).

This one caught my eye, as someone who has a passing interest in
American history from formal education in school, later personal reading
of biographies by David McCullough, Steven Ambrose, etc., and from
additional training that many Americans get: specifically, from watching
hundreds of episodes of the game show "Jeopardy" :-).

I was wondering if someone else with more expertise in the subject had
some additional insight. Googling around doesn't seem to demonstrate
that the story is true, nor does it demonstrate that the story is
untrue. One thing that makes me suspicious is that for these three men
(Wilson, Edison, Einstein) to have knowledge of one another in the way
that the story suggests, their timelines, particularly the periods
during which they were famous in the United States, would have had to
significantly overlap.

President Woodrow Wilson lived from 1856 to 1924 and served as President
from 1913 to 1917.

Thomas Edison lived from 1847 to 1931, and generally became famous as an
inventor after the invention of the phonograph in 1877.

Albert Einstein lived from 1879 to 1955, became well-known among
physicists sometime during his famous, and initially controversial,
research published from 1905 to 1915, won the Nobel Prize in 1921,
visited the U.S. shortly afterwards, and eventually became well-known
among most Americans (including Presidents) sometime after he emigrated
to the U.S. in 1932, certainly sometime during or after World War II.

Some points to ponder:

- An early 20th Century U.S. President like Wilson might have been
aware of American winners of the Nobel prize, but might he have been
made aware of a still relatively obscure German/Swiss physicist
before he left office in 1917, pre-Nobel?

- Even if we assume that the President was Warren Harding (who was
close to Thomas Edison, even camping out with him in Maryland during
his presidency:

http://www.ohiochannel.org/your_stat...&file_id=81864

Harding only served briefly from 1921 to 1923. A better match would
be Herbert Hoover, who clearly was aware of Albert Einstein:

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=22068

and served during the time that Thomas Edison was still alive:

http://teachpol.tcnj.edu/amer_pol_hi...mbnail341.html

- Hoover's successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), only became
president in 1933, two years after Edison died in 1931.

- Thomas Edison was a great inventor, but an individual without much
formal education. Would he have necessarily been aware of what was
going on in a theoretical academic field like Physics before 1917,
and before Einstein had even done recognized works in that field?
Recall that the General Theory of Relativity, published in 1915, was
not widely accepted until years later, his Nobel Prize was for the
Photoelectric Effect, and as a resident of one of the countries in
the Central Powers (opposing the U.S., France, and the UK during
WWI), his work would be censored from international publication
during most of Wilson's term, anyway:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_...ral_relativity

- The only reference I could find to Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison
even just in communication with one another was this photograph from
1930:

http://www.topfoto.co.uk/gallery/einstein/default.htm

where Einstein telephoned Edison (from Germany) to congratulate him
on the 50th anniversary of the invention of the electric light bulb,
much later than Wilson's term of office.

So, the timelines of Wilson, Edison, and Einstein don't really match up
simultaneously. Nor do those of FDR match up with Edison, nor Wilson
with Einstein. Either the President would have to be someone like
Hoover or Harding, or the scientist would have to be someone else. At
the very least, Einstein couldn't really be considered a "prominent
American" until after he emigrated to the U.S. in 1932, and obtained
U.S. citizenship in 1940.

Ob Amateur Radio: Thomas Edison was a contemporary of Hiram Percy Maxim
(co-founder of the ARRL), who lived from 1869 to 1936, and is credited
with inventing the Maxim Silencer for firearms, and the automobile
muffler. Hiram's father, Hiram Stevens Maxim, invented the machine gun,
and was involved on the losing end of several patent disputes with
Edison over the incandescent light bulb.

- --
73, Paul W. Schleck, K3FU

http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
Finger for PGP Public

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