person
Thomas Edison
Edison
also: Эдисона
American inventor, world-famous by this period for the phonograph and (soon) the incandescent lamp; the calendar imagines him dining with, and resigning in exasperation from, the fictional Ashanti king.
Reading notes
- The Alarm Clock's Calendar §122 Edison
Thomas Edison, the American inventor already world-famous by 1880-82; the calendar imagines him dining with -- and abruptly resigning from -- an audience with the fictional "king of the Ashanti."
- My Conversation with Edison §2 Thomas Edison
By 1885 Edison was already a celebrity of the popular press worldwide, including in Russia, chiefly for the phonograph (1877) and the incandescent electric lamp (patented 1879, then racing toward commercial rollout) -- inventions widely covered in Russian newspaper 'miscellany' columns of exactly the kind the narrator mentions in loc. 3. Chekhov's satire depends on readers already knowing Edison's name and reputation as the era's foremost 'wizard' inventor.
- The Night Before the Trial §100 Edison
Thomas Edison, whose fame as an inventor made him, by the 1880s, a stock topic of small talk across Russia -- the narrator lists him alongside bedbugs and the weather as the sort of thing strangers chat about to pass a sleepless night.