Age of Great Inventions Primary Sources
Historical documents. What clues can you gather about the time, place, players, and culture?
Edison's Patents
Links to scans of Thomas Edison's original patent for his incandescent bulb lamp and a schematic of the iconic great invention (1879).
Golden Spike Reportage
Along with several photos of the ceremony marking the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic Museum page includes scans of a few contemporary newspaper chronicles of the event.
Looking Backward
Google Books now has the entire text of Bellamy's Looking Backward: 2000 - 1887 available on the web. Fo free.
Edison's Papers
Rutgers University has a digital collection of many of Thomas Edison's papers on the web. The document sampler link from this page provides a survey of some great materials including an exchange that led to the coining of the term "electrocution."