While watching the PBS show "History Dectives" tonight they were
talking about a house in Uniontown, New Jersey, which was poured in
a mould or form complete at one time.  It was claimed that Thomas A.
Edison built the houses.

In course of the segmet they brought out that Edison patented the house
construction and it was built by Ingersoll of the dollar watch fame.
But at Rutgers University, in the Edison papers project, they have the
adverts for Edison's concrete furniture, chairs, beds, etc.  They did
mention that ole Tom was going to make concrete pianos and they had
cartoons from the op-ed pages of the papers showing numbers of concrete
pianos, etc., in the time frame of the late 'teens and 'twenties.  This
could explain the widely held folk rumor of concrete pianos in every
other parlor.

And what was ole Tom's abiding interest in providing the world with
concrete pianos and other assorted furniture?  It seems he invested
3 million in an iron mine and processing equipment of his own design, 
in the state of New Jersey.  Then the price dropped to $3 a ton and
his iron mine went belly up.  He removed the rock crushing equipment,
bought a limestone quarry and started to make cement -- to help the
common man with low-cost poured-concrete houses and pianos.

Glen R. Perye Jr.