Stanford Professor With Edison Items in Home Indicted
A Stanford University professor who allegedly decorated his home with thousands of priceless inventions and documents from the collection of inventor Thomas A. Edison is under indictment for concealing stolen property, federal authorities announced Thursday.
Among the items confiscated from the one-story home of Phillip Burns Petersen in Redwood City, Calif., are the inventor’s phonographs, electric light bulbs, recorders, commemorative medals and sketches, along with busts of Edison and hundreds of binders containing thousands of documents, according to an FBI inventory.
The artifacts were stolen from the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, which the 63-year-old Petersen visited several times to do research in 1976, said U.S. Atty. W. Hunt Dumont.
Petersen is not charged with theft in the case.
Claudia J. Flynn, an assistant U.S. attorney here, said the statute of limitations for the federal charge of theft is five years.
Edie Shean-Hammond, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service in Boston, said the value of the items has been estimated at $50,000 to $200,000, “but to us, they are priceless.”
“The materials that were stolen are highly significant to our telling the story of Edison’s life and times,” she said.
Shean-Hammond said most of the items reported as stolen were found in Petersen’s home and have been returned to the museum.
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