flux capacitor or abey and abet

I really enjoyed reading this ode to an exclusive, insider image of the liver-spotted hands of Thomas Alva Edison, cantankerous tinker and vicious crank, described as the clickbait of 1919, making the rounds of the popular engineering magazines of the day.
It is especially ironic, howsoever this scoop was obtained, since Edison railed against all things he deemed as “catchpenny,” including the inventions of his competitors: the battery being a “mechanism for swindling the public” and through some means not elaborated, eroding the work-ethic of the common-man and inducing “a latent capacity for lying.” I wonder what Edison made of this idolatry, even when driven by the pulpy journalism that regale our margins. Edison probably posed for that photograph to spite his competition.