1924, he married Laura F. Onderdonk in 1928. Tainter received several distinguished awards for his graphophone. Unpublished work In 1947 Tainter's widow, Laura Fontaine Onderdonk, donated a number of Sumner Tainter's unpublished writings, including the surviving Home Notebooks, to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. The Home Notebooks contain daily agendas describing in detail the project work Tainter conducted at the Volta Laboratory during the 1880s. In 1950 Laura Tainter donated other historical items, including Sumner Tainter's manuscripts of "Memoirs of Charles Sumner Tainter", the first 71 pages of which detailed his experiences up to 1887, plus further writings on his work at the Graphophone factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Awards and honors The Electrical Exhibition in Paris awarded Tainter a gold medal for his co-invention of the photophone the previous year (1881); the French Government appointed him an "Officier de L Instruction Publique" for his work in the invention of the Graphaphone (1889); the San Francisco Exposition awarded him a gold medal for his Graphophone work (1915); the Panama Pacific Exposition also awarded him a gold medal for his work on the Graphophone (1915); the American Association for the Advancement of Science made Tainter an Emeritus Life Member of their institute (Pittsburgh, December 1934). Patents Patent images viewable in TIFF format Photophone Transmitter, filed September 1880, issued December 1880 (with Alexander Bell) Selenium Cell, filed September 1880, issued December 1880 (with Alexander Bell) Process of Treating Selenium To Increase Its Electric Conductivity, filed August 1880, issued December 1880 (with Alexander Bell) Photophonic Receiver, filed March 1881, issued May 1881 (with Alexander Bell) Telephone Transmitter (using a "jet of conductive fluid"), filed April 1885, issued February 1886 Reproducing Sounds from Phonograph Records (without using a stylus), filed November 1885, issued May 1886 (with Alexander and Chichester Bell) Transmitting And Recording Sounds By Radiant Energy, filed November 1885, issued May 1886 (with Alexander and Chichester Bell) Recording and Reproducing Speech and Other Sounds (improvements include compliant cutting head, wax surface, and constant linear velocity disk), filed June 1885, issued May 1886 (with Chichester Bell) Apparatus for Recording and Reproducing Sounds (wax coated cylinder, pause and reverse mechanism), filed December 1885, issued May 1886 Paper Cylinder for Graphophonic Records (helically wound), filed April 1887, issued November 1887 Apparatus for Recording and Reproducing Speech and Other Sounds (with treadle drive designed for dictation), filed July 1887, issued December 1887 Graphophone (with duplicate