Thomas Edison and Menlo Park | Thomas Edison Center Thomas Edison and Menlo Park Thomas Edison and Menlo Park Thomas Edison and Menlo Park The following excerpts are taken from Westfield Architects & Preservation Consultants’ 2007 Preservation Master Plan, Edison Memorial Tower, Museum, & Site. Young Edison Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in the town of Milan, Ohio. 1 His parents, Sam and Nancy Edison, were of Canadian origin and had six children prior to Thomas, only three of whom survived. Edison’s family moved to Port Huron, Michigan in 1854. Throughout his childhood, Thomas Edison was full of curiosity about how things worked and always asked a lot of questions. He didn’t do very well in a traditional school setting, and often got punished for annoying the teacher with too many questions. As a result, after the age of twelve, he was home-schooled by his mother. His interest in science was first sparked when his mother bought him his first scientific book, The School of Natural Philosophy. He thoroughly studied the book and performed all the experiments described in it at home. He soon set up his own laboratory in his room and began performing original experiments.

After a few disasters, he was asked by his parents to move his laboratory to the basement. The explosions from the basement constantly shook the house, often upsetting his father. To fund his experiments, Edison took a job as a newsboy on the new Grand Trunk Railway service that had recently begun operating between Port Huron and Detroit, selling candy and refreshments. 2 He made good use of his free time in Detroit by reading at the public library. He had set up a laboratory in the baggage car of the train where he performed experiments during his free time. An accidental fire on the train caused by one of his experiments led to his firing. Edison was so interested in the working of the telegraph, which had been in use for about forty years, that he built one of his own in his home. At the age of sixteen he became a telegraph operator at the telegraph office in Port Huron. 3 Like most of his other ventures, this job also ended when Edison almost blew up the office while experimenting with the equipment. After that he traveled around the country for five years, mostly working as a telegraph operator at different offices.

Although he was moderately deaf as a teenager, he was able to do his job as a telegraph operator because the sharp clicks of the telegraph machine were clearer to him than other ambient sounds. Finally, after being demoted and quitting his job at the Western Union Telegraph office in Boston for a prank he played on his bosses in December of 1868, he decided to quit working as a telegraph operator and decided to devote himself to his inventions. Edison stayed in Boston for a while and used his salesmanship skills to convince investors to finance his inventions. In 1869, he patented the Electrical Vote Recorder. Another one of his earliest successful inventions was an improvisation of the “stock ticker” which received up-to-date stock price information from the stock exchange and displayed it at various locations. But after a few failures, he lost the faith of his investors. Broke, Edison moved to New York where he befriended a top telegraph engineer, Franklin L. Pope, who worked for Dr. S. S. Laws, the inventor of the earlier version of the stock ticker and who now owned New York Gold Indicator Company. 4 Pope gave Edison some space to board at the company’s Wall Street headquarters.

Within a few days, the master ticker tape machine had a major breakdown throwing the entire office and many New York businesses in turmoil. Since Edison was always around the office, he offered to fix the machine. When he did so within two hours, he was offered a job the following day as Pope’s assistant. 5 After working for Dr. Laws, Edison set up his own engineering business and was soon hired by Western Union to be in charge of all of their equipment. 6 Within a short span of time, his boss at Western Union offered to buy out all his new inventions and improvements to the equipment for a lump sum price of $40,000. 7 An awestruck Edison took the money and invested it in an empty factory building in Newark where he set up his first workshop. Two of Edison’s earliest and most important assistants were John Kreusi, a Swiss-trained clockmaker and machine shop foreman, and Charles Batchelor, Edison’s chief mechanical assistant from England. 8 Edison immersed himself in his work with new inventions, but at the same time, his factory continued to produce constantly improved stock tickers and telegraphic equipment. All of Edison’s employees willingly worked long hours because they respected and trusted Edison’s commitment to science.

In 1871, Edison, then twenty-four, fell in love with sixteen-year-old Mary Stilwell, who was one of his employees at the time. He married her on Christmas day that same year. Their first child was Marion Estelle, born on February 18, 1873, who Edison affectionately called “Dot”. They had two other children after Marion, Thomas Alva Jr. born January 10, 1876, called “Dash,” and William Leslie born October 26, 1878. By 1876, Edison decided to move away from the city and into a larger space where he could expand his operations to include a large scale inventions workshop. During the same time, Alexander Graham Bell invented the first version of the telephone which created waves throughout the scientific and engineering communities. Western Union commissioned Edison to improve upon the primitive telephone to put it into practical use. 9 ^top Menlo Park Menlo Park was one of the six neighborhoods that formed Raritan Township. It was a very sparsely populated rural area and the site of a failed residential development in the early 1870s.

Edison purchased two parcels of land measuring approximately 34 acres from the family of William Carman who was one of his employees at Newark, in late 1875. The office of the real estate development company, Menlo Park Land Company, at the corner of Lincoln Highway and Christie Street, became Edison’s home. Edison’s father built the main laboratory building on the block south of Christie Street between Middlesex and Woodbridge (now Tower) Avenues. Edison also built other ancillary buildings including the glass house, a carpenters’ shop, a carbon shed, and a blacksmith shop. By the Spring of 1876, Edison moved his operations to Menlo Park. Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory was the world’s first such research and development facility. While Edison was working on perfecting the telephone, he started experimenting with the idea of being able to record the sound of the human voice. In November 1877, one of Edison’s first major inventions at Menlo Park was the phonograph, which was a basic machine that allowed a person to speak into a diaphragm that was attached to a pin that made indentations on a paper wrapped around wood.

The first words Edison successfully recorded on the phonograph were “Mary had a Little Lamb”. By 1878, this invention was known all around the world and Edison soon earned the title of “The Wizard of Menlo Park.” Menlo Park was suddenly known worldwide and started attracting visitors to see demonstrations of the phonograph. For his expanding inventions factory, Edison commissioned the engineering firm of Babcock & Wilcox from New York City to build a machine shop behind the laboratory building in 1878. 10 In that same year, Edison also constructed an office and library for himself at the corner of Christie Street and Woodbridge (Tower) Avenue. In this same year, Edison coined the name “Invention Factory” for the Menlo Park site. 11 Edison did not linger over the success of his phonograph. He quickly moved on to other inventions. His next big breakthrough came when he invented a bamboo filament to create a successful incandescent lightbulb. Other people had been working on the making of light bulbs in the past, but none of the earlier bulbs was ever able to work for more than a few minutes.

Finally, on October 21, 1879, Edison’s light bulb burned for a continuous thirteen and a half hours. The following bulbs lasted for 40 hours and Edison and his team worked hard to light the laboratory and his home with several of the new light bulbs for Christmas. On New Year’s Eve of the same year, Christie Street became the world’s first street to be lit by incandescent light bulbs with the help of a power system designed by Edison. By the summer of 1880, Edison had perfected the incandescent bulb enough to be able to produce and sell it in large quantities. He remodeled the wooden building on the east side of the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks and Lincoln Highway to serve as a Lamp Factory. 12 Edison also laid down an experimental underground system and put up several lampposts in Menlo Park and successfully tested the first underground electrical system in November 1880. 13 The first two homes to be lit by Edison’s incandescent lights were the home of Francis Upton (a mathematician who worked for Edison) located at Frederick Street at the corner of Woodbridge Avenue, and Sarah Jordan’s boarding house.

Sarah Jordan was the widow of one of Edison’s associates from Newark, who Edison brought to Menlo Park to setup the boarding house for his single employees. This was also a place where the entire team gathered for social events during their free time. Edison established the Edison Electric Light Company and began working on using electricity for other purposes. He built an experimental train running on electricity at Menlo Park that started from the west side of the Machine Shop at the corner Christie Street and Middlesex Avenue and ran about three blocks north to a copper mine called “Mine Gully”. When Edison had discovered copper ore deposits in the area he sank a shaft for his very own copper mine. 14 But very soon, the mining effort seemed uneconomical and inefficient and the mine was abandoned. The electric powered railway became a success in 1881. In the meantime, Edison continued to improve his earlier inventions and took them to the next level. In the summer of 1882 he began setting up a large generator plant at Pearl Street in downtown New York City. He fitted all the office buildings and homes on Pearl Street with about four hundred of his incandescent bulbs.

On September 4, 1882, hundreds of people gathered on Pearl Street to witness a never before seen spectacle; at 3 p.m. the generator was turned on and the street was lit with electricity. This was a huge success for Edison in proving his theory of a central generator station supplying power in bulk. After this, Edison became rich and famous. People thronged to Menlo Park to see his inventions first hand. The first floor of the laboratory constantly entertained business men and investors who came to invest in Edison’s projects. Thomas Edison created some the world’s most important and some of his greatest inventions at Menlo Park. While headquartered there, he applied for about 400 patents on inventions big and small. ^top Post-Menlo Park Years [By the early 1880s] Edison felt the need to be closer to where the business was in New York City, and his operations were quickly outgrowing the existing facilities at Menlo Park. The family moved into a house at 25 Gramercy Park in New York City but spent their summers in the Menlo Park home. 15 On August 9, 1884 Edison’s wife, Mary, died of typhoid fever.

16 Edison was devastated. In the summer of 1885, he met Mina Miller, a music student in Boston at a dinner party at a mutual friend’s residence. After months traveling between Boston and New York, Edison married Mina Miller in her hometown of Akron, Ohio on February 24, 1886. 17 Together they had three children, Madeline, born May 31, 1888; Charles, born August 3, 1890; and Theodore, born July 10, 1898. In 1886, Edison started building a new facility in West Orange, New Jersey. In 1887, his laboratory moved out of Menlo Park and into the new, much larger laboratory in West Orange. This is where Edison spent the remaining forty-four years of his life, continuing to improve his earlier inventions and creating new inventions such as the motion picture camera. He died on October 18, 1931 at the age of 84. After Edison left Menlo Park, the property was completely abandoned. Most of the buildings were occupied by squatters.

The laboratory building was used as a theater, a dance hall, and a barn. Edison’s office and library building as well as his home were used as private residences. The carbon shed was used as a chicken shed. The buildings and site were in poor condition. In 1904, The General Electric Outing Club organized a dinner in honor of Edison at the site. This was the first time Edison had returned to the property since he moved to West Orange. He emotionally toured the property, visiting every building. The last remaining official record of the buildings is a series of photographs taken by J. Lloyd Grimstead and Charles B. Carman in 1911. The buildings continued to deteriorate until they began to completely fall apart one by one. Edison’s home was destroyed in fire in 1914, and his office and library building met with the same fate in 1919. The laboratory, machine shop and other buildings were slowly scavenged for building materials. Edison returned to Menlo Park on May 16, 1925 to unveil a memorial tablet (see Commemorative History ) donated by the State of New Jersey to honor him and his work at Menlo Park.

This memorial tablet still stands at the edge of site of Edison’s home adjoining Lincoln Highway. In 1928-29, Henry Ford, who was a close friend of Edison, decided to construct a replica of the Menlo Park complex at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. He moved the only two surviving buildings, the Glass House and Sarah Jordan’s Boarding House, to Greenfield Village. 18 (The Glass House had been previously moved to Parsippany by General Electric, the company that succeeded Edison’s original Edison Electric Light Company. 19 Henry Ford also hired Charles Carman to locate all surviving material that belonged to the original laboratory to be used in the reconstruction. A model of the laboratory building constructed of material from the laboratory is now located in the museum building. A steel framed tower was built as a memorial to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Edison’s perfection of the light bulb. The tower was built at the location of the laboratory with a large replica of the Edison’s original light bulb at the very top, lit for the first time on October 21, 1929. A frosted bulb called the “Eternal Light” was installed at the base of the tower.

After Edison’s death in 1931, his family donated the property to the State of New Jersey to be converted into a state park. Meanwhile, plans for building a new, permanent tower were developed. The original design for the new tower was the creation of architects John A. Peterkin and Col. Hugh A. Kelly. This was to be an elaborate Art Deco structure featuring a circular museum building, 180 feet in diameter, with four colonnaded entrances leading into a central circular space with Edison’s statue in the center surrounded by murals depicting events at Menlo Park along the circular walls. This museum building would form the base for a 175 feet high Art Deco Tower topped with a large replica of the incandescent bulb. Due to a lack of funds during the Depression, this design was never realized. Eventually, a new design in the Art Deco style for the tower, modest by comparison, was prepared by Massena & duPont, Architects. The construction of the new tower had begun while the old tower was still in place. The old tower was then destroyed by lightning in August 1937.

Remarkably, the “Eternal Light” survived the disaster and continued to stay lit even after the tower had collapsed around it. 20 The bulb was then allowed to remain in place while the new tower was built. The new tower was the gift of William Slocum Barstow, the president of the Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Inc., on behalf of the Edison Pioneers. 21 The new tower was a 131 feet 4 inches high concrete structure built entirely with Edison Portland Cement. It featured aggregate- finish, precast concrete panels on the exterior and was topped with a replica of the incandescent bulb, 19 feet 2 inches in diameter. The bulb was cast by Corning Glass Works from a sketch of the first commercial light bulb. 22 The tower was dedicated on February 11, 1938. Since 1933, the property has been owned by the State of New Jersey. Several plans over the years to expand and beautify the property have fallen through, mostly due to lack of funding.

When the Edison Memorial Tower Corporation, a non-profit organization, became involved with the property in 1999, the tower was in a neglected state and the gatehouse was almost completely abandoned. Since then, the group has assisted the Township in its efforts to rejuvenate the property by bringing back the memory of Edison and his work. ^top Notes Note 1: Anna Sproule, Thomas A. Edison, The World’s Greatest Inventor, Blackbirch Press Inc., Woodbridge, Connecticut, 2000, p. 11. back Note 2: Ibid, pp. 14-15. back Note 3: Ibid, p. 21. back Note 4: Sproule, p. 25. back Note 5: Ibid, p. 26. back Note 6: Ibid. back Note 7: Ibid. back Note 8: Stacy Spies, Images of America Edison, Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2001, pp. 14 & 20. back Note 9: Sproule, p. 28. back Note 10: Spies, p. 13.

back Note 11: Ian Burrow determined that the term “Invention Factory” is first mentioned in an interview with Edison in the Philadelphia Weekly Times on April 29, 1878 (Israel 1998 chapter 8, footnote 2 on page 486). back Note 12: The Edison Pioneers (compilers), The Story of Menlo Park, p. 14. back Note 13: Ibid, p. 20. back Note 14: Ibid, p. 21. back Note 15: Kathleen L. McGuirk, Introduction — The Diary of Thomas A. Edison, The Chatham Press, Inc., Old Greenwich, Connecticut, 1931, p. 8. back Note 16: McGuirk, p. 9. back Note 17: The New York Times, Mr. Edison’s Wedding, February 25, 1886. back Note 18: Spies, p. 21. back Note 19: Ibid. back Note 20: State of New Jersey Department of Conservation and Economic Development, Edison State Park, Bureau of Parks, p. 1.

back Note 21: Ibid. back Menlo Park, Thomas Edison's Invention Factory What was Menlo Park? Thomas Edison's Invention Factory Edison's complex at Menlo Park, showing house, laboratory, office and machine shop. sketch by Theo. R. Davis By Mary Bellis Updated August 10, 2016. Thomas Edison was behind the formation of the first industrial research laboratory, Menlo Park, a place where a team of inventors would work together to create new inventions. His role in forming this "invention factory" gave him the nickname "the wizard of Menlo Park." Menlo Park, New Jersey Edison opened a research laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ, in 1876. This site later become known as an "invention factory," since Edison and his employees worked on several different inventions at any given time there. It was there that Thomas Edison invented the phonograph , his first commercially successful invention. The New Jersey Menlo Park laboratory was closed in 1882, when Edison moved into his new larger laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey.

Images of Menlo Park Six interior views showing Edison at Menlo Park The Wizard of Menlo Park Thomas Edison was nicknamed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by a newspaper reporter after his invention of the phonograph while at Menlo Park. continue reading below our video Profile of Thomas Edison Other important achievements and inventions that Edison created at Menlo Park included: a carbon button transmitter (aka microphone) and the induction coil that greatly improved the telephone an improved bulb filament and successful incandescent lightbulb the first underground electrical system a prototype electric railway was constructed at Menlo Park the founding of the Edison Electric Light Company Christie Street in Menlo Park became the world's first street to be lit by incandescent lightbulbs In fact, Menlo Park became a tourist attraction because of the novelty of lighting Edison applied for over 400 patents for inventions made at Menlo Park Menlo Park - The Land Menlo Park was part of rural Raritan Township in New Jersey. Edison bought 34 acres of land there in late 1875. The office of a former real estate company, at the corner of Lincoln Highway and Christie Street, became Edison's home.

Edison's father built the main laboratory building on the block south of Christie Street between Middlesex and Woodbridge Avenues. Also built was the glass house, a carpenters' shop, a carbon shed, and a blacksmith shop. By the Spring of 1876, Edison moved his full operations to Menlo Park. Thomas Edison - Top 10 Most Beloved Wizards - TIME Top 10 Most Beloved Wizards 7. Thomas Edison Hulton Archive / Getty Thomas Edison didn't technically have supernatural powers, but he didn't earn the nickname "the Wizard of Menlo Park" for nothing. Before his death, in 1931, the prolific inventor amassed a record 1,093 patents for creations including the phonograph, the motion-picture camera, the incandescent lightbulb, the alkaline storage battery and the first commercial electric light and power system  all of which he created at Menlo Park, the world's first industrial-research facility.

Founded in 1876 in New Jersey, the lab would eventually span two city blocks, becoming an impressive model of efficiency and productivity for generations of tinkerers to come; some historians would later say the lab itself was Edison's greatest invention. But though "the world was made over by Edison's magic," as the New York Times once proclaimed, the Ohio native maintained a modest view of his abilities. "Genius," he famously confessed, "is about 2% inspiration and 98% perspiration." Thomas Edison / Useful Notes - TV Tropes YMMV "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) was an inventor and businessman. Nicknamed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" by the press. Edison made his first invention, a type of stock ticker, when he was only 22. By the time he died, 1,093 inventions were patented to him, which was the record for several decades. Born in Ohio, he moved with his family to Port Huron, Michigan, when he was young.

As a child, Edison's inquisitive mind wasn't challenged by his school work and his teachers called him "difficult," so his parents pulled him out to home school him. Edison was thus largely self-taught. Port Huron is just across the border from Canada, and at the time was a major railroad crossing, bringing the Grand Trunk Railway into the US on its way from Toronto to Detroit and Chicago. As a teenager, Edison rescued a little boy from an oncoming runaway train; in gratitude, the boy's father, who worked as a telegrapher along the railroad, offered to give Edison lessons in telegraphy. Edison accepted, getting his first job on the Grand Trunk telegraph line in Canada, and worked as a telegraph operator in Michigan and Kentucky before his poor hearing—and an incident where the lead-acid battery he was tinkering with spilled sulfuric acid that dripped on to his boss' desk on the floor below—forced him to look for other means to make money. He found refuge with one of his telegraphy friends, who let him stay in his basement in Elizabeth, New Jersey , starting around 1869.

By 1871, he had gotten married and moved to nearby Newark, as his inventions were making him enough money to live on. It was at that point that he had his biggest idea. In 1876, Edison found a likely spot of land near Menlo Park in Raritan Township in Middlesex County, about 20 miles southwest of Newark. Here he built his new invention: an industrial research lab. It was responsible for world-changing inventions within just a year. Some of the most important inventions to come out of Edison's lab include the phonograph, a practical light bulb, storage batteries, transmitters, motion picture cameras, and microphones. Needless to say, the research conducted by Edison and his assistants were groundbreaking and forever changed the world. The proud Edison would often take credit for inventions largely completed by his workers, leading many people throughout history to claim that he stole them, which may be true. He is today, however, known to have stolen at least a few designs from other inventors.

For what it's worth, often Edison was only taking previous inventions and making them practical; this includes his famous lightbulb.note Edison's light bulb was not the first, but it was the first that could actually be considered useful. Joseph Swan, an Englishman who invented one before Edison, openly admitted as such. Also, he eventually hit upon the idea of crediting the patents to the various corporations he established to manufacture and market his inventions,note An unexpected advantage of his living in New Jersey; New Jersey had the country's first modern general business corporations law, allowing you to easily establish a corporation for running a business without too many strings attached. rather than to himself or to his researchers; this meant that nobody could accuse him of stealing credit for the products of his lab, as technically he didn't claim to be the inventor. More important than the things he invented though was the technique he developed for it. After a fashion, you could say that Edison invented inventing. He came up with the modern R&D cycle: Identify a market, get backing before you start, publicize it ahead of time so the public is wiling to pay for it, and plough back the profits into making more inventions.

He also developed the world's first real R&D team—his numerous and largely nameless assistants, working hard on inventions for which Edison would get all the credit (eventually, he had the sense to start crediting things to his corporation, about which see below); before this, invention was usually one guy or a few, and it wasn't their only job. He was also very important as a businessman. In 1892 he merged the aforementioned various corporations he had founded into one company: the General Electric Corporation. Yes, that General Electric Corporation. ( That one, too ). He used several extravagant public demonstrations to bring attention to his inventions, such as lighting up entire city streets using his light bulbs. He aggressively used his media attention and his powerful connections to make his company the nation's chief electric powerhouse. One of the unfortunate side effects of this was pushing out Nikola Tesla 's alternating current in favor of Edison's own direct current, despite AC being superior in terms of efficiency, flexibility, and long-range transmission. Edison tried to get AC banned, even going so far as inventing the electric chair (which set its first victim on fire) , spreading false information, and electrocuting an elephant and making a movie out it .

However, there are some factors everybody is forgetting. It is possible that Edison honestly believed Tesla's AC was a dangerous as he claimed it was, and many people who mention the incident with the elephant confidently leave out that the elephant was going to be put down no matter what Edison did. And to top it off, there is serious doubt that Thomas Edison was even involved in the particular event, as it occured nearly a decade after the War of Currents and several years after he had been forced out of the General Electric company; however, Edison was responsible for electrocuting cats, dogs, mules, and horses (and appeared on screen with the animal executions.) The association may have stemmed from the fact that several Edison companies were involved, with the Edison Manufacturing company filming the event, and the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of Brooklyn supplying the power. Regardless, Edison was so horrified by the prisoner execution, he became an ardent anti-death penalty activist. Still, this might have set back electrical development by decades, though most modern day devices use both rather than one or the other.

He also tried to use his law connections to keep a monopoly of the motion picture camera, forcing many aspiring film moguls to move to a town in California named Hollywood, which was out of his reach. He was known to be quite a Jerkass . For example, Nikola Tesla (his employee at the time) said that Edison offered US$50,000 to improve his DC generators, but when Tesla accepted the offer, Edison said that it was just a joke . (Whether this story is true or not, though, has been disputed.) Because of his numerous inventions and his influence on world history, he's depicted quite a lot in popular culture. Any help listing and organizing all of them will be appreciated! Tropes as portrayed in fiction: Historical Hero Upgrade & Historical Villain Upgrade : Thomas Edison is either portrayed as a quirky underdog genius who had to fight to get his honest hard work recognised, or as a concept-stealing Corrupt Corporate Executive who swept away all opposition with threats and slander. There's plenty of evidence for and against both portrayals , but the market for energy and electricity was absolutely feral back then.

From a more meta standpoint, it is nowadays known that Edison can be credited with far fewer inventions than he laid claim on during his lifetime, most prominently the incandescent light bulb and the microphone. Massive Numbered Siblings : Thomas Edison had six children over his lifetime. Appears in the following works: Comic Books The graphic novel Tales from the Bully Pulpit features his ghost and Theodore Roosevelt stealing a time machine from H. G. Wells and going to the future to fight a descendant of Adolf Hitler and his army of evil martians. Atomic Robo stars a robot invented by Nikola Tesla, so naturally Edison is one of the series' Big Bads . Here he's presented as doing highly immoral things in a quest for immortality; and the War of the Currents was a fight to stop one such scheme. He dies in a climactic battle with Tesla in 1931, but somehow re-forms as a ghost in 1999. Mad Scientist The Inventor, one of the major villains in Ms. Marvel (2014) , was intended to be a clone of Edison.

However, the clone's DNA got scrambled with that of a cockatiel, so he wound up as a Half-Human Hybrid / Mix-and-Match Man . Film - Live Action Spencer Tracy played him in the 1940 film Edison, the Man. Also in 1940, the movie Young Thomas Edison features Mickey Rooney as Edison during his earliest years. The Back to the Future ride features the short film "Doc on the March," which features Doc going through time and witnessing various historical events. He witnesses Edison giving an important speech and then gets an autographed light bulb from him. Literature Edison is the titular Science Hero of Garrett P. Serviss's Edison's Conquest of Mars , a 1898 science fiction Fan Sequel to The War of the Worlds that spawned a genre known as "Edisonade." Edison's ghost is a character in Expiration Date , which gives a relatively sympathetic portrayal of him.

Live-Action TV On NewsRadio , Joe insists on making his own components for every device he fixes rather than buy "any of that mass-produced garbage." When an impatient Bill asks Joe to just give up and buy the piece in question, Joe answers, "Did Thomas Edison give up?" Bill points out that "Thomas Edison wasn't trying to invent something that was readily available in a variety of stores near his home." In the short-lived show The Secret Adventures Of Jules Verne, the protagonists meet a young American boy named Al, deaf in one ear, who makes amazing inventions and is able to reverse-engineer a hovering machine from the future (or the past; not sure about this one). When leaving, he reveals that Al is a shortened form of his middle name - Alva. Yep, that's Thomas Alva Edison. Edison makes an appearance in Murdoch Mysteries as a rival to fellow inventor James Pendrick. He's shown to be so ruthless as to be suspected of trying to kill Pendrick for his revolutionary sound equipment. He's not the murderer, though after Pendrick rejects his offer to collaborate, he does vow to freeze him out of any success in the moving picture industry in America at the end of the episode.

In Kamen Rider Ghost , Edison is one of fifteen Ghost Eyecons based from fifteen different famous people in the world. In this form, Takeru wields Gan Gun Saber in Gun Mode. Music The Bee Gees ' song "Edison" is about him . Tabletop Games Edison is the Big Bad of the role-playing game Punk Rock Saves the World . His goal is to be credited as "the greatest inventor of his time", even if he has to take credit for other people's inventions, such as the Time Machine that spurs the plot (and was actually created by Tesla). Theater Edison is one of the main characters, along with Henry Ford and President Warren Harding , in Camping with Henry and Tom, a 1995 play written by Mark St. Germain. These men were in fact friends in real life and the play is based on real life road trips that these men actually took, along with another of their inventor-businessman friends, Harvey Firestone. Video Games Appears as an antagonist, and later on an ally, in the America chapter of Fate/Grand Order as a Caster-class Servant. As a man with a lion head , and in a red, white, and blue jumpsuit.

Yes, really ◊ . And he's also the President of the United States due to an altered timeline. Tesla also appears as Archer-class Servant and is Edison's Rival / Sitcom Arch-Nemesis / Worthy Opponent . Web Comics One of the more bizarre depictions of him is the webcomic Edison Hate Future , which features him listening to primitive headphones and complaining about the future . He is portrayed in a very unflattering light in The Oatmeal 's "Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived" , mainly because of his feuds with rival Nikola Tesla. The Oatmeal also sells a variety of Tesla > Edison merchandise in its store. Web Video In Epic Rap Battles of History , he makes an appearance alongside Nikola Tesla and he's depicted as an outright Jerkass , deriding Tesla as a poor businessman(which he was) and claiming that he(Edison) was mainly in it for the money.

Edison: The truth hertz , you're broke and washed up Don't give a smidgen 'bout your visions if they can't make a buck Western Animation The Schoolhouse Rock song "Mother Necessity," about the great inventions of American history, features him inventing a light bulb to help his mother, who had poor eyesight. In The Simpsons episode "The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace," Homer becomes obsessed with Edison and tries to invent something to become famous just like he was. When Homey finally makes something useful, it turns out that Edison already made it. Made even better when it's later disovered that Edison stole it from Leonardo da Vinci . On The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius , Jimmy brings Edison to the present to show up Cindy, then has trouble sending him back when he falls in love with his teacher. Edison is featured in the "American Inventors" episode of This is America, Charlie Brown . :: Indexes :: The Invention Factory - Year of Innovation Series, The Edison Papers Edison and Innovation Series-The Invention Factory The Invention Factory Thomas A.

Edison and Menlo Park Edison didn’t just invent at Menlo Park – he had been inventing for years before and went on to invent for years after he left. But while living there, he invented the phonograph and incandescent light – two modern miracles earning him the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park.” The lab at Menlo Park was a collaborative atmosphere, allowing Edison to develop a systemized research for industrial applications. This working environment led to what is now the modern day Research & Development lab! The Move to Menlo Prior to Edison's association with Menlo Park, it was a small, relatively unknown country hamlet on the Pennsylvania Railroad line from New York to Philadelphia. In the years before the move, Edison's laboratory and shops were in rented buildings in Newark.

We don’t know why Edison moved out of the city but he said "the cause of this move was trouble I had about rent." However, in April 1878, he told a reporter from the Philadelphia Times "I couldn't get peace and quiet in Newark and was run down by visitors." In late 1875, looking for land on which he could build a laboratory to his own specifications, Edison’s father was looking around the New Jersey countryside for real estate. Samuel Edison discovered Menlo Park, which had been part of a failed residential development and in December 1875 Edison moved to Menlo Park, twelve miles south of Newark. Building the Lab Edison's newly built laboratory at Menlo Park cost of $2,500 (about $50,000 in today's money). The white, two-story laboratory building was completed on 25 March 1876, and Edison moved in a few days later. The ground floor housed a machine shop with precision tools and a scientific and chemical laboratory were built on the second-floor. It was a "state-of-the-art" industrial laboratory for 1876, unparalleled in the United States.

In a letter to Western Union President William Orton , Edison described his laboratory as "25 x 100 & 2 stories filled with every kind of apparatus for scientific research. . . . with machinery & apparatus [that] have cost about $40,000." In this new laboratory, Edison promised to produce "a minor invention every ten days and a big thing every six months or so." This new model of invention influenced subsequent research and development laboratories in the U.S. and elsewhere. Edison opened his laboratory in April 1876 and his staff consisted of experimenters Charles Batchelor and James Adams and three machinists, "two of whom have been in my employ for five years and have much experience." G. M. Shaw’s "Sketch of Thomas Alva Edison" , appeared in Scientific Monthly And described it as follows: On the ground floor, as you enter, is a little front-office, from which a small library is partitioned off. Next is a large square room with glass cases filled with models of his inventions. In the rear of this is the machine shop, completely equipped, and run with a ten-horse-power engine.

The upper story occupies the length and breadth of the building, 100 x 25 feet, is lighted by windows on every side, and is occupied as a laboratory. The walls are covered with shelves full of bottles containing all sorts of chemicals. Scattered through the rooms are tables covered with electrical instruments . . . microscopes, spectroscopes, etc. In the centre of the room is a rack full of galvanic batteries. Menlo Park Laboratory, c.1878 The Edison Home in Menlo Park When Edison moved to Menlo Park, he was married to Mary Stillwell and had two children, his daughter Marion and his infant son, Thomas Jr. Edison wanted to live near his new laboratory with his family and they moved into a three-story frame house that had previously been the office of the Menlo Park Land Co. a mere two blocks from his new workplace. Although a newspaper reporter described the house as "without a trace of ostentation," the Edison home was insured as a substantial nineteenth-century bourgeois house, decorated inside with bronzes, curios, a collection of books, and a "Piano-forte." In addition to the immediate family, the household included Mary's sister Alice, and three servants.

In October 1878, a third child, William Leslie, was born to the Edisons. Edison was very happy in his new home. As he told a Philadelphia Times reporter,"I like it first-rate out here in the green country and can study, work and think." Edison’s chief assistant Charles Batchelor also considered Menlo Park to be "a beautiful country place where . . . we all feel considerable benefit from the change." Nevertheless, to calm his wife, he kept "one big Newfoundland dog and two smaller ones and a seven shooter under my pillow nights." Mary Edison also found the isolation of Menlo Park menacing, especially as her husband continued to work nights, and daughter Marion remembered that that her mother also "slept with a revolver under her pillow" because her father frequently did not come home "until early morning or not at all." Mary Edison holding second son William Marion Edison Supporting the Laboratory A year after building his laboratory, Edison needed more money to keep it operating. Because most of his experimental work was on improving telegraph and telephone technology for Western Union, he wrote to company president William Orton to ask for help.

He explained that "the cost of running my machine shop including coal kerosene & labor is about 15 per day or 100 per week; at present I have no source of income which will warrant continuing my machine shop and I shall be compelled to close it unless I am able to provide funds for continuing the same and keep my skilled workmen." After describing the "unusual facilities which I have for perfecting any kind of Telegraphic invention," Edison promised that he would give Western Union "every invention that I can make during that time which is applicable to commercial telegraphy." Western Union agreed to pay for all patent expenses and to give him additional royalties for any successful inventions including the telephone. Edison’s first successful invention for Western Union was the carbon-button transmitter . But it was the tinfoil phonograph that made Edison’s reputation as the Wizard of Menlo Park! Because Western Union did not want the phonograph invention, a group of investors connected to the Bell Telephone Company helped form the Edison Speaking Phonograph Company to promote the new invention and gave Edison $10,000 to improve the exciting new technology. But before he could develop a commercial phonograph, Edison turned to a new challenge—electric lighting.

After announcing in the press in September 1878 that he had solved the problem of the electric light, a group of Western Union investors decided to form the Edison Electric Light Company . Over the next two and a half years they provided Edison with $130,000 for his experiments (about $2.3 million in today's currency). Operating the Laboratory In the early years at Menlo Park, Edison was involved in all the ongoing research and projects. As Edison recalled in one testimony (p. 39) "Suggestions generally came from me. If any change was to be made, my assistants would speak to me about it, and if I thought best the change was made." Edison’s methods were described by the New York Herald of January 17, 1879: Edison himself flits about, first to one bench, then to another, examining here, instructing there; at one place drawing out new fancied designs, at another earnestly watching the progress of some experiment. Sometimes he hastily leaves the busy throng of workmen and for an hour or more is seen by no one.

Where he is the general body of assistants do not know or ask, but his few principal men are aware that in a quiet corner upstairs in the old workshop, with a single light to dispel the darkness around, sits the inventor, with pencils and paper, drawing, figuring, pondering. In these moments he is rarely disturbed. If any important question of construction arises on which his advice is necessary the workmen wait. Sometimes they wait for hours in idleness, but at the laboratory such idleness is considered far more profitable than any interference with the inventor while he is in the throes of invention. Francis Upton wrote his father about Edison's central role in the lab: "One thing is quite noticeable here that the work is only a few days behind Mr. Edison, for when he was sick the shop was shut evenings as the work was wanting to keep the men busy." Once the workforce grew to around sixty employees, Edison could no longer afford the time or expense of keeping his staff idle while they waited for his directions. He learned to subdivide the work, assigning each detail of the system to a particular staff member or a team of researchers and machinists.

Although Edison provided initial guidance and suggestions on how to approach each problem, the experimenters were often allowed, and indeed encouraged, to find their own way to a solution. He later testified (p. 50) : "I generally instructed them on the general idea of what I wanted carried out, and when I came across an assistant who was in any way ingenious, I sometimes refused to help him out in his experiments, telling him to see if he could not work it out himself, so as to encourage him." Wilson Howell was assigned the task of devising an insulation for the underground cables, and his was atypical experience at Edison’s Menlo Park. "Mr. Edison sent me to his library and instructed me to read up on the subject of insulation, offering me the services of Dr. [Otto] Moses to translate any French or German authorities which I wished to consult. After two weeks search, I came out of the library with a list of materials which we might try. I was given carte blanche to order these materials. . . . and, within ten days, I had Dr. Moses' laboratory entirely taken up with small kettles in which I boiled up a variety of insulating compounds. . . .

Of course there were many failures, the partial successes pointing the direction for better trials." As they gained experience and Edison's trust in their abilities, men like Howell were given greater responsibilities and wages. Edison required his staff to keep careful records of each experiment. In Edison’s Newark shops Edison recalled , "drawings were made on all sorts of scraps of paper and thrown in a drawer," but after establishing his laboratory at Menlo Park he "commenced the practice of placing note books all over my laboratory, with order to my assistants to draw out and sign every experiment." As he subdivided the work in 1880, certain books were assigned to a particular project or test series. As the scale and scope of the work expanded, Edison also found it useful to have a member of his office staff (which now numbered six) keep a daily record of work in the laboratory so he could easily follow the progress of each project. Edison required his bookkeepers to maintain careful records of the labor, material, and other experimental costs incurred by each project. Each employee was required to fill out a timesheet showing how many hours he had worked on each project so Edison could charge these costs to the Edison Electric Light Company, Western Union, or other financial backers.

The Wizard of Menlo Park, a.k.a. Inventor Thomas Edison The Wizard of Menlo Park, a.k.a. Inventor Thomas Edison Podcast: Play in new window | Download Introduction: Mary Harrell-Sesniak is a genealogist, author and editor with a strong technology background. In this blog post, Mary searches old newspapers to learn more about the amazing life and accomplishments of the great inventor Thomas Edison. As you observe your family members enjoying conveniences such as talking on cellphones, downloading music, charging batteries and living in a well-lit house, remind them to give thanks to Thomas Edison. These modern devices wouldn’t exist without him. Photo: Thomas Edison with his phonograph (second model), c.1878. Credit: Levin C. Handy; Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. Edison’s Early Years Born on 11 February 1847 in Milan, Ohio, Thomas Alva Edison was the youngest of seven children born to Samuel and Nancy (Elliott) Edison. His mother died in 1871 and his father died in 1896 at the age of 91.

According to Samuel Edison’s obituary below, the family’s ancestors arrived in North America long before the American Revolution. There’s a good chance many of our readers, including myself through his Beach and Merriman lines, are distant cousins of Thomas Edison. (See famouskin.com and Thomasedison.org .) New York Tribune (New York, New York), 27 February 1896, page 7 Home Schooling – and Deafness Thomas Edison had little formal schooling. After his teachers reported him to be a slow learner, his mother decided that home schooling was a better method to educate her son. [search_box] For someone who made so many inventions involving sound, it is startling to learn that Edison was almost completely deaf. At the age of 12, he either contracted scarlet fever or had an accident which left him severely hearing-impaired. The National Park Service’s Thomas Edison page reports that Edison once wrote: “I have not heard a bird sing since I was twelve years old.” Another story, which Edison himself told, was that he “was picked up by the ears to keep from falling out of a train” and this caused something to pop inside his ears.

The genius behind so many amazing inventions never attended college or technical school. He learned through his mother’s home schooling, his own voracious reading, and constant experimentation. His inventions amazed our ancestors and they continue to impact us today. No wonder he was called the “Wizard of Menlo Park,” the location in New Jersey where he built a laboratory in 1876. Inventions and Patents Despite his genius and remarkable inventions, however, most children today are not taught much about Thomas Edison other than a few lines in a history book. Nor can many young people identify his inventions, even though Edison achieved 1,093 or more patents (some report 1,368) in his lifetime. According to the History Channel’s Thomas Edison page, many of his patents addressed telephony, telecommunications and electricity – so imagine where we’d be without them.

Here are some of his many achievements: 195 patents for telephony, the phonograph, and their improvements, starting in 1876 34 patents for the telephone, beginning in 1878 389 patents for electric light and power, including the first commercially-successful incandescent light bulb in 1879 This is his patent for the telephone of 1883. Illustration: telephone design, patented to Thomas Edison on 27 March 1883. Source: Google Patents. Invention of the Phonograph In 1877, Edison invented the phonograph – a device to record people’s voices that greatly amazed the public. At that time, people could hardly imagine a machine that can record your voice now, so that your ancestors hundreds of years later can hear what your voice sounded like! It seemed as though Edison was truly a wizard. As this newspaper article reports: Speech has become, as it were, immortal.

Vermont Phoenix (Brattleboro, Vermont), 20 November 1877, page 2 For his own first recording, Edison recited the beloved children’s poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” It is wonderful and almost magical, even in our own age of technological marvels, to hear Edison’s own voice from so very long ago. You can hear him reciting the poem here . Controversies Edison arrived at some of his invention ideas simultaneously with others, and in some cases his inventions were based on the breakthroughs of his predecessors. Consequently, you’ll find various reports objecting to giving Edison credit for some of his inventions – controversies that erupted during Edison’s lifetime and in some cases continue today. [search_box] For example, the invention of the light bulb is often credited to Edison, although Sir Joseph Swan (1828-1914) and at least 22 other inventors came up with the idea before him. Where they failed to perfect their ideas, however, Edison succeeded, as he always strove to use superior materials and clever marketing to materialize and promote his inventions. His incandescent light bulb can truly be said to be the father of modern lights.

Evansville Courier and Press (Evansville, Indiana), 29 November 1929, page 7 Another controversy involving Edison resulted from patents pertaining to the movie industry. As seen in this article, Edison strongly protected his inventions in the courts in 1908. In the end, he won. Aberdeen Daily News (Aberdeen, South Dakota), 25 March 1908, page 3 More Breakthrough Edison Inventions I could literally write a book about Thomas Alva Edison’s inventions. Many of his inventions that should be common knowledge include these: An early stock ticker machine, around 1869 Digital History Digital History Digital History ID 3311 He was hailed as "The Wizard of Menlo Park." The New York World, in 1901, called him "Our Greatest Living American, The Foremost Creative and Constructive Mind of This Country, Our True National Genius." He was portrayed in the movies by two different Hollywood stars, Mickey Rooney and Spencer Tracy. He had 1,093 patents to his name and paved the way for many electricity based technologies years before the physics of electricity was understood.

His inventions include the dictating machine, the electric light, the electrified railroad, the fluorescent lamp, the mimeograph machine, the movie camera, the phonograph, Portland cement, and wax paper. But his greatest invention was none of these--it was the development of the modern research laboratory and a research team. Born in rural Ohio in 1847, Thomas Edison was the archetypal self-made titan who had risen from humble origins to become the most famous inventor in the world. He had little formal schooling and his outlook was quintessentially American: practical, optimistic, and suspicious of intellectuals. By the age of 10, he had a small chemical laboratory in his cellar and was operating a home made telegraph. When he was 12, he hawked newspapers, magazines, and candy on a train from 7 in the morning until 9 at night. He printed a newspaper and conducted experiments in the train's baggage room. When one of his experiments started a fire, he lost his job. He was partially deaf, and was ridiculed by other students and never completed grade school. When a teacher pronounced his mind "addled," his mother took him out of school and taught him herself.

His second wife would tap out conversations in Morse code on his knee. In later years, he said that his lack of hearing saved him from many distractions. His started out as an itinerant telegraph operator, traveling from town to town; his first invention was a device that repeated Morse code at a slower speed, so he could more easily transcribe the messages. His first invention to make money was a ticker tape to convey stock market prices to brokerage houses. He became a millionaire in his forties. He often worked 24 hours straight, except for five-minute naps. "Genius," he said, "was one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." When he announced the phonograph in 1877, a Yale University professor told the New York Sun that "The idea of a talking machine is ridiculous." After he announced that he had made an incandescent lamp, a board of inquiry convened by the British Parliament concluded that his claim was impossible and "unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men." Contrary to popular belief, he did not invent the light bulb. Rather, he figured out how to make it a durable and inexpensive consumer item.

He promised to make bulbs "so cheap that only the wealthy can afford to burn candles." The key was to find a long-lasting filament. He tested over 6,000 different materials. Far from being a solitary genius, Edison created the first modern research laboratory. Far from being a lone tinkerer, he employed as many as 200 laboratory assistants and machinists at his facilities in Menlo Park and West Orange, N.J. His West Orange factory had 10,000 employees in the mid-1910s. Edison demonstrated that it was possible to produce a steady stream of new inventions and technologies. Early in his career he said that his goal was "a minor invention every ten days and a big thing every six months or so." He was also the first inventor to develop links with major corporations that were willing to finance his inventions. He formed links with Cornelius Vanderbilt, who owned Western Union, the telegraph company, and with J.P. Morgan. He made some mistakes. He championed direct current (DC), when George Westinghouse pushed for alternating current (AC), which could move efficiency over long distances.

He stuck with a battery-powered electric car, while Henry Ford put out a cheaper gas-powered model. He spent millions on pre-fabricated concrete houses. A prankster, he nicknamed his children Dot and Dash and proposed to his second wife in Morse code.

Question: What inventor was nicknamed The Wizard of Menlo Park?
Answer: Thomas Edison