| What makes it historical? |
Having earned his reputation as the Wizard of Menlo Park by inventing the electric light system, Thomas Edison built a new, much larger laboratory here in West Orange in 1887! Here, he and his “muckrakers” worked tirelessly to improve the phonograph and create X-ray imagery, alkaline batteries, and motion pictures!
This site preserves five million pages of Mr. Edison’s original documents and correspondences, including fan letters sent to him by multiple US presidents! His desk is largely in the same state as when he died, and while some parts of the complex have had to be rebuilt, like the Black Maria movie studio, much of the machines and library are originals! |
