The Wizard of West Orange

🗹 #166 of 424 NPS units

After leaving Morristown, it took us about 30 minutes to drive to West Orange, NJ and Thomas Edison National Historical Park. 

While Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph (1877) and incandescent light bulb (1879) in his laboratory in Menlo Park, NJ, by the mid-1880s his business operations had outgrown the facilities there. He moved his industrial research and development laboratory into the West Orange complex in 1887, a campus ten times the size of Menlo Park. Here, along with his teams of scientists/engineers, he perfected his phonograph, developed motion pictures, and invented many other devices and technologies.

Our first stop was the Laboratory Complex Visitor Center (Building 1) to get our bearings and my passport stamps, of course! On the park's schedule of events for today was a phonograph demonstration in the music room at 1:00PM and a ranger talk in the Chemistry Laboratory (Building 2) at 2:00PM. 

 

Gatehouse and Main Laboratory Building

Since we had a few minutes before the demo, we headed into the Main Laboratory Building (Building 5) to check out Edison's library/office first.

Edison's desk

I need a cot in my office for napping, too!

Then we went upstairs to the music room on the third floor to meet the volunteer who was giving the phonograph demonstration. As the name suggests, this room was used for recording music for the phonograph.

The Main Laboratory Building is set-up so that visitors can go through it via self-guided tour. The rest of the third floor is filled with artifacts, with many prototypes and commercial Edison products displayed in the cases along the walkway and even more stored on shelves and in cages behind them. There was so much to see that it was almost overwhelming to take it all in. I definitely see a return visit in our future.

Edicraft "electric servants" from the 1920s - sandwich grill and waffle baker

Precision machine shop (2nd floor)

Edison's private chemistry lab (2nd floor)

Heavy machine shop (1st floor)

Outside in the courtyard, we took pics with our favorite inventor... 

...and of a replica of the "Black Maria", the world's first movie studio. Mounted on a circular track, it could be turned to maximize sunlight entering through the roof. A variety of short movies, from ballet to boxing, were filmed inside.

I was super excited that we were able to go inside the Chemistry Laboratory with a ranger. It reminded me of my days prepping demos for chemistry lectures in back room of 100 Noyes Lab at the University of Illinois!

Having gotten our pass from the visitor center to enter the gated neighborhood, we drove a short ways over to see Edison's home, Glenmont Estate. Unfortunately, tours are only offered Fridays - Sundays, so we just walked around the grounds for a bit.

Final resting place of Edison and his second wife, Mina

By the time we finished, it was still before 3:00PM, so we had plenty of time to make it to Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park before the information table closed at 4:00PM.

30 miles

Part III here.