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For Whom the Bulb Burns

West Orange, N.J.

In this era of cyberspace and fiber-optics, our image of an inventor tends to revolve around intangible diagrams manipulated on a computer screen by technogeeks working behind sliding glass doors. But back when Thomas Edison (1847-1931) was opening up the new age of electricity, the act of inventing usually involved prototypes made of very tangible materials—spring steel, cast iron, polished brass, beveled glass and varnished oak. Edison's world ran on tooled gears, tanned leather, rubber, tar- paper and shelves of chemicals in hand-labeled bottles with ground glass stoppers. Machinery in motion really moved—flywheels spinning, pistons snorting, belts running from driveshafts—while smoke, tallow and machine oil lent their pungent smells to the air.

This was all driven vividly home when I visited the Thomas Edison National Historical Park recently during an "Edison Day"—not an anniversary, but a day at the museum in which admission fees are not charged. The place was teeming with visitors directed through the complex by the staff of archivists, specialists and park rangers.

The prolific inventor at his desk with his Ediphone and the 'Genius of Electricity' statue. ENLARGE
The prolific inventor at his desk with his Ediphone and the 'Genius of Electricity' statue. Thomas Edison National Historical Park

The "park" comprises 14 historic buildings remaining from the Edison laboratory complex and factory. Edison moved his operations to West Orange in 1887 from his smaller complex at Menlo Park, outside Newark. An international celebrity by this time, Edison had already improved Morse's telegraph and Bell's telephone, and had invented the incandescent bulb and the phonograph, not to mention the electric distribution system—a direct ancestor of General Electric—with which he would illuminate the streets of New York and other cities.

In the West Orange lab, Edison and his staff invented, among other things, a successful alkaline storage battery, a fluoroscope for viewing X-ray images, and a method of erecting poured-concrete buildings. Here they also developed motion pictures and conducted experiments toward adding sound to the silent movies. In the surrounding factory buildings, with their own large work forces, Edison ran the various businesses born of his inventions, including the manufacture of movie cameras, film and projectors, and his favorite enterprise, the Edison Phonograph Co., with its vast catalog of phonographs and recordings released under the Edison label. Indeed, Edison effectively invented the modern entertainment industry.

After his death, activity at the laboratory diminished. In 1948, it was opened as a museum run by the Thomas A. Edison Foundation; in 1954, ownership was transferred to the National Park Service. Age and wear took their toll, however, and by the 1990s the buildings, housing five million documents and 400,000 artifacts, were in a parlous structural state. After a five-year, $13 million restoration project initiated by the Park Service with substantial funding from the nonprofit Edison Innovation Foundation, the campus was reopened this past October.

On Edison Day, the "Black Maria," Edison's great tar- paper-covered film studio—designed to revolve on a circular track to follow the sun through its hinged roof—was open for inspection. There were tours that included the chemistry lab (the world's best-equipped in 1887) and a fascinating display of archival material, including Benito Mussolini's long and elegant condolence telegram—in Italian—to Edison's widow.

The music room. ENLARGE
The music room. Thomas Edison National Historical Park

Most fascinating of all, however, is the main laboratory building, containing Edison's three-story paneled library. Here you really feel the presence of the man, smiling benignly in his rumpled suit and comfortably insulated from the noise of machinery and colleagues by his partial deafness. His 10,000 scientific volumes, furnishings, paintings and numerous tributes are just as he left them—his roll-top desk open to reveal pigeonholes crammed with notes and jottings. In a corner alcove is the cot where he took the famous catnaps that enabled him to work long days into his mid-80s.

Dominating the scene is a monumental Italian marble, "The Genius of Electricity," a nude winged boy holding aloft a live Edison electric bulb, its silk-wrapped wires trailing through his limbs to a wall socket. Edison purchased the work at the Paris World's Exhibition of 1889 (for which Eiffel built his tower), and though the sculpture represents an honest attempt to salute a new technology through neoclassical allegory, it rides a very thin line between mixed-media and kitsch.

The machine shop and precision machine shop are restored to the same condition they were on the day Edison died, with large direct-current motors waiting for someone to throw the switch to get the rooms humming again. Here, Edison produced the prototypes for various inventions that might go into production once they were perfected. Upstairs a lengthy vitrine holds a display of Edison phonographs (from tin-foil to electric models), motion-picture equipment and advertisements that reveal how important his businesses were to the commerce of his day. A solicitous employer, Edison placed phonographs around the factory buildings to let his workers enjoy musical breaks as well as lunch-time dancing.

In the top-floor music room, Edison himself would audition new artists and review recordings prior to release, often listening through a velvet-padded ear-trumpet. However ironic it was for the head of a major recording company to be seriously impaired of hearing, his musical decisions were law, even if they weren't always commercially successful. Nearby a hands-on room invites young visitors to draw, make an animated flip-book, build things with Tinker-Toys and otherwise engage children of the video era in the spirit of creating working objects. "Look what I invented," cried a little girl, proudly holding up a Tinker-Toy construction.

Edison National Historical Park also includes the inventor's nearby home, Glenmont, where he lived from 1886 through his death. Designed by the influential architect and tastemaker Henry Hudson Holly, the house and grounds reflect the posh late-Victorian lifestyle Edison provided for his family, as well as for his many illustrious guests. On the lawn this particular afternoon, The Paragon Ragtime Orchestra played a program of "music of Edison's day," and as their happy, unamplified tunefulness wafted through the trees, it was hard to resist a wave of nostalgia for this gentle, genteel life in the good old summertime.


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