Thomas Edison's Menlo Park: The World's First R & D Lab

Twenty-nine years old at the time he moved to Menlo Park, Edison was already a successful inventor and businessman. One of the reasons he chose to set up shop in Menlo Park was that it provided a quiet, rural setting where he and his colleagues could work without distraction, yet was not far from a railroad connection to New York, a mere 25 miles away, allowing him easy access to his backers and corporate sponsors.

The laboratory's open floor plan (seen here in an illustration originally published in 1880) allowed for easy communication between Edison and his associates. The layout created an open, informal environment in order that Edison felt would foster creativity. He had no rules for work and no time clock, but the team worked long hours, enjoyed each other's company and produced substantial results.

Among the many significant inventions Edison developed at Menlo Park was a device that allowed the recording and reproduction of sound. Perfected a year after the move, the device was so extraordinary that Edison took it on tour the following year, demonstrating it before members of Congress and at the White House for U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes. During the Washington trip, he visited the studio of famed photographer Matthew Brady, who made this portrait of the man and his machine.

In October 1879, Edison changed world history by successfully passing current through a substance (in this case, a carbonized form of cardboard called Bristol board) that glowed without burning or melting. Other forms of light had already been created, but Edison's bulb was revolutionary in that it was practical: the first iteration (a replica of which is seen in the photo above) shone for 40 hours.

The staff at Menlo Park included machinists, chemists and draftsmen, the total number of workers rising and falling according to the inventor's needs. Some workers passed through briefly, while others stayed with Edison for years, even assuming managerial positions in his manufacturing companies.

During his years at Menlo Park, Edison radically improved the generator, while developing numerous other devices to measure and improve the production and distribution of electricity, like sockets, switches and insulating tape. At around the same time, he also invented the kind of gummed tape commonly used to secure packages.

By 1882, Edison had shifted much of his attention to the management of his electric lighting companies in New York. The Menlo Park facility was closed in the same year. Five years later, he would open a much larger research facility nearby in West Orange, where he would continue to churn out new products and ideas.