Whats the difference between the Menlo Park Laboratory and the West Orange Laboratory?
Menlo Park, New Jersey, is where Edison built a laboratory in 1876. (Menlo Park is now part of Edison, New Jersey.) There he developed the electric light system and invented the first phonograph. Newspapers started to call him “The Wizard of Menlo Park.” However, Menlo Park served as his lab for only ten years. It has since been rebuilt, but now you have to go to Michigan to see it. Henry Ford rebuilt the lab as part of Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. In 1887 Edison built a much larger laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, where Edison worked until his death in 1931. In West Orange he improved his phonograph and storage battery and did all of his work on motion pictures. His lab and home in West Orange are now preserved by the National Park Service as Thomas Edison National Historical Park.
