The Birthplace of Modern America

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March 6th 2011

Published: December 29th 2011

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Thomas Edison's Lab

Thomas Edison's last laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey

In the early days of the republic, political debate was intensely partisan, and split on many issues.

Fundamentally, it came down to the type of society that people viewed was ideal.

One side, led by Alexander Hamilton and other New York and New England merchants, believed the future of the country lay in large scale industry.

The country would grow wealthy and strong from selling goods, and compete with Europe as an equal.

They promoted a strong central government, with regulations to ensure predictable and orderly commerce, development initiatives to create the necessary infrastructure, and a central bank to aid financing it all.

The other side, led by Thomas Jefferson and other southern farmers (and slaveholders, it’s worth noting) believed the future lay in small scale agriculture.

People had left Europe to create a new type of society, one whose rules were created by those that lived under them.

Keeping everything on a small scale, and largely self-sufficient, was the best way to ensure this happened.

In their view the central government should have only enough power to keep the states from squabbling and foreign interference to a minimum, and leave the rest to cities, towns, and counties.

People in those

Thomas Edison's Library

Thomas Edison's library in his laboratory

small entities would create whatever they needed.

Somewhat ironically, the final result was determined by technology, not politics.

James Watt’s invention of a practical steam engine in the early 1820’s gave the industrialists an advantage that the small farmers simply could not compete with.

While the debate rages on (think of the current Tea Party arguments), current US society is much closer to Alexander Hamilton’s ideal than Thomas Jefferson’s.

Northern New Jersey, being close to the center of finance in New York City, is where the early experiments with industry took place.

Their historic sites are now this area’s most important legacy.

Today I explore several of them.

Thomas Edison

My first goal is the laboratory of Thomas Edison.

For people with a technological bent like me, he is considered a saint.

He was the most prolific inventor of all time, and is still third of the list of most patents held by an individual almost a century after his death.

He had four laboratories in his lifetime; the only one left in New Jersey is his last in West Orange.

It was

Thomas Edison's desk

Thomas Edison's desk, preserved at the moment of his death. The desk is under glass, causing the unavoidable light glare in the photo.

restored by the Park Service and is finally open to the public.

The site does a very good job of showing how the laboratory worked, and how Edison used it to create his long list of inventions.

The first myth mentioned is that Edison was a genius scientist.

In reality, he had no scientific training whatsoever.

His genius was engineering, taking new discoveries and finding ways of making them into practical products.

He did this through constant experimentation.

The lab was set up to make almost anything, and to turn out testable prototypes within days of their design.

This, in fact, is how Edison discovered so much.

He had a constant flow of products and improvements that his competitors could not match.

Once he discovered a useful product, he then sold the business to other people and used the funds to expand the lab.

The first room on the tour is Edison’s library.

It’s a classic Victorian room, with books stretching to the ceiling.

These books are all technological and scientific, however (it’s no surprise that near the door is a listing

The Spirit of Electricity

'The Sprit of Electricity', which Thomas Edison bought at a world's fair. The current lightbulb is a replacement for the original, which burned continuously for nearly ninety years.

of all patents awarded in the US at the time).

The room is lit by electric lights, which are original to the design.

When the lab was built, the lights were lit by an on-site generator.

In the center of the room is “The Spirit of Electricity”, a marble statue of an angel holding a light bulb.

It’s here mostly by coincidence.

Thomas Edison saw it at a World’s Fair, and liked it so much that he bought it.

Also in the room is Edison’s desk.

He did do work here, although it was not his favorite place.

Edison’s wife preserved the desk exactly as it was at the time of his death, so everything on it is original.

Most important are the cubbyholes stuffed with pieces of paper, including one for “New Ideas”.

I had a lump in my throat throughout my time in this room.

The storage room comes after the library.

Edison set up his lab to create whatever was needed on short notice, so the storage room needed a large amount of material.

There is metal and wire of all

Laboratory Storeroom

The storeroom contained everything Thomas Edison thought he needed to create a prototype on a moment's notice

sorts, of course, along with machine tools, wood forms, and glass.

The storage room is next to the heavy machine shop.

Edison hired very skilled machinists to turn his plans into prototypes.

Their work was precisely tracked and logged to ensure that needed material was always available.

In the center of the room is a rolling overhead crane that can handle a load of six tons.

The machines themselves were driven from two drive shafts, which in turn were powered by two electric motors.

These are two of the oldest motors in the world.

The second floor of the lab contains the precision machine shop.

Unlike the beefy machines downstairs, these are designed to create very precise and delicate parts.

Most of the work creating prototypes took place in this room.

Victorian women were very good at precise work, so Edison hired a number of them for this part of the lab.

Next to the machine shop is the drafting room.

As the lab expanded, it became too time consuming for Edison to create full drawings.

Instead, he did sketches, which a team of

Heavy Machine Shop

Heavy machine shop at the Edison laboratory.

draftsmen then turned into full plans.

The machinists were fully a part of this process, because the draftsmen then updated the designs based on their experiences turning the plans into parts.

Only when the plans had been signed off by everyone who worked on then, including Thomas Edison himself, were they sent out for commercial production.

Next to the drawing room is the most important room in the entire lab.

It’s Edison’s personal laboratory, where he preferred to do his most important work.

The lab is surprisingly spare, just a central lab table, a chemical rack in the corner, and a shelf of scientific journals on the wall.

The third floor of the laboratory building is now a museum of Edison inventions.

The walls are covered with models.

One display concerns Edison’s failed ore venture, which perfectly illustrates how Edison worked.

After getting bored with the light bulb business, Edison sold his company to Elihu Thompson to form General Electric, and used the proceeds to experiment extracting iron from the low-grade ore found in New Jersey.

He was convinced that demand for electric wire

Precision machine shop

would make it profitable.

Unfortunately, better ore was soon found and the venture was a failure.

Edison discovered, however, that the byproduct of the refining was very useful.

It was sand, much smaller and drier than natural sand.

This sand was in demand at the time, for making cement.

Edison got the formula for strong Portland cement, which had been invented in England, and adapted it to his sand.

He ultimately converted his ore-refining factory to a cement plant, which became profitable.

This technique of finding successful inventions from the by-products of failed ones is very typical of Thomas Edison.

The least known product invented by Edison has to be the X-Ray imager.

X-Rays, and their ability to show bones in the body, were discovered by Wilhelm Rontgen in Germany.

When Edison read the scientific paper, he immediately decided to turn the experiment into a practical medical imager.

After many experiments with different filaments and imaging films, he had an X-ray machine that he sold to doctors around the US.

Unfortunately, the assistant who did the most work on the project also discovered something else

Thomas Edison's personal laboratory

This was the room where Thomas Edison preferred to work on new ideas, alone.

people did not know about X-Rays: heavy exposure to them causes skin cancer.

Located behind the main laboratory building is an odd-shaped black building on wheels.

It’s a reconstruction of the Black Mariah, the world’s first motion picture studio.

Edison invented the first practical motion picture camera based on work from France and film from George Eastman.

He constructed the studio soon afterward.

It had a flap in the roof that was opened to regulate the amount of light.

It was on wheels so it could be turned to follow the sun.

The first film Edison released was one of his assistants sneezing.

The film still exists.

The narrative film “The Great Train Robbery” was released soon afterward and the industry took off.

After the laboratory, I went to see the other side of Edison at his house, Glenmont.

It’s located in the gated community of Llewellyn Park.

In case one thinks snobbish private communities are a new phenomenon, this one was founded in 1857!

The area as a whole is deliberately rustic and beautiful, and a private police force ensures that casual visitors don’t

The Black Moriah

A reconstruction of the Black Moriah, the world's first motion picture studio

see any of it beyond Glenmont.

Glenmont is a classic Victorian house.

It was built for a local bookkeeper, who financed it through embezzlement.

After he was caught, he turned over the house to avoid jail time, and Edison then bought it for half its real worth.

Edison considered the house too fancy for his taste, and spent many nights in his lab.

His wife, who came from a wealthy background, found it more accommodating.

Her father was also an inventor, so she was used to the many days her husband wasn’t home.

Victorian families were expected to entertain guests regularly, and the Edisons did more than most.

Almost everyone from the worlds of science and business passed through at some point, including many Nobel-prize winning scientists.

The dining room table could accommodate 20 people at a time!

The rest of the house is filled with paintings, intricate woodwork, animal-skin rugs, and other artifacts typical of the era.

The house also has original electric lights, which were originally powered by a cable run up the hill from the lab.

Everything is original, since Edison’s family

Glenmont, home of Thomas Edison

preserved it intact after his death.

A short trail from the house leads to the Edisons’ graves.

Montclair Art Museum

After having my fill of Edison, I went to the Montclair Art Museum.

Montclair was and is a wealthy community, members of whom founded a museum in the early 1900s.

The museum has two main strengths, one expected and the other unusual.

Both reflect the tastes of the museum’s founders.

The expected strength is landscape paintings from the middle to late 1800s.

These types of paintings were very popular at the time the museum was founded, and many were donated.

The museum has a noted number by George Inness, who painted in Montclair for a decade.

The unusual strength is art by Native Americans, both old and current.

This was the particular passion of one of the museum’s founders, and they donated their entire collection to the museum.

The museum has continued collecting in this area, and now has one of the largest collections in the Northeast.

I particularly enjoyed the more contemporary work.

Much of it combines traditional materials or motifs with modern art ideas.

Thomas Edison's Grave

Gravesite of Thomas Edison, on the grounds of Glenmont

For example, they have a traditionally formed pot from a New Mexico pueblo which is covered in flowing trees and flowers based on French Art Noveau.

Beautiful work.

The museum is pretty small.

It consists of only six rooms, one of which holds special shows (the one when I was there was on Warhol).

Seeing it all still takes quite a bit of time because much of the work is arranged topically (portraits, landscapes, etc.) which complicates finding everything of a wanted type (the Native American work, for example, was spread through four different rooms).

I still enjoyed the visit.

Patterson and Great Falls

After the museum, I had one last historical site to see.

The Great Falls of the Passaic River is the second most powerful waterfall (defined as volume times drop) in the Northeast.

It was the most powerful known in colonial days, since Niagara was not discovered yet.

The waterfall was the natural site for Alexander Hamilton and his partners to put into practice their ideas about large scale industry.

They formed the Society for Useful Manufactures (S.U.M.), bought the land around the waterfall, created an extensive canal system,

Montclair Art Museum

Entrance to the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair New Jersey

and put their ideas into practice.

Within twenty years, every site along the canal system was taken, and the city of Paterson had grown up around the site.

It became the first planned industrial city in the US.

In 1902, S.U.M built one of the first electrical hydropower plants in the US at the waterfall.

Paterson and S.U.M prospered until the early 1920s, when increasing use of water by upstream towns made the waterpower unreliable.

The final straw was the Depression.

S.U.M. dissolved and sold its assets to the city of Paterson in 1936.

Be warned: Paterson is now one of the poorer cities in New Jersey, so the area should be visited with caution.

The waterfall is large and impressive, but not really beautiful.

It’s a series of parallel cascades where the water falls into a narrow ravine.

Like most big waterfalls, the higher the water level the better it looks, and I saw it in a thunderstorm.

A park surrounds the falls, so it’s possible to see it from many angles.

One of the best viewpoints is a pedestrian bridge over the ravine

Great Falls of the Passaic

Great Falls in Paterson New Jersey. I shot this photo from the bridge downstream from the falls

below the falls.

Just below the falls is the power plant.

It looks like any other industrial building from the early 1900s, so without the historic marker I wouldn’t know what it was.

There is a statue of Alexander Hamilton in the park next to the power plant, looking over the enterprise he created.

The remains of the canal system are across the road.

Most of it has been filled in at this point, but old gates and stone walls are still visible.

Philadelphia Food is Heaven

After Paterson, I drove to Philadelphia in pouring rain.

I chose this city because of its location, and because it’s the home of three things that I love eat.

I combined all three for dinner tonight.

Cheesesteaks were invented in Philadelphia in 1936.

There are now many places that sell them, and locals argue over who makes the best the way most foodies discuss the latest chef.

For the purist, the sandwich is made with only three or four ingredients: grilled strips of steak (people argue whether chopped steak counts), cheese, white bread, and optional onions.

S.U.M. Hydroelectric station

The S.U.M Hydropower station at Great Falls. Built in 1902, it is the second oldest hydroelectric plant still in use.

A subset argues that the true cheesesteak has to be made with Cheese Whiz.

I certainly like them that way, because the sugar in the Whiz caramelizes on the grill.

The second item is TastyKakes.

Baked by the local Tasky Baking Company, they are basically a Twinkie done right, and are insanely addictive snack food.

The final item is Yuengling Lager, a product of the oldest brewery in the US.

Yuengling tastes the way Budweiser and similar beers should taste.

My dinner may end up shortening my lifespan, but I certainly enjoyed it!

I slept the night at the Alexander Inn.

It was the first boutique hotel in Philadelphia, and is noted for its moderate rates.

The design focus is art deco, and more subtle than other boutique hotels.

The walls are covered with modern art prints, and some originals.

Like Room Mate Grace, the price of the style was a very small room.

It was worth it.

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