A Pilgrimage to Edison's Lab

For the past six years, as I drove down Main Street in West Orange, I glanced only fleetingly at the red brick edifice and the strangely shaped, black tar-paper cabin, which I knew were both part of Thomas Edison's Laboratory.

My family moved to New Jersey around the same time a road sign appeared on Route 280 announcing that the Edison site was temporarily closed for renovations. As the years dragged on, the sign began to weather and it seemed that the lab would never open again. My eldest boy was slowly evolving from a superhero into the world's next great inventor. I began to get anxious, realizing that seeing Edison's lab could be, for him, equivalent to a pilgrimage to Mecca.

This October the iron gates were finally flung wide and the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, now officially under the auspices of the National Park Service, reopened. After three visits to "the Lab," as it is simply called in my house, the Edison legacy is becoming part of my family's own.

It's hard to imagine that unimpressive downtown West Orange was ever the beating heart of an industrial and technological revolution. As we stepped beyond the shiny new Visitors Center to watch a documentary overview of Edison's life, the remarkable significance of what happened here began to dawn on us.

We all know about Edison's light bulb, his phonograph and the first movie camera. But how many realize that Edison's ventures included poured cement construction? Or that among his many patents were household gadgets like the Edicraft Siphonator, the Edicraft Toaster or the Ediphone, his dictation machine? Perhaps most controversial were his efforts to influence the path of electrical current, fighting mightily to see his AC batteries take the lead against Nikola Tesla's DC current. (In my household, the AC/DC battle rages on. My husband, a confirmed Tesla devotee, is anxious to dispel our son's Edison idol worship, but I've begged him to wait until he's old enough to grasp the true savagery of ambition.)

When the documentary was over, we crossed the blustery courtyard and entered Building #5. Suddenly, it was as if we'd slipped through a crack in time. There on the wall hung the time clock where Edison himself punched in every day. Stuck to the glass was a typed message, "SPECIAL NOTICE. Cigarette smoking in the Laboratory must be stopped. Anyone disobeying this order will be dismissed," hand-signed with a flourish: "Thos. A. Edison."

The cold corridor rose into vast, drafty darkness–an industrial complex riddled with ghosts. We could hear footsteps echoing overhead and smell the must and dust of a century long gone. Building #5 was once the hub of a many-spoked wheel by which Edison drove his juggernaut of influence into virtually every aspect of the industrial engine.

Out of the dark, industrial gloom, we stepped into Edison's Library, three towering stories of true Victorian grandeur. Wood paneling and polished railings rose in an elegant hall lined floor to ceiling with well-stocked bookshelves. Partitioned work areas with desks and tables graced the upper balconies. On every spare wall hung framed commendations, group portraits of Edison's employees, blueprints, aerial photographs of Edison factories and signed portraits of contemporary notables along with oil paintings and marble busts of Edison himself. Centered behind an extravagant Greco-Roman winged seraph holding a light bulb high aloft were more of Edison's crowning achievements: an original phonograph, movie projector and movie camera.

Light bulbs were everywhere. The room glowed with a warm incandescence that reflected on the Plexiglas shield that protected Edison's large roll-top desk. Still stuffed with papers, half-filled jars, carefully labeled vials and a tray of unsmoked cigars, everything looked ready to set back to work as soon as the master inventor returned. And tucked into one alcove was an unadorned cot where Edison slept probably more often than in his elegant home, Glenmont, just a few blocks up the hill in Llewellyn Park.

We stepped beyond the Library and directly into the heart of the machine, first passing a storeroom where heavy iron rods were stocked in wooden frames. Neatly ordered drill bits of every imaginable size were shelved above industrial strength clamps and beside drawers of screws, bolts and washers. Uncut animal horns lay on a table near a giant tortoise shell, all waiting to be put to use in Edison's machines.

Edison used to brag that he could "build anything from a lady's watch to a locomotive." But the West Orange Laboratory was never a manufacturing site. It was, in fact, one of the world's first research and development complexes where well-paid, skilled machinists worked to turn Edison's inspiration into marketable products.

Beyond the storeroom, a doorway drew us into the Heavy Machine Shop. There, huge belts suspended from overhead drive shafts once moved the massive machinery of Edison's inventions. His R&D space was flexible, adapting to Edison's ever-changing needs. Upstairs, the Precision Machine Shop, Drafting Room, Photography Studio and Music Studio showed the breadth and depth of Edison's operation.

But Room 12 on the second floor was Edison's personal lab. According to a 1910 biography, this stark white room was where he did most of his serious thinking. "The door is always open, and often he can be seen seated at a plain table in the centre of the room, deeply intent on some of the number of problems in which he is interested…." There was even, once upon a time, a smaller room off Room 12 used for Edison's "secret experiments."

Certainly my eldest son felt the air of mystery and intrigue about the dusty halls and slightly mildew-scented corridors of Edison's complex. But there was plenty to keep my younger child busy, too. Hands-on displays featured tools and equipment to touch, spin and crank. There were flip-book movies, stereoscope viewers and old quarter-inch thick phonograph records to touch and play. (Crackles and skips were a unique experience for kids of the MP3 age!)

Particularly in the separate Chemistry Lab, we were told in no uncertain terms to keep our hands off for fear of touching chemicals or exposing ourselves to other dangers. Edison frequently dealt with toxic chemicals, working his experiments on industrial strength tabletops and sinks sometimes made of lead. Though the Park Service did its best to clean everything thoroughly, "We are in the business of preservation as well as education," said Park Ranger Tim Pagano. There were still cobwebs and dust enough to give the experiments a sense of having been frozen in time. The men who once worked here must have left their ghosts behind. The feeling was of energy and industry suspended, of an unfinished attempt to conquer the impossible through science, intellect, ambition and perhaps a touch of divine madness. In the Music Room on the third floor, visited by the greatest singers and musicians of the day, even the walls seemed to vibrate with the lingering melodies that were captured there.

On the third floor of Building #5 was a gallery of Edison's inventions. His most famous achievements were displayed behind glass, like the original phonograph from 1877 on which Edison etched the sound waves of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" onto tinfoil. Amidst several displays were TV monitors showing clips from Edison's first movies. Grainy and choppy looking, many of those first images were captured right on the Edison lot, either in the open courtyard or in the Black Maria–that odd shaped hut near the front gate. Mounted on a turntable and with an opening near the roof, the entire building could be turned to take full advantage of the daylight for filming.

I sensed in my son's reverential calm that he might have the patience for a tour of Glenmont. So we picked up a Visitors Permit that allowed us into Llewellyn Park, the first "gated" community in the United States, developed by Llewellyn Haskell in the 1850s. It was a rare opportunity just to drive down the quiet, heavily-wooded lanes where illustrious elites of the modern day live, like the Colgate family and more recently Whoopi Goldberg. But I kept my gawking to myself as we drove up to the glorious russet mansion decorated for Christmas with all the Victorian fancies.

Here we entered the lushly paneled reception hall and drawing room where Edison and his second wife, Mina, played host to such luminaries as Helen Keller, Anne and Charles Lindbergh, Orville Wright, Henry Ford and the King of Siam. We climbed the grand staircase aglow in the light of a magnificent stained glass window to reach the more relaxed second floor where the family slept and spent time together reading, playing music or Parcheesi.

But it was in the garden that I knew my boy had fully understood what he'd seen. It was late in the season but before the snow as he searched the broad lawn for some kind of token–a flower, he said, or maybe a pretty leaf. Finally, he found a late bough of bronze foliage and laid it solemnly across Thomas Edison's grave.

SEEING IT REAL: Thomas Edison National Historical Park is open Wednesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Glenmont is open Friday through Sunday, but passes are limited and distributed on a first-come, first-served basis from the Laboratory Visitor Center. Go early to pick up a pass for no extra charge.  House tours are offered between noon and 4 p.m.

The entrance fee is just $7, with children under 16 years old free, and includes both the Laboratory Complex and Glenmont.