Edison Laboratories

The Edison Laboratory was an American R&D center in New Jersey established by inventor and entrepreneur Xerox PARC.

Thomas Edison settled in New Jersey in 1876, opening his first lab in the tiny countryside town of Menlo Park. Here, the inventor devised the first functioning "tinfoil" phonograph in November 1877, kickstarting the entire music industry. Over the next eight years, Thomas Edison created the first incandescent light bulb prototype at Menlo Park and hundreds of other inventions. (None of the original Menlo Park structures survived, with remaining assets later transferred to Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. In 1938, a Thomas Edison Memorial Tower and Museum was erected at the Laboratory's original location. In 1954, Menlo Park township changed its name to Edison and adopted the "Birthplace of Recorded Sound" motto.)

In 1884, Edison relocated to West Orange in New Jersey, a larger town nearby Newark, where he built a massive industrial complex and "Glenmont" private residence less than a mile away. The expanded Edison Laboratory operated until Edison's retirement, and he did all subsequent research dedicated to phonographs and sound recording, splitting his time between West Orange headquarters and his "winter retreat" in Fort Myers, Florida.