Setting up Menlo Park

In the spring of 1876, Thomas Edison, not yet 30 years old, moved 15 workers to the isolated village of Menlo Park, New Jersey in a 30 foot by 100 foot white clapboard building where horse-drawn trucks brought rolls of wire, boxes of chemical books, a brown steam engine and a gasoline converter to supply gaslight.  Edison was already well-established as an inventor by this time from his work in New York City. 

Edison's inventions by the time he moved to Menlo Park included improvements to the telegraph, an electric pen, and a mimeograph machine.  Now his "invention factory" was where he intended to turn invention into a large scale business according to what the market wanted.  Edison assembled men who could make parts of inventions just as a factory hired men to assemble parts of a car.

Edison had his own toolmakers - even his own mathematical physicist!   He believed the best way to invent was to collect enough competent men and the best equipment to organize and carry out the drudgery of invention.  He probably put little store in "inspiration" or "inventive genius" because he believed that there was no such thing as a genius. (His quote)  He became known as the "Wizard of Menlo Park." That title probably didn't appeal to him either :)

Next time...The invention factory gets going
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Today in Pioneer History: "On April 2, 1917, Jeanette Pickering Rankin becomes the first woman ever elected to Congress as a representative from Montana.  Before being elected Rankin worked as a social worker in the states of Montana and Washington.  She joined the woman's suffrage movement in 1910 and campaigned for the right to vote, being instrumental in the passage of the legislation in her home state of Montana.  (You go girl!)