Menlo Park is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

within Edison Township in Middlesex County, in the U.S. state of

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

. In 1876,

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February11, 1847October18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, ...

set up his home and research laboratory in Menlo Park, at the time an unsuccessful

real estate development Real estate development, or property development, is a business process, encompassing activities that range from the renovation and re-lease of existing buildings to the purchase of raw Real Estate, land and the sale of developed land or parce ...

named after the town of

Menlo Park, California Menlo Park ( ) is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, California, San Mateo County in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, California, Eas ...

. In this lab, which was one of the first to pursue practical, commercial applications of research, Edison invented the

phonograph A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound. The sound vibration Waveform, waveforms are recorded as correspond ...

and developed a commercially viable

incandescent light bulb An incandescent light bulb, also known as an incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe, is an electric light that produces illumination by Joule heating a #Filament, filament until it incandescence, glows. The filament is enclosed in a ...

filament. Christie Street in Menlo Park was one of the first streets in the world to use electric lights for illumination. In 1887, Edison moved his home and laboratory to West Orange. After his death, the

Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum The Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park, also known as the Menlo Park Museum / Edison Memorial Tower, is a memorial to inventor and businessman Thomas Edison, Thomas Alva Edison, located in the Menlo Park, New Jersey, Menlo Park area of Edison, N ...

was constructed near his old Menlo Park lab and dedicated in 1938. Edison's old lab site and memorial now make up Edison State Park.About Us

. Accessed March 22, 2012. The municipality in which Menlo Park is located, which was called "Raritan Township" while Edison was alive, was changed to Edison Township on November 10, 1954.Snyder, John P
''The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries: 1606–1968''
Bureau of Geology and Topography,

Trenton, New Jersey Trenton is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of New Jersey and the county seat of Mercer County, New Jersey, Mercer County. It was the federal capital, capital of the United States from November 1 until D ...

, 1969. p. 170 re Edison Township, p. 173 re Raritan Township. Accessed November 20, 2016.

References

Neighborhoods in Edison, New Jersey Unincorporated communities in Middlesex County, New Jersey Unincorporated communities in New Jersey Company towns in New Jersey {{MiddlesexCountyNJ-geo-stub

See also

References