unincorporated community
An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...
, United States.
In 1876,
Thomas Edison
Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 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 inventi ...
set up his home and research laboratory in Menlo Park, which at the time was the site of 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 land and the sale of developed land or parcels to other ...
named after the town of
Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County within the San Francisco Bay Area of California in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south ...
. While there, he earned the nickname "the Wizard of Menlo Park".Walsh, Bryan "The Electrifying Edison" Web: ''Time'' 5 Jul 2010. The Menlo Park lab was significant in that it was one of the first laboratories to pursue practical, commercial applications of research. It was in his Menlo Park laboratory that Thomas Edison invented the
phonograph
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
and developed a commercially viable
incandescent light bulb
An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb with a vacuum or inert gas to protect the filament from oxi ...
filament. Christie Street in Menlo Park was one of the first streets in the world to use electric lights for illumination. Edison left Menlo Park and moved his home and laboratory to West Orange, New Jersey in 1887. After his death, the Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum 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 Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum. Accessed March 22, 2012. The municipality in which Menlo Park is located, which was called "Raritan Township" while he was alive, was officially changed to Edison Township on November 10, 1954, in honor of the inventor.Snyder, John P ''The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries: 1606–1968'' Bureau of Geology and Topography,