Nov 17--Another house (Thomas Edison), just for Laura!

Sorry about this LJ, but we did stop by Thomas Edison's house in West Orange, NJ. His laboratory is right down the hill, but it was under re-construction so we couldn't go inside. The house wasn't too exciting, but I was interested to discover that Edison made himself quite a bit of money from his inventions. He actually didn't inherit a fortune like a lot of the famous men we've studied, he made it himself. He translated his new technologies into commercial products and marketed them. Inventing the phonograph and the first practical incandescent lamp allowed him to go on inventing. Edison wasn't formally educated and called the 200 scientists that worked for him in the lab "muckers", and called himself the "Chief Mucker". Sounds like he spent most of his time in the lab...not much family life up at the house. At the West Orange lab they invented the movie camera, improved the storage battery, the fluoroscope (whatever that is), rubber from the goldenrod plant, Edison Portland cement...and a ton of other things. Edison himself had 1,093 patents. He lived from 1847-1931 so he's doing all this at more or less the same time that the Wright Brothers were trying to figure out how to fly.