Thomas Edison National Historic Museum, West Orange, NJ
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We could have almost walked here. Actually, we should have, but then we'd have to walk back, too, and that was more than we were up for on this lazy Sunday. So we hopped into the car and made our way to West Orange. On the way we saw a strange sight: on the front lawn of a house was a fully-antlered buck head to head with what looked to be a Springer Spaniel. By the time we could turn around and investigate (we were concerned that the dog's collar might be caught on a tine) both animals had disappeared. That's one mystery I would have liked an answer to!
And on we went to the Park, where real Park Rangers had their nifty Park Ranger outfits on, complete with Ranger hats. Not at all what I expected, for some reason. We paid up (only $5 and free use of the audio tour headsets) and started to wander around the property.
At his "Invention Factory" (the three story brick building in the photos) Edison developed the phonograph, invented the movie camera and the nickel-iron alkaline storage battery, and was awarded 500 patents. The complex includes his chemistry lab, machine shop, and library. It is all in surprisingly good shape, although the museum had been closed since 2003 for renovations and had only been reopened for about two months, so perhaps that it just looked new and shiney because it had been recently dusted.
The fabricating room was a maze of motors and belts and machines. OSHA would have a field day here. The stockroom had almost anything you could ever want. Decide that you might get a good result if you used elephant hide? It's here. How about walrus tusk? Check. Doweling? What size and material? The saying was that you could create anything from a precision watch to a locomotive and never have to leave the building to do it. I believe it.
The museum allows for access to all three floors and most of the rooms on each one. The third floor is primarily dedicated to a museum-like showing of actual or reproductions of early inventions. It was all well laid out and the audio tour gave some good information.
The rest of the third floor was primarily storage, not clearly labeled nor very interesting looking. I listened to a couple of the audio tour links, wished I had some of the sturdy wooden furniture I could see behind the mesh and wondered what was in the cardboard boxes. Then we left and went to a Ranger-led talk in one of the exterior chemistry labs.
The Ranger was pleased to have someone else take over his tour and he thanked Dan and Aaron for sharing their knowledge. It was fun to be with someone who really knew what they were talking about. And the Ranger let us in on a little secret: when they renovated the museum, they replaced all of the hazardous chemicals with lookalikes. But then he told us where they put the originals. I told him I'd keep the secret, but it was funny to know how far they hadn't gone.
Once the chemistry lab tour was over, we meandered around a couple of buildings, finished up what we hadn't finished inside and then went off to discover lunch at the Tick Tock Diner.
