The Edison Memorial Tower - Edison, NJ
N 40° 33.790 W 074° 20.341
18T E 555955 N 4490476
Huge, fantastic tower erected to pay tribute to the Wizard of Menlo Park, Thomas Alva Edison. The tower is topped with the world's largest incandescent light bulb.
Waymark Code: WMHRNP
Location: New Jersey, United States
Date Posted: 08/09/2013
Views: 12
Menlo Park, 9.1 m (100 alt., 355 pop.), is known for the site of Edison's laboratory, marked by a rough-hewn granite boulder (R). In a hillside park behind the boulder stands the 129-foot memorial tower, topped by a huge electric bulb about 14 feet high and 9 feet in diameter. The eight-sided tower is built of reinforced colored concrete. The great bulb is made of prismatic pyrex glass and illuminated by 12 lights inside. Bronze tablets to be placed on seven of the eight sides will tell of Edison's inventions. A bronze and glass door will give a view of the perpetual light at the base, burning since 1929. The tower stands on the spot where the first incandescent bulb was made. Edison's home is gone; his workshop and many relics have been removed by Henry Ford to his museum in Dearborn, Mich. Residents day that Edison also worked in the little wooden shack directly behind the highway memorial. --- New Jersey, a Guide to Its Present and Past: Page 485-486, 1939
The tower has a lot of weather damage to its base and other area where concrete has been chipped away or gone missing. A bas relief of Edison on a marker has been stolen. The 7 markers are all still there but I could not get close as the perimeter is fenced. Each of the large 7 markers can be found on one of the eight sides (the eighth side is for the door) and tell about his inventions and other exploits. There is also an interpretive at the site. I was alone when I visited and no one seemed to come down this old, lonely road. There is a small museum to the right but it was closed, of course. It seems, time as forgotten this strange memorial.
I read about this memorial on several sites. I learned the basic facts. Extending 131 feet, 4 inches above Menlo Park, the Edison Memorial Tower marks the spot where Thomas Alva Edison conceived the first practical incandescent light bulb. For 10 years, Edison worked here on some 400 patented ideas before eventually moving his “Invention Factory” to West Orange. The tower and museum were dedicated on February 11, 1938, on what would have been the inventor's 91st birthday.
As early as a few years ago, plans were unveiled to renovate the tower. NJ coughed up a few million for the project. Apparently, a few million from the sate and donations from other sources only gets you a cheap wire metal fence.