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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2003
MENLO PARK, 9.1 miles (l00 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 light 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 say that Edison also worked in the
little WOODEN SHACK directly behind the highway memorial. For 10
years following 1876, Edison worked night and day at Menlo Park testing
thousands of ideas and materials. He even tried the red whiskers of
Mackenzie, the station agent, for a lamp filament – and rejected them.
The laboratory was lighted by gas when he began work. When he moved
his shop to West Orange in 1887, the incandescent lamp was being used
in many cities. Edison here developed his system of electrical distribution,
his commercial dynamo, the carbon transmitter for the telephone, the
phonograph, the automatic telegraph, and other devices.
West of Menlo Park, Edison had a temporary right-of-way over the
fields to Pumptown, 1.5 miles. On it he built the first electric railway line,
an experimental affair later scrapped. The current was conveyed underground from two of Edison's electric-lighting dynamos at Menlo Park to
one rail of the ungraded, hazardous track built of discarded horse-car rails.
His first electric locomotive was a small, four-wheeled dump car on which
was mounted a dynamo. This acted as a motor, receiving current through
the wheels from one rail, and returning it to the other rails. Friction pulleys at first transmitted power to the driving wheels. The truck and wheels
of the first cars are exhibited at the Edison plant in West Orange (see WEST ORANGE); out of it grew Edison's invention of the third-rail
and trolley systems.
The glamor of great discovery has faded; Menlo Park now is simply a
residential district, with a sawmill its only industrial plant.
At 9.4 miles is the junction with a dirt road.
Left 0.7 miles on this road under a stone railroad bridge to the New JERSEY HOME
FOR DISABLED SOLDIERS (open 9-7), on the crest of a ridge (L). Established in
1866 at Kearny for veterans of the Civil War, the institution was transferred in
1932 to its present site of 150 acres. The home cares for veterans of all wars and
in 1937 had one Civil War veteran on its roster. The building is a broad, two-and-one-half-story brick structure of Colonial design, with a white cupola.
Right on Parsonage Rd. from the entrance gate to Soldiers Home to the attractive
new MIDDLESEX COUNTY TUBERCULOSIS HOSPITAL 0.9 miles (open Tues., Thurs., and
Sun.), of Georgian style, built of brick with white trim. In the valley below the
hospital is a small lake, part of ROOSEVELT PARK (see Tour 1).
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