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National Resources Planning Board 



him to cxtrnordinarv success in business and to the 

 realization of a boyhood dream — the possession of a 

 well-equipped laboratory in which he could work day 

 and night if he chose. The funds which he received 

 from the sale of his stock-ticker made it possible for 

 him to set up a workshop on the top floor of a padlock 

 factorj' in Newark, N. J. In 1876, however, the desire 

 for greater privacy and more room caused him to build 

 a laboratory at Menlo Park. It was a "two story 

 clapboard structure, long and unpretentious but ex- 

 actly what he wanted."*' Next to the laboratory in 

 importance was the brick machine shop where skilled 

 workmen constructed the innumerable pieces of equip- 

 ment that Edison needed in his experiments. A small 

 wooden carpenter shop, a gasoline plant that supplied 

 the gasoline gas used for illumination, and a small 

 building in which lami)black, made from a battery of 

 smoking kerosene lamps, was collected and pressed into 

 small cakes for use in the Edison carbon transmitter 

 completed the facilities at Menlo Park.^" 



*• Jehl, Francis. Mcnlo Park reminiscences. Dearborn, Mich., Edison Institute, 

 1936. vol. 1, p. 7. 



A private laboratory in which a man strove to make 

 inventing a profitable business was a new thing and 

 did not go uncriticized bj' the "pure" scientists of the 

 day. Moreover Edison was looked upon as an un- 

 schooled intruder. His methods of research were not 

 the traditional ones. Ho frequently disregarded the 

 long-established rules deemed to be fundamental and 

 relied on common sense and patient effort to carry him 

 through a difficult problem. His motto was "Seeing 

 is believing," and he would not give up the search for 

 what he wished to see until he ha<l exhausted every 

 possibility. Over and over again he experimented 

 with "a scrupulous integritj' and a minute attention to 

 detail" on problems the scope of which would have 

 challenged even the best trained scientist. Each ex- 

 periment was recorded methodically in notebooks, one 

 of the most frequent entries being "T. A." meaning 

 "Try Again. "5' 



Edison has often been criticized for his "trial-and- 

 error" method. But Dr. Karl T. (\)mi)ton. who worked 



'• Dyer, F. L., Martin, T. C, and Mcadowcroft, W. H. Edison: his life and in- 

 ventions. New York, London, Harper and Bro., 1929. vol. 1, p. 272. 

 " Menlo Park reminiscences, p. 33S. See footnote 49. 



TiGURE 6. — Interior View of Edison's Laboratory at Menlo Park, ISSO 



World Wide Photos ,/nc 



