The name of Menlo Park will not have as striking a significance to the younger readers as to their elders whose recollections carry them back to the years between 1876 and 1886. During that period the place became invested with the glamor of romance by reason of the many startling and wonderful inventions coming out of it from time to time.
Edison worked there during these ten years. He had adopted Invention as a profession. As we have seen, he had always had a passion for a laboratory. Thus, from the little cellar at Port Huron, from the scant shelves in a baggage car, from the nooks and corners of dingy telegraph offices, and the grimy little shops in New York and Newark, he had come to the proud ownership of a real laboratory where he could wrestle with Nature for her secrets.
Here he could experiment to his heart's content, and invent on a bolder and larger scale than ever before. All the world knows that he did.
Menlo Park was the merest hamlet, located a few miles below Elizabeth. Besides the laboratory buildings, it had only a few houses, the best-looking of which Edison lived in. Two or three of the others were occupied by the families of members of his staff; in the others boarders were taken.
During the ten years that Edison occupied his laboratory there, life in Menlo Park could be summed up in one short word—work. Through the days and through the nights, year in and year out, for the most part, he and his associates labored on unceasingly, snatching only a few hours of sleep here and there when tired nature positively demanded it. Such a scene of concentrated and fruitful activity the world has probably never seen.
The laboratory buildings consisted of the laboratory proper, the library and office, a machine shop, carpenter shop, and some smaller buildings, and, later on, a wooden building, which was used for a short time as an incandescent lamp factory.
Here Edison worked through those busy years, surrounded by a band of chosen assistants, whose individual abilities and never-failing loyalty were of invaluable aid to him in accomplishing the purposes that he had in mind.
As to these associates, we quote Mr. Edison's own words from an autobiographical article in the Electrical World of March 5, 1904: "It is interesting to note that in addition to those mentioned above (Charles Batchelor and Francis R. Upton), I had around me other men who ever since have remained active in the field, such as Messrs. Francis Jahl, William J. Hammer, Martin Force, Ludwig K. Boehm, not forgetting that good friend and co-worker, the late John Kruesi. They found plenty to do in the various developments of the art, and as I now look back I sometimes wonder how we did so much in so short a time."
To this roll of honor may be added the names of a few others: The Carman brothers, Stockton L. Griffin, Dr. A. Haid, John F. Ott (still with Mr. Edison at Orange), John W. Lawson, Edward H. Johnson, Charles L. Clarke, William Holzer, James Hippie, Charles T. Hughes, Samuel D. Mott, Charles T. Mott, E. G. Acheson, Dr. E. L. Nichols, J. H. Vail, W. S. Andrews, and Messrs. Worth, Crosby, Herrick, Hill, Isaacs, Logan, and Swanson.
To these should be added the name of Mr. Samuel Insull, who, in 1881, became Mr. Edison's private secretary, and who for many years afterward managed all his business affairs.