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NARRATOR—This majestic water tower was built in 1922 for fire protection. Flames had already damaged the Edison complex once, on December 9th, 1914.
BERNIE CARLSON—Edison had gone home early to eat supper that night with his family. And when heard about the fire, he went out into the yard at Glenmont and watched the fire from there. And his son Charles was with him, and his son was very worried about how his father must feel. … And eventually Edison turned to his son and he said, “Where’s mother? Get her out here. And tell her, bring her friends, too. They’ll never see a fire like this one again.”
NARRATOR— The fire gutted several factory buildings. But firemen protected the laboratory from significant damage.
[SOUND—FADE OUT]
NARRATOR—As you look past the water tower, you’ll see a concrete building. Edison put in this ventilated and temperature-controlled building after the fire.
[MUSIC—TBA: DIAMOND DISC PRE-1916.]
NARRATOR— Edison built Vault 32 to protect around 10,000 Diamond Disc molds used to press phonograph records. He built another vault for his Blue Amberol cylinder molds. The January, 1916 edition of Edison Phonograph Monthly enthused, “Our ‘Holy of Holies,’ shall we call these vaults? Here are enshrined the immortal voices of Edison artists; here are kept the imperishable records of instrumental skill on violin, on harp, on piano—on all musical instruments. If the names of these illustrious artists are considered, we might style these vaults our ‘Westminster Abbeys,’ except that instead of holding the mortal remains of the illustrious dead, they hold the imperishable songs and art of illustrious immortals.”
Thomas Edison seems to have realized the historic value of what he did, even as he was doing it. He constructed several archive facilities over the years, not only for recordings, but for experimental prototypes and complete documentation of his inventions, businesses, and laboratory procedures.
You’ll find more in-depth stops for the buildings nearby. Just look on the signs for audio labels.
[SOUND—STAMP MILLS, ROCK CRUSHERS, ASSAY FURNACES.]
NARRATOR—Edison set up a metallurgical laboratory here in Building Four to test samples of various metals.
BERNIE CARLSON—In the 1890s, Edison hoped to use giant electromagnets to remove iron from rocks. However, to do so, Edison had to crush the ore into a very fine powder, and the existing steel mills—the steel mills in the 1890s, that is—couldn’t use powdered iron in their blast furnaces. And so Edison never had customers for his iron ore; it was very pure, but he could never find anybody who could actually use it. As a result, he lost over three million dollars on this project.
NARRATOR—Edison did produce usable ore briquettes, pressed with a binder. But the discovery of higher graded iron ore deposits in the Midwest proved the final downfall.
BERNIE CARLSON—A reporter asked Edison how he felt about the magnetic ore separation venture and losing all that money, and Edison replied, “Well it’s all gone now, but we had a helluva good time spending it.”
[MUSIC—“HAS ANYBODY HERE SEEN KELLY?,” 4-MINUTE AMBEROL CYLINDER 416, ca. 1908.][1]
NARRATOR—Later Building Four witnessed major developments in phonograph recording and duplication. Here’s where Bill Hayes and other muckers created a harder wax phonograph cylinder called the Four-minute Amberol. You’re listening to a Four-minute Amberol cylinder from 1908.
Thomas Edison, Junior, Edison’s eldest son by his first wife, also worked awhile in Building Four, testing toasters and coffee makers for the Edicraft line of kitchen appliances.
[1] Billy Murray and Chorus, “Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?,” The Edison CD Sampler, copyright 1984 Edison National Historic Site, West Orange, NJ, track 9
NARRATOR— The muckers stored chemicals in the front end of Building Three. Now let’s look into the back. Walk along the left side of the building.
[SOUND—SLOWLY FADE IN WOODWORKING SHOP: SAWS, LATHES.]
NARRATOR—Up ahead you’ll see a doorway on the right. When you get there, take a look inside.
BERNIE CARLSON—And the back half was where they actually had a pattern shop where they had a set of woodworking machines. And by “patterns,” they meant that if you were going to cast anything in metal, in particular in iron, what you’d often make isyou’d make a dummy up in wood first, and then you’d use that to make your mold for the actual metal part that you wanted to make.
NARRATOR— Casting heavy metals was one of the few things Edison couldn’t do on-site. The wooden patterns that this shop sent to foundries came back as parts for factory machinery.
Power was transmitted to the woodworking machines through belts and lineshafts, as in the machine shops in Building Five.
BERNIE CARLSON—And the way they got power to Building Three was they actually ran wires underneath the ground. And it was an opportunity for Edison to demonstrate the transmission of electric power.
NARRATOR—Notice the smaller building to the left.
[SOUND—BLACKSMITH.]
NARRATOR— This is Building Seven: a blacksmithing shed built in 1919. The complex had several blacksmith shops over time, though we know only a few details about them. We know that a blacksmith named A.C. Anderson worked in Building Seven for three months starting in November, 1920. His weekly salary was 39 dollars and 60 cents.
NARRATOR—Harold Anderson began his career working for Edison in 1924. Here he is in 1959, giving a tour of Building Two, the Chemistry Laboratory. Take a look inside.
HAROLD ANDERSON— The building as you see it today is a mixture of some very old apparatus and other things not so old. Over here in the corner there are gas furnaces that were probably built in when the building was built. That was in 1887. And the year it was built, it was probably the world’s best-equipped chemical laboratory; very modern, very up to date. But by the time Edison died it was partly modernized, but rather old-fashioned even then. But during the whole 44 years that Edison lived and worked in West Orange, he spent a lot of time in the Chemical Laboratory. He liked working in chemistry. He had had a chemical laboratory in the cellar of his home when he was only 10 years old, in Port Huron, Michigan.[1]
NARRATOR—Edison and the muckers experimented with the chemical content of waxes and resins used to make phonograph records. Approximately 50,000 chemistry experiments over a decade went into perfecting Edison’s storage battery.
Through the door at the end of the room you’ll see a cluttered lab bench. Edison himself worked there. The dry, brown stalks with flowers are goldenrod. As you may have heard earlier on your tour, the Old Man spent the last years of his life experimenting with goldenrod as a source of synthetic rubber.
[1] Harold Anderson 6/7/1959, excerpt from transfer no. 388–01
NARRATOR— Small, temporary buildings of this type went up and came down as needed in the West Orange complex. This example, Building Eleven, dates to around 1900. Its first use was for research related to Edison’s ore mining. It also housed a small chemistry laboratory that was probably used in developing improved storage batteries, phonograph records, and motion picture film. A similar structure, Building Ten, stood beside it on the left.
In 1940, Thomas A. Edison Incorporated took down Buildings Ten and Eleven to build a museum called the Edison Memorial Building. They donated Building Eleven to the museum known as The Henry Ford in Michigan. Ford’s architect, Edward Cutler, reconstructed Building Eleven. Cutler described it as “nothing but a barn, more or less.”
The Henry Ford in Michigan preserved Building Eleven, along with several buildings from Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory. They returned this structure to Edison National Historic Site in 2002, as part of the heritage of the West Orange laboratory. But what happened to the Edison Memorial Building museum?
NARRATOR— Head up the stairs just beyond Building 11. They lead to a flat concrete space. This was intended to be the site of the museum. But according to Professor Bernard Carlson, only an underground vault was constructed during World War Two.
BERNIE CARLSON—At that time, the Edison Museum was not run by the Park Service; it was still run by Thomas A. Edison Incorporated. And the company was very worried that all of its valuable information—all of the ideas, all of the proprietary knowledge that Edison had generated—could be lost if the Germans flew a bombing mission and bombed in and around New York City, and they thought that they might be a real target. And so as a result, they built this bombproof vault for all of Edison’s notebooks and all of his records.
NARRATOR— Today the National Park Service continues to store the Edison archives and artifact collections in this vault, and in several other vaults in the lab complex.
You’ll find more in-depth stops for the buildings nearby. Just look on the signs for audio labels.
(ENG) Building 13 - Black Maria (325)
English audio guide for Building 13 - Black Maria, #325
NARRATOR— The Thomas A. Edison Foundation donated this replica of the Black Maria. If it is open, you can step inside. The original structure went up near the water tower in 1893. The Black Maria was the first building ever constructed as a motion picture studio. Its nickname came from the black tarpaper that covers it. In 1890s slang, a “Black Maria” meant a police paddy wagon.
[SOUND—PERIOD POLICE SIREN, IF AVAILABLE.]
NARRATOR— Archivist Leonard DeGraaf.
LEONARD DeGRAAF—The Black Maria was designed so that its roof could be opened up. And it was constructed on a circular track so that the building could be moved as the day progressed; with the roof open, the sun would shine down, and would give the film producers inside the Black Maria enough natural light in order to make the films, because at that time, they didn’t have bright enough lights.
NARRATOR— Professor Bernard Carlson.
BERNIE CARLSON—The Black Maria was used by Edison employees to make a series of what we would today call “shorts.” That is to say small, quick films on a variety of special topics. And those topics included “Fred Ott’s Sneeze”; they also included boxing matches, and also exotic dancers. But my all-time favorite was a short sequence in which they showed two cats boxing. I’ve never actually seen the film, but I have seen stills from it.
NARRATOR— Edison’s men tore down the original Black Maria after The Old Man opened a new studio on New York’s 21st Street in 1901. Thomas Edison was the first to see a commercial potential in motion pictures. He hired trailblazers like Edwin S. Porter, director of The Great Train Robbery—the first movie that told a story. The Edison Company continued to make motion pictures—including an early version of Frankenstein—until the beginning of World War One. The outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914 closed an important market for Edison films. This, as well as competition from new film companies operating in Southern California, ultimately forced Edison to leave the motion picture industry in 1918.
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Last updated: August 9, 2025
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