THOMAS EDISON AND MENLO PARK

More than any other inventor in history, Thomas Edison is responsible for the technologies that make modern life modern. By the time of his death in 1931, he held 1,093 patents covering the creation or refinements of devices in telegraphy and telephony, electric power generation and lighting, sound recording, motion pictures, storage batteries, and mining and cement technology. However, his most important invention was one that couldn’t be patented: the process of modern invention itself. By applying the principles of mass production to the 19th-century model of the solitary inventor, Edison created a process in which skilled scientists, machinists, designers, and others collaborated at a single facility to research, develop, and manufacture new technologies.