change was a fortunate one, for the inventor had married Miss
Mary E. Stillwell, and was now able to establish himself comfortably
with his wife and family while enjoying immediate access to the new
laboratory. Every moment thus saved was valuable.

To-day the place and region have gone back to the insignificance from
which Edison's genius lifted them so startlingly. A glance from the
car windows reveals only a gently rolling landscape dotted with modest
residences and unpretentious barns; and there is nothing in sight by way
of memorial to suggest that for nearly a decade this spot was the scene
of the most concentrated and fruitful inventive activity the world has
ever known. Close to the Menlo Park railway station is a group of
gaunt and deserted buildings, shelter of the casual tramp, and slowly
crumbling away when not destroyed by the carelessness of some ragged
smoker. This silent group of buildings comprises the famous old
laboratory and workshops of Mr. Edison, historic as being the birthplace
of the carbon transmitter, the phonograph, the incandescent lamp,
and the spot where Edison also worked out his systems of electrical
distribution, his commercial dynamo, his electric railway, his
megaphone, his tasimeter, and many other inventions of greater or lesser
degree. Here he continued, moreover, his earlier work on the quadruplex,
sextuplex, multiplex, and automatic telegraphs, and did his notable
pioneer work in wireless telegraphy. As the reader knows, it had been a
master passion with Edison from boyhood up to possess a laboratory,
in which with free use of his own time and powers, and with command of
abundant material resources, he could wrestle with Nature and probe her
closest secrets. 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 now come to the proud ownership of an establishment to which
his favorite word "laboratory" might justly be applied. Here he could
experiment to his heart's content and invent on a larger, bolder scale
than ever--and he did!

Menlo Park was the merest hamlet. Omitting the laboratory structures, it
had only about seven houses, the best looking of which Edison lived in,
a place that had a windmill pumping water into a reservoir. One of the
stories of the day was that Edison had his front gate so connected with
the pumping plant that