The Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park, also known as the Menlo Park Museum / Edison Memorial Tower, is a memorial to inventor and businessman Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

, located in the Menlo Park area of Edison, New Jersey

Edison, New Jersey

Edison Township is a township in Middlesex County, New Jersey. What is now Edison Township was originally incorporated as Raritan Township by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 17, 1870, from portions of both Piscataway Township and Woodbridge Township...

. The tower and museum were dedicated on February 11, 1938, on what would have been the inventor's 91st birthday.

The tower marks the location of Edison's Menlo Park laboratory. Edison and his staff later relocated to West Orange, NJ in 1884 to what is now the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, after which the original buildings began to deteriorate.