Edison Outside the Lab
Thomas Edison has 1,093 patents to his name. He and his associates worked long hours every day, six days a week at his Menlo Park laboratory, with the goal of developing "a minor invention every ten days and a big thing every month or so." Browse a gallery of images showing how Edison spent his rare leisure time with family and friends.
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Thomas Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio. At the age of 12, he took a job as a newsboy on a daily train between Port Huron and Detroit, Michigan.
Credit: The Henry Ford -
While riding the rails as a boy, Edison became fascinated with the telegraph. In 1862, he landed his first job as a telegraph operator.
Credit: The Henry Ford -
Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell on Christmas Day in 1871. After the ceremony, Edison returned to his lab to work on a stock ticker.
Credit: Thomas Edison National Historical Park -
Edison and Mary had three children together. Their daughter, Marion, was born in 1873, followed three years later by Thomas Alva, Jr. in 1876. Edison gave them Morse code inspired nicknames: “Dot” and “Dash.” Here, Mary holds her second son, William, who was born in 1878.
Credit: Rutgers University -
In 1878, Edison traveled to Rawlins, Wyoming to view a solar eclipse with noted astronomer Henry Draper and several other prominent scientists. He brought his new tasimeter, a device for measuring infrared radiation, for testing.
Credit: Carbon County Museum -
Mary was often plagued by headaches, fatigue and panic attacks. Complications from her third pregnancy left her with chronic pain, which she treated with morphine. On August 9, 1884, Mary Stilwell Edison died of "congestion of the brain" at Menlo Park.
Credit: Rutgers University -
In 1885, Edison vacationed at his good friend Ezra Gilliland's beach house near Boston and met 19-year-old Mina Miller. Mina's father, Lewis Miller, was also a successful inventor, with 92 agricultural patents to his name.
Credit: Rutgers University -
Edison soon fell in love with Mina and wrote about the "Belle of Akron," in his diary: "Got thinking about Mina and came near to being run over by a street car."
Credit: Thomas Edison National Historical Park -
Edison taught Mina Morse code so they could communicate privately by tapping messages on each other's hands. He proposed in this manner, and the two were married on February 24, 1886.
Credit: Library of Congress -
Mina and Edison had three children together. The two eldest, Madeleine and Charles, are pictured here with their father at Glenmont, their home in Llewellyn Park, New Jersey.
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At the time of her marriage, Mina was just seven years older than Edison's eldest child, Marion, who would later describe her stepmother as "too young to be a mother but too old to be a chum."
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In August 1889, Thomas and Mina Edison [center-left] attended the Universal Exposition in Paris and toured Europe for two months. The trip was a combination of work and leisure.
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While in Europe, Edison met other scientists and inventors, like engineer Adolphe Salles (pictured) and French scientist Etienne-Jules Marey, whose "chronophotography" captured movement using 12 consecutive images per second on a long film strip.
Credit: Art Resource -
While Edison worked in his lab, Mina, pictured here with Madeleine and Charles, supervised the household staff and referred to herself as "the home executive." After 1891, she owned the couple's home, Glenmont, so it wouldn't be seized to pay Edison's debts in case of bankruptcy.
Credit: Corbis -
Though Edison still kept long hours at his lab, he reassured Mina (or "Billy" as he called her) in this 1898 letter that "You the children and the laboratory is all my life, I have nothing else."
Credit: Rutgers University -
Despite expecting his staff to work long hours, Edison tried to have fun with those he called his "muckers." Here, Edison goes fishing with Fred Ott, best known for his sneeze in one of Edison’s earliest motion pictures.
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In 1914, auto tycoon Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison at his vacation home in Florida. This was just the first of what would become an annual tradition.
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Beginning in 1915, Edison, Henry Ford, John Burroughs and Harvey Firestone took camping trips to locations across the U.S., calling themselves "The Four Vagabonds." Here, they're gathered at Burroughs' home in the Catskill Mountains in 1920.
Credit: Thomas Edison National Historical Park -
The Vagabonds' families accompanied them on their excursions. Pictured here at a campfire in Florida in 1914 are Edison, his wife Mina, their children Charles and Madeleine, Henry and Clara Ford, and John Burroughs.
Credit: Fort Myers Estate -
The Vagabonds' camping trips were well-equipped, with up to 50 vehicles to carry the travelers, their staff, cots, chairs, tables — even electric lights and an icebox! Later trips included a huge round table with a Lazy Susan that could seat 20.
Credit: The Henry Ford -
In 1921, President Warren G. Harding joined Edison, Ford and Firestone at their campsite in Maryland.
Credit: The Henry Ford -
In 1891, a young Henry Ford had worked for the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit as an engineer. Ford looked up to Edison, and the two became close friends. Here, they're pictured on a camping trip in northern Michigan in 1923.
Credit: The Henry Ford -
During WWI, Edison grew concerned about America's reliance on foreign sources of rubber, so he partnered with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone to find a quick-growing domestic source. Here, Edison and Harvey Firestone watch M.A. Cheek tap a rubber tree in 1925.
Credit: Thomas Edison National Historical Park -
Edison died on October 18, 1931 in West Orange, NJ. In the weeks preceding his death, the press stationed themselves in West Orange reporting every minute change in the inventor's condition.
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Edison's body lay in state for two days and nights in his West Orange library. More than 50,000 people passed through to pay their respects.
Credit: Thomas Edison National Historical Park
