Thomas Edison had created the first industrial laboratory concerned with creating knowledge and then controlling its application. Edison's name is registered on 1,093 patents. Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention that first gained him wider notice was the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park," New Jersey. His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder. Despite its limited sound quality and that
John Park (inventor) John Park (inventor) John Esten Park, (1814 - 1872), educated in chemistry and medicine, experimented with using concrete to construct buildings before the American Civil War. His work left the town of Seguin, Texas, with a large concentration of 19th-century concrete structures. John E. Park was born in 1814, in Eatonton, Putnam County, Georgia, to James and Martha (Yandell) Park. About 1835, he married Rebecca Rosella Hubbard (1808-1877); they had seven children. He studied at the Louisville Medical Institute in Kentucky. His interest in concrete construction may have come from familiarity with the burgeoning Louisville cement industry, spurred by the