Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum 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, located in the Menlo Park area of Edison, Middlesex County, New Jersey. The tower was 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, the world's first organized research and development site. He came to Menlo Park in 1876, the area was then known as Raritan Township, and later changed
Menlo Park, California on the former Rancho de las Pulgas. In 1854, they erected a gate with a wooden arch bearing the inscription "Menlo Park" and the date "August 1854" at the entrance to their property (now the intersection of Middle Ave and El Camino Real). The word "Menlo" derived from the owners' former home of Menlo in County Galway, Ireland, and is an Anglicized version of the original Irish name of the place, "Mionloch", meaning "middle lake." In 1863, the San Francisco and San Jose Rail Road had built the railroad from San Francisco to as far as Mayfield (now California Avenue