29 October 2014

Biggest, though


Rico says he remembered it as the longest-burning, but it turns out the Edison lab in Menlo Park  (now Edison), New Jersey has the biggest, instead:
The Thomas Edison Memorial Tower and Menlo Park Museum were built in 1938, in the Menlo Park section of what is now the town of Edison. They mark the site of Edison's greatest triumphs, particularly the invention of recorded sound and the light bulb, which he unveiled to the public on 31 December 1879. The spot is marked by a hundred-foot-tall tower topped with the World's Largest Light Bulb, which is fourteen feet tall, weighs eight tons, and is illuminated at night. (Henry Ford stole the actual workshop for his Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, and supposedly bottled Edison's Last Breath). The museum curator, Jack Stanley, entertained us with amazing tales of Edison and his competitors, but said the Last Breath thing was a bunch of hooey.
The museum was closed in 2010, given a makeover, then reopened in June of 2012. At that time the light bulb was switched off and the tower surrounded by scaffolding for a complete renovation. The museum announced in January of 2014 that the tower will reopen later in the year, at which point the big bulb will be switched back on, but lit by LEDs, not Edison's incandescent light bulbs.
Rico says he thought it was a single bulb, but no...

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