09/16/96 EDISON'S LAB: THE GREAT INNOVATOR'S INNER SANCTUM

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EDISON'S LAB: THE GREAT INNOVATOR'S INNER SANCTUM
Looking for inspiration? Check out Edison's research center
Summer's over, and you've sampled National Park Service sites from the sea to the Sierras. Now, you figure, it's time to get back to business.
But wait: Did you miss the back-to-business park? No scenery here, but the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange, N.J.--next to an A&P and catty-corner from a body shop--is a place of exquisite beauty for anyone who has ever launched and run a business.
This is the former research complex of Thomas A. Edison, and it should inspire even the most cramped imagination to think big about what it takes to turn a brilliant idea into a brilliant business. Like the phonograph, say. Or the movies. Or the storage battery. All of which Edison either invented, improved, or pushed into practical use and production from these deteriorating red-brick buildings just 12 miles west of New York City. (For directions and information, call 201 736-0550.)
The ranger-guided tours take visitors through the historic heart and soul of Edison's research and development empire--cavernous rooms fairly alive with ghosts. The machine shop and beaker-strewn lab still smell of grease and chemicals. The massive supply room, which Edison stocked with materials ranging from elephant hide to pig iron, is still full. A jar containing rubber made from goldenrod--a late, commercially unsuccessful venture--sits on a lab shelf.
The scope of Edison's exploration is obvious. Less visible is what many consider his greatest invention of all: modern R&D techniques. Like a grand maestro, when he had an idea he would ``conduct'' teams of researchers to explore it. A rolltop desk, virtually untouched since the day Edison died in 1931, was the operation's nerve center. It sits in the middle of a three-story library of technology reference books, not far from a cot where the workaholic entrepreneur periodically recharged his own batteries.
``CUTTING EDGE.'' Today, Edison's name evokes simply ``inventor.'' Schoolchildren don't hear much about the now-vanished factories surrounding the labs, which in 1920 employed 10,000 workers making batteries, dictating machines, and phonographs for Edison's operating companies. All of Edison's inventions were aimed at commercial application. His unique genius, says Douglas Tarr, an archivist who has spent 12 years with Edison's papers, was to take existing technologies, improve them, and weave them into commercially viable systems. Electric light predated Edison; he developed the commercial central generating station and the incandescent bulb. Then he manufactured parts for independent Edison lighting companies around the nation and, later, appliances.
``Everything he does is on the cutting edge. It's difficult to stay ahead for very long,'' says Tarr, who speaks of the ``Old Man'' in the present tense. ``Edison has more patents than anyone ever, but his primary aim is to develop products and get them into production.''
MICROMANAGER. And his blind spot? What today is called ``content.'' He failed to see the importance of having a strong creative team in his film business, and his production company faded away after he built the country's first movie studio. Because he hated jazz, he wouldn't record much of it, and he thought technology was more important than stars.
He fell into a classic entrepreneur's trap, as well. Nostalgia for the collegial days of the smaller Menlo Park (N.J.) lab didn't keep him from creating a corporate structure, but it did make him disinclined to take advantage of it. Edison ``found it impossible to let a subordinate do the job without regular oversight and interference,'' notes biographer Andre Millard in Edison and the Business of Innovation.
By overruling professional managers, he cost TAE Inc. dearly. But if Edison cared about money, he cared more about control. ``I always invented to obtain money to go on inventing,'' he said.
That sensibility kept him aloft when projects failed scientifically or financially, as often happened. Failure is a little-noted facet of Edison's life, but only because he was undaunted by it. ``He failed constantly,'' says Rutgers University professor Paul Israel, an Edison scholar. ``He regarded it as a learning tool.''
As Edison put it: ``Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.'' Perhaps to drive that point home, the Old Man punched a time card like everyone else, often logging up to 80 hours a week.
Now that's a bracing thought to end the summer.
By Fred Strasser in West Orange, N.J.