There was something restless in the spirit of Thomas Edison. In 1882, at the age of 35, he shut down his Menlo Park laboratory. From 1882 to 1887, he worked out of several temporary locations.
Finally, in 1887, his base of operations moved to West Orange, New Jersey, where he would live for the rest of his life. There he built a huge laboratory and staffed it with the best minds he could find. Edison would immerse himself completely in a project, sometimes working on it for ten years. He would have to be thoroughly convinced a project wouldn’t work before he gave it up. Because he was never quite satisfied, he might demand a change when something was already on the assembly line—much to the dismay of the workers.
