Edison Machine Works

The Edison Machine Works was a manufacturing company set up to produce dynamos, large electric motors, and other components of the electrical illumination system being built in the 1880s by Thomas A. Edison in New York City.

The need for equipment in the development of a large-scale electric illumination "utility" in New York City, starting around 1880, soon outstripped the capacity of Thomas Edison's machine shop at Menlo Park.

The Machine Works also had a department that designed and tested equipment and trained Edison workers how to wire buildings and install and repair dynamos.

Extra lathes needed for production had to be set up on the sidewalks outside the building connected through the factory windows by long drive belts.

[5] Strikes, unionizing attempts, and the general expense of labor and land in New York City sent Edison looking for a site for a new factory.

Edison Machine Works on Goerck Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan photographed by Edison employee Charles L. Clarke.
1896 view Schenectady, NY location after it had become General Electric
Historical marker about the Machine Works in Schenectady.