The tower marks the location of Edison's Menlo Park laboratory, the world's first organized research and development site.

Menlo Park is known as the Birthplace of Recorded Sound (November 1877), and the site of the world's first practical incandescent lamp-light bulb (October 1879).

The Thomas A. Edison Memorial Tower was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 30, 1979 as an important architectural and commemorative landmark.

[3] The tower's pinnacle is meant to represent an incandescent light bulb[4] and originally included an audio system that according to a 2004 Weird NJ magazine could be heard from a distance of two miles.

The Tower, which rises 131 feet above the Terrace, is topped by a 13' 8" foot high Bulb made of Pyrex segments by the Corning Corporation.

[citation needed] The Edison Memorial Tower Corporation, a 501(c)3, has been instrumental in having the current museum renovated.

[12] - In 2016, a project added an educational sign diagonally across from the museum site at the intersection of Christie Street and Tower Road.

This sign sheds light on the Sarah Jordan Boarding House which once inhabited the site, and was moved in 1929 to Henry Ford's Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI.