New Jersey may be the most inventive state in America. Count down five tech milestones from the Garden State — from Morse’s telegraph debut and Edison’s phonograph and light bulb to the transistor born at Bell Labs — plus two bonus picks, including the Band-Aid.
#5: Liquid crystal display (LCD) (Princeton, 1968)
Flat displays that use liquid crystals to show images. George Heilmeier’s team built the first at RCA in Princeton. Electricity steered the crystals to control the light. Heilmeier was the first in his family to finish high school.
#4: Telegraph public demo (Morristown, 1838)
Messages sent as electric clicks along a wire. Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail showed it at Speedwell in 1838. It was the telegraph’s first public demonstration. Their two miles of wire were all looped inside one building.
#3: Phonograph (Menlo Park, 1877)
The first machine that could record sound and play it back. Thomas Edison invented it at his Menlo Park lab in 1877. A needle pressed sound waves into foil on a spinning cylinder. His first recorded words: “Mary Had a Little Lamb”.
#2: Practical light bulb (Menlo Park, 1879)
A glass bulb with a glowing carbon thread inside. Edison’s Menlo Park team got one to burn 13½ hours in 1879. Bamboo filaments later lasted over 1,200 hours. Menlo Park’s Christie Street was one of the first lit by power.
#1: Transistor (Murray Hill, 1947)
A tiny electronic switch inside nearly every gadget. Bardeen and Brattain built the first at Bell Labs in 1947. It replaced bulky vacuum tubes and let electronics shrink. Its inventors shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Bonus Picks From New Jersey
Band-Aid bandage (Highland Park, 1920). Earle Dickson’s wife kept cutting and burning herself cooking. In 1920 he stuck gauze on tape so she could bandage herself. His employer, Johnson & Johnson, turned it into the Band-Aid.
American steam locomotive (Hoboken, 1825). In 1825 John Stevens built a steam locomotive in Hoboken. He ran it on a circular track at his own estate. It’s often called America’s first steam locomotive.
Tech From Every State
This is part of my Tech From Every State series: the top tech inventions and firsts from each of the 50 states, told with simple animations. Watch the whole series on YouTube and subscribe to The Tech Ranch so you don’t miss your state.
Did we miss something invented in New Jersey? Tell me in the YouTube comments — and give the video a thumbs up if you learned something.
