The image of Thomas Edison is a man alone in a laboratory. The reality was a team. Edison hired “muckers,” engineers, machinists, and physicists from around the world.
The team was about 14 in the early years and 50 or 60 by the 1880s. The lab produced more than 400 patents in six years. Newspapers called Edison “the Wizard of Menlo Park.”
The muckers built the wizard deliberately. They saw that Edison alone made a more valuable brand than the group. The myth was a business decision.