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| 1881 |
Edison leaves Menlo Park and opens new offices in New York City. He establishes factories to make various parts of the electric light and power system and begins construction of the first permanent central power station, on Pearl Street, which opens in September 1882. |
| 1883-1884 |
Edison spends a year promoting the installation of central stations for small manufacturing cities and towns and establishes a company to build the stations. |
| 1884 |
Mary (Stillwell) Edison dies. |
| 1886 |
 Edison marries Mina Miller. Charles Tainter, working in Alexander Graham Bell's Volta Laboratory, develops an improved wax-recording phonograph called the graphophone. |
| 1887 |
Edison moves into a new laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. |
| 1888 |
 Spurred by the graphophone, Edison develops his "perfected" phonograph.
Edison engages in a "war of the currents" with George Westinghouse as he challenges the safety of the new alternating-current electric systems with evidence from animal electrocutions conducted at his laboratory. |
| 1890 |
William Kemmler becomes the first man executed with an electric chair. |
| 1892 |
The Thomson-Houston Company and Edison General Electric merge to form General Electric. Edison leaves electric lighting and spends the rest of the decade attempting to develop a method for processing low-grade iron for use by eastern smelters, which fails after the discovery of rich new mines in the Midwest. |
| 1893 |
The Columbian Exposition in Chicago is powered by alternating-current and the Niagara Falls Commission approves AC as the system for the first large-scale electrical generator in the world.
Edison demonstrates his system for making and showing motion pictures. |
| 1896 |
Introduces the Home Phonograph, an inexpensive, spring-motor phonograph. |
| 1900 |
 General Electric organizes the first modern research-and-development laboratory.
Edison begins work on a storage battery for use in electric cars. |
| 1909 |
Edison markets his alkaline storage battery, which is used extensively in a host of commercial application after the market for electric automobiles declines. |
| 1915 |
 Influenced by a New York Times interview with Edison, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels convinces Edison to head a Naval Consulting Board to investigate new military technology. |
| 1916 |
Edison, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone begin a tradition of vacationing together and are followed by the press everywhere they go. |
| 1927 |
Edison begins an effort to find a natural substitute for rubber that can be grown and processed quickly in case of shortages caused by war, eventually settling on goldenrod as the best material. |
| 1929 |
Edison re-enacts the invention of the incandescent light at the Golden Jubilee celebration in Dearborn, Michigan, where Henry Ford has reconstructed the Menlo Park laboratory.
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| 1931 |
 Edison dies in Llewellyn Park, New Jersey, on October 18. The nation dims its light bulbs for one minute on the day of his funeral. |
