An inveterate scribbler with a wide-ranging mind, Edison filled some 3,500 notebooks with ideas and drawings. This sheet is from a five-page list of "things doing and to be done," contained in an "idea book" he probably began on Jan. 3, 1888, shortly after he moved his lab from Menlo Park to West Orange, N.J. The full list includes notions for improving the phonograph and electric lighting, as well as a cotton picker and "ink for blind"
One of Edison's daunting to-do lists, from January 1888
Credit: The Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University