A painting of the Menlo Park laboratory buildings from the winter of 1880–1881.

This scene was painted by seventeen-year-old R. F. Outcault, who later created the cartoon strips Yellow Kid and Buster Brown (and, in the early twentieth century, was involved in a lawsuit with Thomas Edison). The long wooden building in the center is the main laboratory (exaggerated in length), the small brick building at front center is the library and office, and the large brick building at the rear is the machine shop. Notice the telegraph wires coming to the laboratory from the right and the (electric) train at upper right. The picket fence in front ran along Woodbridge Ave.