FREEHOLD – As part of its Historically Speaking lecture series, Monmouth County Historical Association will present a month of Wednesday evening lectures in September.
Beginning 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 3, at the Centers Playhouse, 35 South St., Linda Barth will present “The Garden State: Where Ideas Grow,” based on her new book, “A History of Inventing in New Jersey: From Thomas Edison to the Ice Cream Cone.”
Many people are familiar with Edison’s “invention factory” in Menlo Park, where he patented the phonograph, the lightbulb and many more innovations. Yet many other ideas have grown in the Garden State, too.
New Jerseyans brought sound and music to movies and built the very first drive-in theater. In addition to the first cultivated blueberry, tasty treats like ice cream cones and M&M’s® are also Jersey natives. Iconic aspects of American life, like Bubble Wrap®, the boardwalk, the Band-Aid®, and even professional baseball itself started in New Jersey. Life would be a lot harder without the vacuum cleaner, plastic and air-conditioning and many other important advances in medicine and surgery were developed in New Jersey.
Barth will explore groundbreaking, useful, fun and even silly inventions and their New Jersey roots during her talk.
A lifelong resident of the Garden State, Barth is the executive director of the League of Historical Societies of New Jersey. She has served on the board of Celebrate NJ!, a grassroots movement that builds pride in and fosters a brighter future for New Jersey through educational programs and promotional initiatives. She has written two books on the D&R Canal for Arcadia Publishing and two children’s picture books: “Bridgetender’s Boy,” published by the National Canal Museum in 2005, and “Hidden New Jersey,” from Charlesbridge Publishing in 2012. “A History of Inventing in New Jersey: From Thomas Edison to the Ice Cream Cone,” published by the History Press, was released in August 2013. She has also contributed to the Encyclopedia of New Jersey.
