Louisville’s Thomas Edison House is located in historic Butchertown, a neighborhood which has been known as the center of meat production in this city for over 200 years. It was also one of the areas Thomas Alva Edison called home during the years he lived and worked in Louisville.
Edison came to Louisville in 1866, at the young age of 19, to work as a telegraph key operator. With his skill at receiving telegraph messages, Thomas Edison had little difficulty landing a job with the Western Union located on Second and West Main Street — about eight blocks from this home. Apparently, Louisville was also experiencing a shortage of telegraph operators at the time.