Learned Something New Yesterday…

Yesterday I helped a friend out by driving him to Fort Myers (about 2 hours away) since he had a broken shoulder and was having problems driving. After his interview he brought up going to Thomas Edison’s and Henry Ford’s Winter Houses. I had NO clue either had a house down here in South Florida!

After a few minutes of driving he directed us right to the spot.

Low and behold there was a pretty nice house (especially for that time frame) right beside the Gulf, with the attached guest house (attached by a covered walkway) of the Edison Family, and the not so nice, but still large house next to that of Henry Ford. Across the street from Edison’s house was a long building that housed his lab.

Now this lab was not the lab he used to work with electricity (although he had one to the side of his house for that at one time, which was uprooted by Mr. Ford and taken to Ford’s museum up north) , but was a “chemical lab” where he did extensive research and development with botany. He created this lab and began working in it at 80 years of age, which is equivalent to someone that is about 100 now!

This just amazed me! Add to that, I read that he was the inventor of the moving picture or movies! He had something like 182 patents in his life!