FL -- Fort Myers -- Edison & Ford Winter Estates -- Lab:
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Description of Pictures: Previously on this site was Edison's original electrical laboratory, constructed in 1886. Here, he and his assistants conducted experiments to improve incandescent lighting. After observing Edison at work, a journalist from the New York World reported that his bulbs "burst out into a radiance that threatened to obscure even the brilliant sun of Fort Myers."
In 1925, Edison's neighbor, Henry Ford, asked for permission to move the Fort Myers laboratory to Dearborn, Michigan. He intended to make it part of the historic village he was assembling there. Edison agreed but due to opposite from Mina Edison and the town of Fort Myers, the laboratory was not removed until 1928. At that time, it was dismantled piece by piece and sent to Ford's Greenfield Village.
To replace the laboratory, Mina Edison ordered the construction of an office. The small paneled room and its private garden were completed with the Edisons arrived in 1929. The presented them to her husband as a birthday gift.
When assisting the Navy in World War I, Edison realized the importance of war-time rubber supplies. He decided to find a source of domestic rubber in the event that foreign sources were cut off in a future conflict. As early as 1923, Edison shipped Mexican milkweed plants to Fort Myers for experiments.
In 1927, Edison received financial backing from Harvey Firestone and Henry Ford. They formed the Edison Botanic Research Corporation which built this laboratory in 1928. With their support, the investor used a special hybrid of goldenrod to product small quantities of rubber. In this laboratory, Edison tested a large variety of plants and finally focused on goldenrod, a common weed growing to an average height of 3 to 4 feet and which yielded five percent latex. Edison was able to grow goldenrod to a height of 12 feet, yielding 12 percent latex. Domestic rubber production was never achieved on a large scale, but the experimentation continued years after Edison's death.
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
EDISL_060117_033.JPG: Mina Edison, Edison's second wife, willed the Fort Myers estate to the city after her death in 1941.
EDISL_060117_050.JPG: The Banyan Tree was a gift of Harvey S. Firestone. He brought it to Edison after a trip to Indian. When it was planted in 1925, it was only four feet tall and two inches in diameter.
Ficus beaghalensis, by its Latin name, the banyan is native to India. There it is called the "Walking tree" because of its massive support roots, which "walk" away from the center of the tree.
Edison's banyan is the largest of its species in the state of Florida, with a circumference of over 400 feet. It was designed state champion tree in 1980.
EDISL_060117_103.JPG: Edison was famous for taking catnaps anywhere he could. His wife Mina found him asleep on the floor of the office and ordered this cot to be installed for him.
EDISL_060117_153.JPG: You should recognize this goldenrod from the previous picture
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Wikipedia Description: Edison and Ford Winter Estates
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Edison and Ford Winter Estates contain a historical museum and 17 acre (6.9 hectares) botanical garden on the adjacent sites of the winter homes of Thomas Alva Edison and Henry Ford beside the Caloosahatchee River in southwestern Florida. It is located at 2350 McGregor Boulevard, Fort Myers, Florida, USA. It is open daily from 9:00 am to 5:30 pm, including Sundays.
History:
The present site dates from 1885, when Edison first visited Florida and purchased the property to build a vacation home. This structure, completed in 1886 and dubbed "Seminole Lodge", served as a winter retreat, laboratory, and work place until Edison's death in 1931. Edison’s good friend Henry Ford purchased the adjoining property in 1915 where he built "The Mangoes". In 1947, Mrs. Thomas Edison deeded the property to the City of Fort Myers in memory of her husband for the enjoyment of the public. It was opened for public tours in 1950. By 1988, the adjacent Henry Ford winter estate was purchased and opened for public tours. In 2003, the governance of the site was transferred by the City to a new non-profit corporation, Thomas Edison & Henry Ford Winter Estates, Inc. (dba Edison & Ford Winter Estates, Inc) whose mission is to protect, preserve and interpret the site and future growth and development. The new corporation successfully completed a $10 million restoration project in 2006. A separate fundraising arm, Edison-Ford Winter Estates Foundation, Inc., was created to assist the restoration project with no function in governance, programming or development but rather to assist the governing board with the initial restoration.
Gardens:
Edison's botanical garden contains more than a thousand varieties of plants from around the world, including African sausage trees and a 400-foot banyan tree given by Harvey Firestone in 1925. It was originally an experimental garden for industrial products. Later Mrs. Edison gave the garden an aesthetic turn with plantings of roses, orchids and bromeliads.
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