Fort Myers, Florida We all know many of Edison’s inventions, but I was amazed to learn he held over 1,000 patents, and is the only person to date who filed a patent for sixty-five consecutive years. He was still inventing when he died in his mid-80's in 1931. Henry Ford worked on his automobiles at his estate until they went in to mass production in Dearborn. Edison’s laboratory was moved to Michigan in 1925, but in 1927 another laboratory for rubber experiments is begun. In addition to all this information and history, there is a huge botanical garden of rare and sometimes weird plants. Edison used many of them in experiments, but mostly he was just interested in the variety. The second largest Banyon tree in the world is on Edison’s estate–the first largest is in India and the third largest we saw several years ago on Maui. It was an interesting and informative day in April 2000. |