The Art of Edison
>> Friday, June 10, 2011 –
beauty,
Greenfield Village,
Michigan,
photography
The most famous of Thomas Edison's patents (among the 1,093 US patents he holds) is much in the news of late. The poor incandescent light bulb is soon to be banned and replaced with the more energy-efficient and supposedly longer-lasting (though I have not seen this to be true in our house) compact fluorescent bulb. Whatever your position on the federal government telling how you are allowed to light your own home (I'm decidedly against it, despite my environmental leanings) the incandescent bulb, which for more than 100 years has lit our homes is on its way out.
Edison invented many more useful things, and improved greatly upon a number of others, bringing us recorded sound, the phonograph, movie cameras, the stock ticker, and even a battery for an electric car. He started more than a dozen businesses, one of which survives to this day—General Electric. He is the ultimate portrait of American inventiveness, ingenuity, and entrepreneurship.
His industrial research laboratory is part of Greenfield Village at The Henry Ford museum and makes for some beautiful photographs that even I, a lover of all things natural, can appreciate. I took these photos on my excursion to Greenfield Village last month.
Guess what will be lighting our house in 20 years? INCANDESCENT LIGHT BULBS! Black market incandescent light bulbs... HA-SHA-SHAAA!!!!
I am so with you on this! I detest the florescent bulb! And even more so, the government telling me what kind of bulb to use. I do have a small stock pile of incandescents...perhaps I'll save them for my grandchildren to sell on the black market?
Any chance I can get the pics I asked you to take, when were there? Or are you holding out until I writing the blog post I promised you?
A great quote for a t-shirt: "When incandecent lightbulbs are outlawed, only outlaws will have incandecent lightbulbs."
We love the Edison complex at THF! I remember in the 80's one of the docents told me that they had realized that the substances in the bottles on the shelf were actually "the real deal" and quite dangerous. They had to clean all of the jars out!
And I totally plan to stock up on incandescent bulbs so that I don't have to live entirely in the harsh glares of CFLs.