Bowdoin Orient Volume V21 No1 17 1891 1892 PDF Download

"Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) was America's most famous and, arguably, most prolific, inventor. But few realize the extent to which he called Florida home. Between 1885 and his death in 1931, Edison and his family wintered in the sleepy Gulf Coast town of Fort Myers, south of Tampa. There, they were the pride of the small town, which eagerly watched to see what magic the Wizard would conjure." "In 1914, Edison, knowing that his comments often made the rounds of the national press, said to a reporter, "There is only one Fort Myers and 90 million people [the U.S. population at the time] are going to find out."" "Edison's presence encouraged Henry Ford to buy the house next door. When the price of rubber soared in the 1920s, Edison's experiments with rubber from local plants paid off for Ford and Harvey Firestone, who together funded his research." "In this biography, Michele Albion has amassed details of the Edisons' years in Fort Myers. Using a wide range of little-known resources, including photographs, manuscripts, maps, and newspaper accounts, she presents a uniquely intimate portrait of the inventor as an influential member of a close-knit community. In doing so, she reveals important facets of Edison's life that are largely unknown or overlooked by biographers who fail to make a distinction between "vacationing" and "wintering" in Florida."--BOOK JACKET.