Today we visited the Greenfield Village part of the Henry Ford museum. This complex is 90 acres and has several different villages to visit. All the people working here are in period dress. Makes you feel like you've been transported back to the 1800's. Most of the buildings here are the original buildings that were bought by Mr. Ford, disassembled , brought here and reassembled. For example the Wright Cycle Shop, Noah Websters house, Thomas Edison's Fort Myers Library, George Washington Carver's Cabin to name a few. The only building that was built onsite was the church constructed to resemble a New England church. Henry Ford built this church for his mother and mother-in-law and named it after them, the Martha-Mary Chapel. There were even slave quarters. It was a great depiction of how people lived back then. They sure had a hard life. Makes you realize how much we take for granted today. There was also a magnificent collection of Thomas Edison's inventions and equipment that he used for his research.
We got to tour the Sarah Jordan Boarding House. Sarah Jordan converted this 1870 duplex into a boarding house in 1878 so that several of Thomas Edison’s unmarried employee's would have housing near the Menlo Park Laboratory Complex. The house was one of the first to be lighted by Edison’s newly invented incandescent lamp during the public lighting demonstration of December 1879. But since the light bulbs, which were mounted on the wall, were experimental, Sarah Jordan and her boarders relied on kerosene lamps as well. When Sarah wanted the lights to go on she had to ask Thomas Edison to go to his laboratory and pull the switch. The electricity was controlled by Edison himself. There were no wall switches in the house.
Makes you appreciate how easy our life is today.
No comments:
Post a Comment