Since I arrived in Florida the weather has been wonderful. I used to visit central Florida frequently, with our 10th grade class, at the end of April and the weather was usually very hot and steamy. This week, however, has been sunny, with low humidity and temperatures in the mid 70s (low 20s C). The typical Floridian and most tourists are enjoying the beach and water activities but, today, I visited two museums.

The first, in Fort Myers, is called Edison-Ford Winter Estates and is the location where Thomas Edison and Henry Ford (along with Harvey Firestone and other tycoons) spent considerable time camping, exploring and discussing the business issues of the day. The Ford and Edison estates were next door and this is where I visited. I was not particularly interested in the houses but did enjoy the museum and, especially, Edison’s laboratory. The museum focused on their time in Florida and the inventions that both men are justly famous for but both men (and Firestone) were gravely concerned that America had to import all of its rubber so Edison spent the last few years of his life trying to find suitable plants and processes to produce rubber in the US and this was the focus of the lab.

The second museum is the REVS Institute which is, primarily, an academic library for scholarly study of the development and history of the automobile in association with Stanford University. I had never heard of the place until Motorweek (a weekly TV program) did a story on them a few weeks before I left on this trip. They have millions of historical items and documents of which 118 are cars of all ages and types. They are open to the public three days a week and I was treated to an excellent tour of what is considered to be one of the top ten car collections in the world. This is not a museum in the sense that all but five of the cars are operational and are driven at least once every year, even the 1902 Mors race car. They send cars to international speed festivals all over the world to be displayed and driven. Nowadays we tend to focus on the influence that the Internet and technology has on our lives but, before the automobile, most people lived and died  within 25 miles of the place they were born.

The road trip part of the day was short and and mainly on highways but, if you would like to see the map (and boring video), they are here.

Banyan trees planted by Edison as a part of his experimentation with different plants for possible US rubber production.Edison’s preserved lab. The glassware and equipment are all original.One of his storage cabinets with original samples of different compounds still in the bottles.
Although I took many photos at the REVS institute most are only of interest to car enthusiasts. They have many race cars that I remember from my youth. This is the Eagle that Dan Gurney drove to victory in the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix, the only time an American driver has won a Grand Prix in an American car.