Friday, March 27, 2026

Edison - Ford Winter Estate

Friday - We spent the morning touring the Edison & Ford Winter Estates. This is a banyan tree planted as an experiment in the search for locally grown latex sources. Two thousand plants were tried to see which ones prospered in North America. Rubbers produced from petroleum soon took over the market. 

The model T Ford came with all of the tools needed to maintain and repair the car. It sounds like Ural adopted the same model though the model T came with a much larger toolbox.

The estate had the winter homes/cottages for both Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. The Edison’s would spend the winter and the Fords only about three weeks. 

Edison did have a lab set up to study the plants. Very different from his other labs. But there is still a surprising number of machine tools. He did set up a DC generator to provide power but later connected to the AC system set up by the city. 


2 comments:

  1. Yeah but I bet the tools from Ford weren't the pot metal tools the early stuff by Ural was made of....so glad modern Ural tools are better...of course, I don't believe they're made in the old factory anymore..,.outsourced.

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    1. I don’t think I’ve had any problems with the Ural supplied tools. Though the previous owner (an aircraft mechanic) added quite a few additional tools.

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