We visited the Edison-Ford Complex today in Fort Myers, just a nice walk from the marina here and a nice sunny day. Thomas Edison and Henry Ford both had winter estates here in Ft. Myers. Ford actually worked for Edison before he invented his first car and started Ford Motor Co. They remained lifelong friends. Almost everything here was about Edison except Ford's estate next door and a couple Model T cars.

Edison's estate is a beautiful large property on the big saltwater river through Fort Myers, leading to the gulf 20 miles away at Sanibel Island. His house looks like two houses in a row because he designed a living area in one house with their bedrooms upstairs, and a second house with an eating and entertaining area and more bedrooms upstairs there. If they had company stay over, they usually stayed in the second house bedrooms. The houses are close together with wide double doors opening to the warm climate, so it's a little like the island living homes in tropical areas that have open floorplans with multiple buildings to comprise one home.

There was an excellent museum with lots of Thomas Edison's original lab equipment (the lab is gone now) and many early inventions. Of course, he invented the familiar Edison Cylinder Phonograph like this and there were dozens of patented versions.







He also invented the first regular record player phonograph.













And the first motion picture camera and projector....

and on and on. He was an extremely prolific inventor.










On the way back, we passed this boat on our dock. Cute boat name.

Obviously, this guy owned a Luhrs before this boat and didn't like it.










Tomorrow we're going to Marco Island.