Into the chilled October night, four figures cut through the darkness. Over the railroad tracks, down the dirt street, past the stately homes and silent shops, they quietly made their way to a group of gray, wooden buildings just ahead.
The short, white haired elderly man in the middle seemed to be the focus of their concerns as the group ascended the stairs inside the long building that stood in the center of the complex. One man held his arm in respectful assistance. At the top of the stairs another helped him out of his coat. The third led him to a seat at the end of a long work bench.
In front of his chair, a plank of wood about six feet high and six inches across had been erected. On it were tubes and wires running from the top to the floor. The old man paused for a moment, brushed a lock of white hair from his eyes and began to work. One of the men assisted while the other two watched. The work went on for some time.
Finally, the newly created devise began to glow. Moments later the entire village outside the window was bathed in light to the sounds of cheering.
It was October 21, 1929 in the newly restored Menlo Park laboratory at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. The two men watching were President Herbert Hoover and auto producer Henry Ford. The elderly gentleman was inventor Thomas Edison and the fourth was Francis Jehl, a former Edison assistant and now renowned scientist in his own right.
The event was the Golden Anniversary of the invention of the electric light. Edison was there to reenact that historic night of fifty years before when he had started man on the road to the future.
In this very Menlo Park laboratory, brought to Greenfield Village from New Jersey by Henry Ford, Edison had filed patents for more than 1000 new inventions, including the electric light, the phonograph, motion picture projector and even a major development in the telephone.
Here in this old wooden building, resembling more a barn than a laboratory, Thomas A. Edison created the beginnings of our modern world.
During the Chicago Exposition of 1893, the question was asked: What American now living will be the most honored 100 years later? The over whelming choice was Thomas Edison.
The people of the 1890’s had never heard of the National Education Association or Goals 2000. And so, recognized in his day as the greatest living American, the “Wizard of Menlo Park” is, today, being eliminated from the history books.
In the new “dark ages” now ascending over our public schools, Thomas Edison’s accomplishments are irrelevant, perhaps even threatening, to those authors of the new history standards who fear and loath technology.
Without Thomas Edison, American living standards would still be at the level of much of today’s modern Russia where vast regions exist with candle light and plow horses. There would be no computers, no central heating, and no space exploration. And contrarians like Barbara Streisand should take note, there would be no movie stars and no recording industry. Edison invented those, too.
Those responsible for the new history standards knew exactly what they were doing in leaving out the great leaders of our country including Edison, Ford, Thomas Jefferson and others. These modern day change agents, who invented Outcome-Based Education and represent the core of the feminist, environmentalist, animal rights, anti-development, anti-technology leviathan, fueled by a new age worship of “Mother Earth” called “Gaia”, now fight to stifle all human progress. Is it any wonder that the accomplishments of Thomas Edison would stand as a threat to their world view of a renewed society of cave dwellers?
Americans of the late 1800’s knew there was a better life in Thomas Edison’s inventions. Before his accomplishments, life had been harsh, children died at early ages, mothers toiled from dawn till dusk, fathers tilled their fields by hand, leisure time was a little known luxury. However, in the schools, children learned how to read and write, add and subtract and find America on the map.
Because of the free, inventive minds of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers and many more, America created a society that became the envy of the world.
That’s why, on the night Edison sat down to recreate his invention of the light bulb, some four hundred world dignitaries gathered to honor Edison. They waited in the great hall of the Henry Ford Museum as Edison, Ford, Hoover and Jehl recreated that historic feat in the old laboratory.
When it was finished, the generators throughout the compound were turned on and Greenfield Village was flooded in light.
When he completed the task, Thomas Edison pushed back his chair, breathed deeply, stood up and left the building. He never returned. Henry Ford, understanding the significance of the moment, had the chair nailed to the floor where Edison had left it.
Henry Ford understood Thomas Edison’s greatness and his unmatchable contribution to human progress. But today’s children, blocked from learning about him in today’s public classrooms by Goals 2000, will never know the man who brought us from darkness.
