The Lightbulb’s Golden Anniversary

 Henry Ford, like many of us, was a collector.  Starting as a child disassembling watches and other machines to see how they worked. As he built his collection of inventions, he stored them in a spare office in his factory as early as 1907. He didn’t seem to think he had reached the critical mass necessary to install it in a museum until the late teens.  Then planning for that building, as well as collecting for what to display, took an additional decade. Then Ford, rather than building replica rooms, began collecting famous buildings in addition to the machines built there.  The first ones arriving in Dearborn in 1928 and they became the nexus of Greenfield Village.

The Henry Ford Museum complex—then to be known as The Edison Institute—broke ground September 27, 1928. The first roof rafters going up in May, 1929. The walls of the Independence Hall replica that fronts the main building, was completed in August.  

Eventually, it would be ready to open to the general public on June 22, 1933, but Ford was excited about what he’d achieved already, and wanted to host a party as soon as things took shape.

The opportunity that presented itself that same year, was the Golden Anniversary of  the first successful incandescent light bulb invented by his longtime friend Thomas Edison on October 21, 1929. 

The Edison Institute was dedicated by President Herbert Hoover with some 500 personal guests of Edison and Ford. It began with a program of the “history in the remaking” in person with Edison at the reconstruction of his Menlo Park laboratory. Followed by a tour of the historic buildings and finishing with a plush banquet afterwards in the Independence Hall replica. The attendees included Marie Curie, George Eastman, John D. Rockefeller, Will Rogers, Charles Schwab, Adolph Ochs, Walter Chrysler, J.P. Morgan, Orville Wright and, via shortwave radio from Berlin, Albert Einstein.

The reenactment was broadcast on radio with listeners encouraged to turn off their electric lights until the switch was flipped at the Museum. 

This stunt thought up by Edward Bernays, the father of modern public relations (see Era Fashions August, 2021 about hair nets). The entire spectacle was his, an all-out PR assault that included not only the celebratory events mentioned above, but also included a commemorative US postage stamp.