John and Fred Ott

 Brothers John and Fred Ott worked with Thomas Edison in Newark as machinists beginning in the 1870s; John beginning at 20 in 1871 and Fred beginning as a 14-year-old apprentice in 1875. Both brothers followed Edison to Menlo Park in 1876, where John was Edison's principal model and instrument maker. After the move to West Orange in 1887, John served as superintendent of the machine shop until a terrible fall in 1895 which left him severely injured.

Fred made history in 1894 as the first movie actor for pretending to sneeze while filmed. In 1900 he was also in the movie “The Kiss” with an unidentified woman. It was a remake of a movie of the same name starring May Irwin and John Rice in which the actors famously talk at each other with their mouths close for the worst kiss ever recorded.  I suppose that necessitated a remake with a machinist showing the world how to do it right.

WWI introduced problems importing latex rubber. Edison, and later Ford, bought estates in Florida and tried to find a non-tropical plant species that could replace the rubber tree if that supply would be cut off later.  John Ott retired, but Fred moved to support the work. After many years, there was some success in the weed, goldenrod, but the work hybridizing lost the energetic backing after Edison died, and the U.S. government let the attempt fail in 1936.

John died only one day after the inventor on October 19, 1931; his crutches and wheelchair were placed by Edison's casket at Mrs. Edison's request.

Fred retired shortly afterwards at the age of 81 and moved back to West Orange, New Jersey, where he died October 24, 1936.

 

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.