gaining and heas almost ahe time it was small stream. the lavaaining into rocks. he made a notation of that but i it is the wrong spelling because the french spelling has no t in it. he made a comment that long ago and that hole is still here. also where john fremont made a comment in his journal located, they happened to see a set of lodge poles, poles for tepee. we found here a handsome set trees, verynst the white and plainly scraped. ed that owners been here we have purchased them but had they not, we left the old in their place with a small

quality of tobacco. we'vessed my mind and talked about it how long it would take to peel the bark off of the poles. for the american indians that preferredthat had those and come back and find not old ones, so he did make any friends with that particular thing. then they went south and went to -- eventually down t to upper marsh then he turned he named winter ridge and summer lake. calleds a place here summer lake. then he went down through warner valley and into nevada. after this trip was made, the information was published in the the report of the expedition. were made. copies wagon, major wagon

train that came out out to oregon after 1845 and towards the california country had this with him and this map. >> this is american history tv on c-span3. has takenities tour us to cities across america, working with our cable partners. we have toured historic sites and interviewed local historians. coming up up, some highlights. see the schedule aware -- of where we've been and watch a video from all of our stops at c-span.org/localcontent. the passion, the interest, the drive was to create something that could be

commercially viable in wartime. this was a very active place for 1928-1936. we are in the edison research lab. it was built in 1928 and was very active until 1936. his primary focus for laboratory work was new jersey. early daysfe in the was built around the creation of electricity, and in the early days, the folks of that was new york city, manhattan. theprimary residence for second half of his lifetime, for 40 years, was just outside new york city in a little town called west orange, new jersey. edison arrived in 1885. it was a cold winter up north. he stopped first in jacksonville and saint august in. he made his way across the state on a rickety railroad and came

1885at to fort myers in and fell in love with the property. he thought, i can use this as a winter retreat. i can also raise plants here. i can bring my new family here. he built a home for himself and a home for his partner. they remained partners for a few years and then had their differences. edison bought his partners home. to mirror image homes, one for edison and his family and one for his important guests. onson's interest in plants this property began when he first arrived here. he was looking for a planned filament that could be used in the light bulb, and that was bamboo. thelanted bamboo on property. it had several dozen varieties of bamboo on the property. he loves palm trees. we have about 100 varieties of palms on the property. he brought the royal palm to

fort myers, and now it lines 10 miles of roadway here. the reason why this lab was so important is that it caused the u.s. government to come forward with what was called the patent, the u.s. patent law, which then said that if you invented something with plants and it was a process that was worthy of patenting, it was issued a patent. until that time, the patent process in this country had been for mechanical devices, for machinery, for things that moved and operated, and it wasn't until really the early 1900s that the era of plant science, george washington carver, that whole era of plant science emerged. for plantsprocess was very critical in america and internationally. american industry during the late 1800s was very interesting

because it was the beginning of the machine age in this country. henry ford worked for thomas edison. he worked for the edison illuminating country -- company in detroit. he was younger than edison. he was 15 years younger than edison. really, their friendship was based on a love of invention, an interest in how to take things from the process of creating it through commercialization. created henry ford had the ford motor company. he no longer worked for edison. they stayed very close, friendship, mentorship, certainly a lot of shared projects. henry ford visited many times, and by 1915, he bought the estate next-door. the idea would be the two men would vacation together, certainly work and play. from that time on, they were

neighbors and really became -- it really became an almost expected thing that ford and edison would be here in the winter months. 1920's, the united states was relying on foreign rubber, and we were headed into war. at that point, they decided a plant material and the process should be done in this country. ford, and firestone were traveling all over the world and were collecting plants and had hundreds of thousands of people around this country collecting plants and sending them back here to fort myers to find a source of plant material that could produce rubber efficiently, effectively, commercially. trickieratory was because of that reason. they could grow the plants on-site and actually do the preliminary research on site. all three men had an interest in using rubber products in their industries. thatwanted to produce

economically, efficiently, and have it available to them. about thisting thing laboratory, edison was a very early proponent of what we today call a factory system. each one of the tables in here would have had a different operation going on, and the team of scientists around the table would be working on that particular process. edison would be moving through the process happening at each table. of thek was that director, the man who took what everyone was working on, take that process, and move it to the next step. if he were here, he would be the thoughtful overseer. i'm not saying he also didn't do work in the lab himself, but he had a talented group of people working with him. himself, he also had a full-time glassblower. a lot of the work that was happening in here used some very