The museum was not yet finished, but remarkable exhibits are brought here from all over the world. Here are scores of steam-engines and machines, beginning almost with Watt's boiler. All the machines are set in foundations, so that after the opening of the museum they will be able to perform, actually demonstrating ancient technique. Among them are extraordinarily elaborate models—clumsy, heavy, on cast-iron Corinthian columns, painted with green oil paint. The automobile department is tremendous. Here evidently have been assembled all the types and models of automobiles that have ever existed anywhere in the world. And it cannot be said that a conception of beauty was foreign to the builders of automobiles of thirty years ago. Of course, almost all these machines seem strange to our eye today. Yet among them are some beautiful examples. Here is a lot of red copper, shining green brass, plate glass, and morocco leather. On the other hand, these automobiles underline the greatness of contemporary automobile technique: they show how much better automobiles are made now, how much cheaper, simpler, stronger, and more elegant.
Perhaps Henry Ford himself does not yet know what his museum will look like. One does not feel here any leading idea in the layout of the departments and in the disposition of the exhibits. But evidently Henry Ford was moved by one aim—to gather together all examples of ancient technique scattered all over the world and uncared for, before it all rusts away and falls apart on dump heaps. He is in a hurry. Newer and newer exhibits are constantly being brought to this museum. Here are wooden ploughs, harrows, wooden spinning wheels, the first sewing machines, the first typewriters, ancient gramophones, engines, locomotives, trains.
On rails embedded in the polished hardwood floor stands an antique train with carved cast-iron bars on tambours. The outside walls of the cars are painted in rosettes and leaves, while under the windows, inside of medallions, are painted country scenes. The carriages are attached to a small engine with bronze headlights, handle bars and emblems. On just such a train some seventy-five years ago a little boy by the name of Edison was selling newspapers to the passengers. On just such a train he received the historic box on the ear from a conductor, after which he lost his sense of hearing. In 1927, during the celebration of Edison's eightieth birthday, Mr. Ford, who is no longer a youngster himself, arranged for a very touching celebration. The old railway branch line between Detroit and Dearborn was restored, and this very same train, with its flowers and country scenes, carried the great inventor. Just as lie had done seventy-five years ago, Edison sold newspapers to the guests who sat in this train. The only thing lacking was the rough-neck conductor who had thrown the boy off the train. Yet, when Edison was asked whether his deafness had had any effect on his work, he replied:
"Not the slightest. I was even spared the necessity of listening to all the foolishness with which people are so generous."
The amusing train, jingling, rolled into Dearborn. All around it, on the entire globe, electricity burned, telephones rang, phonograph disks resounded, electric waves belted the world. All that had been called forth into life by this deaf old man with the face of a captain of armies, who slowly, supported by his guides and kept from falling, was passing from carriage to carriage and selling his newspapers.
Ford maintains the Edison cult in America. To a certain extent, this cult has reference to Ford himself. He is a man of the same generation as Edison. He, too, brought the machine into life and gave it to the masses.
When we were leaving the museum we saw in a vestibule a concrete plate laid in the floor. In it were the prints of Edison's feet and his signature in his own hand.
We went to another of Ford's museums, into the so-called "village"— "Greenfield village." The village covers a large territory, and to examine it visitors are given antique carriages, traps, and buggies. On the coach boxes sit coachmen in top-hats and fur coats with the fur on the outside. They crack their whips. It is as strange to see the coachmen as the horses they are driving here. No automobile is allowed to drive into Greenfield Village. We sat down in a carriage and rolled along the kind of road we had not seen in ages. It was a genuine old road, a wonder of the fifties of the nineteenth century—dirt, slightly sprinkled with gravel. We rolled along it with the measured jog-trot of the landed gentry epoch.
The village is a recent undertaking of Ford's. It is difficult to say what it really is. Even Ford himself could scarcely explain the need for it. Maybe he wanted to resurrect the old, for which he pines. Or, on the contrary, maybe he wanted to emphasize the poverty of those old days by comparison with the technical wonders of today. Yet, in this undertaking there is none of the traditional and absurd eccentricity of American billionaires. Although it is not yet clear what Ford is trying to attain in his museum, it is undoubtedly wise to gather and preserve for posterity exhibits of the old technique.
Edison's old laboratory was brought in its entirety from Menlo Park into this museum village—the same laboratory where innumerable experiments had been carried on to find the thread of the first electric lamp, where this lamp was first lighted, where the phonograph first played, where a number of things happened for the first time.
In that poor wooden house with creaking floors and sooty walls was born the technique of our days. The traces of Edison's genius and his titanic application may be seen there even now. There were so many glass and metal instruments, so many jars and retorts in that laboratory that it would take a whole week only to dust them.
When we entered the laboratory we were met by a shaggy old man with ardent black eyes. On his head was a little silk skull-cap, the kind usually worn by academicians. He began to attend to us with enthusiasm. He was one of Edison's collaborators, perhaps the only one still alive today.
He threw up both his arms and cried out with all his might:
"Everything that the world received here was made by the youth and strength of Edison! Edison in his old age was nothing compared with the young Edison! He was a lion of science!"
And the old man showed us a gallery of Edison's photographic portraits. In one of these the young inventor resembles Bonaparte, a proud bang falling across his pale forehead. On another he looks like Chekhov in his student days. The old man continued to wave his hands with great animation. It occurred to us to wonder how an American could muster such powers of exultation. But we soon discovered that the old man was a Frenchman.
Speaking about his great friend, the scientist became more and more wound up. We proved to be attentive listeners, and were amply rewarded for that. The old man showed us the first electric lamp that ever burned in the world. He even showed us, by means of impersonations, how it occurred, how they all sat around the little lamp, awaiting the results. All the little threads lighted for an instant and at once went out. But finally they found the one thread that would not go out: They sat for an hour, and the lamp glowed. They sat for two hours, without stirring. The lamp still glowed. They sat through the night. That was victory.
"Science can go nowhere away from Edison!" cried the old man.
"Even the radio tubes of our day were born with the light of this incandescent lamp."
With trembling yet deft hands the old man attached the first Edison lamp to a radio set and caught several stations. The amplification was not great, but it was sufficiently audible.