Thomas Edison… Forward Thinker from the Previous Century
Apparently, electric vehicles, “green” houses, wind power generation, and solar power are not new ideas by any stretch of the imagination.
According to a NYTimes article about Edison, the Magician of Menlo Park envisioned cars running solely on clean electrical power and houses not connected to “the grid.”
Edison worked with Henry Ford to produce running electric vehicles (Who’d have thought that Ford, of all companies would have had one of the first, though almost a hundred years ago and discontinued from production?) and build a model home with all modern luxuries that could be powered off of renewable energy in the ‘burbs of New Jersey. He even went so far as to state “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
If that’s not forward thinking that’s 100 years ahead of his own time, I don’t know what is. It’s too bad we didn’t listen to him until the last 15-20 years.
[via treehugger.com]
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