Soybean Lab Agricultural Gallery – Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Michigan, photo by cmulou

You don’t really think about “light” having an anniversary, but today is the 131st anniversary of Thomas Edison’s invention of the electric light. Light’s Golden Jubilee Honors Thomas Edison and Dedicates a Museum from The Henry Ford Museum relates that today features another birthday:

On October 21, 1929, Henry Ford hosted an elaborate celebration in Dearborn, Michigan, in honor of his friend Thomas A. Edison. Known as Light’s Golden Jubilee, the date marked the 50th anniversary of Edison’s invention of the electric light. Ford also planned his event as a dedication of his own lasting tribute to Thomas Edison and to American innovation, the Edison Institute of Technology (later renamed Henry Ford Museum) and Greenfield Village. Here, Henry Ford had moved the Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory where the inventor made his discovery so many years before.

The RSVPs for Light’s Golden Jubilee began pouring in to Ford Motor Company by early October 1929. Prominent businessmen like John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and J.P. Morgan, scientist Marie Curie, inventor Orville Wright, and humorist Will Rogers were among those who enthusiastically accepted Ford’s invitation to be part of the landmark event.

A t 10 o’clock that morning, President Herbert Hoover, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison arrived at Smiths Creek depot at Greenfield Village on a steam- powered locomotive, much like the one on which Edison had sold papers as a youth. They were met by invited guests that numbered more than 500. The crowd roared their approval and congratulations as Edison , Hoover and Ford stepped from the train to begin the day’s festivities…

Read on and also see some photos from the opening gala at the Henry Ford.

Check this photo out bigger in cmulou’s Winter at Greenfield Village slideshow and Happy Birthday to one of Michigan’s coolest museums!!