The Story of Thomas Edison's Dying Breath

In the 1920s, automobile magnate Henry Ford reconstructed the Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory of his idol and close friend, inventor Thomas Edison, at Greenfield Village, Ford's outdoor museum in Dearborn, Michigan. A popular attraction at Ford's Museum is a glass test tube containing the great inventor's last dying breath.

Galileo's Middle Finger

According to the Henry Ford Museum site, it was Ford's idea to capture Thomas Edison's last exhalation as the elderly inventor lay dying in 1931. Some have said that Ford's belief in reincarnation had led him to further believe that, in death, the soul leaves the body with its last breath. Others have also said that Ford was influenced by the astronomer Galileo's preserved middle finger, which was severed from his corpse in the 16th century and placed on display in a glass case in Florence, Italy.

The Glass Tube

As Edison was dying, the auto magnate convinced Edison's son Charles to sit at his father's bedside in order to capture and cork the great man's last breath inside a test tube. After the inventor died, Charles Edison gave Ford the glass tube.

For twenty years, the existence of Edison's "last breath" was the stuff of legend until the glass tube was discovered among hundreds of Ford family personal effects that had been transferred to the Henry Ford Museum after Henry's widow Clara died in 1951.

The Dying Breath Lost

Amazingly, the tube containing Edison's last breath wound up lost for another twenty years. It was found again in 1978, this time under a display case at the Museum. And, for the first time, the Museum placed it on display.

Authenticity?

In the late 1980's, a letter from Charles Edison to newspaper columnist Walter Winchell surfaced. In the letter, the inventor's son revealed that he had given a sealed test tube to Henry Ford after his father's death.

The Edison National Historic Site, however, hasn't fully supported the details of Ford's story of Thomas Edison's dying breath. While the Edison people have admitted that there were indeed several "small empty glass bottles" on the bed stand next to the inventor's deathbed, they won't attest to the contents of any of the vessels. They do, however, state that Charles Edison had the bottles sealed with paraffin and then gave them to his father's close friends, including Ford.

Besides Henry Ford Museum's "dying breath" container, another such sealed container is on display at the Edison Winter Home in Fort Myers, Florida.

In all fairness to the Henry Ford Museum, the test tube is on display in a glass case with a placard titled "Edison's Last Breath?" The "question-mark" on this placard attests to the shakiness of the authenticity of its contents.

A Side Note:

Another popular Edison deathbed story states that the clock in the great man's office had stopped at the moment of his death. This also hasn't been conclusively proven.

SOURCES:

http://www.thehenryford.org/exhibits/pic/2004/july.asp

http://www.thehenryford.org/exhibits/pic/2004/edison/galileo.asp

http://www.nps.gov/archive/edis/edifun/edifun_4andup/faqs_fables.htm