WIZARD’S LABORATORY, THE:   Edison’s Quest for Rubber
Grades 9-12, Science; 30 minutes.

In 1927, Thomas Edison, the "wizard" of electricity, began searching for a domestic source of rubber to protect Americans from foreign control of this vital commodity. The eighty-year-old inventor experimented with thousands of plants on his Fort Myers estate, eventually selecting goldenrod as the most promising source of rubber. Edison died in 1931, but his research continued until the development of synthetic rubber.