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Cade Museum opens illuminating new exhibit inviting visitors to relive the Age of Electricity

Press release from Cade Museum

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Last year, the Cade Museum invited visitors to “Wander the Milky Way.” Beginning in early February, guests can travel back in time to investigate how electricity shapes our lives with a brand-new museum theme called, “Latimer, Edison, Tesla: The Age of Electricity.”

From the 1870s through the 1890s, Thomas Edison’s laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, patented some of the most important inventions of the modern age, including the light bulb, sound recording, and motion pictures. The late 19th century saw tremendous change and the rise of a new kind of American icon: the Inventor.

The “Age of Electricity” gives visitors the opportunity to meet the brave and creative inventors who wired our world and encourages them to tinker, design, and traverse their way across the turn of the 20th century.

The museum rotunda will feature the new hands-on exhibit, “Lewis Latimer: Lighting the Way,” where guests will walk through the life of Lewis Latimer, an inventor who changed the way the world viewed electric light. Latimer’s self-made story demonstrates how he helped bring incandescent lighting to the masses, first by wedging his way into patent drafting to eventually inventing ground-breaking changes to light bulb filaments, landing him a spot in Thomas Edison’s electric company. Excerpts from Lewis Latimer’s diary give guests a glimpse into the mind of a man who is immortalized in history for his inventions, all while overcoming the challenges faced with being an African American inventor in the height of Jim Crow America.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit Cademuseum.org.

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