Thomas Alva Edison

Went with my brother Ravi to Thomas Alva Edison's laboratories today in New Jersey. Amazing. So interesting! The inventor of electric bulb, gramophone, cement, motion picture and several others. Overwhelming. He had the first motion picture shooting studio built on circular moving platform to have the whole building move to get sun shine inside. In North America the sun rises at different points at different months of the year. The machine shop, the elevator he used, the first song recording etc etc are all there just as he had left them. He even put a tiny gramophone inside a doll to make it talk. Just great feeling visiting it and listening to his voice, seeing the first motion pictures ever made.

Earlier it was a visit to Rubin museum of Himalayan art in New York. The exhibition on cosmology is mind blowing. Feel good walk around Union Square meeting Abby Robinson after six years, walking around with her and trying to spot the iron man sculptures on top of buildings who look like they are just about to jump off. Nice break from my lecture routine.
Lovely trip to Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. an intimate experience of the arts. C
see my pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/vrdevika