Meeting with gold star mothers today and tweeted and, this tweet from the republican who represents the 21st district of new york. ,poke at the Business Council new york state luncheon today about shared goals of increasing jobs and commerce in new yorks 21st district. Of congress back on tuesday, september 6. Coming upe things this fall, remaining federal spending bills for fiscal year 2016 2017. Zika prevention and research. Defense programs and policy, and possibly in the house, discussion of impeachment of the irs commissioner. For the next hour, and American History tv exclusive. The cities tour features visits port huron, michigan. For five years now, we have traveled to american cities, interviewing historians, authors, and leaders. You can watch more of our visit at cspan. Org citiestour. On the fourth floor of what is called the Municipal Office of city hall, right on the st. Clair river. Probably the most Eastern Point of michigan. Our population is around 30,000 people, which is a decrease. At one time, back many years ago probably in the 50s or 60s, it , would have been closer to the 40s. As economic changes and industry changes, it has decreased over the years. And demographically, we have an assortment of all different types of people, but i would the it a little bit on distressed side. Because we are this county seat, we have rentals and social services and things like that. We dont have the most stable population. It kind of comes and it goes. Economically probably not the , highest incomes, so it a Broad Spectrum of lower to upper income, but it is a Nice Community to live in and a nice place to raise your family. We ht things going on. The Unemployment Rate in michigan is higher than in the country and higher in this area. It has gone down. It has not gone down at the same we are always a little bit higher than the rest of the county and the rest of the state because michigan is traditionally, but we have had a lot of improvements over the last couple of years. Everyone suffered in 2008 when the economy tanked and we are crawling out of it, but it takes a little longer to crawl out of it, but we have some wonderful things happening, so im proud of that. We have an interest in our downtown area. A lot of downtowns have failed since everyone moved out to the malls and now i think the mall s are not doing so well. Our downtown is revitalized and we have a lot of new businesses and new restaurants and bars and quaint stores. Certainly no Big Department store or anything like that, but more loftting apartments. Something i would not have said years ago would go, but there has been a surge of those and we , have so many that they have waiting lists. That is good because in those lofts, its the professionals and that is what you are looking for to get some of the younger people to come back here and for jobs to come back here. It has seemed to be successful in that manner and we also have right behind where im standing on the river, a wonderful piece property, which used to house our ymca. It was sold to the city and this property was made development ready. Weve sold that to a developer and they are going to put highrise condos on that. I think they havent decided on the exact plan, but we are still in the stages of working on a site plan. But they should be started in a year at the latest. Its probably going to be at least four or five stories high, so this is going to bring a lot of people into town. That is we are looking for, kind of redeveloping and reinventing ourselves as a place to come not only if you are younger, getting people to live in the downtown area has been very much a part of that. I think one of the key parts of our history is we are celebrating, we have celebrated in our sesquicentennial and 2007, theres a lot of history. We are very proud of the lighthouse and the fact that people can visit and walk out to the top. Back in the day, you had shipping and logging and things like that. Obviously not today, but its a very strong part of our heritage. The bluewater bridge connects with ontario, and that was built in 1938. Before that, you have to take a ferry if you were going across. That is a cumbersome way to travel back and forth. The amount of commerce we get from canada to the United States is astronomical. A lot of it goes through port huron, but a lot of people come from canada to port huron to shop. It is a big part of the success of the businesses in this area, not just port huron but the surrounding area. Its important that they have this bridge. That lasted until the 90s. In 1997, they opened the second span of the bridge, and both sides going back and forth truck traffic is sometimes all the way across the bridge. Its very much doing its job and i think in the future, port huron is only going to get better. I do see a lot of interest from investors on the other side of the state, and thats one of the reasons that we ended up with the refurbishment of the Thomas Edison inn. Now a double and restaurant combined to there. That was an investor from the west side of the state. I think we are getting more notice from other places. A lot of times, people didnt know they knew where it was, but they thought it was a small little town by the bridge, one that you drive through. I think we are getting the reputation that it is definitely worth coming here. The people are friendly and we have nice places to go, so i think we will have a resurgence , even more than we have now, of our downtown and other businesses coming in and investments in the community, so im looking forward to good things happening. American history tv is at the museum. Dison depot its one of the many places we are visiting. We will hear about Thomas Edison and his ties to this city and that building. The 20th century would look so different without Thomas Edison and delightful, the photograph. The phonograph. These are ordinary, common things but they all came from his brain and his brain came from fort huron. He arrived here when he was seven years old and he was born in 1847. He started working here in 1859. The train station was built in 1858. He got the job as news butcher at age 12. Here, we have a vignette that shows edisons mother yelling at his teacher, mr. Crawford, who called edison addled. I guess today we might say stupid or confused or mixed up. You can see here that it hurt his feelings and angered her. She said, hes a lot smarter than you are and if you cant teach him, i will. So she took him home and home schooled him and he always credited his mother for making him the man he became through her kindness, through her teaching him, and a love of learning that he carried on his entire life. He Read Everything he could, in the evenings as a man, he would read the encyclopaedia britannica. I think if edison were in school today, he might have been on ritalin or some other medicine for add or adhd. I think he just had so much going on in his head that if he werent particularly interested in the subject matter at hand, he just didnt want to Pay Attention and wanted to explore things in his own way. We are on a restored train car from about 1889. This is used to represent the train car Thomas Edison rode daily as a 12yearold boy to detroit. It was a news butcher meaning a , news peddler, and he would have a basket and walk up and down the aisle of the train cars selling fruit, candy, cigars, newspapers. That was his job. He would arrive here at the at 7 00 a. M. And ride to detroit and come back at 8 00 or 9 00 at night. He would spend his time selling things to passengers. We have a recreation of his little Chemical Laboratory and printing equipment where he was , the first person we know of to print a newspaper on a moving train. He had access to the latest news through the telegraph agents at the train offices and would get that news hot off the presses. He also sold the detroit free press. During the civil war, he was doing this, right after the civil war battle of shiloh. He convinced the detroit free him 1000 copies of the paper on credit instead of buying them ahead of time. So he sold way more copies than he usually did. Ever the entrepreneur, he started raising the price and the closer he got back to port huron and the fewer papers he had back, the price went up. By the time he got back, it went from five cents a copy to . 25 a copy, and he sold them all out and was able to give his mother a nice chunk of change that day. This is his Chemical Laboratory in the basement which he originally had in the bedroom in the bathroom at home but , his mother objected to the potential hazards from mixing chemicals, so he moved to the basement and scrounged bottles all over town and would put them by chemicals and put them in these bottles that he labeled poison to keep people out. He labeled each bottle with a number and he kept a logbook, so he knew what was in each model in each bottle and could safely explore the properties of these chemicals. He had a chemistry book, and he was testing every statement made in the book to see if what it said in the book would really happen if he experimented. He had to see for himself if what the book said was true. We have some articles found in the archaeology of his boyhood home. The home burned in 1870, five years after his parents were evicted. It was left there until it was excavated in the 1980s. Theres no way to know if all of these things came from edison but we do have printers type , that matches the type used first on the train until he was kicked off the train after some of his chemicals from the laboratory copy train car on fire. He moved the laboratory to the basement again. His father went to the railroad and asked, if he stops this nonsense, can he have his job back . This is edison at the age she the age he was working here. A glint in his eye very likable. I think thats how he talked people into letting him do things like have a Chemical Laboratory on the train, or actually run this train, for example. It takes a great deal of knowledge and skill to run a steam engine like that. He talked to the he talked to the engineer and the firemen into letting him do it. They knew what it took and apparently had the confidence he could do it. They were wrong in his assessment of his abilities. While they were taking a nap, he was running the train, and they were rudely awakened with a scalding hot splash of dirty, oily water. He really didnt know what he was doing, and that was the end of his dream to be an engineer, but thank goodness for that because he went on to such great things. This is a telegraph office. Trains had telegraph operators because trains are dispatched by had aaph, so each station telegraph operator. Edison had an interest in anything electrical, especially telegraphs. When he was a boy, it was a relatively new technology. He was four years old when it was invented. At 12, it was still relatively new. He really wanted to learn it badly. He made his own connected between his own house and a couple of neighbors. He was not proficient and his equipment was cobbled from junk. It was in michigan on his way to , detroit, he was acting as a news butcher and he saw the threeyearold son of the station master playing on the track. A boxcar was rolling toward him. Nobody set the break or something. He ran and saved the kid just in time and ingratitude, mr. Mackenzie thought tom, or al as he went by as a use, taught him mores code properly. In two months, he had become proficient enough to get his first job as an operator in downtown port huron. It was more of a general store. They sold everything. He lasted there six months. He was not a good employee. He tinkered with all the equipment, he broke the tools. After about six months, they parted ways. Mr. Walker always had nice things to say. He went to stratford junction , ontario and got a job as , telegraph agent. He ended up moving all over the midwest. He never stayed anywhere very long. He was always getting in trouble on the job for tinkering with the equipment. At one point, he let a bottle of acid run through the floor and into the bosses desk below. He was fired for that. For a few years, he had three different jobs in three different cities in different places around the midwest. We know he did not last long as an employee and it was important for him to be the boss. That is one of the lessons he learned. It had to be his way or its just not going to work out for him. Mary had a little lamb, his fleece was white as snow. Everywhere that mary went the lamb was sure to go. We have a model of the first , invented this was a 1877. Popular project for people learning machine work. The Edison Laboratory had blueprints made so people could make a copy if they wanted to. We have one here. This was recorded on tinfoil and you would wrap tinfoil around the cylinder nice and smooth. You would speak into one of boss one win in would emboss the tinfoil and the diaphragm of your voice would make a go up and down, and then you would play it back on the other one. This is the only one that used a different recording head and you realize after that that the same would work to record and playback. This is a 50,000 watt lightbulb that was supposed to be a perpetual memorial to edison. It was lit in 1940 by edisons widow, who came to town for the World Premiere of young tom edison. Mickey rooney played Thomas Edison. Here at the museum, we have a newsreel from the time. Of Mickey Rooney arriving from the time period of Mickey Rooney arriving on the old train and mrs. Edison throws the switch. I think you need welding gobbles to look at it. It is so bright, even on the camera. Edisons most famous for the lightbulb, but his favorite invention, he said was the phonograph. He figured out a way to save sound. I can play this if you like. This is a model from 1905. From 1915. R is i brought this in for memorial day. He invented the cylinder format. Some of your people might not realize that records were shaped like this originally. This one is celluloid. Its called indestructiblesome e ause the early blacks once the early wax ones were very fragile. This one, i could drop and it would suffer no ill effects. The heyday of the cylinder machine was roughly 1895 to 1915 or so. In the 20s, they did make cylinder machines. He actually produced cylinders until about 1929. He was always very loyal to his customers, providing them with cylinders as late until 1929. One of his most famous quotes is genius is 1 inspiration and 99 perspiration. He knew everything was hard work and he was not afraid to do that hard work and he showed that in the laboratory that he built in the basement of his home where , he was testing every statement made in a book about chemistry to see for himself if it was true or not, and it became important to have that work ethic. That showed when he was working on the lightbulb. Differentrough 1000 compositions for the filament until he finally found the right one. Hard work and sticking to it served him well in life. Port huron is proud of Thomas Edison. Hes probably one of the most famous people in the world. He spent his formative years here and we still have this beautiful train depot that he worked out of. The Jewelry Store is still there. His parents and family are still in the cemetery. It just shows us that people from a small town can go on to do great things. Edison invented the century. Cspan is visiting port huron to learn more about the citys history. Graphic op is for it will talk about the First White House in the state of michigan. In the state of michigan, there are over 116 lighthouses and this ones claim to fame is being the first. We just came up from the 99 steps to the top of the fort ot white house. We have the blue water bridge is to the south and lake huron to the east. We are at the st. Clair river at the mouth of the lake. You can see the nice bluewater and what tourists come to this area for. When they hear this is the blue water area, this is what they get to see, and they realize they are not lying. Just north to the city, in the city limits of port huron, it gets its namesake from the military port established here in 1814. Charles gratiot what the gentleman who built fort gratiot. He was an engineer in the army and was responsible for building fort gratiot. In response to an attack that could come from canada and protecting the mouth of the river. The decision to add the lighthouse was made around the 1820s. At that time, traffic was increasing on the great lakes, so they felt this was a significant spot. It will become michigans first. In 1825, congress appropriated money to build lighthouse just south of where we are standing, by the bluewater bridges. It was right at the mouth of the river. It was built by Winslow Lewis and the construction of the building was subpar, and it led to deterioration and soon after, it would collapse with a november storm. When the original tower collapsed, the need for a new tower was evident. A new location. The tower was moved several hundred yards to the north on lake huron and congress appropriated about 5,000 to build the tower in 1828. Construction began, and by december of 1829 the new tower , was completed and lantern was lit in december. The lighthouse laid a very significant role because you had mariners going up and down the st. Clair river. It was a narrow channel that was known at that time as rapid. The water was quick moving and swift. Guiding the mariners towards that channel in making sure they were in line with that area was very important. The light provided safe harbor for mariners who sailed in port huron on for mariners on lake huron, which could prove to be treacherous, especially in october or november. Its a very important lighthouse for those reasons. The fort is operational from time to time. It is a military installation, so as the needs came to be, the fort would be regarrison and used. Theas regarrison when cholera epidemic affected the surrounding area. It was regarrisoned during the civil war. The 27th michigan infantry would be mustered into service and learn their tactics and training at fort gratiot, and then would go on to kentucky and other points south. After the civil war, you will see dramatic changes at the Fort Gratiot Light station. There is an