Edison & Ford Winter Estates, Fort Myers, Florida, USA

The full statue of Thomas Edison is located under the banyan tree given to Edison by Harvey Firestone.

Why does Edison have a steel ball in his hand?

Thomas Edison, while working at night, always kept a steel ball in one hand so that if he fell asleep and the steel ball left his hand, he would be woken up by the noise.

Edison was among the creative geniuses that used the state of conciousness between wakefulness and sleep to stimulate creative insight. When confronted with a very difficult problem, he catnapped in the chair in his office. To insure that he could record any insights gained during the interval between wakefulness and sleep, he placed metal pans beside his chair and held a steel ball in each hand. When he started to enter genuine sleep, his hands relaxed, dropping the steel balls in the pans. Awakened, he immediately recorded any insights gained during the period between wakefulness and sleep. So the statue conjures up this idiosyncratic behavior of Edison. Coincidentally, a number of Edison’s inventions also involved stainless steel balls.