Just over a decade into the 20th Century, Edison also turned his hand to electric cars, as part of his vision to make the longest lasting battery in the world, according to Bob Burrell from Essex in the United Kingdom, who has just put the finishing touches to a restoration of a 1912 Edison electric car.

"He built three cars, one of which he drove from Scotland to London, charging it up along the way," Mr Burrell told the Sunday Express newspaper. The final leg of the journey from North to South was 170 miles, which makes GM's claim of a 170 mile journey in an Opel Ampera (the European market re-badged Volt) being the longest single electric vehicle journey in the U.K. look quite foolish. Edison's car managed the feat almost a century earlier...