A、They were transported from Asia. B、They were made from natural rubber. C、They were pretty costly. D、They were rather durable.

At the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries, the prolific American inventor Thomas Alva Edison developed devices that changed industry, communication, and everyday life. He perfected much of his work in his famous laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. But he was almost as busy at his winter home in Fort Myers, Florida, where his work took some interesting twists.
    Fort Myers is now a stylish and expensive place to live.(16)But in 1885 when Edison fell in love with it, it was little more than a cow town on the Gulf of Mexico. It had about 200 people and several thousand head of cattle.
    Over the years, Edison became good friends with automobile titan Henry Ford, who was a guest at Edison’s winter home and eventually bought his own place across the street. Today both houses are part of the same museum complex. Edison, Ford and tire executive Harvey Firestone set up a laboratory there at Edison’s place in Fort Myers.
     (17)At the time, automobile tires were made from real rubber, imported from Africa. One company had a monopoly on the shipments, so Firestone and Ford asked Edison to come up with something they could make in the US.
    Edison was trying to perfect a rubber-like substance made of a kind of plant named goldenrods(秋麒麟草)in 1931. As it turned out, others went on to develop artificial rubber, made of purely chemical compounds.
    Thomas Edison came to love plants—the goldenrods, the banyan, and palm trees.(18)He gave tiny Fort Myers hundreds of palm saplings to plant along the main road. Today they form a beautiful canopy for which Fort Myers is famous.
16. What did Fort Myers look like in Edison’s time?
17. What do we know about automobile tires in the early 20 th century from the passage?
18. What do we know about Thomas Edison from the passage?