During the year 1878, Thomas Alva Edison spent many hours in his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, working on the invention of the light bulb. He enlisted the services of dozens of workers to conduct experiments. At the end of the year, he had filed patents on 1,093 inventions. He also developed electrical generators, meters, a phonograph, a kinetoscope, and an electric dictation machine.
Thomas Edison’s team tested hundreds of materials to develop an incandescent light bulb. The first successful design was made in January 1879 in Menlo Park, New Jersey. It consisted of a glass bulb filled with an inert gas and a carbon filament wire. The bulb’s filament burned for about half a day, before it burned out.
Thomas Edison’s light bulb was based on carbon filaments. He initially considered using tungsten for the filament. However, his tools were not available at that time. He settled on using a thinner cotton thread filament, which was much more resistant to burnout. It also burned for longer than the competition’s designs. He was able to burn the filament for fourteen hours in a test. Its high resistance meant that it consumed less electricity than competing designs.
After his initial success, Edison continued to work on improving the design of his light bulb. He experimented with different filament materials, gasses, and shapes of glass bulbs. He built a vacuum pump that would prevent the filament from reacting with outside gasses. He also developed a better vacuum pump that would remove air from the bulb. The bulb became safe and reliable, and electric lights became affordable.
During his work on the design of the light bulb, Edison’s team performed about 1,200 experiments. They tried over 300 different filaments, including flax, cedar, hickory, and cardboard. They also tried different types of vacuum pumps. They found that the best vacuum pumps were ones that were not only effective, but would also prevent the filament from reacting with outside gasses.
Thomas Edison’s light bulb design was successful because it produced an orange glow when voltage was applied. The filament was made from carbonized cotton threads. It was also a thin filament, which was much more effective than other types of metals. The filament was also much cheaper than competing designs.
As the electric light bulb became more commercially viable, the number of lights installed began to increase. Thomas Edison established the Edison Electric Light Company, which became the largest light bulb manufacturer in the world. He also developed an electric generator that could power a large lighting system. The company eventually merged with Joseph Swan, who was also developing light bulbs. Swan’s designs were successful, but they also burned out too quickly. They were too dangerous to use in homes.
The light bulb made by Thomas Edison is often considered to be the first practical and commercially viable incandescent lamp. However, many of his peers also worked on light bulb designs before he patented his invention. They also suffered from the same problems that plagued earlier designs.