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A Bright Idea
American inventor Thomas Edison is often recognised as the man who invented the light bulb. However, other inventors created electric lights before Edison did. The story of the electric light shows that being first is not always what is most important. Edison’s light bulb was not the first electric light, but it became the most famous.
In 1800, an Italian inventor named Alessandro Volta created a new way of making electricity when he invented the first battery. News of his success reached an English inventor named Sir Humphrey Davy. Right away, Davy realised this was a big opportunity. He thought he could use one of Volta’s batteries to power a light. Davy knew how significant making an electric light would be. Electric lights, in Davy’s opinion, would change the world!
Davy invented a light called an electric arc lamp, which passed an electric current through the air between two rods. In 1806, he presented his invention to the Royal Society in London. His new electric light worked! However, the arc lamp was much too bright for people to use in their homes. It also used a lot of power, and it drained its battery too quickly. In some ways, the first electric light bulb was a success. But people could not use it in a practical way.
Other inventors came closer to making a useful electric light. In 1840, British inventor Warren de La Rue created a light bulb that had a coil of platinum, which is a valuable silvery-white metal, inside an airless tube. When he passed an electric current through the tube, the metal coil glowed, creating light. La Rue’s light bulb used much less power than Davy’s arc lamp. The brightness was good for people to use indoors. However, the high cost of platinum made his light bulbs too expensive to produce and buy. In 1850, English inventor Joseph Swan made a light bulb like La Rue’s, using carbon instead of platinum. Swan’s light bulb was cheaper to make, but it burned out quickly.
In 1878, Thomas Edison started working on an electric light. Edison knew how other inventors’ lamps had succeeded and how they had failed. He and his factory workers tested three thousand bulb designs between the years 1878 and 1880. They tried many different materials. They ended up with a design similar to Swan’s light bulb. Edison improved on Swan’s design and used a special kind of bamboo instead of carbon. Instead of burning out, Edison’s light bulb lasted hundreds of hours. Finally, there was an affordable light bulb that people could use in their homes.
Edison didn’t stop at creating a light bulb that people could use. He also knew that people would need power for their lights. Edison formed the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York. He directed the design and construction of the first electrical power station, located on Pearl Street in New York City, USA. On 4 September 1882, a switch was turned at Pearl Street Station. Four hundred lamps went on for fewer than ninety electric customers. But the number of electric customers and people using Edison’s lights would quickly grow.