How Did Thomas Edison Make the Light Bulb?

Edison didn't invent the light bulb but he made it more practical and useful. People knew that whoever could make a practical light bulb, which could be sold to everyone for their home and businesses, would be rich. In 1878, Edison joined other inventors in the race to improve the light bulb. Eliminating the oxygen kept the material from burning, but platinum still melted at high temperatures.

So Edison and his staff got to work trying to fix that problem. They soon realized that the material needed to have high electrical resistance. In other words, when electricity passes through it, it heats easily. So they began testing high-resistant substances.

By 1879, Edison and his workers were beginning to get results. In 1880 they chose bamboo to make the filaments and the bulb burned for 600 hours. Edison’s power company was lighting New York City by 1882.

Joseph Swan

While Edison was working in the United States on improving the light bulb, another inventor, Joseph Swan, was working on light bulb improvements in England. Instead of bamboo, he used carbon paper to make the filaments. He received a patent for his light bulb in 1878. He started his own power company in England. But Edison sued him for patent infringement because he got the idea about high resistant filaments from him.

After a bit, they stopped feuding and joined forces. They formed a company, Edison-Swan United, which was one of the biggest producers of light bulbs in the world.

Earlier Light Bulbs

Arc Lamp

In 1801, Sir Humphry Davy ran an electric current through two platinum strips trying to make a light bulb. The strips didn’t last long, but at least it was a start. He continued working on the problem and, in 1809, the arc lamp was invented.

Davy used two charcoal rods instead of platinum, but that was impractical because the light was very bright. It not only was too bright, it also took a lot of power to operate and it rapidly drained the batteries.

The power problem was solved with the invention of electric generators, and arc lamps were useful in places where a bright, intense light was needed, like in searchlights, industrial plants, or lighthouses.

Incandescent Light

There still needed to be a way to make the light bulb work in people’s homes. Inventors worked on modifying the arc lamp and came up with incandescent light. Incandescence works on simple principles:

Certain materials heat up when electricity passes through them
If the materials get hot enough, they will glow

The two hurdles to jump at this stage were the materials burning or melting. One way to stop a substance from burning is to remove the oxygen. So, if material was placed inside a bulb, and the oxygen was vacuumed out, then the material would not burn.

In 1814, Frederick de Moleyns received a patent for the incandescent lamp. It had powdered charcoal which was heated between two platinum wires, in a vacuum.

Thomas Edison

Edison was born in Milan, Ohio on February 11, 1847. Since he did poorly in school, his mother decided to teach him at home. His first job, at the age of 13 was a newspaper boy. Later, he had the opportunity to learn to be a telegrapher and took it. He did that full time until he was 16.

Soon, he became an inventor, getting his first patent in 1869. It was an electric vote recorder and did not work very well, but his life as an inventor was just getting started.

His first successful invention was the Universal Stock Printer. After that, he spent a lot of time working to improve the telegraph’s efficiency. Some of his other inventions include the phonograph and the kinetoscope, an early motion picture projector.