The Light Bulb

Olivia Colafella
In this paper I seek to assess why the light bulb was the most impactful invention of the
Industrial Revolution. The light bulb was invented by Thomas Edison in 1879. Although he did
not come up with the idea, he was the first to successfully complete it. Edison had over 2,000
inventions, but the light bulb was the most famous. The light bulb that Thomas Edison invented
has been used for many years. It was recently changed to help cut down the number of light
bulbs that need to be made. I argue that the light bulb was the most influential invention during
the Industrial Revolution. I will prove this by explaining its many uses and how it changed the
way society saw things.
Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. He was the seventh
child born and would be one of four to survive to adulthood. Thomas Edison received about 3
years of formal education, and left school in 1859 to being working on the railroad. Thomas
Edisons light bulb research began in 1878. His experiments involved the fabrication and testing
of many different metal filaments, including platinum, which was very difficult to work with. It
was also very expensive and too low in resistance. He then used a carbon-based, high-resistance
filament. In October 1879 Edison successfully tested a filament that burned for thirteen and a
half hours. By November 1879, he filed for a United States patent for an electric lamp. The
filament was made from a piece of carbonized thread. By New Years he was demonstrating
lamps using carbonized cardboard filaments to large crowds at the Menlo Park laboratory. It was
not until several months after the patent was granted that Edison and his team discovered that a
carbonized bamboo filament could last over 1,200 hours. About a year later, Edison began
manufacturing commercial lamps using carbonized Japanese bamboo as filaments. Throughout
his career, Edison worked on many improvements to his invention. It changed the way people

lived after it was dark. Prior to the light bulb, people burned lamp oils or used manufactured
natural gas for light. Electric lights became cheap and safe to use. They were installed in large
quantities all over the world. Time.com has a quote from Thomas Edison that says As there is no
oxygen to burn, you can readily see that this piece of carbon will last an ordinary life-time. It has
the property of resisting the heat of the current of electricity, while at the same time it becomes
incandescent, and gives out one of the most brilliant lights which the world has ever seen. The
cost of preparing one of these little horse-shoes of carbon is about 1 cent, and the entire lamp
will cost not more than 25 cents.
When Thomas Edison died on October 18, 1931, he had 1,093 patents. There were 389
for electric light and power, 195 for the phonograph, 150 for the telegraph, 141 for storage
batteries, and 34 for the telephone. All of his inventions changed the way that people lived in the
Industrial Revolution. Before the lightbulb, it was very difficult to see at night. It made people
able to work much longer. This is why I believe that the light bulb was the most influential
invention during the Industrial Revolution. It was used for several hundred years but was just
recently replaced. The light bulb has revolutionized that way we see in the dark.