The reason Edison had access to a laboratory was due to his inventive genius that produced capital.
Edison perfected the light bulb and developed the parallel method of electrical distribution. He even 'perfected' Bakelite or developed Condensite to use with his DD's. I find it very interesting that he overcame the technical difficulties that other people could not. In my opinion what made Edison such a great man was his tremendous output of inventions, patents, and companies. Here is a history of the electric light from this site: http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/bulbexperiment.html The first electric light was made in 1809 by Humphry Davy, an English scientist. He experimented with electricity and when he connected wires and a piece of carbon to a battery, the carbon glowed, producing light. In 1875 Herman Sprengel invented the mercury vacuum pump making it possible to develop a practical electric light bulb by making a really good vacuum inside the bulb possible. In 1878 Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, an English physicist, was the first person to invent a practical and longer-lasting electric light bulb (13.5 hours). Swan used a carbon fiber filament derived from cotton. Thomas Alva Edison, a prolific inventor, and his team (yes, he did not work alone!) experimented with thousands of different filaments to find just the right materials to glow well and be long-lasting. In 1879 Edison obtained an improved Sprengel vacuum pump, and it proved to be the catalyst for a breakthrough. Edison discovered that a carbon filament in an oxygen-free bulb glowed for 40 hours. Soon, by changing the shape of the filament to a horseshoe it burned for over 100 hours and later, by additional improvements, it lasted for 1500 hours. As always I welcome any comments on any mistakes I may have made. Best wishes, Steve > There are good arguments that he didn't actually invent any of those, > although he was an important developer in each case. He certainly built > the first talking machine, although Charles Cros probably would have beat > him to it if he's had access to a laboratory. I realize that's a > technicality- even Cros did not claim any more than having the theoretical > idea first. > Eric Stott > > > _______________________________________________ > Phono-L mailing list > [email protected] > > Phono-L Archive > http://www.oldcrank.org/pipermail/phono-l/ >
