Light Bulb

From the earliest periods of history until the beginning of the 19th century, fire
was man's primary source of light. This light was produced through different
means�torches, candles , oil and gas lamps. Besides the danger presented by an open
flame (especially when used indoors), these sources of light also provided
insufficient illumination.

The first attempts at using electric light were made by English chemist Sir Humphry
Davy. In 1802, Davy showed that electric currents could heat thin strips of metal
to white heat, thus producing light. This was the beginning of incandescent
(defined as glowing with intense heat) electric light. The next major development
was the arc light. This was basically two electrodes, usually made of carbon,
separated from each other by a short air space. Electric current applied to one of
the electrodes flowed to and through the other electrode resulting in an arc of
light across the air space. Arc lamps (or light bulbs) were used mainly in outdoor
lighting; the race was still on among a large group of scientists to discover a
useful source of indoor illumination.

The primary difficulty holding back the development of a commercially viable

incandescent light was finding suitable glowing elements. Davy found that platinum
was the only metal that could produce white heat for any length of time. Carbon was
also used, but it oxidized quickly in air. The answer was to develop a vacuum that
would keep air away from the elements, thus preserving the light-producing
materials.

Thomas A. Edison, a young inventor working in Menlo Park, New Jersey, began working
on his own form of electric light in the 1870s. In 1877 Edison became involved with
the rush for a satisfactory electric light source, devoting his initial involvement
to confirming the reasons for his competitors' failures. He did, however, determine
that platinum made a much better burner than carbon. Working with platinum, Edison
obtained his first patent in April of 1879 on a relatively impractical lamp, but he
continued searching for an element that could be heated efficiently and
economically.

Edison also tinkered with the other components of the lighting system, including
building his own power source and devising a breakthrough wiring system that could
handle a number of lamps burning at the same time. His most important discovery,
however, was the invention of a suitable filament. This was a very thin, threadlike
wire that offered high resistance to the passage of electric currents. Most of the
early filaments burned out very quickly, thus rendering these lamps commercially
useless. To solve this problem, Edison began again to try carbon as a means of
illumination.