DescriptionThomas Edison began serious research into developing a practical incandescent lamp in 1878. Edison filed his first patent application for "Improvement In Electric Lights" on 14 October 1878. After many experiments on what filament to use, first with carbon in the early 1880s and then with platinum and other metals, Edison settled on carbon as the filament. The first successful test of the incandescent lamp was on 22 October 1879, which lasted 13.5 hours. Edison continued to improve this design and by 4 November 1879, filed for a US patent for an electric lamp using "a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected ... to platinum contact wires." Although the patent described several ways of creating the carbon filament including using "cotton and linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways," Edison and his team later discovered that a carbonized bamboo filament could last more than 1200 hours. The 1890 Edison Incandescent Electric Lamps is a catalog and price list the Edison Lamp Company produced in Harrison, New Jersey.
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Organization NameRutgers University. Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives.
Organization NameRutgers University. Libraries. Special Collections
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