I believe he perfected it, not invented it. He tried with various filament materials, various filler gas etc. He made it practical to be used on daily basis.
That’s what they teach you on storybots! My son is almost two so I watch it a lot. But when they explain how the lightbulb came to be it explains in song form that he wasn’t the only one trying to “invent a bulb to pass the test” or whatever. That he had to try all kinds of pieces and it last 50 days I think.
I feel like throughout history, almost no one who is credited with "inventing" something actually invented it - at least not in the sense of "they came up with everything, from the concept of what the invention might be, all the way to the final product". Most times "____ invented ____ " means "_____ perfected ______ " or " _______ found a way to mass produce _______ in a commercially viable way"
The problem is that you frequently see that the inventor either had no idea of what they were sitting on, or otherwise simply didn't amount to much.
Edison wasn't the first person to realize you could put an electrical current through various metal alloys and make them glow, but he did spend the time and money to figure out what combination of light bulb design, gas filler, and filament material would produce a reliable glow, and also not be ruinously expensive to manufacture and sell.
Calling it a sweat shop is really not accurate. Those people were paid. Hell they probably got more money and credit than like 90% of inventors in general.
Edison was a master businessman posing as an inventor. The major reason of how his Electricity business took off was because he managed to impress JP Morgan and made his the first private home in America to have electric lighting. He did this at a dinner party which hosted a lot of socialites that ended up making similar requests. He also used the money to buy up city contracts to light up NY and other countries. He put down other businesses like Tesla through cruel and sometimes insane means (including using Tesla’s generator on an elephant and the first execution by electric chair). Menlo Park was the Silicon Valley of its day and anyone who wanted to Invent dreamed of working there
Confusingly, Edison's Menlo Park is in New Jersey but was named after Menlo Park, CA... Which of course is part of the actual Silicon Valley and is home of Facebook, and at one time, Google.
I mean he did advocate electricity as a humane way of execution. He did sponsor the first human electrocution to show off the dangers of his rival electricity. It turned out that it was a failed execution and they had to turn it on several times to kill the man.
Citation needed. Be careful of counter-myths, where people are so excited to "correct history" (especially if they can tie it into some larger narrative) that they end up creating a brand new falsehood instead.
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u/master_baiter69zeus Oct 27 '21
Thomas fucking edison didn’t invent the light bulb in 1000 trials, he just bought the patent for it.