It's dark by five and the day is already over

Sun's been down since half past four. We ate supper by feel. — Mother of five, 1868

Thomas Edison's first good bulb ran a little over 13 hours on a scorched cotton thread. Then his lab tried thousands of other things, including hairs from a co-worker's beard. Nobody wrote down what the co-worker thought about that. The winner was bamboo from a grove beside a shrine near Kyoto, good for 1,200 hours. Japan hasn't forgotten. There's a monument to Edison by the shrine, and every October there's a memorial service for him. More than the fellow with the beard ever got.

Still bugs us: it is 1 a.m. and nobody is tired yet.

The full file

Edison wasn't the only one. Joseph Swan was working on a bulb of his own in England at the same time. Edison didn't want a patent fight, so he made a deal, and in 1883 the two went into business together as Ediswan. Cheaper than lawyers.

He knew how to put on a show. On New Year's Eve 1879 he opened his lab at Menlo Park to the public with 25 lamps burning, and extra trains ran to bring in the crowds.

A bulb's no good without power, so he built that too. His Pearl Street Station in lower Manhattan started supplying customers on September 4, 1882, lighting about 400 lamps. Getting past the cities took a long while. In 1935, about 90% of rural American homes still had no electricity. The farm stayed dark a good deal longer than the city did.

Relates to No. 00280.