THE BEGINNINGS OF THE INCANDESCENT 



LAMP. 



BY THOMAS A. EDISON. 



[Thomas Alva Edison, electrician; born Milan, O., February 11, 1847; became a 

 railway newsboy at the age of 12; later learned telegraphy and worked at this in 

 various places in United States and Canada; invented the automatic repeater, print- 

 ing telegraph, quadruplex telegraph, etc.; estabhshed workshop at Newark, N. J., 

 afterwards going to Menlo Park in the same state, and later to West Orange ; invented 

 machines for quadruplex and sextuplex telegraphic transmission, the megaphone, 

 carbon telegraph transmitter, the phonograph, incandescent lamp and light system, 

 and other inventions; honorary chief consulting engineer, Louisiana Purchase expo- 

 sition at St. Louis. The following article was written for the Electrical World and 

 is published by special arrangement.] 



I am glad to put on record a brief personal narrative of 

 the details connected with what was to me a very interesting 

 period of electrical development. The occasion is not only a 

 reminder of the rapid flight of time, but of the fact that since 

 1874 — the year of the quadruplex, by the way — all the great 

 modern departments of electrical industry have sprung into 

 vigorous being. 



My experiments on carbon began in 1876, when I had the 

 idea of making carbon wire, etc., for various electrical and 

 chemical purposes. Even at that early time Messrs. Charles 

 Batchelor and E. H. Johnson were with me, and we saw quite 

 a business ahead in carbon novelties. I had familiarized my- 

 self with the properties of carbon, particularly that made from 

 paper and Bristol board, and this led on very naturally to my 

 work on the carbon telephone or microphonic transmitter, 

 early in 1877. In the fall of that year I was pretty well 

 through with studies and inventions in that line, but had 

 several other ideas that I wanted to work up. One of these 

 was the subdivision of the electric light, and I began experi- 

 menting with that purpose. My records and the voluminous 

 testimony in litigation, now happily long past, show that in 

 the fall of 1877, about September, strips of carbonized paper 

 were tried as an incandescent conductor suitable for use in 

 lamps, and the work was followed up until January of 1878, 



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