Edison Lights the Night
1879 AD
1879 1879
74.15W40.45N
SCI

MENLO PARK, NEW JERSEY
	After two years, Thomas Edison finally saw the light.
	In 1877 he had begun studying how to make an electric lamp and within a year had performed 1,200 experiments.  In 1879, after spending $40,000, he made a bulb using a carbonized cotton thread for a filament. It burned for two days in the vacuum bulb.  Later he used carbonized cardboard and finally carbonized bamboo.
	The bamboo model was the first economically feasible incandescent light bulb.
	His bulbs were first installed on the steamship "Columbia" and later in a New York City factory.
	Edison was a prolific inventor, with 1,033 patents at the time of his death in 1931.  Two others of his many inventions were the phonograph and the movie projector.