
Who invented the lightbulb? - signor_bosco
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/who-invented-the-lightbulb/
======
m-i-l
If questions like this become political within a US-specific persepctive, they
can have an element of nationalism when considered with a more global
perspective.

Many people in the UK know the story of UK-based Joseph Swan developing his
own bulb, patenting it, setting up a company and selling it, supplying homes
and businesses such as The Savoy, and then a US marketer called Edison later
coming along and taking credit for all of these achievements. There are
similar stories too, e.g. UK based inventor (James Dewar) inventing the vacuum
flask, a foreign company (Thermos) later claiming it as their own. And beyond
the UK, most French people will say the Lumière brothers invented cinema, but
UK people will point to the Roundhay Garden Scene shown in Leeds several years
earler, and of course if you're from the US you'll probably think that was
Edison too.

Not trying to take any particular sides, just trying to make a point that your
country of origin can have an impact on what you learn (and perhaps also that
this article is a little US-focussed).

~~~
samizdis
Bill Bryson's book _Made in America_ , although mainly about language (US v
British English), also deals with many false and/or disputed claims about who
invented what.

On the language side, it also points out that many "Americanisms", oft-derided
by certain sorts of English people, are actually nothing of the sort, but
rather original English retained in American usage.

An entertaining and informatie read, in my opinion.

~~~
Igelau
"Soccer" is a good example of an Americanism that's not.

------
dirktheman
Related: the Pleasanton fire department has the oldest still functioning
lightbulb. Apparently it was manufactured in the late 1890's, and has been in
service with the fire department since 1901.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light)

~~~
bluGill
Not the oldest still functioning light. But the oldest in normal use - there
are older bulbs in museums that are turned on for special occasions (by
experts doing their best to ensure it won't burn out). This bulb is installed
and used as a bulb. (though mostly it is there as a historical element -
modern bulbs produce more light and would have replaced it if there wasn't a
historical reason to keep it around)

~~~
jhallenworld
Many vacuum tubes from the 1920s are also still functioning. They end up being
one of the most reliable parts of early radios. Transistors from the 50s - 70s
meanwhile are having big problems..

------
rayiner
Relevant: [https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/december/wineburg-
histor...](https://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/december/wineburg-
historiography-zinn-122012.html)

> Wineburg, one of the world's top researchers in the field of history
> education, raises larger issues about how history should be taught. He says
> that Zinn's desire to cast a light on what he saw as historic injustice was
> a crusade built on secondary sources of questionable provenance, omission of
> exculpatory evidence, leading questions and shaky connections between
> evidence and conclusions.

> Over time, however, a problem emerged as Zinn's book became the single
> authoritative source of history for so many Americans, Wineburg said. In
> substituting one buttoned-up interpretation of the past for another,
> Wineburg finds, A People's History and traditional textbooks are mirror
> images that relegate students to similar roles as absorbers – not analysts –
> of information. Wineburg writes that a heavily filtered and weighted
> interpretation becomes dangerous when "we are talking about how we educate
> the young, those who do not yet get the interpretive game."

Also, Biden falsely claiming Latimer invented the lightbulb detracts from what
is a fascinating story in its own right:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Howard_Latimer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Howard_Latimer).

~~~
TeMPOraL
According to the Wikipedia link, Latimer (together with a J. Nichols) got
another patent related to lightbulbs a year before the one that's described in
the article:

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US247097](https://patents.google.com/patent/US247097)

------
turing_complete
I really recommend "How Innovation Works" by Matt Ridley to better understand
the history of different inventions and innovations. It also dispels the myth
of the singular event of invention by a single person. Rather innovation is a
process of compilation.

~~~
ljosifov
I would like to second - "How Innovation Works" by Matt Ridley is an excellent
book. I see the kindle version is £1.99 on amazon.co.uk atm - what a bargain.
Most innovations we all enjoy and cherish are a product of long chain of trial
and error by different people at different times. Often the theory is
understood poorly (if at all) at the time of the invention, and developed
after. Luck plays a role in particular person X inventing Y at time Z. But
given the number of other people (not-X) that come up with similar invention
~Y at similar time ~Z, looks like Y would have been invented by someone at
about time Z.

~~~
Wildgoose
Thanks. Now purchased.

------
baryphonic
"Who invented <X>?" is an almost meaningless question. Edison and Swan bear
the primary responsibility for producing practical and economical lightbulbs
and the electricity distribution systems required for them. But both men were
undeniably standing on the shoulders of giants.

The same is true for almost any invention. Most successful inventions aren't
created by geniuses out of whole cloth. Rather, inventions are often re-
combinations of a variety of pre-existing innovations in a novel way that are
practical and efficient. We should give praise to the people who made the
litany of small contributions and improvements before the invention, but also
recognize that the credited inventor(s) usually made a contribution that was
more than the sum of the components.

To use a different example less culturally connected to our time, the ideas of
differentiation and integration (they weren't necessarily called this) were
fairly well-known before Newton and Leibniz. Those two independently
recombined the existing knowledge into a simpler formulation (the fundamental
theorems or calculus) and thus get the credit. They made these two concepts
highly useful. Yet neither of them could have done his work without thousands
of mathematicians who made small mathematical discoveries or inventions in the
millennia before them.

Or in another example, Jim Keller recently said that "Moore's Law" is not a
result of one set of principles applied repeatedly over the decades, but a
result of probably hundreds of individual innovations.[1]

I personally think we should credit teams of people, but perhaps list the
inventor who was most successful at producing the technology economically at
scale with primary credit.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA&t=1805s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nb2tebYAaOA&t=1805s)

------
sn41
Credit where credit is due. The great West Indian fast bowler Michael Holding
correctly gave Latimer the credit for the carbon filament. Politicians on the
other hand, distort the message.

------
bsanr2
This article downplays Latimer's contribution, presumably (and ironically) for
the same political reasons it derides. Latimer's filament production patent
made Edison's lightbulb viable as a mass-produced product. As with Shuji
Nakamura, Isamu Akasaki, and Hiroshi Amano and their advancements with
production of high-brightness blue LEDs, they did not "invent" blue LEDs, nor
the numerous products enabled by the existence of blue LEDs. However, their
contributions did indeed make the LED revolution possible in a fundamental
manner, in the same way that Latimer's contributions (which did not end at the
patent but included further research and consultation for fledgling electric
lighting projects around the country) made the electric light revolution
possible.

The three Japanese men above received many accolades for their work, including
a Nobel prize. The crux of the controversy is white America's perennial
reluctance to give just due to black innovators. Hyperbole becomes necessary
to counteract their reticence. It would obviously be easier to simply be
forthright about black contributions, but here we have yet another example of
that not happening; characterizing Latimer's work as a "footnote" reeks of the
aforementioned reticence.

------
gumby
I gave a talk once at the then brand new science museum at La Vilette in
Paris. A slightly chauvinistic pal from England came along and as we walked to
the lecture hall he observed, sneeringly, “this is where the French pretend to
have invented everything”.

I thought he was being ironic but it turned out he really assumed pretty much
everything in the last 500 years or so had been invented in England.

I assume the equivalent belief is probably pretty widespread.

------
LargoLasskhyfv
The ancient Egyptians with their
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendera_light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendera_light)
powered by
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery)

------
amai
"It was invented by Russian scientist and engineer Aleksandr Lodygin. In 1872
Lodygin submitted application of the patent for his lamp"

[https://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/the-ilyich-
lamp...](https://russiapedia.rt.com/of-russian-origin/the-ilyich-lamp/)

------
ecmascript
Politicians before: "Vote for me, we will do xyz, create a great future and
change history!"

Politicians today: "Vote for me, we will do xyz and change history ...books"

~~~
TeMPOraL
The heroes of yore were the ones who wrote history. I'm just an editor.

~~~
nix23
No one 'writes' history, that's why you need historians, they are the ones
that can bring a matter into the right context and research why something was
'written' like it is, like it was a battle of 10000 Horsemen when in fact
historians know that a that time in hole Europe maximal 3000 Battle-horses
existed.

~~~
psychoslave
Well, history surely have a lot of good tools to cross information by now,
meanwhile historians are still human beings happening in some specific socio-
cultural frame. If you rely on someone else analysis – which is reasonable –
being aware of the person profile is as important as the impact of the work on
shaping society representations.

------
josefrichter
Invented by Czech inventor Jára Cimrman. Undisputed fact.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Undisputed? I question that.

------
noxer
>While Edison’s contribution to the lightbulb was significant, he did not
“invent” the lightbulb. At most he put the last piece into place.....

So he did invent it. Being the first that puts stuff together to get a working
result is exactly what everyone means if they say someone invented something.
That it builds on existing inventions is the norm.

~~~
TulliusCicero
No, the article makes it clear that he "invented" the first commercially
viable light bulb, not the first light bulb, period.

~~~
noxer
That's what an inventor does. He puts together something functional and
usable. If someone tried before with limited success hes not considered the
inventor. The plane wasn't invented by the people who died jumping off of
things.

~~~
TulliusCicero
No, you're conflating two different things.

The Wright brothers are credited for inventing the airplane based on their
first powered flight, even though this plane was in no way commercially viable
or even useful. It was only a proof of concept.

Applying the same principle to light bulbs, you'd have to credit someone
earlier than Edison. They had working, functional light bulbs, they were just
niche.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Seems Edison invented the light bulb in much the same way Steve Jobs invented
the modern smartphone.

Both took existing technology, added the missing pieces to make it a wide
scale, must have product, created an ecosystem around it, and popularized it
to the market, and reaped massive monetary rewards.

As far as the regular person is concerned, calling the person most responsible
for the widespread adoption of a technology the “inventor” is probably more
right than wrong.

~~~
screye
That is entirely counter to the existing meaning of 'invention'.

The person to bring the first mature product to market is if anything, the
antithesis of an inventor. Edison and Jobs were astute businessmen, and that
is high praise enough. The CEO of Boeing did not invent flight, just because
Boeing introduced the first modern airliners as people know it.

We do not need to add more superlatives to people who have already been
deified in popular culture. Overloading terms like these, only serves dilutes
their meaning, at the detriment of language at large.

