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Showing posts with the label alternating current

Edison vs. Tesla: AC/DC

Thomas Edison's first electric light bulb, 1879. Thomas Edison gets credit for inventing the light bulb, and it’s entirely fair to say he deserves it.  Still, just because his is the first name in electric light doesn’t mean he has the final say in electricity.  Edison would have you think so.  Like most great inventions, the light bulb wasn’t the work of one person, but rather the result of the combined efforts of many.  Since Italian monk Giuseppe Ponzelli first theorized that electric light was possible in 1747, many others worked on inventing the light bulb.  It took a while, though.  The first commercially viable light bulb was invented by Edison in 1878.  His next effort would have to be to invent a place to plug it in! Well, not really.  In fact, Edison figured he had that all sorted out.  Light bulbs, he posited, would draw from a direct current of electricity.  Edison worked on other electrical inventions at his Menlo Park, New Jersey lab, and the direct curre