The great inventor Thomas Alva Edison is credited for the creation of the phonograph, the movie camera, and one of the most useful and life altering inventions that sparked the innovation of the technology used to this day. There is no doubt that Edison was brilliant and excelled at what he did. However, there is one major misconception that is associated with him, and that is he is the sole inventor of the light bulb. From a young age, people are taught that everything from the idea to the finished product was the property of Edison. The truth of the matter is, Thomas Edison did not create the light bulb. Many overlook the man who truly produced the first light bulb, Sir Humphry Davy.
Sir Humphry Davy was an English chemist who was responsible for illuminating an arc lamp by transferring electricity through a platinum wire in 1802 …show more content…
It is said that on this day Edison was hit with the realization late at night in his laboratory of the filament being shaped as slender cylinder due to him absentmindedly rolling a compressed piece of lamp black in his fingers and creating a light bulb that burned for forty hours (Flatow 23). However, there is no evidence of the light bulb or records to prove the story factual. Despite no physical proof, Edison confirmed the papers’ stories (Miller 204). Hollywood blew the story further out of proportion and the tale was just accepted as fact. Even to this day, power companies still commemorate October 21, 1879 as a day that the impossible was made possible (Flatow 23). A less believable fable also surfaced when Edison was being celebrated as a hero for his discovery. A man wrote in a newspaper as a joke, “What everyone thinks is the evening star is really an electric lamp which Edison sends up attached to a balloon every night”( Miller 206). People once again believed this story as well and thought that Edison was really capable of
Sir Humphry Davy was an English chemist who was responsible for illuminating an arc lamp by transferring electricity through a platinum wire in 1802 …show more content…
It is said that on this day Edison was hit with the realization late at night in his laboratory of the filament being shaped as slender cylinder due to him absentmindedly rolling a compressed piece of lamp black in his fingers and creating a light bulb that burned for forty hours (Flatow 23). However, there is no evidence of the light bulb or records to prove the story factual. Despite no physical proof, Edison confirmed the papers’ stories (Miller 204). Hollywood blew the story further out of proportion and the tale was just accepted as fact. Even to this day, power companies still commemorate October 21, 1879 as a day that the impossible was made possible (Flatow 23). A less believable fable also surfaced when Edison was being celebrated as a hero for his discovery. A man wrote in a newspaper as a joke, “What everyone thinks is the evening star is really an electric lamp which Edison sends up attached to a balloon every night”( Miller 206). People once again believed this story as well and thought that Edison was really capable of