How many filaments did edison try

In fact, Edison did not invent the light bulb. Various inventors dabbled in channeling electricity for light since the beginning of the 19th Century. Credit for the first electric light goes to the British chemist Humphry Davy who invented the Electric Arc lamp within the first decade of that century, though is more famous for the lamp that bears his name invented in Another English chemist, Warren de la Rue offered a design i n that relied on a coiled platinum filament in a vacuum tube.

It worked well. However the high cost of platinum rendered the bulb too expensive for mass production. In an English physicist named Joseph Wilson Swan used carbonized paper filaments for his bulb design, though it took yet another decade to make a working prototype, though its useful life made it not viable as a commercial product.

It took him until to developed a bulb with greater longevity that relied on treated cotton thread that also removed the problem of early bulb blackening. They used carbon rods held between electrodes in glass cylinders filled with nitrogen.

While the product worked, Canada is not really recognized as the cradle of electric bulbs. That's because even though Woodward obtained an American patent in , he wasn't able to launch his bulbs in the U.

So in Thomas Edison bought out the patents from Woodward and his Canadian partners. Edison's mother, Nancy, knew her son was fond of chemistry and electronics, so she gave him books to read on the subjects. One book explained how to perform chemistry experiments at home; Thomas did every one in the book.

A biographer of Edison once noted: "His mother had accomplished that which all truly great teachers do for their pupils, she brought him to the stage of learning things for himself, learning that which most amused and interested him, and she encouraged him to go on in that path. It was the very best thing she could have done for this singular boy.

Thomas got a job as a newsboy for the day-long trip to Detroit and back. Since there was a five-hour layover in Detroit, Edison asked for permission to move his laboratory to the baggage car of the train so he could continue his experiments there.

This worked for a little while, until the train lurched forward and spilled some chemicals, setting the laboratory on fire.

While working for the railroad, Thomas saved the life of a station official's child who had fallen onto the tracks of an oncoming train. As a way of thanking him for saving his child's life, the father taught Thomas how to use the telegraph.

Thomas became so good at using the telegraph that he got a job working as a telegrapher sending signals between the United States and Canada. He began experimenting with ways to improve the telegraph, which led to his invention of the automatic telegraph, duplex telegraph, and message printer.

It was about this time that Thomas dedicated his life to being a full-time inventor. He continued his work on the telegraph and his ideas also gave birth to the universal stock ticker.

His father Samuel supervised the construction of the new laboratory; it opened in In the period from to Edison and his associates worked on at least three thousand different theories to develop an efficient incandescent lamp. Incandescent lamps make light by using electricity to heat a thin strip of material called a filament until it gets hot enough to glow. Many inventors had tried to perfect incandescent lamps to "sub-divide" electric light or make it smaller and weaker than it was in the existing arc lamps, which were too bright to be used for small spaces such as the rooms of a house.

Edison's lamp would consist of a filament housed in a glass vacuum bulb. He had his own glass blowing shed where the fragile bulbs were carefully crafted for his experiments.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. The number of filament experiment may be lost to history, as well as whether he actually said one of his famous quotations: Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Community Bot 1. Frank Dyer's book is freely available on Gutenberg. I'll accept this answer because it specifically addresses the claim, even though Dave's answer is extremely well researched. As summarized on page no fewer than 80 varieties of bamboo and 3, kinds of vegetable fibre were tested If you see the photographs in this book and read the quotes from Mr. This is helpful, but it only establishes Edison's investigations into bamboo.

The claim involves over unrelated materials. Nobody is claiming he tested "unrelated" materials. The assertion quoted in your question is open to many of the materials being highly related, different species of bamboo, the same bamboo processed in different ways, etc. Here he is stating he tested 6, plant samples, not necessarily bamboo. Fishing line and beard hair are not plant samples. I mistyped above "bamboo" should have been "plants". At that time, fishing line probably was plant material.

Beard hair is not plant material. So at least 1 of the is claimed not to be plant material. HDE I added another source of information to the answer. Show 1 more comment. Featured on Meta.