Page 124 - Cousins - Celebrities, Saints & Sinners

connect electric lights economically manageable he would have to develop a lamp that would
draw a low amount of current. This meant the lamp would have to have a high resistance.

After many experiments, first with carbon filaments and then with platinum and other metals,
Edison returned to a carbon filament. The first successful test was on October 22, 1879; it
lasted 13.5 hours. Edison continued to improve this design and on November 4, 1879, filed for
U.S. patent 223,898 (granted on January 27, 1880) for an electric lamp using "a carbon filament
or strip coiled and connected to platina contact wires". This was the first commercially practical
incandescent light.

Although the patent described several ways of creating the carbon filament including "cotton
and linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways", it was not until several months
after the patent was granted that Edison and his team discovered a carbonized
bamboo filament that could last over 1,200 hours. The idea of using this particular raw material
originated from Edison's recalling his examination of a few threads from a bamboo fishing pole
while relaxing on the shore of Battle Lake in the present-day state of Wyoming.
In 1878, Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City with several
th
financiers, including J. P. Morgan, (6 cousin, 2 times removed) Spencer Trask, and the
members of the Vanderbilt family. Edison made the first public demonstration of his
incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park. It was during this time that he
said: "We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles."
As Edison expanded his direct current (DC) power delivery system, he received stiff competition
from companies installing alternating current (AC) systems. From the early 1880s, AC arc
lighting systems for streets and large spaces had been an expanding business in the US. With
the development of transformers in Europe and by Westinghouse Electric in the US in 1885–
1886, it became possible to transmit AC long distances over thinner and cheaper wires, and
"step down" the voltage at the destination for distribution to users. This allowed AC to be used
in street lighting and in lighting for small business and domestic customers, the market Edison's
patented low voltage DC incandescent lamp system was designed to supply. Edison's DC empire
suffered from one of its chief drawbacks: it was suitable only for the high density of customers
found in large cities. Edison's DC plants could not deliver electricity to customers more than one
mile from the plant and left a patchwork of unsupplied customers between plants. Small cities
and rural areas could not afford an Edison style system at all, leaving a large part of the market
without electrical service. AC companies expanded into this gap.

Thomas Edison's staunch anti-AC tactics were not sitting well with his own stockholders. By the
early 1890s, Edison's company was generating much smaller profits than its AC rivals, and the
War of Currents would come to an end in 1892 with Edison forced out of controlling his own
company. That year, the financier J.P. Morgan engineered a merger of Edison General Electric
with Thomson-Houston that put the board of Thomson-Houston in charge of the new company
called General Electric. General Electric now controlled three-quarters of the US electrical
business and would compete with Westinghouse for the AC market.
References:
1. Relative Finder, associated with FamilySearch, and the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS)
2. Wikipedia.org
3. Learn more – Thomas Edison - Inventor
4. LDS Family Tree attached

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