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💡 The Light Bulb
Thomas Edison's workshop in New Jersey made a light that could glow for hours — and changed the night forever.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
📍 Where is it?
📍 Menlo Park, United States — see it on the big map →
Before electric lights, people lit their homes with candles and oil lamps. They were dim, smoky and dangerous — and when the sun went down, most work simply stopped.
Thomas Edison wanted a better light. In his workshop in Menlo Park, New Jersey, he and his team tried thousands of different materials for the tiny thread inside a glass bulb. The thread had to glow brightly without burning up. They tried cotton, wood, bamboo and even hair.
In 1879, they finally got it right. Their bulb, with a thread made from carbonised cotton, glowed for more than 13 hours. Soon, electric lights were shining in homes, streets and factories. People could read, work and play after dark, and towns began to glow at night for the very first time. Edison's workshop was nicknamed the "invention factory" because so many new ideas came out of it. The laboratory building was later moved to a museum village in Michigan, where you can still see it today.
🤩 Wow fact!
Edison's team tested thousands of materials for the bulb's glowing thread before finding one that worked.
🧠 Quiz time!
How long did Edison's successful 1879 light bulb glow for?