December 22, 1882 offers me the opportunity to resume a post I wrote a few years ago, entitled Who invented the Christmas lights. The story is this: “Who invented the Christmas lights? In a sense, none other than the inventor of the light bulb (and a lot of other things), Thomas Edison. It was Christmas in 1880 and a row of electric lights came up. he could see from the windows of his laboratories in Menlo Park, California (where Facebook is now headquartered). “
This tells the site Everyday Misteries. But it took nearly 40 years for Christmas lights to become a tradition. In fact, at the time of Edison there was still a widespread distrust of electricity and people decorated the Christmas tree with candles (cause of several fires). It was Edward H. Johnson, a friend and colleague of Edison, in 1882, who created the first real row of Christmas lights by putting together 80 bulbs white, red and blue around a tree in a house on 36th Street in Manhattan, New York.
Here is the report that he made the following day William Augustus Croffut sul Detroit Post and Tribune: “I was walking on Fifth Avenue the other night when I got a call from the home of Edward H. Johnson, vice president of Edison Electric. I reached it and at the back of the beautiful house I saw a large Christmas tree, which had a quaint and unusual appearance. Was brightly lit with many colored spheres about the size of an English walnut and rotated 6 times per minute on a small wooden box. There were 80 lights in all, encapsulated in these transparent spheres, and divided equally between white, red and blue. As the tree turned, the lights alternated so that with each turn they were turned off and on. The result was a continuous glitter of dancing colors, white, red and blue, all night long. It is not necessary for me to tell you that it was a good show, you can hardly imagine something more beautiful … It was a superlative performance “.
To explain the context, “Johnson, who was an engineer, an inventor and a skilled businessman, decided that putting light bulbs on a tree at Christmas was a great way to promote the invention that Edison had just patented … But electricity wasn’t as widespread yet and it was too expensive for Johnson’s invention to become a tradition. Until in 1894 it was the president of the United States who had electric lights put on the tree of the White House and, also thanks to the falling price of electricity, things changed within ten years. The first Christmas lights, made by the Edison General Electric Company of New Jersey, were sold in 1901: but they still cost about 2 thousand dollars, they were certainly not something for everyone. It was a certain Albert Sadacca who made it a commercial product for everyone: it was 1917 and at the time he was just 15 years old and immediately after yet another fire in New York due to a candle on a Christmas fir, he decided that he would create a company of Christmas lights. Like in a Christmas fairy tale, yours Rent it will become the world‘s leading company specializing in Christmas decorations “.
Johnson he will die in that year, apparently from a shock electric.
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