The first time the light bulbs were turned on in a street was on New Year’s Eve, and the street was where Thomas Alva Edison’s laboratory was obviously. It was December 31, 1879 and the inventor was 32 years old but already a reputation for genius. The “genius of Menlo Park”, from the place in New Jersey where his legendary workshops were located.
He had been experimenting there for months to find an incandescent bulb that lasted for hours. Months of hopes, announcements and failures. Which one day Edison himself will remember with una frase citatissima a proposito del fallimento: “I have not failed 10,000 times, I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work”. Which we could translate like this: “I have not been wrong ten thousand times, but I have discovered the ten thousand ways in which it would not have worked”. The problem was to find a material for the filament inside the glass bulb that could not only heat up and emit light when crossed by the electric current, which many had already managed to do, but last a few hours. Initially, the choice fell on platinum, but then for a reason of costs – but also of duration – it was decided to focus on coal (even if years later it will be tungsten that will definitely make the bulbs take off).
Edison worked on the project for 13 months, supported by due investors, JP Morgan and Vanderbilt, which today we would call venture capitalists, who had decided to invest 30 thousand dollars at the time (about 800 thousand today) not so much in Edison’s startup as on his multifaceted talent. They weren’t wrong. On November 1, 1879, Edison applied for a patent for “Improvements in Electric Lamps” (with 8 pages full of explanations). In the days of Christmas he turned on the lights in the laboratory, but he had a big launch event in mind, to turn on the lights on the street ahead for New Year’s Eve. The wait was enormous, to the point that some historians say that the railway company had to set up special trains to take the curious to Menlo Park. The proof was simple: the light bulb was turned on and off, which seems trivial to us, but at the time it bordered on magic.
After what test (here the light bulb) enthusiasm was sky high and progress has never stopped. October 1st of the following year Edison opened the first light bulb factory. On October 4, 1882, the first power plant was opened in New York. The rich and developed part of the world was preparing to turn on the lights forever.
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