Storiascopio · Era 10 of 12 · lower secondary year 2
A practical electric light bulb
1879 · Menlo Park, New Jersey, United States
In short
Many inventors were trying to produce light with electricity, but the filaments burnt out quickly. In the laboratory at Menlo Park, in the United States, Thomas Edison and his team tried thousands of materials. In 1879 a bulb with a thread of carbonised cotton, sealed in a glass bulb with no air, stayed alight for more than 13 hours. At around the same time the Englishman Joseph Swan had achieved a similar result.
Why it matters Edison also built the power stations and cables to bring electricity into homes, and night in the cities changed for ever.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Thomas Edison”
Where we are in the era “Age of revolutions”
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1712Event 23 of 251895
Your turn
Name ______________________ Class ______ Date __________
When did it happen? Find the date at the top and write it here:
Tell it in your own words: what happened?
Draw the scene below.
storiascopio.com/en/event/a-practical-electric-light-bulb/ · free worksheet, you may photocopy it for your class