In these modern times an incandescent electric lamp is such an every-day affair as to be a familiar object even to a small child. But only a few years ago—a little over thirty—the man who proposed and invented it was derided in the newspapers, and called a madman and a dreamer.
If among Edison's numerous inventions there should be selected one or a class that might be considered the greatest, it seems to be universal opinion that the palm would be awarded to the incandescent lamp and his complete system for the distribution of electric light, heat, and power. These inventions as a class, and what has sprung from them, have brought about most wonderful changes in the world.
The year 1877 was a busy one at Edison's laboratory at Menlo Park. He was engaged on the telephone, on acoustic electric transmission, sextuplex telegraphs, duplex telegraphs, miscellaneous carbon articles, and other things. He also commenced experimenting on the electric light.
Besides, as we have seen in the previous chapter, he invented the phonograph. The great interest and excitement caused by the latter invention took up nearly all of his time and attention for many months, and, indeed, up to July, 1878. He then took a vacation and went out to Wyoming with a party of astronomers to observe an eclipse of the sun and to make a test of his tasimeter.
He was absent about two months, coming home rested and refreshed. Mr. Edison says: "After my return from the trip to observe the eclipse of the sun I went with Professor Barker, professor of physics in the University of Pennsylvania, and Dr. Chandler, professor of chemistry in Columbia College, to see Mr. Wallace, a large manufacturer of brass in Ansonia, Connecticut. Wallace at this time was experimenting on series arc lighting. Just at that time I wanted to take up something new, and Professor Barker suggested that I go to work and see if I could subdivide the electric light so it could be got in small units like gas. This was not a new suggestion, because I had made a number of experiments on electric lighting a year before this. They had been laid aside for the phonograph. I determined to take up the search again and continue it. On my return home I started my usual course of collecting every kind of data about gas; bought all the transactions of the gas engineering societies, etc., all the back volumes of gas journals, etc. Having obtained all the data, and investigated gas-jet distribution in New York by actual observations, I made up my mind that the problem of the subdivision of the electric current could be solved and made commercial."
The problem which Edison had undertaken to solve was a gigantic one. The arc light was then known and in use to a very small extent, but the subdivision of the electric light—as it was then called—had not been accomplished. It had been the dream of scientists and inventors for a long time.
Innumerable trials and experiments had been made in America and Europe for many years, but without success. Although a great number of ingenious lamps had been made by the foremost inventors of the period, they were utterly useless as part of a scheme for a system of electric lighting. In fact, these efforts had been so unsuccessful that many of the leading scientists of the time, even as late as 1879, declared that the subdivision of the light was an impossibility.
The chief trouble was that the early experimenters did not conceive the idea of a system, and worked only on a lamp. They all seemed to have the idea that an electric lamp was the main thing and that it should be of low resistance and should be operated on a current of very low voltage, or pressure. They, therefore experimented on lamps using short carbon rods or strips for burners, which required a large quantity of current.
Electric lighting with this kind of lamp was indeed a practical impossibility. The quantity of current required for a large number of them would have been prodigious, giving rise to tremendous problems on account of the heating effects. Besides, the most fatal objection was the cost of copper for conductors, which for a city section of about half a mile square would have cost not less than a hundred million dollars, on account of the enormous quantity of current that would be required.