As one of the most controversial inventions, who invented the light bulb? Was it Edison?

Who invented the light bulb? It was Edison. This is common sense, but there has always been a lot of controversy about this common sense.

Some people think that Edison was not the first person to invent the light bulb, and some people think that Edison bought the patent for the filament and that he was not the real inventor of the light bulb. What is the truth? The reason why there is controversy about the inventor of the light bulb is that at the same time or even earlier, many scientists had devoted themselves to the research of light bulbs, and indeed many different types of light bulbs were introduced. So why did the title of "inventor of the light bulb" fall on Edison in the end?

In fact, the first person to invent lighting appliances should be the famous British chemist David, who in 1806 created a device that could emit visible light in a glass bulb.

We know that Edison obtained the patent for the incandescent lamp in 1880, and David's invention was more than 70 years earlier than Edison's. Why is David not considered the inventor of the light bulb? Because the "light bulb" invented by David is completely different from Edison's light bulb. David's invention is actually an arc lamp, which uses arc discharge to emit light. This arc lamp is much brighter than an incandescent lamp, but it has obvious disadvantages, such as high power consumption and short lifespan, and it is basically impossible for ordinary people to use it.

Although David did not invent the light bulb, he brought enlightenment to future generations. He made people realize that the filament is the key to making an incandescent lamp with stable light emission and long life.

So in 1835, British scientist James Lindsay used copper filaments to make the first real light bulb, but unfortunately the life of the copper filament bulb was too short. Five years later, in 1840, another British man, Warren De La Rue, invented a long-lived platinum filament bulb, but platinum was expensive, so this bulb was destined not to be widely used.

Since both British scientists invented the light bulb long before Edison, why are they not considered the inventors of the light bulb?

Because a true light bulb should have a wide range of practical application value, not just be able to emit light. It's like you can use a nuclear bomb to blow an iron box into the earth's orbit, but you can't claim that you invented a rocket because of this. A true rocket must have practical application value. There are two people who can really challenge Edison's identity as the "inventor of the light bulb", one is the British inventor Maxim, and the other is Sir Joseph Swan. After repeated attempts, Edison finally invented a light bulb with wide practical application in 1879, and applied for a patent in the same year. Almost at the same time, Maxim also applied for a patent for the electric light.

Unfortunately, Edison's patent was approved in January 1880, while Maxim's patent was not approved until July, making Edison the true inventor of the practical light bulb.

From Maxim's perspective, this should be an infuriating thing. Perhaps it was this anger that pushed Maxim to invest in another invention, which eventually succeeded. That is the Maxim automatic machine gun that can fire 770 rounds of bullets per minute. At the same time, Sir Swan of the United Kingdom used carbonized paper as a filament and invented the incandescent light bulb, which was patented in the United Kingdom.

In order to finally establish his identity as the "inventor of the light bulb", Edison later filed a lawsuit against Sir Swan.

However, in the end, Edison and Swan merged their respective businesses to form a new company called Ediswan. In the process of inventing the light bulb, many scientists participated in it and made indelible contributions. Therefore, it would be biased to say that the light bulb was invented entirely by one person. It should be said that the invention of the light bulb is the cumulative result of a series of inventions and progress. Based on this result, Edison finally invented the light bulb with wide practical application value.

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