Meet Edison: The Light Bulb That Changed Night Into Day

Before 1879, when the sun went down, most people's homes went dark except for candles or flickering gas lamps that could catch fire. Then an inventor named Thomas Edison built a light bulb that could glow for over 13 hours without burning out. That single invention changed how people lived at night forever.

- Who Thomas Edison was and what problem he was trying to solve - How a light bulb makes light using electricity - What a patent is and why inventors get one - How one invention can change daily life for everyone

Long ago, people lit their homes with candles and oil lamps. These worked, but they were dim, they could blow out in the wind, and worst of all, they could start fires. Thomas Edison and his team at a workshop in Menlo Park, New Jersey worked for months, testing over 1,000 different materials to find one that would glow brightly inside a glass bulb without burning up too fast.

Inside a light bulb is a thin wire called a filament. When electricity flows through the filament, it heats up so much that it glows, just like a metal poker left in a campfire glows red hot. Edison found that a thin thread of carbon (later, tungsten wire was used in newer bulbs) could glow for many hours inside a glass bulb with the air removed, so it would not catch fire the way it would in normal air.

When Edison finished his light bulb, he got a patent for it in 1879. A patent is like a certificate from the government that says, this idea belongs to this person, and no one else can copy it and sell it without permission. Patents protect inventors so that if they spend months or years working on an idea, someone else cannot simply steal it and take the credit. Edison held over 1,000 patents in his lifetime, more than almost any inventor in history.