Wizard of Light
Written by: Nathaniel Slade
In 1876 an inventor in Menlo Park, New Jersey fumbles around in the deep darkness. A candle lighting only an eighth of the room that he worked at wishing he had a better light source. Then out of nowhere lightning strikes lighting the entire room for only a second, and what a bright light it was. This is how Thomas Alva Edison, the wizard of light, gains his title. Basing his work off of Benjamin Franklin’s own work Edison begins creating a light maker a glass bowl that produced light. Edison makes a glass flask of sorts and runs one copper and one piece of carbonized sewing thread through the flask. These two wires are connected by a filament which burns to create light.
Edison tries many different kinds of materials for his filament. Most explode or burn out in a few minutes. Some materials he tried were human, horse, and pig hair, paper, twigs from twenty kinds of trees, wool, cotton, and carrot peels. However none of these were successful. Then on October 22, 1879 outside of his lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey one hundred, newly dubbed, light bulbs can to life. The filament that was successful was a kind of carbon fiber that burned for thirteen and a half hours.
Soon fallowing this event Edison was given the nickname “the wizard of light” and promised to make electricity so cheap that only the rich would burn candles. To do so he made a large generator in New York and in other major cities. Able produce light bulbs for 25 cents each he made mass profit. Edison really is the wizard of light.