Let there be light! – The inventor of the lightbulb

These days, it is almost impossible to imagine life without electric lighting. Thomas Alva Edison’s ingenious invention of the lightbulb in 1879 was a ground-breaking achievement. That, at least, is what most history books tell us. But did Edison really invent the lightbulb? Or was he simply a businessman who exploited other people’s ideas for his own ends? 

“I have struck gold with electric light,” Edison is said to have told a colleague in 1878. Yet the invention attributed to him was anything but innovative. Numerous sources attest that several creative tinkerers from around the globe had already worked on the design of an electric light source decades before him. As early as 1835, Scotsman James Bowman Lindsay unveiled the first experimental lightbulb. In 1841, Englishman Frederick de Moleyns was awarded what was likely the first patent for a lightbulb for a model that used two glowing platinum wires in a glass bulb. An American named John Wellington Starr likewise patented a lightbulb in 1845, this time using carbon sticks to produce light. However, all these designs had one thing in common: They were not suitable for everyday use. The resourceful Edison was indeed the first to achieve this master stroke. 

British physicist and chemist Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914) had also worked on a lightbulb design earlier than Edison. In 1860, he developed a lamp which he caused to glow using carbon filaments. Eighteen years later, he finally succeeded in lighting up a whole house. In the same year, he filed for a patent in England for his handy, practical lightbulb – about two years before an equivalent patent was awarded to Edison in the United States. So, which of the two was the true pioneer of the lightbulb? 

A court of law was called on to decide the matter. Swan and Edison engaged in patent litigation, with the latter emerging as the winner. The reason? Swan had used a low-impedance carbon filament, whereas Edison’s high-impedance version caused no flickering and no fluctuations in brightness while the lightbulb was on. Strangely, the two inventors quickly patched up their differences after the lawsuit and, in 1883, jointly founded Edison and Swan United Electric Light Co Ltd. in London. Although he never became world famous like his business partner, Joseph Swan did receive a number of honours: King Edward VII knighted him for his services in 1904. The Swan Medal for Applied Physics is also named after him, and not a few history books today single him out as the real creator of the lightbulb – or at least put the two gentlemen on the same level.
 

The quarrel over who played the more important role in the story of the lightbulb was still far from resolved, however. While the Edison versus Swan case was still before the courts, a third inventor likewise got involved: Heinrich Göbel (1818-1893), a native of Springe near Hanover in Germany. An émigré to New York, the watchmaker claimed to have already developed a model that worked with high-impedance carbon filaments in 1854. His only mistake, he argued, was that he had not filed for a patent on his invention. Protracted legal disputes ensued and gained considerable attention in the USA and Europe. The court doubted the credibility of his claims, however; and Göbel died of pneumonia in 1893 while the case was still in progress. 

Though the watchmaker was initially forgotten, he later became the stuff of legend. Opponents of Edison revived his assertions, and one German engineer faked additional “evidence”. Especially in the era of National Socialism, the sketchy image of the ingenious but unsung German inventor took on solid contours. In 2004, Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance went so far as to issue a postage stamp emblazoned with the claim “150 years of the electric lightbulb”. The stamp bore the likeness of the eau de Cologne bottle that Göbel had allegedly used as his glass bulb. A year later, a TV broadcast gave second place in a list of “Germany’s best” and greatest inventions to the lightbulb – again attributing it to Göbel.