Reality Check: Edison Did Not Invent The Light Bulb

Can you believe that it has been over 130 years now and there are still people out there who think that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb? The simple truth about it is that it was not the case. The actual inventor was a British physicist named Joseph Swan (1828-1914). He began working on the idea in 1850 and it took him ten years to actually have a working model. Initially the device had problems. The light did not work very well and did not last very long and after struggling with it for a while Swan abandoned the idea and did not return to it for 15 years. By 1875 he had tackled it again and improved its performance and received another patent for the improved design in 1878 which is almost a full year before Thomas Edison announced his breakthrough with light in 1879. As it turned out Edison's version was almost an exact copy of Swans idea. Swan sued him in court and won and in 1883 it forced Edison to go into business with swan to form a joint company called The Edison and Swan United Electric Light Company, a.k.a. Ediswan. In the deal that they struck Edison retained the rights to the invention in The U.S. while Swan kept the rights in the U.K. They both spent the following years lighting up the lives up their fellow citizens on both sides of the Atlantic with this invention.