Few inventions did more for humans than the lightbulb. Before it, homes were lit with oil lamps and candles, a dangerous practice that released gases into the home at all times for them to unknowingly inhale and burn down their homes. The lightbulb still had its rough patches in its inception despite the need for its creation.
The lightbulb is usually credited to Thomas Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park. However, he was not the first to come up with making light electrically. Forty years before Edison patented the lightbulb, British inventors demonstrated proof that a constant electric light could be invented (Matulka). There were two main problems hindering them: the filament, which is heated by an electrical current to create the light, and the space inside of the glass bulb, deciding whether it must contain a gas to operate (Matulka). Lightbulbs, even though they were proven to work, were not adopted in homes because they were not yet practical enough to be used large scale. They weren't diffused into society because they didn't work long enough, were too expensive, and took too much energy to use (Matulka).
Technically, the lightbulb was adopted very late into its creation, almost half a decade after that first test. The reason why it was diffused into society at all is because of Thomas Edison. He (and his researchers) focused entirely on making the filament work (Matulka). In 1879, they finally had a lightbulb that could last for almost fifteen hours (Matulka). He garnered the attention of the everyday citizen, who now were eager to try the new mode of power. This is when early adopters truly took root. Edison finally settled on a ligthbulb that could burn for 1,200 hours, as well as making a better fuel pump for the air inside of the bulb (Matulka). This version he patented and sold for the next decade, filling every home in America with a new and safer technology. As the amount of people using lightbulbs grew, he merged his company with another to make the General Electric company, which brought it to the forefront of society (Matulka). We still use lightbulbs today, even if we have vastly changed their design.
The lightbulb caught on as soon as it was practical to use, but it took almost fifty years to take that last leap. It was harder to send out into rural areas because of the constraints with power, but now we have lines to make sure as many people have access to power as possible. The largest downside of a lightbulb is how much waste it creates. It is very difficult to recycle a lightbulb, and every year 600 million lightbulbs are put in waste, which is about 30,000 pounds of mercury. Efforts have been made to find ways to make the bulb last longer and therefore have less to throw away, but it's still a work in progress. Until a better source of light is developed, the biggest downside to a lightbulb is how it eventually turns off. After that, precious material is disposed of in landfills, never to be used again.
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