It was the American inventor Edison who really invented the electric light and made it bright. The son of a railway worker, he dropped out of elementary school and made a living selling newspapers on trains. Edison was an extremely diligent man who liked to do various experiments and created many ingenious machines. He was particularly interested in electrical appliances. Since Faraday invented the motor, Edison was determined to create electric lights and bring light to mankind.
After carefully summarizing the failed experience of his predecessors in manufacturing electric lamps, Edison formulated a detailed test plan and conducted tests in two aspects: first, classifying more than 1,600 different heat-resistant materials; second, Improve the evacuation equipment so that the bulb has a high vacuum. He also conducted research on new generators and circuit branching systems.
Edison tested more than 1,600 heat-resistant luminescent materials one by one. Only platinum wire has good performance, but the price of platinum is astonishingly expensive, and more suitable materials must be found to replace it. In 1879, after several experiments, Edison finally decided to use carbon filament as the filament. He sprinkled a piece of cotton silk with charcoal powder, bent it into a horseshoe shape, put it in a crucible, heated it, made it into a filament, put it in a light bulb, and then used an air extractor to remove the air from the light bulb. The light turned on and could be used continuously. 45 hours. In this way, the world's first carbon filament incandescent lamps came out. On New Year's Eve 1879, Lopack Street, home to the Edison Electric Light Company, was brightly lit.
In order to develop electric lights, Edison often worked more than ten hours a day in the laboratory, sometimes testing for several days in a row. After he invented carbon filament as a filament, he successively tested more than 6,000 plant fibers, and finally Bamboo filaments are selected, burned in a high-temperature sealed furnace, and then processed to obtain carbonized bamboo filaments, which are then installed into the light bulb, thereby increasing the vacuum degree of the light bulb again. The light can last for 1,200 hours continuously. The invention of the electric light caused the gas stock price to plummet 12% in three days.
Following Edison, in 1909, the American James Curry invented the use of tungsten filament instead of carbon filament, which greatly increased the efficiency of electric lamps. Since then, electric lights have leapt to a new level, and various lamps such as fluorescent lamps and iodine-tungsten lamps have sprung up on the lighting stage.
Lamps turn darkness into light, making the world more dazzling and colorful