TABLE OF CONTENTS Lightbulb 4 Kevlar 6 Basketball 8 Airplane 10 Blue Jeans 12 Assembly Line 14 Cotton Gin 16 Heart-Lung Machine 18 Polio Vaccine 20 Transistor 22 Frequency Hopping 24 Personal Computer 26 Fact Sheet 28 Glossary 30 For More Information 31 Index 32 About the Author 32
1 EDISON STRIVES TO LIGHT THE WORLD Until the 1800s people had relied on oil lamps candles and later gas lights to light their homes Then electric power started being used This prompted inventors to develop indoor lighting using electricity But inventors struggled to make a lightbulb that was safe and efficient enough for widespread use In a lightbulb electricity heats materials to make it glow and give off light But this was difficult to do without overheating the bulb One early attempt was produced in 1860 But the wire inside the bulb called a filament burned too fast to make it useful Thomas Edison worked on improving the lightbulb in his New Jersey research lab He tested thousands of materials for the 4 Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents a world record
A lightbulb gives off light when the filament inside is heated filament He used a lower current of electricity for a power source In 1879 Edison tried a platinum filament The bulb burned only a few hours Finally he tried a cotton filament made from sewing thread It burned for approximately 15 hours Edison continued working to improve the lightbulb for which he is famous Soon electric lighting was was used in houses and businesses across the country MORE THAN BULBS M Edison did more than improve the lightbulb He developed a system to provide electricity to homes In the 1880s he designed the first commercial electric power station in New York and oversaw its construction Nearby homes and businesses received power from the station to light their homes 5 6,000 Edison tested at least this many different natural resources when experimenting with filaments Introduced 1879 Inventor Thomas Edison Key features Smaller and more efficient than earlier versions
