LEDs Beware! The Rebirth of the Incandescent Light Bulb

The incandescent light bulb, first commercialized by Thomas Edison in 1879, was a remarkable invention for its day. Edison found that when an electric current was passed through a carbon filament, the filament would glow, or incandesce. The incandescent light bulb was improved over the next three quarters of a century by using different filament materials and adding inert gas inside the outer jacket. It was mass-produced by the hundreds of millions in a seemingly endless array of shapes, sizes, and wattages, but the basic technology of the incandescent light bulb was largely unchanged.