The Sun's Only Rival

When Thomas Edison finally produced a successfully working electrical light bulb, with the help of an amazing team, the world was amazed. Light bulbs became the wonder of the world and a company called GE came up with a great catch phrase to sell their light bulbs after the turn of the century. See more photos at my GTG blog post!

The catch phrase is the title of this Going True Green blog post. I took the photo of a GE bulb, still in the original package from 1925, when consulting on a job involving energy savings for a house built in 1925. This bulb was in the basement for almost 100 years, as if waiting for me to take a photo. This was surreal, a time warp for me, but this also created a teaching moment.

One scientist that became part of Thomas Edison’s team was Lewis Howard Latimer and he was a major contributing factor to the success of the light bulb. Latimer and Joseph Nichols, invented the carbon filament light bulb, which was a tremendous improvement on Thomas Edison’s original filament that would burn out rapidly. After receiving a United States patent for the carbon filament, a second patent was received in 1882 for the process of “Manufacturing Carbons” which was an amazing improvement to the method of producing light bulb carbon filaments.

The Edison Electric Light Company in New York City hired Lewis Latimer in 1884 and he supervised the installation of public electric light throughout New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, and London. Then in 1892, the Edison Electric Light Company merged with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company to become General Electric or as we all know, GE.

The future looked so bright, that even famous artists did paintings and photographs featuring the light bulb. So by the 1920s, GE was selling the new improved light bulbs like the one in my photograph above and then in 1928 came the incandescent bulb we all used until compact fluorescent bulbs slowly replaced them. Today and the future seems bright with LED technology leading the way. Some data shows that a 2 or 3 watt LED will soon give off the light level equal to a 75 watt incandescent light bulb.

In April of next year, the world will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and for that event, I am humbled to be invited back to speak in Rome at the Pontifical Regina Apostolorum Institute of Science and Faith. I am currently in the process of finalizing additional presentations in both domestic and international venues for this important milestone. I will keep you posted on the dates and locations.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to all. Best wishes for a happy, safe and blessed New Year.

Bill Lauto, at GoingTrueGreen.com;Environmental Scientist

International Sustainability and Energy Consultant