Traveling the World

After his demonstration of the "electric candle" in Menlo Park in December 1880, Edison continued his publicity campaign by announcing his search worldwide for the perfect vegetable fiber for his incandescent filaments.  Agents were sent to China, Japan, the Amazon, Cuba, the West Indies and Central America.  Edison hoped to keep investors and future customers alive with interest in his "ongoing" invention.  The newspapers called his traveling agents "dauntless knights of civilization."  One agent sent to Cuba, however, died of yellow fever while another just home from the Amazon, disappeared from a restaurant in New York, never to be seen again.

In 1888, however, a railroad and shipping magnet gave Edison his first chance to install a complete lighting system.  The S.S. Columbia was the first ship to be electrically lit in history.  On arrival in San Francisco on its two month maiden voyage from New York, all 115 incandescent lamps were still burning after 415 ship hours.

Edison operated his first urban incandescent lighting system in London the following year.  Two generators shipped from New York provided the power to 2000 lamps in the neighborhood, including the Central British Port Office Building.  Edison had proved his electric candle's promise in grand scale.  Now it was time to light up America...

Next time...Pearl Street Station
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On April 23, 1564, William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-the Avon.  Not only did he write over 30 of the best plays and 154  of the best sonnets in history, but he was also an actor at the Globe Theater on the Thames in London in a company called "The King's Men." His play are performed and read more often and in more nations that any other literature with the exception of the Bible.  It was said by Ben Jonson that "he was not of an age, but for all time."  Happy Birthday Bill!