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!  

Dramatic Flair

Even though Edison was building the "electric candle" on the proven ground of gas lighting which had subdivided light and already tested the market, he needed to provide a cheaper, better substitute for the dangerous gas light.  Being Edison, he was confident he could, and it would be a total system.  He couldn't just solve one problem, he had to solve them all at the same time.

He set about using advertising to showcase his idea and his success, and gain investors, on the front page of the New York Herald on December 21, 1879:

                              EDISON'S LIGHT THE GREAT INVENTOR'S TRIUMPH
                                            IN ELECTRIC ILLUMINATION
                                                   A SCRAP OF PAPER
              IT MAKES A LIGHT WITHOUT GAS OR FLAME, CHEAPER THAN OIL
                                       SUCCESS WITH A COTTON THREAD

The reporter added the dramatic with his story of applying an electrical current to that tiny "scrap of paper that a breath would blow away" and how it produced "a bright beautiful light like the mellow sunset of an Italian autumn." 

Edison announced that Menlo Park would be illuminated by "magical new lighting" on New Year's Eve 1886.  In the week between Christmas and New Year's crowds came in droves to see Edison's light of the future.  Forty incandescent bulbs from a single electric generator amazed the visitors - not just the lights themselves but the fact that they could turn off and on instantly!  America was not only amazed, they were ready for electric light!

Next time...Keeping the lights on
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Today in Pioneer History: "On April 20, 1841, the first detective story is published by Edgar Allen Poe - "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."  The story describes the extraordinary analytical powers used by Monsieur C Augusta Dupin to solve a series of murders in Paris.