Thomas Edison And Christmas Lights

Let’s Be Thankful For Thomas Edison!

Isn’t it the most wonderful time of the year? It’s cold, it’s festive, and beautiful twinkly lights adorn trees and buildings all over the country. Christmas lights are everywhere – in fact, many people string them up all year round, dangling from doorways and trees, and framing windows. They symbolise cosiness, comfort and warmth. So, all in all, pretty lights are the best! But – have you ever considered where we would be if Thomas Edison hadn’t invented the first electric light way back on 31 December in 1879? For one thing, the world would be a much duller place!

Illuminating The Season

We rely on electricity for so many aspects of our lives that it is hard to comprehend what life would be like without it. As I sit here typing this, I have my desk lamp on; my laptop is plugged in charging, and out of my window I can see buildings lit up and brightening the dark winter sky. Okay, so we can manage without electricity (at least in the short-term) – this is what candles are for! At this time of year, though, with shorter days and longer nights, electric lights can cheer up the most miserable of settings and make everything look so much nicer.

Something To Ponder

Thomas Edison was a world-renowned inventor and the electric lightbulb is just one aspect of what he created. If you look at a lightbulb today and see a capital letter ‘E’, you don’t have to work too hard to figure out what this stands for. You got it: Edison! If he hadn’t done this back in the late 1800s, I wonder whether we would have the range of lights we have today. Who knows?

When you are putting lights on your tree, or decorating your bedroom, or wandering around the shops in your hometown, you will, no doubt, see lights all over, from multicoloured to warm white, to ones that flash and are made in all sorts of shapes. Spend a few minutes having a think about the invention of lights and how all of what we take for granted today goes all the way back into the late 19th Century.

Without Edison’s amazing work, we might be seeing things in a very different light.