I do love light! Most of the bulbs in my house are super bright, and I'm grateful for all of them. I will say I'm a pretty good energy conserver, though when I want light, I want LIGHT! So when did people become lucky enough to have a bright light produced by energy? Great question!
The idea of using electricity to produce light has been around for over 200 years, but the light bulb that actually produced a bright light AND lasted "many hours" didn't come until 1879 with Thomas Edison's carbon filament light bulb. However, Joseph Swan did produce a different version of the carbon filament bulb a year earlier, though his bulb burnt out rapidly. And nearly 40 years before that, British chemist Warren de La Rue created a carbon filament bulb, but with the expense of platinum and a good vacuum was hard to come by, thus making his bulb uneconomical. All in all Edison was credited with the invention because of the cost effective bulb that could last a decent length of time.
