He tenaciously took the idea all the way to the marketplace. And we're left wondering why Edison gets the credit. For one thing, he was his own spin doctor. He wove his myth as he wove his machinery . There is no single inventor of any great technology.
Ideas rise out of a whole community.
But people who can put full-blown systems together are rare. And in that sense, maybe it is fair to say that Edison invented the light bulb, after all. This story is told in many places. For more on one particular early electric lighting system, namely limelight, see Episode 1268 . This episode is an expanded version of Episode 11 .