Evening star., 1901-01-26
THE INCANDEsCENT LAMP.
Edison Describes How Success was
Attained After Many Experiments.

Attained After Many Experiments.
From the Electrical Review.
80 you want to talk about the old days
az Pearl street." said Mr.. Edison. well, 1
hardly know where to begin. 1t was some
thing like this: The central station ldea
struck me all of sudden in 1878 In
those days. You know. we had arc lamps
/ had been down to see Prof. Barker, at
Philadelphia and he had shown me one. A
little later i had seen another one-l think
1t was one of Brush's make-and the whole
outfit engine. dynamo and one or two
lamps travelling around the country
with a circus. AT that time Wallace and
Moses G. Farmer had succeeded in getting
ten or fifteen lamps TO burn together IN
series II happened that j was compare
lively at leisure then, because l had just
finished working on the carbon button
telephone and this electric light Idea look
possession of me. 1t was easy to see what
the thing needed: IL wanted to be SubdlVld-
ed The light was TOO bright and too big.
What we wished for was little lights and
distribution of them to peoples houses In
just the same way that gas is sent around
and burned at your fixture when you want
It. i remember, along about then GrOSVe-
nor p. Lowry thought perhaps l could sue
ceed in solving the problem and he raised
a little money and formed the Edison
Electric Light Company. We started the
laboratory at Menlo Park. The way we
worked 1t was that l got a certain sum Of
money a week and employed certain
number of men, and we went ahead to see
what we could do
Replying to an inquiry as to how he
went at the problem, Mr.. Edison laughed
and said why. II was easy. 1t was
easy enough TO that the subdivision
never could be accomplished unless each
light was made Independent OF every other.
Now IT was plain enough that they could
not burn in series; hence they must burn
in multiple arc 1t with this conviction
that I started. ] was fired with the idea Of
the incandescent lamp as opposed to the
arc lamp. so L went to work and got, some
very fine platinum wire drawn. AS we'll
as / remember II was made by Johnston,
Mathy 4 Co, In London. We tried to
make the platinum work, but II didn
stand Then we tried mixing in about 10
per cent OF iridium with the platinum, but
We couldn't force that high enough with
out melting IL. After that came a lot of
experimenting, covering the wire with OK
ide of cerium and a lot of other things such
as the Welsbach people use nowadays.
Then / got a great idea; l took cylinder
of zirconia and wound about 100 feet Of the
platinum fine wire on 1t coated with mag
nesia from the syrupy acetate What | was
after was getting high resistance lamp.
and / made one in that way that worked
up to forty ohms: but the oxide developed
the phenomenon that DR.. Nernst has run
up against lstely-I didn't see 1t then as
he does now-and the lamp short-circuited
itself.
AFTER that" continued the inventor,
warming 10 MS SUBJECT, We Went nShtng
around and trying all sorts and shapes Of
things to make filament that would stand.
We tried silicon and boron and lot Of
things that j have forgotten now. The
funny part Of II was that I never thought
in those days that carbon would answer,
because fine hair OF carbon was SO sensi-
tive to oxidation. Finally l thought
would try It. because we had got very
high vacua and good conditions for 1t.
There were quite lot Of us In those days
that used to talk things over together at
Menlo Park. There was Charlie Hughes