page_title: Heinrich Göbel
section_title: Investigations in recent years
hierarchical_section_title: Heinrich Göbel / The claimed Göbel anticipation concerning Edison's incandescent light bulb patents / Investigations in recent years
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Portraitaufnahme von Heinrich Göbel / Henry Goebel
context_page_description: Heinrich Göbel, or Henry Goebel, born in Springe, Germany, was a precision mechanic and inventor. In 1848 he emigrated to New York City, where he resided until his death. He received American citizenship in 1865.
  In 1893, magazines and newspapers reported 25 years earlier, Göbel had developed incandescent light bulbs comparable to those invented in 1879 by Thomas Alva Edison. Göbel did not apply for a patent.
  In 1893, the Edison Electric Light Company sued three manufacturers of incandescent lamps for infringing Edison's patent. The defense of these companies claimed the Edison patent was void because of the same invention by Göbel 25 years earlier, which came to be known as the "Göbel defense".
  Judges of four courts raised doubts; there was no clear and convincing proof for the claimed invention. A research work published in 2007 concluded that the Goebel-Defense was fraudulent.
  After Göbel's death, in some countries, the legend arose he was the true inventor of the practical incandescent light bulb.
context_section_description: Investigations in recent years partially corroborated the findings in the article by Tanner.
  One important point is, that there is no source to confirm Goebel's alleged source of knowledge in the fields of electricity and vacuum physics. Goebel claimed that he had worked together with a certain Professor Münchhausen in the 1840s, that he had constructed equipment for experiments at today's Leibniz University Hannover (at that time called Höhere Gewerbeschule), that he had assisted experiments related to electric light, that he had got the idea and the basic concept of the design of an electric incandescent lamp from Professor Münchhausen and that he had continued with experiments on electric light on his own in New York. A person Professor Münchhausen was not known in the Kingdom of Hanover in the 1830s and 1840s, there is no documentation of experiments on electric light in the Kingdom of Hanover in the 1840s and no source for deliveries of equipment or any other kind of relation of Henry Goebel to today's Leibniz University Hannover.
  As one result of investigations in Germany and in the US and an analysis of all documents of the litigations with Goebel-Defense Hans-Christian Rohde stated in his dissertation, that there is no source from the time prior to 1880 to support the assumption of a relation of Henry Goebel to incandescent lamps prior to 1880. His thesis is, that Henry Goebel got the knowledge when working for the American Electric Light Co. in 1881 and was not busy with incandescent lamps before.
  A philological analysis of all affidavits of the Goebel-Defense manifested numerous contradictions and improbabilities. This and the lack of independent sources in the archives to confirm claims of Henry Goebel support the thesis, the Goebel-Defense was fraudulent. Probably Goebel told his story in 1882 to present himself as experienced in the art of construction of electric lamps to promote his intended business. Patent attorneys and their technical consultants created the Goebel-Defense on base of this story. Probably a biography of an inventor of electric light was constructed on top of the true biography of Henry Goebel. There is circumstantial evidence that falsification of written affidavits was part of the strategy of the counsels of the defense.
  One curious matter is the name of Goebel's alleged teacher, Professor Münchhausen. Münchhausen is a rare family name in Germany and Münchhausen is the name of a literary figure in a collection of tales with title The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen of Rudolf Erich Raspe  (published 1785) and in another version of Gottfried August Bürger (published 1786), a popular book in Germany; a man telling lies and incredible stories. A  thesis on this is, that Henry Goebel, an old man, was under pressure of lawyers to provide affidavits and got pangs of conscience and this was his way to indicate the story was untrue. In the culture of Germany there is a close association of "Münchhausen" and "untrue, telling lies".
  So-called Goebel Original Lamps are in the archives of the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn.  A technical examination with today's methods of science to establish, if possible,  a final truth on the production year of the lamps and to clear up technical points of dispute in the litigations did not take place yet.
caption: Henry Goebel, photo published in Western Electrician on the head page of the issue dec 16, 1893 reporting his death
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