All right, not trying to shock you, but Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb. I'm Patty Steele. His brilliant use of someone else's ideas is next on the backstory. We're back with the backstory. I know there are a whole lot of inventions credited to Thomas Edison, the light bulb, phonograph machine to record music and sound, and the motion picture camera, so it's hard to imagine that some, or actually most, of what he gets credit for were not really his ideas. Of course, his status as an icon was pretty much sealed with his invention of the first incandescent light bulb. But here's the thing. He definitely wasn't the guy to create or even demonstrate the first light bulb, not even close. There were as many as twenty who came before him. What he was was a masterful businessman and self promoter. He knew how to take somebody else's work, use the brilliant minds he had hired to perfect it, and most importantly, he knew how to market and mass produce whatever the heck he was building. So get this. Among the long list of Edison's inventions, almost half of them are the ideas in visions of other people that he took credit for. And of course there were a whole lot of inventors chasing the holy grail lighting up the night. And this is surprising. Some of the earliest inventions involving electric light came in the seventeen hundreds. Now most of those used some combination of chemical gases to create an electrical charge. Then in the early eighteen hundreds, even more would be lights showed up. In eighteen oh six, the British scientists demonstrated a totally electric light in London. Then in eighteen forty one another brit got the bright idea to enclose his light in a glass bulb. Yup, that was the very first light bulb. After that it turned into a crazy free for all with lots of inventions and lots of patents, but none of them really did the whole job. Problem is they used too much electricity and put out too much heat and not enough light. They were really expensive and worst of all, they burned out in a matter of minutes. Then things really began to change. While Thomas Edison bought patent rights from a couple of Canadian inventors, yet another guy from England, Joseph Swan came up with a working light bulb using thin wire filaments, much like we still have today in some lights, and that gave him a much bigger claim than most to inventing a usable light bulb. In fact, he got a UK patent and his bulb went into wider use than Edison's. He lit London's entire Savoy Theater with it the first public building in the world to get fully electrified, and Swan's own home in the English countryside was the very first house in the world to be fully lit using electricity. Now, Swan sued Edison for patent infringement and he won. But again Edison needed to be the guy, so he tried to counter sue Swan for infringement, but he quickly realized Swan would be able to prove the research and publication surrounding his bulb came before Edison's. In fairness, Edison did improve the filament for his bulb, so in order to bypass a long, expensive court battle, the two of them finally agreed to merge their businesses into a British company called EdiSwan. I like that name. They literally owned the British marketplace and get this, some of their light bulbs still light up now, deep into the twenty first century, and that gives you a hint into Edison's phenomenal success. He always found a way to take credit, or if he couldn't get it out right, he found a way to share it. Now the thing is sharing it wasn't really as interesting to him, not his thing. He told his team he needed all the credit in order to lock down patents and ultimately market share. So he'd take somebody's idea, have his team perfect and simplify it, make it cheaper, and then mass produce and market the heck out of it. And Edison was a marketing genius as well as a showman. He knew how to work the press, cultivating great relationships with reporters, probably taking them out for drinks and being easily accessible to them so they could discuss things with him. Insiders say he sometimes would tell them he had just solved a huge problem before he really had, just for public response. He loved that he was considered a magician. That's how he got the nickname the Wizard of Menlo Park, based on his hometown laboratory in New Jersey. Now here's the thing. Edison was really most famous for his insane work ethic. In fact, you've probably heard one of his most famous quotes. He's the guy who said genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration. He rarely slept more than four hours a day and really didn't sleep four hours at a time, and during his lifetime he had almost eleven hundred patents to his name in the US alone. What he did invent was team based research, using a lot of great minds to solve a problem, mass production on a huge scale, organizing a massive distribution network, and the ability to lure investors to fund his work. Much of that virtually unknown in his time. But at the end of the day, he just didn't invent the light bulb. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our executive producer is Steve Goldstein of Amplify Media. We're out with new episodes twice a week. Thanks for listening to the Backstory. The pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know

All right, not trying to shock you, but Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb. I'm Patty Steele. His brilliant use of someone else's ideas is next on the backstory. We're back with the backstory. I know there are a whole lot of inventions credited to Thomas Edison, the light bulb, phonograph machine to record music and sound, and the motion picture camera, so it's hard to imagine that some, or actually most, of what he gets credit for were not really his ideas. Of course, his status as an icon was pretty much sealed with his invention of the first incandescent light bulb. But here's the thing. He definitely wasn't the guy to create or even demonstrate the first light bulb, not even close. There were as many as twenty who came before him. What he was was a masterful businessman and self promoter. He knew how to take somebody else's work, use the brilliant minds he had hired to perfect it, and most importantly, he knew how to market and mass produce whatever the heck he was building. So get this. Among the long list of Edison's inventions, almost half of them are the ideas in visions of other people that he took credit for. And of course there were a whole lot of inventors chasing the holy grail lighting up the night. And this is surprising. Some of the earliest inventions involving electric light came in the seventeen hundreds. Now most of those used some combination of chemical gases to create an electrical charge. Then in the early eighteen hundreds, even more would be lights showed up. In eighteen oh six, the British scientists demonstrated a totally electric light in London. Then in eighteen forty one another brit got the bright idea to enclose his light in a glass bulb. Yup, that was the very first light bulb. After that it turned into a crazy free for all with lots of inventions and lots of patents, but none of them really did the whole job. Problem is they used too much electricity and put out too much heat and not enough light. They were really expensive and worst of all, they burned out in a matter of minutes. Then things really began to change. While Thomas Edison bought patent rights from a couple of Canadian inventors, yet another guy from England, Joseph Swan came up with a working light bulb using thin wire filaments, much like we still have today in some lights, and that gave him a much bigger claim than most to inventing a usable light bulb. In fact, he got a UK patent and his bulb went into wider use than Edison's. He lit London's entire Savoy Theater with it the first public building in the world to get fully electrified, and Swan's own home in the English countryside was the very first house in the world to be fully lit using electricity. Now, Swan sued Edison for patent infringement and he won. But again Edison needed to be the guy, so he tried to counter sue Swan for infringement, but he quickly realized Swan would be able to prove the research and publication surrounding his bulb came before Edison's. In fairness, Edison did improve the filament for his bulb, so in order to bypass a long, expensive court battle, the two of them finally agreed to merge their businesses into a British company called EdiSwan. I like that name. They literally owned the British marketplace and get this, some of their light bulbs still light up now, deep into the twenty first century, and that gives you a hint into Edison's phenomenal success. He always found a way to take credit, or if he couldn't get it out right, he found a way to share it. Now the thing is sharing it wasn't really as interesting to him, not his thing. He told his team he needed all the credit in order to lock down patents and ultimately market share. So he'd take somebody's idea, have his team perfect and simplify it, make it cheaper, and then mass produce and market the heck out of it. And Edison was a marketing genius as well as a showman. He knew how to work the press, cultivating great relationships with reporters, probably taking them out for drinks and being easily accessible to them so they could discuss things with him. Insiders say he sometimes would tell them he had just solved a huge problem before he really had, just for public response. He loved that he was considered a magician. That's how he got the nickname the Wizard of Menlo Park, based on his hometown laboratory in New Jersey. Now here's the thing. Edison was really most famous for his insane work ethic. In fact, you've probably heard one of his most famous quotes. He's the guy who said genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration. He rarely slept more than four hours a day and really didn't sleep four hours at a time, and during his lifetime he had almost eleven hundred patents to his name in the US alone. What he did invent was team based research, using a lot of great minds to solve a problem, mass production on a huge scale, organizing a massive distribution network, and the ability to lure investors to fund his work. Much of that virtually unknown in his time. But at the end of the day, he just didn't invent the light bulb. I'm Patty Steele. The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our executive producer is Steve Goldstein of Amplify Media. We're out with new episodes twice a week. Thanks for listening to the Backstory. The pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know