In a Rare and Unpublished Letter Relating to the Light Bulb, Thomas Edison Describes How He Spread His Creation Worldwide

One of a only a handful of letters of Edison ever to reach the market mentioning the lightbulb

Thomas Edison propelled the United States out of the gaslight era and into the electric age. In 1878 he created a practical long-burning electric light, something that had eluded scientists for decades. With dreams of lighting up entire cites, Edison lined up financial backing, assembled a group of brilliant scientists and technicians, and applied his genius to the challenge of creating an effective and affordable electric lamp. With unflagging determination, Edison and his team tried out thousands of possibilities, convinced that every failure brought them one step closer to success. On January 27, 1880, Edison received the historic patent embodying the principles of his incandescent lamp that paved the way for the universal domestic use of electric light.

This changed the way everyone lived. Work continued past dusk. The day no longer had to be confined to daylight hours or huddled around the heat and light of the fire. It remains among the greatest advancements of the modern age.

Edison is not only well know for his creation, but also for his marketing of the bulb and the spread of this product. On October 8, 1883, the US patent office ruled that Edison’s patent was based on the work of William E. Sawyer and was therefore invalid. Litigation continued for nearly six years, until October 6, 1889, when a judge ruled that Edison’s electric-light improvement claim for “a filament of carbon of high resistance” was valid. To avoid a possible court battle with Joseph Swan, whose British patent had been awarded a year before Edison’s, he and Swan formed a joint company called Ediswan to manufacture and market the invention in Britain. Mahen Theatre in Brno (in what is now the Czech Republic), which opened in 1882, was the first public building in the world to use Edison’s electric lamps, with the installation supervised by Edison’s assistant in the invention of the lamp, Francis Jehl. Edison made Europe a primary focus and aimed to spread his bulb and push out other potential competitors.

His focus was not only in Europe however. When it came to the delivery of electricity, this race to capture the light bulb market in the U.S. was bringing in additional entrants. Nicola Tesla worked with Edison in the early 1880s on the lightbulb. Tesla left Edison in 1885 and set out to raise capital on his own for Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing, even digging ditches for the Edison Company to pay his bills in the interim, until the industrialist George Westinghouse at Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company, a believer in AC power, bought some of Tesla’s patents and set about commercializing the system so as to take electric light to something into more than an urban luxury service. While Tesla’s ideas and ambitions might be brushed aside, Westinghouse had both ambition and capital, and Edison immediately recognized the threat to his business.

Within a year, Westinghouse Electric began installing its own AC generators around the country, focusing mostly on the less populated areas that Edison’s system could not reach. But Westinghouse was also making headway in cities like New Orleans, selling electricity at a loss in order to cut into Edison’s business.

This was, evidently, a strategy that, as this letter attests, Westinghouse borrowed from Edison himself. Congressman Roscoe McCulloch had introduced a bill in Congress instituting a new system of tariffs and wrote to business leaders and others to support his bill.

Typed letter signed, on his Orange, NJ Laboratory stationery, September 15, 1916, to Congressman McCulloch. “Dear Sir – I received your favor of the seventh instant, and have read your speech on the Tariff question with a good deal of interest. I think your arguments are sound, but, even if carried out, the plan could and would be entirely nullified by the scheme of ‘dumping.’

“I originated this scheme thirty-two years ago, and sold incandescent lamps all over Europe below the cost of production at that time. I started, and it was followed soon after by two other concerns. In fifteen years, it became universal.”

It is fascinating to see Edison claim credit for inventing “dumping”.  We obtained this letter directly from a McCulloch descendant, and it has never before been offered for sale.