Author: Ernest Freeberg
Author info: Professor of History
Publication Date: February 2013
Publisher: Penguin Press
Synopsis: The late nineteenth century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but arguably the most important invention of all was Thomas Edison’s incandescent lightbulb. Unveiled in his Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratory in 1879, the lightbulb overwhelmed the American public with the sense of the birth of a new age. More than any other invention, the electric light marked the arrival of modernity. This book places the story of Edison’s invention in the context of a technological revolution that transformed America and Europe. In the end, Edison’s greatest invention was not any single technology, but rather his reinvention of the invention process itself.