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who invented bulb
Thomas Edison and British inventor Joseph Swan can both lay claim to having invented practical light bulbs that were commercially viable. However, they were building on the work of nearly two dozen inventors who came before them.

British inventor Humphry Davy invented an early light bulb in 1802. Davy’s incandescent light was neither especially bright nor long lasting, but it did kick off decades of experimentation in the United States, Western Europe, and Russia. However, none of the light bulbs proved to be commercially viable for nearly 80 years.

In the 1870s, Edison in America and Swan in Britain began parallel light bulb development efforts. Edison filed a patent application for an "improvement in electric lights" on Oct. 14, 1878. The patent was for an incandescent light that used carbon filament.


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