Edison completed the electric light bulb thanks to Japanese bamboo

Thomas Alva Edison's electric light invention has made homes around the world flooded with light at night. People thank you, in particular, the Japanese are very reverent for this great inventor. Is there any connection here?

The Plani Dealer in Cleveland said that Japanese people account for the largest percentage of tourists visiting Edison's childhood in Milan, Erie County, Ohio (USA).

Edison filament bulbs, inventions.

His admirers are everywhere in this cherry blossoms, but for the citizens of Yawata City in Kyoto Prefecture, their feelings for this inventor are deeper. At Iwashimizu Hachiman shrine there is an Edison memorial and at the foot of the temple's lower mountain there is a small shopping mall named 'Edison Street' , with his bronze statue. The city of Yamata is also the locality associated with Milan, where Edison was born, and since the early 1980s, many souvenirs have been exchanged between people in two places.

Edison began experimenting with incandescent light bulbs in 1878. The light emitted light by using electricity to heat a fragile material, called a filament, until it was hot enough to glow. Many inventors have tried to complete incandescent lamps, but the bulbs they make have very short lifespans or too high prices that cannot be marketed for large-scale commercialization. Others have too thick filaments that have to consume a large amount of electricity, not economically efficient.

Finding a good material for hairs is a big problem that Edison finally managed to overcome. He realized that, in order not to consume much energy, to find materials with high resistance and to extend the life of the filament, the material that made it must also be durable when heated.

After experimenting with thousands of materials, from platinum to beard, hair, Edison discovered a carbon fiber hairline that he was looking for. He decided to try using carbon fiber cotton filament. The result is a light bulb in record time of 14 hours. Immediately, Edison applied for a patent, in which he described carbon filaments that could be made of different materials such as 'flax and cotton, wood braces, paper rolled in many ways'.

Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

Edison continued to study other organic materials that he carbonized in the laboratory. He brought his workers to many parts of the world to find the perfect material for light bulbs. Edison estimated that he had "tested no less than 6,000 plants and rummaged around the world to find suitable filament."

One of Edison's workers, William H.Moore, sent samples from a bamboo forest near Iwashimizu Hachiman shrine in Kyoto in 1889. The plant has a scientific name, Phyllostachys bambusoides , originating from China and Japan, often used to make flute pipes and handcrafted art items are highly artistic.

It is unclear whether Edison asked Moore to send him any special bamboo, or Moore sent them to Edison at his disposal. But anyway, Edison found a species of bamboo that, when carbonized, produces great filament bulbs.

To make the filaments of light bulbs, bamboo trees are cut into pieces in a vertical way and then split into very thin pieces, bent in the shape of a hairpin or curled around to fit in the light bulb. They are then coated with dried carbon and heated in an oven at extremely high temperatures for hours.

In this process, bamboo fibers change from the original cellulose structure, into pure carbon, and then into glass bulbs. However, bamboo hairs are only as long as the distance between the eyes of the bamboo.

Restrictions on the length of the filament cause the brightness of carbon fiber bulbs to be limited. It wasn't brighter than a candle, but it shone longer than any bulb of hair at the time. Some light bulbs that Edison and his team have more than 1,200 hours of life.

Carbon filaments become the superior material in incandescent light bulbs, until tungsten filament flourishes, bulbs have a longer and brighter life. The first tundsten fiber lamp made from a Hungarian company was called Tungsram in 1904. In 1911, Edison's company, General Electric, switched to tungsten.

Edison died in 1931. Three years later, the statue of Thomas Alva Edison was built on the campus of Iwashimizu Hachimangu temple, atop Mount Otokoyama. When Madeleine Edison Sloane, Edison's daughter, visited the temple in 1964, she was deeply moved to see her father's memorial in a distant country and remarked that this was something she had never seen. in U.S.A.

Edison memorial at the campus of Iwashimizu Hachiman temple.

Each year, on the day of Edison's birth and death, a light festival takes place in Iwashimizu Hachiman shrine, the local traditional bamboo lanterns are lit around his memorial along with the American national anthem. is played.