Once you have electricity, you will soon discover two things. First that a thin conductor will be heated when you pass electricity through resistive heating, an

Once you have electricity, you will soon discover two things. First that a thin conductor will be heated when you pass electricity through resistive heating, and secondly, that it will soon burn, melt or vaporize after a short time if you heat it enough to produce any significant amount of light. In other words, the initial idea came from a quite basic fact about electricity, and Humphry Davy experimented with it already around 1800, but a lot of trial and failure had to be done before it could be used for practical lighting. Edison did enough research to come up with a practical one. He was not the only one, and others, including Joseph Swan made practical light bulbs at about the same time. Even this seemingly revolutionary idea was really more trial and failure than anything else.