onnecticut, were shown, with the current from which arc lamps were
there put in actual service. A year or two later the work of Charles F.
Brush and Edward Weston laid the deep foundation of modern arc lighting
in America, securing as well substantial recognition abroad.

Thus the new era had been ushered in, but it was based altogether on the
consumption of some material--carbon--in a lamp open to the air. Every
lamp the world had ever known did this, in one way or another. Edison
himself began at that point, and his note-books show that he made
various experiments with this type of lamp at a very early stage.
Indeed, his experiments had led him so far as to anticipate in 1875 what
are now known as "flaming arcs," the exceedingly bright and generally
orange or rose-colored lights which have been introduced within the last
few years, and are now so frequently seen in streets and public places.
While the arcs with plain carbons are bluish-white, those with carbons
containing calcium fluoride have a notable golden glow.

He was convinced, however, that the greatest field of lighting lay in
the illumination of houses and other comparatively enclosed areas,
to replace the ordinary gas light, rather than in the illumination
of streets and other outdoor places by lights of great volume
and brilliancy. Dismissing from his mind quickly the commercial
impossibility of using arc lights for general indoor illumination,
he arrived at the conclusion that an electric lamp giving light by
incandescence was the solution of the problem.

Edison was familiar with the numerous but impracticable and commercially
unsuccessful efforts that had been previously made by other inventors
and investigators to produce electric light by incandescence, and at the
time that he began his experiments, in 1877, almost the whole scientific
world had pronounced such an idea as impossible of fulfilment. The
leading electricians, physicists, and experts of the period had been
studying the subject for more than a quarter of a century, and with but
one known exception had proven mathematically and by close reasoning
that the "Subdivision of the Electric Light," as it was then termed, was
practically beyond attainment. Opinions of this nature have ever been
but a stimulus to Edison when he has given deep thought to a subject,
and has become impressed with strong convictions of possibility, and
in this particular case he was satisfied that the subdivision of th