Famous Days for Students of English

21-10-1879

The first experiments with electric light were carried out in the early 19th century. That’s when Humphry Davy from England discovered that when an electric current passed through a platinum wire, it became hot and lit.

Yet it took another half a century for scientists to figure out that air had to be sucked out of the test cylinder. The first attempts at light bulbs followed, but no bulb could shine for a long time.

It was necessary to find a suitable material for the inner part of the bulb. That was the challenge that Thomas Edison and his team of scientists were ready to accept. His team made thousands of tests. They were working day and night.

On October 21, 1879, Edison made a new type of light bulb that lit his lab. The bulb was shining for 13 and a half hours.

The newspapers didn’t write about anything else and called the light bulb Edison’s triumph of life. However, he didn’t consider it a success. He wanted a light bulb to last much longer. That’s why his team did thousands of other tests.

Then they discovered that a material from bamboo could extend the life of a light bulb by up to a thousand hours. After that, light bulbs flooded the world.

Difficult words: carry out (do), current (a flow of something like water or electricity), figure out (have a new idea how to solve a problem), lab (a laboratory), consider (think), last (continue for some time).