Tube light is a slang used to describe nitwits. We are all too familiar with the bulb switching on in comic stips. And, of course, they save us from having to live in the dark ages. But how much ...

You might have learned in school that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but the truth is much stranger (public domain) It has been known for a long time that passing a current through a wire ...

Swan continued to develop his invention and in 1880 his friend William Armstrong's house at Cragside, near Rothbury in Northumberland, was the first private home to be lit by electric light bulbs.

In 1877, after Edison invented the phonograph, Johnson took the machine on tour, charging crowds to drum up excitement. When Edison patented the light bulb in 1880, its exact value was hard to ...