By Deb Oestreicher on December 27, 2005. Format: Paperback. I heard the title The Man with the Golden Arm long before I ever read the book or saw the movie. It's a beautiful, evocative title, but it also makes you think of something grotesque: a man with a shiny prosthetic.
Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb in 1879, patenting it the following year. Before getting the right design for a long-burning, pleasant light for indoor use, he experimented with more than 1,600 different bulbs.
Edison placed his filament in an oxygenless bulb. (Edison evolved his designs for the lightbulb based on the 1875 patent he purchased from inventors, Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans.) by 1880 his bulbs lasted 600 hours, and were reliable enough to become a marketable enterprise.