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.
Underwood Archives / Getty Images. While Thomas Edison is widely credited with inventing the lightbulb, the truth is that it took multiple inventors and several decades to successfully master a long-lasting incandescent light bulb. Incandescent bulbs work by sending electricity through a filament that glows before melting or burning.