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.
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.