128 Years of Christmas Tree Lights
Posted on December 22, 2010
Filed Under Technology, The Writing Life | Leave a Comment
Here’s a technology brushup for this holiday time – clarification of the confusion (in case you’ve shared it) of who invented the first electrically lighted Christmas tree.
The gentleman was Edward H. Johnson and he lit his first tree in 1882, three years after his associate, Thomas A. Edison, invented the light bulb.
(Edison himself created the first strand of electric lights and strung them around the outside of his Menlo Park laboratory in 1880.) 
Ralph Morris is sometimes credited with the first string of Christmas tree lights, but that’s apparently because his son, Leavitt, thought his dad was the inventor and published a 1952 article to that effect in The Christian Science Monitor. (The Morris family tree is shown here. We couldn’t find a photo of the Johnson tree.)
Edward Johnson seems to have had a display sensibility, as well as electrical prowess. His first lighted tree was described as “brilliantly lighted with many colored globes about as large as an English walnut and was turning some six times a minute on a little pine box. There were eighty lights in all encased in these dainty glass eggs, and about equally divided between white, red and blue. As the tree turned, the colors alternated, all the lamps going out and being relit at every revolution. The result was a continuous twinkling of dancing colors, red, white, blue, white, red, blue—all evening.”
Most Christmas trees today don’t create that much brightness!
In any event, the important thing is that, at the darkest time of the year, both technically created and spiritually generated brightness abounds. We wish you all the blessings of this joyous season and the turning of the year! – Doug Bedell
Comments
Leave a Comment
If you would like to make a comment, please fill out the form below.
Recently
- Presentations With Forethought
- Technical Writing’s Lineage – Surely It’s Deeper than Digital
- At the Holidays, Twitting Amazon
- Successful Cookie Baking – From Mom, an Acknowledged Expert
- Slides for a Tech Writer’s Craft
- Digital or Not, Be Clear
- Being Watchful About Digital Designs…
- When Proposals Don’t Click, Keep Making Them Anyway
- Like a Good Gardener, Help an Enterprise Keep Itself Current
- We’re Leaders All, And Need to Think That Way
Categories
Archives
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
Blogroll