On a late December evening in 1880, Thomas Edison wanted to impress some city officials visiting his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. He had been working on making incandescent light bulbs more practical and longer-lasting, so he hung a double row of 290 lamps outside. The “soft and mellow light” was “beautiful to look upon” and “brilliant,” The New York Times reported. The timing was right, but it was a few more years before electricity would be firmly associated with the holiday season. Edison’s colleague and close friend Edward…
