Dimensions
147 x 216 x 20mm
The late nineteenth century was a period of explosive technological creativity, but more than any other invention, Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb marked the arrival of modernity, transforming its inventor into a mythic figure and avatar of an era. In narrative that reaches from Coney Island and Broadway to the tiniest towns of rural America, award-winning author and historian Ernest Freeberg presents a sweeping history of electric light, its celebrated inventor, and the birth of the modern age.
Along the way, Freeberg traces the progress of electric light through the reactions of everyone who saw it, captures the wonder this new technology inspired, and discusses the unique changes to American life for which the light bulb paved the way. It is a quintessentially American story of ingenuity, ambition, and possibility, in which great forces of progress and change are brought about by one of our most humble and ubiquitous objects.
