On November 4, 1879, Thomas Edison applied for a patent for a practical, long-lasting light bulb. One year later, the U.S. Census Bureau reported just three electric light manufacturing establishments in the United States, with 229 employees. The 1947 Economic Census reported 62 electric lamp manufacturing establishments employed 23,842 people. More recently, the Census Bureau's County Business Patterns series reported that there were 74 Electric Lamp Bulb and Part Manufacturing (NAICS 335110) establishments employing 4,518 people during the pay period that included March 12, 2017.

Jump to:

Thomas A. Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, in 1847, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. As a child, Edison received little formal education. His mother instructed him at home and he was an avid reader of books about nature and the sciences. As a teenager, while selling newspapers to train passengers, he was introduced to the stations' telegraph systems. During the Civil War, he worked as an itinerant civilian telegrapher before accepting a permanent position with telegraph giant Western Union. His years as a telegrapher influenced some of his earliest inventions, including improved stock "ticker" technology and a voting machine.

In 1870, Edison established a workshop in Newark, New Jersey, and moved to Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1876. While attempting to improve components of Alexander Graham Bell's telephone at his Menlo Park lab, Edison developed what he considered one of his greatest inventions (his "baby")—the cylinder phonograph.

His phonograph was the first practical sound device to reproduce the human voice by transferring vibrations from a speaker's voice through a stylus and on to foil cylinders, which could be amplified and played repeatedly. Edison announced the cylinder phonograph on November 21, 1877, and demonstrated the invention by playing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on one of the invention's foil cylinders. The following month, he submitted a patent application for the phonograph, and received approval (Patent No. 200,521) on February 19, 1878.

Next, Edison turned his attention to developing an economical electric light bulb that would rival candles, gas, and lighting oils. Borrowing from previous electric light bulb research, he sought to improve the durability and quality of existing bulbs and materials. He spent months examining materials, including metal wire, human hair, and even coconut husks, before settling upon a carbon filament. After successfully using a carbon filament to illuminate a light bulb for increasing durations on October 22, 1879, Edison made additional improvements and submitted a patent application on November 4, 1879. Edison invited the public to a display of light bulbs on New Year's Eve 1879. The announcement was so enthusiastically received that the Pennsylvania Railroad chartered special trains to Menlo Park to transport excited crowds who were awed by strings of glowing bulbs hung between Edison's labratory buildings.

In the decades that followed, Edison continued to research and innovate. In his lifetime, he received more than 1,000 U.S. patents, many of which continue to impact the way we live more than eight decades since his death on October 18, 1931.

You can learn more about Thomas Edison using data and records collected by the U.S. Census Bureau and other federal agencies. For example:

• Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, a village in Erie and Huron Counties, on February 11, 1847. In 1850, Erie County's population was 18,568 and Huron County counted 26,203. In 2016, the Census Bureau estimated the population of the two counties at 75,107 and 58,439, respectively.
• Approximately two decades after Samuel F. B. Morse sent the first telegraphic message in 1844, Thomas Edison worked as a telegraph operator. He based two of his earliest inventions—an electric vote recorder (Patent No. 90,646) and a stock "ticker" (Patent No. 140,488)—on telegraph technology.
• Thomas Edison moved to Newark, New Jersey, in 1870. In that year, Newark's population was 105,059. At its peak in 1930, the city was home to 442,337. In 2016, the Census Bureau estimated its population at 281,764.
• During the 1860 Census, Thomas Edison's profession was "news boy." He identified himself as a "scientist" during the 1880 Census. In 1900, 1910, and 1920, the census and much of the world knew Edison simply as an "inventor."
• The Census Bureau's sister agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce—the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office—maintains the records related to Thomas Edison's patent submissions. Some of these patents include his 1878 stencil-pen (Patent No. 196,747), the 1880 electric lamp (Patent No. 223,898), and the 1897 kinetographic camera (Patent No. 589,168).
• Less than 1 year after the light bulb's public unveiling in 1879, Thomas Edison established the Edison Illuminating Company. The company opened electric generating stations to supply electricity for home and street lighting in New York City, New York, and Shamokin, Pennsylvania, in 1882; and Sunbury, Pennsylvania, Brockton, Massachusetts, and Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, in 1883. In 1907, 8 percent of all dwellings had electrical service. The total nearly doubled by 1912, and by 1956, 99.2 percent of all urban and rural nonfarm dwellings had electrical service.
• Thomas Edison relied upon the many gifted employees he hired to assist him at his Menlo Park laboratory. Some of these employees included the chemist, Jonas Walter Aylsworth; machinist John Ott; electrician and chemist Reginald Fessenden; recording expert Walter Miller; electrical engineers William J. Hammer and John W. Howell; and physicist and mathematician Francis Robbins Upton.
• Thomas Edison died on October 18, 1931, in Llewellyn Park, West Orange, New Jersey. Henry Ford, a close friend of Thomas Edison, convinced Edison's son Charles Edison (later Secretary of the Navy from 1939–1940, and 42nd New Jersey Governor from 1941–1944) to capture his father's last breath in a test tube. The test tube is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
• On November 10, 1954, Raritan Township officially changed its name to Edison Township in honor of Thomas Edison and the laboratory he built in its Menlo Park neighborhood. Four years after Edison established his laboratory, the 1880 Census counted 3,789 people in Raritan Township. Following the 1960 Census (the first after its 1954 name change), Edison Township's population was 44,799. In 2025, the Census Bureau estimated Edison Township's population was 110,002.
• Learn more about Edison's incandescent light bulb using census data by visiting the U.S. Census Bureau's Stats for Stories: The Incandescent Light Bulb. Stats for Stories provide links to timely story ideas highlighting the Census Bureau's newsworthy statistics that relate to current events, observances, holidays, and anniversaries.

On June 1, 1869, Thomas Edison received his first patent for improvements to "electrographic vote-recording."

A demonstration of the device to Congress by one of Edison's investors failed to win support for its use in U.S. elections.

In 1892, Lockport, New York, was first to use the first practical mechanical voting machine in an American election.