Democrat nominee for President, Joe Biden was visiting Kenosha, Wisconsin where he was delivering a speech at the Grace Lutheran Church and made yet again another head scratching comment. Biden delivered this speech after meeting with the family of Jacob Blake. His speech was about racial inequality in institutions and that includes the education system. With that, Biden was speaking of examples of racial inequality in institutions and for some reason brought up the example of the invention of the light bulb. Biden said: "Why in God's name don't we teach history in history classes? A black man invented the light bulb not a white guy named Edison."
Huh, is that so? That's news to me...I was under the assumption that Thomas Edition invented the light bulb. Just to cover my bases I researched what I thought I already knew just because Biden told us it was false...I looked at "the science" as Biden says...isn't that what he preaches? We have to "follow the facts" and "listen to the scientists"? Okay so I went to the scientific facts, right to Livescience.com and they say that while Edison patented the first light bulb, others contributed to the generation of electricity; such as Italian inventor Alessandro Volta who generated the first practical method of generating electricity with the voltaic pile. Furthermore, Humphry Davy, an English chemist and inventor, produced the world's first electric lamp by connecting voltaic piles to charcoal electrodes. Additionally, an English chemist Joseph Swan developed a light bulb that used carbonized paper filaments in place of ones made of platinum. While Swan did find a more cost effective way to produce this, he had some issues with the filament he used and the technology of the day was not up to par to allow this prototype to work. Thomas Edison came along and figured out not only the cost effective problem others had but he realized the problem with Swan's filament; therefore coming up with the first practical light bulb and patented it successfully in 1879.
*The exact facts from Livescience.com, HERE.*
With that being said, would you say the science speaks for itself? By the way, all of those scientists were White men...While Edison was not the first to successfully generate electricity, he was indeed the first to create a practical and safe light bulb patent....Some think Biden was referring to Lewis Howard Latimer, a member of Edison's team who did patent a more efficient way of manufacturing carbon filaments, that contributed to the manufacturing component of the distribution but he did not invent the actual light bulb as we know it...So I took Biden's advice and listened to the science here on this one. Maybe he should take his own advice...
-Producer Lightning