Good Morning on 22nd December

Good Morning on this 22nd day of December. Its a mild 14°C in our Bubble this morning with high SW winds of 30mph. Heavy rain expected for most of the day but, with it being the shortest day of the year, we can keep smiling and have an amazing day.

On this day in 1882 - The very first string of Christmas tree lights were created by Thomas Edison.

Thomas Edison, the inventor of the first successful practical light bulb, created the very first strand of electric lights. During the Christmas season of 1880, these strands were strung around the outside of his Menlo Park Laboratory. Railroad passengers traveling by the laboratory got their first look at an electrical light display. But it would take almost forty years for electric Christmas lights to become the tradition that we all know and love.

Before electric Christmas lights, families would use candles to light up their Christmas trees. This practice was often dangerous and led to many home fires. Edward H. Johnson put the very first string of electric Christmas tree lights together in 1882. Johnson, Edison’s friend and partner in the Edison’s Illumination Company, hand-wired 80 red, white and blue light bulbs and wound them around his Christmas tree. Not only was the tree illuminated with electricity, it also revolved.

However, the world was not quite ready for electrical illumination. There was a great mistrust of electricity and it would take many more years for society to decorate its Christmas trees and homes with electric lights. Some credit President Grover Cleveland with spurring the acceptance of indoor electric Christmas lights. In 1895, President Cleveland requested that the White House family Christmas tree be illuminated by hundreds of multi-colored electric light bulbs.

On Christmas Eve 1923, President Calvin Coolidge began the country’s celebration of Christmas by lighting the National Christmas Tree with 3,000 electric lights on the Ellipse located south of the White House.

Until 1903, when General Electric began to offer pre-assembled kits of Christmas lights, stringed lights were reserved for the wealthy and electrically savvy. The wiring of electric lights was very expensive and required the hiring of the services of a wireman, our modern-day electrician. According to some, to light an average Christmas tree with electric lights before 1903 would have cost $2000.00 in today’s dollars.

While Thomas Edison and Edward H. Johnson may have been the first to create electric strands of light in 1880/1882, it was Albert Sadacca who saw a future in selling electric Christmas lights. The Sadacca family owned a novelty lighting company and in 1917 Albert, a teenager at the time, suggested that its store offer brightly colored strands of Christmas lights to the public. By the 1920’s Albert and his brothers organized the National Outfit Manufacturers Association (NOMA), a trade association. NOMA soon became NOMA Electric Co., with its members cornering the Christmas light market until the 1960’s.

Today we expect to see the holiday season become aglow with electric strands of light. Think of the variety and range of Christmas lights available in today’s market. We can be grateful to Thomas Edison, Edward H. Johnson and Albert Sadacca for illuminating our holiday season.

General Electric introduced the world's first prewired lighting outfits for the Christmas selling season of 1903. Here are the instructions that came with the lights....

Here is a picture of the instructions for the General Electric outfit pictured above. For the sake of clarity, the instructions are transcribed here:

ELECTRIC DECORATIVE LIGHTING OUTFIT DESCRIPTION

Beautiful illumination is a requisite of handsome decorations, and nothing is more effective for this purpose than miniature incandescent lamps. Such lamps have no flame to cause smoke, smell or soil, and are therefore perfectly safe. The enclosed outfit provides a simple and ready means of using miniature incandescent lamps wherever electric light is available for house and store decorations, and is especially suited for Christmas tree and Holiday lighting. This outfit is made up complete with all connections made so that it is ready for immediate use at any time by simply connecting it to the electric lighting circuit and draping it over the object to be decorated. An outfit of this kind once purchased may be used as frequently as desired and will last for years. It is safe, simple and convenient and avoids all the danger and trouble incident to the use of candles.

DIRECTIONS FOR USE

Each outfit consists of fifty feet of flexible cord with attaching plug and sockets with all connections made and ready for use, and miniature incandescent lamps in clear and colored bulbs. After unpacking the outfit screw the lamps into all the sockets. There are extra lamps to provide against breakage.

At one end of the lamp conductor will be found a screw attaching plug. This should be screwed into the nearest lamp socket in the room. The lamps are strung in series of eight on these festoons on loops of cord radiating from a junction box. This junction plug can be fastened to the decoration in an inconspicuous place and the festoons of cord with lamps can then be draped about the decoration and entwined as desired.

The eight lamps in each festoon are connected in series with each other. Each one of these eight lamps must therefore be in the circuit (i.e., screwed home in its socket and making connections with the current) before any of them can burn. Each lamp must bottom in its socket.

IF THE LAMPS OF ANY ONE FESTOON FAIL TO BURN

Examine each lamp to see that the filament is not broken. Replace any that are from the spare lamps. See that each lamp is screwed home in its socket.

If none of the festoons light up, the attaching plug probably does not make contact in the regular lamp socket to which it has been connected, or the current may not be turned on at the socket or switch.

After lamps have been placed in all the sockets, should the lamps in any series or festoon fail to light after the directions given above have been observed, the trouble can be quickly located by interchanging the lamps, one by one, with those in a festoon or series in which the lamps are burning. The same procedure should be followed in case any one of the series is extinguished after the lamps are lighted. The lamps with this outfit should be used only on circuits the voltages of which are within the limits given on the front of the box.

Standard outfits are supplied with 8, 16, 24 and 32 lights. Additional festoons of 8 sockets each with lamps can be ordered for increasing size of outfit.

Additional lamps can be obtained on order (order should specify miniature lamps for Christmas tree outfit), giving the voltage of the lighting service at the house.

The outfit may be used for general house and table decorations at all seasons.

GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY, HARRISON, N.J., U.S.A. (Edison Decorative and Miniature Lamp Dept.)

When the courts turned down a General Electric patent application for the lighting festoon itself, any company was free to manufacture and sell Christmas tree lighting strings. Many companies did just that.

The early years of the twentieth century saw a large variety of electric Christmas lighting outfits hit the market, supplied by many manufacturers and/or resellers. Among the most prominent were of course General Electric, followed closely by The American Ever Ready company (after 1912, and the forerunner of the Eveready battery company that we know today), The Jaeger Miniature Lamp Manufacturing Company, the Yuletide Novelty Company, The Electric Porcelain Mfg. Company, Empire (a division of Westinghouse), The Triangle Electro Trading Company, Franco and The Excelsior Supply Company.