The light bulb was the least of it. Edison's real invention was the invention factory — and the electric grid that still powers your morning.
Thomas Edison did not merely invent the light bulb — he invented everything around it: the generator, the wiring, the meter, the power station, the company that sold the current. On New Year's Eve 1879 he lit Menlo Park, New Jersey, street by street, and the age of night ended on schedule. He held 1,093 American patents. But his greatest invention was the laboratory that produced them.
