Moriah Larson | Contributing Writer
Christmas is only 24 days away, which leaves little time to enjoy glittering ornaments, holiday music and candy canes.
While every family celebrates Christmas in a unique way, there is no denying that strands upon strands of twinkling lights will be layered upon their Christmas tree, their house…or even both! But how did this tradition begin?
Introduction to Innovation
At the start of the 17th century, the only way people knew how to light up their trees was with candles. But, because of the fire hazard, the wicks would only remain lit for a few minutes per night.
Before the advent of the modern incandescent light bulb, chemist Humphry Davy toyed with high-voltage arc lights. The devices allowed electricity to jump between two carbon rods, emitting a bright point of light. Yet, the design proved unsafe, pushing inventors to create self-contained incandescent lights.
First was Sir Joseph Wilson Swan who, in 1850, filed for a patent design nearly 10 years after Humphry’s discovery. However, Swan’s bulb’s carbon filaments burned out too quickly in the presence of oxygen.
Interestingly, Thomas Edison was also working on incandescent lights. But unlike Swan’s attempt, Edison found that cotton fibers, which could stay lit for more than 1,500 hours, were the best natural filament. Thus, Edison’s company continued to work on supporting technologies to make the device commonplace.
A Christmas Creation
In December of 1880, Thomas Edison created the first electric, Christmas light display to advertise his incandescent bulbs. As a way of heightening both the public’s curiosity, and their Yuletide excitement, Edison strung the lights all around his Menlo Park laboratory compound.
By 1882, Edward H. Johnson, who was the vice president of Edison’s electric company, placed 80 red, white and blue light bulbs onto his scrawny evergreen, which rotated six times per minute on an electric crank.
During Grover Cleveland’s presidency, the White House had a Christmas tree “decorated with gold angels, gold and silver sleds, lots of tinsel, and the first electric lights to be put on a Christmas tree in the White House,” according to “The History of the Christmas Figural Bulb.”
Although Johnson’s light show occurred more than a decade earlier, this publicity stunt is widely recognized as the birth of the electrically illuminated Christmas tree.
The Transition of a Tradition
Legend has it 15-year-old Albert Sadacca saw a home burned to the ground because of Christmas tree candles, leading him and his brothers to pursue safer lighting fixtures. Eventually they developed strings of small, colored light bulbs in the 1910s that were a hit among shoppers. And in 1925, the family founded NOMA Electric Company, which became the largest manufacturer of Christmas lights for the next four decades.
From blinking bulbs to bubbling lights, NOMA presented a wide-array of options to consumers. By the late ‘60s however, people were no longer fascinated with the standard incandescent bulbs.
Hence the creation of computer-controlled lighting, which took off in the 1990s and included the use of software and wireless networks to create elaborate displays.
One of the most famous examples is Carson Williams’ home in Mason, Ohio. In 2004, Williams used Light-O-Rama equipment and a Trans-Siberian Orchestra track to control 16,000 lights with 88 different channels.
Though it took decades to discover semiconductor alloys able to reproduce most colors of light, LED holiday lights have been rising in popularity and dropping in price ever since the late ‘90s.
On Mon, Dec. 16, tune in to watch ABC’s newest competition show, “The Great Christmas Light Fight,” which will feature 20 families (four each week) from across America, decorating their homes to the extreme for a piece of the $250,000 cash prize.