Excerpt from Cyclopedia of Applied Electricity, Vol. 3: A Practical Guide for Electricians, Mechanics, Engineers, Students, Telegraph and Telephone Operators, and All Others Interested in Electricity The incandescent lamp was but a piece of laboratory appa ratus up to 1878, at which time Edison produced a lamp using a platinum spiral in a vacuum, as a source of light, the platinum being rendered incandescent by the passage of an electric current through it. The first successful carbon filament was made in 1879, this filament being formed from strips of bamboo. The names of Edison and Swan are intimately connected with these early experiments. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.