Edward Johnson was manager at Automatic Telegraph Company in 1871, and he needed an assistant. So he hired a young man named Thomas Edison to help him out. The great American Christmas Tree Light story begins the day he wrote, ‘Edison ate at his desk and slept in a chair. In six weeks he had gone through the books, and written a volume of abstracts. Then he made two thousand experiments … and produced a solution.’
Was That Solution a Christmas Tree Light Bulb?
It probably was, although that is jumping ahead somewhat. The Smithsonian Magazine is non-committal on the subject, although it does confirm Johnson and Edison founded the Edison Lamp Company to sell the electric light bulb Edison patented.
Meanwhile, American life continued before as Christmas came and Christmas went. Back in England Queen Victoria’s German husband put up a ‘tannenbaum’ Christmas Tree in the Palace garden, and hung ornaments on it. The great American Christmas Tree Light story was about to begin!
American President Franklin Pierce put a tree in the White House in 1856. Within a couple years the idea caught on. Folk queued up to purchase fresh cut trees at Washington Square Park, and pretty ornaments at Macy’s store.
The Great American Christmas Tree Light Story Takes Off
Edward Johnson was working alone at the Edison store one night. Well kinda working, because he was fretting over a report of a Christmas Tree that caught fire from a candle burning among the branches. He hand-wired 80 white, red and blue light bulbs in a series, fetched a Christmas Tree and put his invention in the street outside.
A reporter from Detroit Post and Tribune wrote, ‘At the rear of the beautiful parlors, was a large Christmas Tree presenting a most picturesque and uncanny aspect. It was brilliantly lighted with eighty lights in all encased in these dainty glass eggs. And about equally divided between white, red and blue. One can hardly imagine anything prettier.’
Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year to everybody everywhere in the world! Times are tougher for many of us while the pandemic hangs on. But we still have our Christmas Trees to lighten up our lives, and don’t they just look pretty in the White House garden.
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