In 1880, after moving to Bridgeport, Connecticut, Latimer was hired as the assistant manager and draftsman for U.S. Electric Lighting Company owned by Hiram Maxim. Maxim was the chief rival to Thomas Edison, the man who invented the electric light bulb. The light was composed of a glass bulb which surrounded a carbon wire filament, generally made of bamboo, paper or thread. When the filament was burned inside of the bulb (which contained almost no air), it became so hot that it actually glowed.
Maxim greatly desired to improve on Edison’s light bulb and focused on the main weakness of Edison’s bulb – their short life span (generally only a few days.) Latimer set out to make a longer lasting bulb. Latimer devised a way of encasing the filament within an cardboard envelope which prevented the carbon from breaking and thereby provided a much longer life to the bulb and hence made the bulbs less expensive and more efficient. This enabled electric lighting to be installed within homes and throughout streets.
Latimer’s abilities in electric lighting became well known and soon he was sought after to continue to improve on incandescent lighting as well as arc lighting. Eventually, as more major cities began wiring their streets for electric lighting, Latimer was dispatched to lead the planning team. He helped to install the first electric plants in Philadelphia, New York City and Montreal and oversaw the installation of lighting in railroad stations, government building and major thoroughfares in Canada, New England and London.
So I guess one wonders who's version of history is correct.
The original invention is still Edison’s. Latimer improvised it.
Edison invented the first practical household light bulb. Practical means worth more than its cost. The key was enclosing a “carbon filament” in a near vacuum. Famously, this requires many, many experiments. Hence, Edison is associated with the saying that genius is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration.
If there is a rival to Edison as inventor of the household light bulb, it is an Englishman. The Englishman was on the same track as Edison, but had problems with creating a near vacuum. These problems were suddenly solved after Edison perfected the process. Edison sued the Englishman for patent infringement, and the two agreed, out-of-court, to a deal. (This is not uncommon.)
Latimer, among others, improved on the Edison’ incandescent light bulb. In Latimer’s case, this involved an improved filament. Improvements to the incandescent light bulb continued, and continue to today, making it last longer and longer, and reducing the cost of indoor light tremendously.
At later times came entirely new light bulb technologies including flourescent light bulbs, halogen light bulbs and LED light bulbs. The stream of inventions is, today, so fast, it’s impossible to keep up with. This is why we know more inventors of the 19th Century, when there was only a trickle, than we do current inventors, when invention is a wide and fast-flowing stream.