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.
While I agree with you in general... Incandescent bulbs made in more recent times have been designed to fail after a certain length of time... This actually started in the 1920s with an agreement reached by all of the major light bulb manufacturers of that time. Incandescent light bulbs were the poster child for “planned obsolescence” for almost a hundred years.
Yeppers - true that ...