Website Gizmodo today has a piece that will amuse lighting aficionados. It tells the history of Christmas lights as we know them today, tracing their evolution back to an 1880 marketing stunt, when Thomas Edison strung incandescent lighting all around his Menlo Park laboratory compound. Electric lighting for Christmas trees was born two years later, courtesy of Edison associate Edward Johnson.
They’re right, the story is strangely interesting, and includes a reproduction of the first ad for Christmas tree lights, from Scientific American magazine in 1900.
Christmas Lights, The Brief and Strangely Interesting History Of