41°
And now GE uses LEDs for the spectacular tree at President's Park in Washington.
GE engineer Nick Holonyak invented the world’s first visible light-emitting diode in 1962, one year before the company took over the national tree lighting, according to a GE press release.
The light bulb and electrical lighting were the seminal breakthrough that allowed Thomas Edison and his partners to grow GE into a global industrial powerhouse, GE said.
The history of Edison’s Christmas lights goes back to the winter of 1880, when the inventor strung a line of electric lights outside his Menlo Park laboratory in New Jersey, GE said.
Two years later, Edward H. Johnson, his partner in the Edison Illumination Co., put up the first string of 80 red, white and blue electric Christmas lights on a revolving tree in the parlor of his New York City home, GE said.
Electric lights were becoming more mainstream by 1895, when President Grover Cleveland had the White House family Christmas tree decorated with hundreds of multi-colored electric light bulbs, for the first time, GE said.
By 1903, GE began selling pre-assembled kits of Christmas lights to the public. By then, electricity got cheaper and more ubiquitous and the market for electric lighting grew.
Click here to follow Daily Voice Fairfield and receive free news updates.
