Battle of the Bulbs
August 1964 Popular Electronics

August 1964 Popular Electronics Table of Contents Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Popular Electronics, published October 1954 - April 1985. All copyrights are hereby acknowledged.

Not everyone whose name sounds like "Goebbels" was a bad guy. Heinrich Göbel was a German-born American mechanic and inventor, also known by his Anglicized name, Henry Goebel - as used here in this 1964 Popular Electronics magazine article that disputes whether or not Thomas Edison was the true inventor of the incandescent bulb. As with the debate over whether Gustave Whitehead beat the Wright brothers with the first man-carrying airplane to take off and fly under its own power, and whether Elisha Gray beat Alexander Bell, there were supposedly credible witnesses to prove claims. Courts have decided otherwise, but that does not rule out the possibility of error. Mr. Goebel reportedly had supporters who saw his home-brew incandescent bulbs burning in his New York shop a couple decades before Mr. Edison proclaimed his invention. The Goebel bulb is very different in appearance (like panel illumination bulbs) from the classic Edison bulb. Be sure to read the third paragraph very closely!

Battle of the Bulbs

By Hans F. Kutschbach

Necessity may be the "mother" of invention but, with many brainchildren, there's a fight about who the "father" is!

The closer we bring our technology to the ultimate, the more vigorous are demands of various countries to have one of their citizens credited with inventions or early developments that first contributed to the state of the art.

A story is whispered behind the Iron Curtain that a Russian peasant was working in a forest and found a wire strung between two trees. On the strength of this discovery, Russia claimed credit for the invention of the telegraph. At about the same time, a peasant in Red China was plowing a rice paddie and did not find any wires, so the Red Chinese government claimed the invention of the wireless!

Everybody knows that Thomas Alva Edison invented the electric light bulb in 1879. Everybody? Not in the town of Springe, Germany! The citizens of Springe are convinced that the light bulb was invented by Heinrich Goebel, born there in 1818. So convinced are the townspeople of Springe that they have erected a memorial to Goebel in the shape of a huge incandescent lamp.

On the base of the memorial, a commemorative tablet reads as follows (translated into English):

To the honor of the inventor of the
incandescent lamp
HEINRICH GöBEL 
Born April 20, 1878, in Springe
Died December 76, 1893, in New York
Erected June 26, 1954, by the Town of
Springe on the occasion of the centen-
nial celebration of the invention

Who Invented What?

Henry Goebel (his Americanized his name) operated an optics shop in New York City. In 1860, according to reliable witnesses, he used an electric lamp which he had made himself to illuminate the store and to attract customers. A cylindrical glass tube closed at the top, it contained a "high vacuum." The light-giving part was of a hair-like thinness and consisted of a carbonized grain.

Goebel wasn't the only one to work on the incandescent lamp. In 1845, two inventors named Starr (an American) and King (an Englishman) experimented with lamps in which thin bars of coal were brought to a glow in a vacuum. In 1878, in Berlin, Alexander Siemens experimented with an electric lamp, and in the same year, J. W. Swan, in Newcastle, England, developed a carbon filament lamp whose filament had a 1-mm. diameter.

How Goebel Made His Lamp

Goebel stripped a piece of bamboo cane between the knots, taking a piece one-inch long. This was ground with planishing rollers to hair-like thinness. After carbonizing the bamboo, the center was moistened, and the filament was bent to a hairpin shape over a hot iron. The piece was held until it cooled, and retained this shape. Many of these filaments were packed into a gas-coal mold, forming a packing of bituminous coal. Wires were fastened to the lower ends of the bamboo fibers, and these were packed with wood shavings. The whole was then packed with more powdered gas-coal and the airtight assembly was heated for an entire night. The next morning it was allowed to cool, it was opened, and the filament was ready for use.

Edison vs. Goebel

The Goebel lamp operated from batteries and had a limited life because of the current drain required from the batteries. The Edison lamp used dynamo power and wasn't affected by current drain.

The Edison Company brought suit against the firms making Goebel lamps in 1893. Goebel introduced proof that his invention was prior to Edison's, and among others, a professor of physics and chemistry and the president of the Electric Company of New York testified that he had indeed seen the Goebel lamp in 1860, and the court did indeed acknowledge the priority of Goebel's invention.

In the same year, at the age of 75, Goebel passed away. His heirs let the matter drop, and this decided the case. If they had continued the fight in court to its end, there's no telling how it would have been resolved.