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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.
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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
Heinrich Goebel died in 1893 at the age of 75-the same year that
an American court acknowledged the priority of his lamp.
Here are the first four "electric" lamps made by Goebel 25 years
before Edison invented his lamp.
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.
A memorial to Goebel was built at Springe, Germany, in 1954.
The illuminated lamp that tops the stone pillar is used as an airplane beacon at
night.
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.
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