First Christmas Lights

byJimKincer

216 followers

1 year ago

Thomas Edison, invented the first strand of electric Christmas lights in 1880. He strung them around the outside of his Laboratory, that’s when people got the first look at a Christmas light display. However, the tradition of “Christmas Lights” would take another 40 years. As we all know, before electric lights, people used candles to light their trees which, as you might expect, was dangerous and resulted in many fires, (not a good idea)! In 1882 Mr. Edward H. Johnson, a friend and partner of Thomas Edison had the idea of putting a string of lights on their Christmas tree, so he wired 80 red, white and blue lights and wrapped them around his family Christmas tree and that was the first Christmas tree decorated with electric lights.

However, it would be many years before everyone used the string of lights to decorate our Christmas trees, some credit might be given to President Grover Cleveland, because in 1895 President Cleveland, had the White House family Christmas tree decorated with strands of multi-colored electric light bulbs.