Lewis Latimer's Bright Idea

You've probably heard of Thomas Edison, the man who invented the lightbulb? People wanted that kind of magic in their own homes. They wanted to be able to flip a switch and have light, just like that! But, there was one problem. Thomas Edison's lightbulb used carbon thread for a filament—that little curly line inside the lightbulb—and the carbon thread lasted only about forty hours before it burned out. Once the filament burned out, the lightbulb would never work again. People would have to buy a new lightbulb. Nobody wanted to buy new lightbulbs all the time. They were expensive. So people gave up on the idea of having electric lightbulbs in their homes, and kept on using candles an kerosene lamps.

But I didn't give up on the idea of electric lightbulbs. I was sure there was a way to make it work. I decided I would find a way to make a longer-lasting light, a light that people could afford to buy for their homes.

I knew it wouldn't be easy.  I'd only been to a few years of elementary school before I had to get a job to help support my family, when I was only ten. Life was hard for my family. 

I figured out that whatever I wanted to learn, I could find out from books or by teaching myself what I wanted to know. I worked in a patent office, a company that helps inventors. The company I worked for drew the pictures for the patents. I helped Alexander Graham Bell draw diagrams of the telephone and get the patent on that. I liked to do experiments, and I had also invented some things myself. Even though I didn't have a college degree or a high school education, I was a scientist and an inventor and an engineer.

So I decided I could figure out how to make a longer lasting lightbulb. And I did it! I designed a carbon filament that was baked in a special way and so lasted for a long, long time, hundreds of hours. I received a patent for my carbon filament, which means the United States government recognized that I was the inventor, the very first person to create that carbon filament.

Electricity wasn't the only type of light I helped to create. I loved leaning new things and teaching others. I believed in sharing the light of truth. I helped people who were hungry or were poor, just like my family had been. I knew that helping others was another way of sharing light.

In one of my poems I wrote:

To love while we live

And give aid to each other

Is the sunshine of life

That turns night into day.

In 1908 I helped to start a Unitarian church in New York. People still go to that church, over a hundred years later. That Unitarian Universalist church—just like this Unitarian Universalist church—gives a long and lasting light. I knew of Unitarians all my life. My parents had been helped by Unitarians, and the Unitarian beliefs in the importance of character, the toleration of different views, and the enthusiastic approach to learning matched my own views well. My wife and children and I were all active Unitarians.

I'm proud of the things I created that made a difference in the world. I wonder what you might create that will also help to make a difference?

(Adapted from A Lamp in Every Corner by Janeen K Grohsmeyer).