Electric Bulbs : Edison's collage

An artistic composition of materials and objects pasted over a surface, often with unifying lines and color.
A work, such as a literary piece, composed of both borrowed and original material.
The art of creating such compositions.
An assemblage of diverse elements: a collage of conflicting memories.

Thomas A. Edison, a young inventor working in Menlo Park, New Jersey, began working on his own form of electric light in the 1870s. In 1877 Edison became involved with the rush for a satisfactory electric light source, devoting his initial involvement to confirming the reasons for his competitors' failures. He did, however, determine that platinum made a much better burner than carbon. Working with platinum, Edison obtained his first patent in April of 1879 on a relatively impractical lamp, but he continued searching for an element that could be heated efficiently and economically.