Fairy Lights. The thought of doing this never ceases to blow my mind, but for many years Christmas trees were decorated with candles. And it wasn’t the poor folks doing this because candles were considered a luxury. Although some credit this to Edison, on this day, 1882, Edward Johnson, who worked at Edison’s plant, came out with the first electric Christmas tree lights. The bulbs were red, white, and blue and about the size of a walnut. And I’m 100% sure they were a pain in the ass. For many years those dang things were plagued with the problem of having one light going out – all go out. I remember my job was to go through the strings before going on the tree looking to make sure they all worked. A bad string meant having to go through the whole thing one bulb at a time and to add additional fun, if two bulbs (or more) were bad, it took forever to find them. The lights didn’t catch on at first for two reasons: They were very expensive and hardly anybody had electricity in the 1880s. In fact, candles continued to be used until around 1904 when they were replaced by small lanterns – oh, yes, still an open flame; much safer. Electric lights didn’t begin to take off until 1930. The three boxes, wooden crates, were what you could expect to find in one of those 1930 “kits”. Fairy lights? That’s what they’re called in the United Kingdom. What do the Brits know?
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 07:44:24 +0000
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