Electro-Dynamic Light Company

The Electro-Dynamic Light Company of New York was a lighting and electrical distribution company organized in 1878. The company held the patents for the first practical system of incandescent electric lighting. It was the first company formally established to provided electric lightning and was the first company organized specifically to manufacture and sell incandescent electric light bulbs.

Albon Man, a New York attorney, and William E. Sawyer, an electrical engineer, officially formed the Electro-Dynamic Light Company of New York on July 8, 1878. This was by way of a partnership with Man supplying money for experiments. Sources in the late 19th century claimed it to be the first formally established electric-lighting company.

The Electro-Dynamic Light Company was the first organized specifically to manufacture and sell incandescent electric light bulbs. Man and Sawyer patented the first practical system of incandescent electric lighting and gave the patents to the company. The United States Electric Lighting Company was organized in 1878, weeks after the Electro-Dynamic Company.

The names of other investor-partners of the company besides Man and Sawyer were: Hugh McCulloch (Man's uncle), William Hercules Hays, James P. Kernochan, Lawrence Myers, and Jacob Hays. Sawyer was about 28 years old and Man about 52 years old at the time the company was formed. They planned on lighting New York City with electricity for one-fortieth the cost of gas lighting. The new company started with capital of $10,000 cash and $290,000 of scrip. It was formed for the purpose of the production of light and power by means of electricity for the lighting of streets and buildings. The company was to make all the equipment necessary to generate and distribute electricity. The distribution of electricity produced by the company was not only for lighting, but for other purposes as well.

In 1878, the Electro-Dynamic Light Company demonstrated an electric light that was the invention of Sawyer and Man. An exhibition was set up in New York City on October 29, 1878. The same exhibition was mentioned several weeks later in a newspaper of Princeton, Minnesota, and Bismarck, North Dakota. The lamp was described as a strip of pencil carbon graphite connected with two wires to an electric generator. The carbon strip was in a hermetically sealed glass bulb that was filled with nitrogen gas. When electricity was applied, the internal strip developed a temperature of between 30,000 and 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Since there was no oxygen in the glass globe the carbon filament did not burn out and produced light instead.

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