What U.S. patent number did Thomas Edison receive for his incandescent electric lamp in 1880?
Answer
U.S. Patent 223,898
Thomas Edison received U.S. Patent 223,898 for his incandescent electric lamp in 1880.
The patent was issued on January 27, 1880, after Edison and his team had developed a practical lamp using a high-resistance carbon filament in an evacuated glass bulb. A high-resistance filament allowed multiple lamps to operate in parallel, making electric lighting more suitable for a distribution system than earlier experimental designs.
The patent did not mean Edison had invented every form of incandescent lamp from scratch. Other inventors had demonstrated electric incandescent lighting earlier, and Joseph Swan pursued related work in Britain. Edison's achievement was a commercially practical lamp system combining the bulb, filament, wiring, generators, and central-station infrastructure.
Patent 223,898 is therefore associated specifically with Edison's improvement of the electric lamp, not with the later development of modern LED lighting.