stylistic:tone
History

Historians Robert Friedel and Paul Israel list inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison of General Electric. They conclude that Edison's version was the first practical implementation, able to outstrip the others because of a combination of four factors: an effective incandescent material; a vacuum higher than other implementations which was achieved through the use of a Sprengel pump; a high resistance that made power distribution from a centralized source economically viable, and the development of the associated components required for a large-scale lighting system.

Historian Thomas Hughes has attributed Edison's success to his development of an entire, integrated system of electric lighting.

The lamp was a small component in his system of electric lighting, and no more critical to its effective functioning than the Edison Jumbo generator, the Edison main and feeder, and the parallel-distribution system. Other inventors with generators and incandescent lamps, and with comparable ingenuity and excellence, have long been forgotten because their creators did not preside over their introduction in a system of lighting.