# The Edison Electric Light Company is organised in New York

Date: 1878

## The fact

On 16 October 1878 the Edison Electric Light Company was organised in New York to finance incandescent lighting and generation. It is a corporate instrument, not a lamp filament.

## Context

Gas lighting was the incumbent. Investors wanted a system: lamps, dynamos, meters, and a station. Later General Electric is a different 1892 Fact.

[Thomas Edison](/people/thomas-edison) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Edison Papers corporate chronologies and Britannica independently date the 1878 company.

Official or archival record: Thomas A. Edison Papers (https://edison.rutgers.edu/; Rutgers University).

## Significance

High confidence on the organisation date.

A company is not a kilowatt-hour series. Keep the lag.

## What is established and what is not

Established: 1878 Electric Light Company organised around Edison’s system. Not established: that household electrification was already complete, or that gas lighting vanished that year.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Thomas Edison: https://factrail.ai/people/thomas-edison

## Drivers

- Energy Security: https://factrail.ai/drivers/energy-security

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Edison
- https://edison.rutgers.edu/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/us-edison-light-company-1878