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History of the Christmas Lights Patent
Before electricity was invented, families would use candles to illuminate their Christmas trees. Unsurprisingly, this tradition led to many home fires.
In 1880, Thomas Edison created the first strand of electric lights which he strung outside of his Menlo Park lab during Christmas.
Soon after, Edward H. Johnson put the very first string of electric Christmas tree lights together in 1882 at his NYC apartment. Johnson, Edison’s friend and partner in the Edison Illumination Company, hand-wired 80 red, white, and blue light bulbs and wrapped them around his Christmas tree. At the time, there was a great mistrust of electricity, so it took many years before Christmas tree lights became commonplace.
In 1895, President Hoover adorned the White House’s Christmas tree with lights, growing the practice’s popularity. A decade later, General Electric began to offer pre-assembled Christmas tree light kits, which made them far more accessible to the common consumer. Previously, wealthy families would pay over $2k in today’s dollars for hand wired lights. The cost of Christmas tree light kits has only come down over time, making them accessible to almost every family today, and cementing the tradition.
Right before President Hoover put Christmas lights on his White House tree, Henry Diek of Baltimore, Maryland was granted a patent in 1892 for a Christmas tree light design. Diek’s patent consisted of an illumination system that relied on gas and burners, similar to a contained kitchen stove. This system sounds even more dangerous than candles, so it's unsurprising that the patent expired without contest in 1909.