Dear
Friends and Students
Can you imagine life without Light
Bulb? Helped us to bring social order after Sunset right? Helped us to extend
the workday in the night right? Without a light bulb there is no night life!
Well, while we enjoy these fruits,
we should know the history of these great inventors, remember and appreciate
them and learn a few business lessons.
We all give credit to Thomas Alva
Edison as an inventor of the bulb! Partly right in the traditional sense but it
is not true. There were around 20+ inventors before Edison invented the version
in 1879! Edison’s version is more practical, economically viable, high
resistance, an effective incandescent (emitting light as a result of being
heated.) material! Hence so much credit offered to his version.
In 1802, Humphry Davy invented the
first electric light. On July 24, 1874 a Canadian patent was filed by a
Toronto medical electrician named Henry Woodward and a colleague Mathew Evans.
They built their lamps with different sizes and shapes of carbon rods held
between electrodes in glass cylinders filled with nitrogen. Woodward and Evans
attempted to commercialize their lamp, but were unsuccessful. They eventually
sold their patent to Edison in 1879 (bulbs.com)
Edison filed his first patent
application for "Improvement in Electric Lights". However, he
continued to test several types of material for metal filaments and further a
few more. It was the beginning of the commercially manufactured light bulbs and
in 1880, Thomas Edison’s company, Edison Electric Light Company began marketing
its new product.
Having said that, the bubble
industry continues to be innovating! Incandescent bulbs are not energy
efficient, only 10% of electrical power supplied to the bulb is converted into
visible light. Hence a lot of emphasis is made on compact fluorescent lamps and
LED lamps .Let us look at the importance and magnitude of the usage! There are
around 5.6 billion light bulbs in the U.S! Manufacturers sell approximately 2.5
billion light bulbs every year!! How could an idea make a whopping market?
Lessons Learned in my Life! How I
lost my Idea for not patenting at the right time?
In 2012, myself along with a few
students conceptualized, “Toothbrush with replaceable/Plug and Play bristle
head using Herbal and Green material”!
We called it the HG (Herbal Green)
Brush. Herbal Way- It is made of herbal teeth cleaning twigs like Neem, banyan
& Miswak (toothbrush tree) etc. Like plug & Play razor, bristles are
made as plug & play so that we can reuse the rest of the brush body; Handle
is made of Bamboo/any other similar green available product. It reduces the
huge amount of plastic usage. Bristles can be made from Neem, Miswak, Baniyan,
Salvadora persica, Dakhaar, Gum tree, Tea Tree, Gouania lupuloides, Cinnamon,
Dogwood etc.
You may check the pictures of my
idea at: https://i2itm.blogspot.com/2022/01/hg-herbal-green-brush-toothbrush-with.html
What Happened? I can see a lot of
patents filed in this area after 2012. We missed filing this patent in 2012.
Exactly 10 years later, we lost it. When you have great ideas, patent them
quickly and commercialize them ASAP.
Having great ideas is not an asset!
Commercializing them quickly is part of business. Great Lessons Learned in my
professional life!!
Patent Your Ideas and Power Your
Business!!!
Your
Well-wisher
Ravi
Saripalle
Join
Inspire to Innovate Storytelling Movement (i2itm.blogspot.com)
