The light we made,
lost, and made again.
America did not invent the light bulb. It figured out how to manufacture it at scale and light the whole world. This is how the lighting industry developed, how it left the USA, and how it came home.
Humans chased the dark for half a million years — fire, oil, gas, arc. The bulb itself was not an American idea. But America learned to manufacture that light at scale, and lit the world. What happened to that industry, and where it stands today, is a story worth telling straight.
Before the Bulb
For most of human history, the night was held back by flame.
Fire, the first light
The first light people controlled was a burning one. For hundreds of thousands of years, fire was how humans pushed back the dark.
Oil, tallow, and wax
Clay oil lamps and candles of tallow and beeswax carried the night for thousands of years. Light was a small, flickering, hand-made thing.
The first electric light
Humphry Davy runs current through a strip of material and produces the electric arc lamp. Bright, but far too harsh and hungry for a home.
America Makes the Light
In one generation, the United States turned a laboratory curiosity into an industry that lit the world.
Edison makes it a product
The idea of incandescent light was decades old. At Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison and his team build the first bulb practical enough to manufacture, sell, and put in every home. Rivals like Hiram Maxim and Sawyer-Man were chasing the same prize.
American bulb-making is born
The Edison Lamp Works begins manufacturing bulbs, soon moving to Harrison, New Jersey. For the first time, light itself rolls off an American production line.
General Electric is formed
Edison General Electric merges with Thomson-Houston of Massachusetts to create General Electric, which will dominate American lighting for a century.
The bulb that never went out
In Shelby, Ohio, Adolphe Chaillet’s Shelby Electric Company builds a carbon-filament bulb so good it refuses to die. One lit in a Livermore, California firehouse in 1901 is still burning today — recognized as the oldest working light bulb on earth. Around 1903 the company is absorbed into the National Electric Lamp Association; a 1911 antitrust case exposes it as secretly about 75% owned by GE. America could build a bulb that lasts a lifetime. What happened next was a choice.
A third giant begins
Frank Poor starts refilling burned-out bulbs in Salem, Massachusetts. That small shop grows into Sylvania. Westinghouse is already in the business too. America now has its lighting titans.
The world's first research park
GE opens Nela Park in Ohio, the first industrial research campus on earth. American lighting does not just lead in volume. It leads in invention.
The golden age
At Nela Park, Marvin Pipkin invents the frosted-inside bulb. GE, Westinghouse, Sylvania, and hundreds of smaller makers light American homes with American-made bulbs.
The Bargain
At its height, the industry made a quiet decision that still shapes how we think about a light bulb.
Built to burn out
The Phoebus cartel — the great lighting companies acting together, GE through its international arm alongside Europe's Philips and Osram — fixes prices and caps bulb life at 1,000 hours, down from 2,500. Bulbs are deliberately engineered to fail so you buy more.
The court weighs in
A U.S. court finds GE violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, ruling that profit was the main reason behind how long a bulb was built to last.
An energy efficient idea, invented here
GE engineer Ed Hammer invents the spiral compact fluorescent bulb. The technology that will help end the incandescent era is, itself, American.
The Lights Go Out
Over three decades, the industry America built quietly left the country.
The work moves offshore
Bulb production shifts to lower-wage countries. Factory by factory, the making of light leaves the United States.
Westinghouse sold to Philips
Westinghouse sells its lamp division to North American Philips, the Dutch electronics giant. One of the founding names of American lighting is now foreign-owned.
Sylvania passes overseas
GTE sells Sylvania's lighting business to Germany's Osram. The last of the big American-owned lampmakers, apart from GE, is now foreign-owned.
The law that ended the incandescent
The Energy Independence and Security Act sets efficiency standards the ordinary incandescent cannot meet, phasing it out between 2012 and 2014.
A giant plant goes dark
GE closes its Winchester, Virginia factory, a major U.S. incandescent plant opened in 1975. About 200 people lose their jobs. The efficient bulbs meant to replace theirs are made in China.
The supply chain thins
Sylvania's Wellsboro, Pennsylvania glass plant closes, and GE drops the twisty CFL to go all-LED. Piece by piece, what is left of American bulb-making keeps disappearing.
The Edison name leaves GE
GE sells its lighting business, the direct descendant of Edison's own lamp company, to Savant Systems. After roughly 130 years, GE is out of the business it started.
The last GE bulbs, made in Ohio
GE Lighting, now a Savant company, closes its Bucyrus and Logan, Ohio plants. Bucyrus had made light bulbs for 80 years. About 175 people lose their jobs, and GE's American light-bulb manufacturing comes to an end.
Nothing left
On August 1, federal standards end the sale of the last ordinary incandescents. The country that taught the world to manufacture the light bulb no longer makes an everyday one at all. Nothing left.
The lights came back on.
On June 10, 2026, GoodBulb made its first bulb. On July 4 — America's 250th birthday — the first American-made LED A19 was sold, around 8 in the morning.
America's gift was never inventing the bulb. It was learning to manufacture it for the whole world. GoodBulb has done that again — this time through automation, the engine of the next industrial revolution.
One family-owned factory in North Dakota is the only LED light bulb factory in America. A second line is coming.
Made in America with domestic and imported components.
Bringing the everyday bulb home wasn’t for lack of trying by the giants. GE sank tens of millions into U.S. lighting and still sent the work overseas. Sylvania assembled LED bulbs in Pennsylvania and Kentucky — then closed both U.S. plants in 2019. Cree built LED lighting in Wisconsin with federal support — and shut it down. Lighting Science Group staffed a Florida plant with hundreds of workers chasing the government’s L Prize — and folded. Billions of dollars, armies of engineers, government funding — and the everyday American bulb still never stayed.
We didn’t copy the overseas assembly line — we invented a new, automated way to build a bulb from the ground up. Today we are a team of twelve and growing, running the only LED A19 factory in America. Five people did what GE, Sylvania, Cree, and Lighting Science couldn’t. Let that sink in.
Sources & Notes
There is no single registry of every company that ever made a light bulb in America; this timeline draws on many sources, and some figures are approximate. Dates reflect the best available public record.
U.S. Department of Energy · Wikipedia (GE Lighting, Nela Park, Phoebus Cartel, Sylvania, Westinghouse Lamp Plant, U.S. Lighting Energy Policy) · Marketplace · Richland Source.