Historical information
The first electric holiday tree lights were made in 1882
by Edward Johnson, an employee of Thomas Edison.
Johnson wanted a safer way than candles to decorate
his tree. The idea was slow to catch on and it was not
until after 1895 when President Cleveland had electric lights on the White House family tree that holiday lights became popular with the public. The first
lights were extremely expensive and only the wealthy
could afford them. Around 1950, the miniature lights
that were the precursors to our modern lights were
introduced in Italy (Nelson 2008). These lights were
small and connected in series so that they were cooler
and less expensive to operate than the larger parallel