In 1878 Edison began working on a system of electrical illumination, something he hoped could compete with gas and oil based lighting.[45] He began by tackling the problem of creating a long lasting incandescent lamp, something that would be needed for indoor use. Many earlier inventors had previously devised incandescent lamps, including Alessandro Volta's demonstration of a glowing wire in 1800 and inventions by Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans. Others who developed early and commercially impractical incandescent electric lamps included Humphry Davy, James Bowman Lindsay, Moses G. Farmer,[46] William E. Sawyer, Joseph Swan and Heinrich Göbel. Some of these early bulbs had such flaws as an extremely short life, high expense to produce, and high electric current drawn, making them difficult to apply on a large scale commercially.[47]:217–218 Edison realized that in order to keep the thickness of the copper wire needed to connect a series of electric lights to an economically manageable size he would have to come up with a lamp that would draw a low amount of current. This meant the lamp would have to have a high resistance and run at a relatively low voltage (around 110 volts).[48]