First electric lamp. The first commercially available electric lamp with a light bulb. It was designed by the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) and patented in 1900. Edison's design consisted of a carbonised bamboo filament contained in a vacuum within a sealed glass bulb. By passing an electric current through it, he could heat the filament until it glowed brightly. Edison had invested $50,000 and a year of his time conducting 6000 trials whilst researching a practical light bulb.