Carry a light with you wherever you go with this 1879 light bulb patent application, printed on our Edison Electric Lamp Patent Application T-Shirt. Maintaining the integrity of the original patent document by Thomas Edison, it has been restored and digitally enhanced.

"Be it known that I, Thomas Alva Edison, of Menlo Park, in the State of New Jersey, United States of America, have invented an Improvement in Electric Lamps, and in the method of manufacturing the same of which the following is a specification. . . . The object of this invention is to produce electric lamps giving light by incandescence, which lamps shall have high resistance, so as to allow of the practical subdivision of the electric light."--Thomas Alva Edison. Filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office November 4, 1879.

The patent act of 1790 established the rules for submitting a patent application. Each application had to be submitted with specifications, a patent drawing, and if possible a model of the invention. Eventually, models were no longer required.

The National Archives holds nearly three million patent case files from 1836-1956.