Incandescent light bulb street in the world to be lit by an incandescent lightbulb was Mosley Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. It was lit by Joseph Swan's incandescent lamp on 3 February 1879. Thomas Edison began serious research into developing a practical incandescent lamp in 1878. Edison filed his first patent application for "Improvement In Electric Lights" on 14 October 1878. After many experiments, first with carbon in the early 1880s and then with platinum and other metals, in the end Edison returned to a carbon filament. The first successful test was on 22 October 1879, and lasted 13.5 hours. Edison continued
Edison screw screws were the only standard connector, and appliances other than light bulbs were connected to AC power via lamp sockets. Today Edison screw sockets comply with international standards. Early US incandescent lamp manufacturers used several different and incompatible bases. The Thomson-Houston Electric Company used a threaded stud at the bottom of the socket, and a flat contact ring. The Sawyer-Mann or Westinghouse base used a spring clip acting on grooves in the bulb base, and a contact stud at the bottom of the lamp. By about 1908, the Edison base was most common in the US, with the others falling