Did Edison Accidentally Create a Vital Superconductor?

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WWhile Thomas Edison was working on one of his greatest achievements, he may have accidentally produced a substance that would not be isolated for a century, and it is currently in high demand.

In 1879, Edison introduced the invention most remembered today: the light bulb, the world’s first practical electric incandescent lamp. This was a revolutionary breakthrough, allowing people to safely light their homes. In this design, electricity flows through a thin filament in a glass vacuum bulb that becomes hot enough to glow. Edison wanted to make the filament from tungsten, but it was not yet possible to make tungsten filaments.

Edison ended up testing filaments made from carbonized plant material: these are organic substances that have been heated in the absence of air, which breaks them down and creates a carbon-filled residue. He tried all kinds of plants, including saw palmetto and hemp, before settling on Japanese bamboo. This filament was capable of lighting for over 1,200 hours before turning off.

“Before I succeeded, I tested no fewer than 6,000 plant cultures and traveled the world in search of the most suitable filament material,” Edison explained of his groundbreaking experiments.

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Edison’s breakthrough not only brought electricity into homes, but it may also have produced graphene, an extremely strong and flexible substance that is only one atom thick. It can serve as a powerful form of semiconductor, vital for technologies ranging from MRI machines to computer chips. Graphene could indeed play a key role in the technology of the future. Modern researchers hope to develop it further to make fast-charging fuel cells that can power electric vehicles, for example, and in systems that deliver drugs into the body. But producing graphene remains a challenge.

When he was a graduate student at Rice University, nanomaterials researcher Lucas Eddy wanted to understand how to create graphene with easily accessible and affordable materials. One type of graphene can be created by rapidly heating carbon-based materials to more than 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, a technique known as Joule flash heating. He had a flash of inspiration when he remembered that early light bulbs typically incorporated carbon-based filaments. And he knew that Edison’s first light bulbs reached the ideal temperature threshold for graphene production.

Eddy tried to find Edison-style bulbs with carbon filaments, but several of them were actually made with tungsten. “You cannot fool a chemist,” he explained in a press release.

He finally found the right bulbs in a small art store in New York, which even offered the same type of Japanese bamboo filaments.

Imitating Edison’s experimental setup, Eddy connected the bulb to a 110-volt direct current electricity source. He let it flow for 20 seconds, because longer heating periods can form graphite, a much thicker form of carbon, instead of graphene.

By shining lasers onto the filament, Eddy and his colleagues confirmed that they had concocted a form of graphene, a discovery reported in the journal ACS Nano.

It’s hard to say whether Edison knew his experiment produced graphene, and in his 1879 demonstration the light bulb burned for more than 13 hours, enough time for the resulting graphene to turn into graphite.

Researchers didn’t even theorize the existence of graphene until 1947, and in 2004 they successfully extracted layers of graphene from graphite – a groundbreaking experiment that began with duct tape. This innovation earned researchers Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010.

This recent discovery raises the question: what other secrets could have emerged during historical experiments like Edison’s?

“Replicating what Thomas Edison did, with the tools and knowledge we have now, is very exciting,” said paper co-author James Tour, a synthetic chemist and nanotechnologist at Rice University. “What questions would our scientific ancestors ask if they could join us in the laboratory today? What questions can we answer when we revisit their work from a modern perspective?”

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Main image: Wondermilkycolor / Shutterstock

• Molly Glick

  Published on January 26, 2026

  Molly Glick is the newsletter editor of Nautilus.