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The first candles were glued with wax or pinned to the end of the tree branches. Little lanterns and small candleholders then appeared to make putting up the tapers easier. Candleholders with clips appeared around 1890. Glass balls and lanterns were created between 1902 and 1914.
The first time a Christmas tree was lit by electricity was in 1882 in New York. Edward Johnson, a colleague of Thomas Edison, lit a Christmas tree with a string of 80 small electric light bulbs. He hand-wired 80 red, white and blue bulbs and wound them around a rotating evergreen tree. No one noticed until 1895, when Grover Cleveland commissioned a White House tree lighted with Edison bulbs.
The person responsible for popularizing Christmas tree lighting is Albert Sadacca. Albert Sadacca was 15 when a terrible fire engulfed a part of New York City in 1917. The cause of the fire: a Christmas tree. In those days, candles placed on their branches lighted the highly flammable trees.
It so happened that Sadacca's family, who had come from Spain, had a novelty business selling wicker cages that housed imitation birds that lit up. The boy suggested to his parents that they begin making electric lights for Christmas trees. They had lots of bulbs on hand, and it would be much safer than using candles. The boy's family agreed that it was a good idea. But in that first year, the business sold only 100 strings of electric Christmas tree lights. The boy then began painting the bulbs red, green, and other colors instead of using plain glass. Business picked up sharply, and Albert Sadacca became the head of a multi-million dollar company.
Once begun, the American custom, spread wherever electricity came to towns and the countryside. Because of the risk of fire, trees with candles were not usually put up until December 24. This technical innovation of electric lights altered the custom since it was now possible to put the tree up earlier and leave it up longer, until the day before Epiphany.
The company started by Albert Sadacca and his two brothers, Henri and Leon was NOMA Electric Company the largest Christmas lighting company in the world for all of the years of its operation prior to 1965.
Other Links About Christmas Tree Lights:
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/story036.htm
http://people.howstuffworks.com/christmas-lights.htm
http://german.about.com/cs/culture/a/cmaslt.htm 2005-12-25
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Sunday, December 25, 2005 9:46 PM