Yes, when I was in school Edison was given lots of credit for his inventions. Seems today though, they try to discredit him and say that he claimed credit for other people's inventions. I wasn't alive back then and didn't know him, so I can't say one way or the other.
It's a neat item. I remember our school having one of those in the Physics laboratory.
Regarding the credit for the electric light bulb, It’s one of those questions which doesn’t have an answer that satisfies everyone since it depends a great deal on how you phrase the question. One thing for sure is that Edison did not ‘
invent’ the electric light bulb (if you phrase the question that way). A number of others demonstrated the principle with working prototypes long before Edison’s experimentation: some patented and some not; some commercialised (in a limited way) and some not; some with limitations on longevity and some outlasting Edison’s first attempt.
Most of Edison’s patents relating to the light bulb were
improvement patents, i.e. refinements to existing technologies; notably those developed by Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans in Canada, William Sawyer in the US, and Joseph Swan in Britain. In 1883, the United States Patent Office ruled that Edison's patents were based on the prior art of William Sawyer and were invalid. After six years of litigation, only Edison’s improvement patent for “a filament of carbon of high resistance” was reinstated.
In fact, most of Edison’s patents had been granted to his employee Lewis Latimer (the actual ‘inventor’) and assigned to Edison’s company.
It would be fair to say that Edison’s company was the first to
successfully commercialise the electric light bulb but not to credit Edison as the inventor.
