In the 1870s, an inventor named Thomas Alva Edison of Menlo Park, the state of New Jersey, United States, began participating in the effort to design incandescent lamps. By using platinum elements, Edison earned his first patent in April 1879. This design is relatively impractical but Edison is still trying to find other elements that can be heated economically and efficiently. In the same year, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan also created an incandescent lamp that can last for 13.5 hours. Most of the incandescent filament filaments that were created at that time broke up in such a short time that it was not commercially meaningful. To solve this problem, Edison again tried to use the carbon strands placed in a vacuum bulb until on October 19, 1879 he managed to turn on the lights that can last for 40 hours