(RightWing.org) – Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden is well known for his rambling speeches and frequent gaffes. Even so, his comments in Kenosha, WI, on Thursday, September 3, must have raised a few eyebrows.
While talking about how history is taught in schools, Biden made the bizarre claim that “A black man invented the light bulb, not a White guy named Edison.”
Joe Biden: "Why in God's name don't we teach history in history classes? A Black man invented the lightbulb. Not a white guy named Edison." pic.twitter.com/KLcr5OUGY9
— The Hill (@thehill) September 4, 2020
In fact, Thomas Alva Edison didn’t “invent” the light bulb. The basic idea was first tested in 1761 by a pastor from Philadelphia, PA. Sir Humphrey Davy, an Englishman, demonstrated a working electric light in 1802, and James Bowman Lindsay, a Scotsman, showed an improved one in 1835. What Edison did in 1879 was file the first US patent for a practical light bulb, based on his own research and the work of Sir Joseph Swan, an English physicist.
Edison and all his predecessors were white. This isn’t important, of course; light bulbs would be no more or less useful if they’d been developed by a black man. But they weren’t – so why is Joe Biden telling people they were?
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