The world was Thomas Edison’s oyster: he had only to choose which new great invention to work on next. He began working with Alexander Bell in sound transmission, and came to realize he could create a mechanism for recording and replaying sound. But he put aside his work on phonographs to work on electric light: attempting to create not only a practical incandescent light bulb, but a large scale city infrastructure.

On this day, October 15, in 1878, to help finance his discovery work, Thomas Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City, backed by the top financiers of the day, including J. P. Morgan and several members of the Vanderbilt family.

From a small test run of 400 street lamps on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, Thomas Edison’s companies would go on to power hundreds of thousands of homes. Twelve years after, Edison Electric would merge with several other Thomas Edison-created companies to create Edison General Electric Company, the predecessor of General Electric.