In February of this year a book titled
Die G?bel-Legende, Der Kampf um die Erfindung der Gl?hlampe (The Goebel Legend, The Struggle for the Invention of the Incandescent Lamp) will be available. The author is Dr. Hans-Christian Rohde, a resident of Springe, Germany. The price will be 29.80 Euro. The paperback book has 248 pages and is a thoroughly researched work.
The abstract follows:
"In Germany, Heinrich G?bel, born in 1818 in the town of Springe near Hanover, is seen as the first inventor of an electric incandescent light fit for practical use. It is said that G?bel, a German immigrant to New York City, constructed a carbon filament lamp - similar to the one described in Thomas A. Edison's famous patent of 1880 - as early as 1854. But allegedly the work of Heinrich G?bel (or Henry Goebel, as he called himself in America) had been overlooked by commerce and science. According to German encyclopedias, it was just a few months before his death in 1893 that a court of appeals recognized the priority of G?bel's invention. This story is being reviewed and examined here. It can be shown that the wide spread German notion of the origins of the incandescent lamp is wrong. No court ever accepted Goebel's allegation. A thorough review of all affidavits in related suits available for inspection in U. S. archives confirms that Goebel's story is not tenable; it was fraudulent. In 1882, Goebel had already used his pretension for reasons of advertisement for his own business. In 1893, three companies that were producing incandescent lamps without license tried to use Goebel's story to defend preliminary injunctions brought against them by the Edison Electric Light Company. In one case, a judge refused the preliminary injunction asked for, but this fact does not prove the truth of Goebel's story. In Germany, however, reports on those suits in American technical papers were misunderstood, and in the 1920s the legend arose that Heinrich G?bel, a man of true German spirit and blood, was the real inventor of the incandescent lamp. The story was particularly popular during the years of the Nazi regime, but it was retold and believed up to the beginning of the 21st century."
For a link to the publisher's page click on:
http://dan4u.de/zuklampen/bookdetails.php4?wkid=1136738671&id=1165578179&usess=&qx=
