The Curious Evolution Of Holiday Lights

In 1882, the look of the holiday season changed forever. Instead of decorating a Christmas tree with candles, Edward Johnson, inventor and vice president of Thomas Edison's electric company, strung 80 red, white and blue light bulbs on his scrawny evergreen. The whole thing rotated six times per minute on an electric crank.

More than a century later, those 80 bulbs have multiplied into hundreds of millions of tiny electric lights - perhaps billions - decorating homes. From those first simple strings of bulbs to computer-controlled LED light displays, here is the curious evolution of the holiday light bulb.