probably not.

No it is not.

1) This story is found in various places, but it could be more of a legend. We are not just talking about lighting a bulb here, but about making: - a working design for a light bulb - an efficient design "the light bulb was invented in 1879 by Thomas edison. it took him 1000 time to make the lightbulb. He said he didn't fail 1000 times, he found 999 ways not to make a light bulb." Source and further information: http://kvanhart.blogspot.com/2009/02/incandescent-light-bulb.html Further information: http://books.google.com/books?id=Q5vkF4Z93FUC&pg=PA207&lpg=PA207&dq=Thomas+Edison+999+tries+to+light+a+bulb&source=bl&ots=u7tjJN2gmz&sig=iGcKT8HZhuyYysJ-k_DLqVk1fPc&hl=en&ei=bxMUSuXtO4uJ_Qbq2ZmuDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5 See also those quotes: "An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots. - Charles Kettering" "Thomas Edison viewed each setback he encountered in making a light bulb simply as another way NOT to make a light bulb." (not sourced) http://home.netcom.com/~spritex/fai_fr.html 2) "Edison Electric Light Company In the period from 1878 to 1880 Edison and his associates worked on at least three thousand different theories to develop an efficient incandescent lamp. Edison’s lamp would consist of a filament housed in a glass vacuum bulb. He had his own glass blowing shed where the fragile bulbs were carefully crafted for his experiments. Edison was trying to come up with a high resistance system that would require far less electrical power than was used for the arc lamps. This could eventually mean small electric lights suitable for home use. By January 1879, at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison had built his first high resistance, incandescent electric light. It worked by passing electricity through a thin platinum filament in the glass vacuum bulb, which delayed the filament from melting. Still, the lamp only burned for a few short hours. In order to improve the bulb, Edison needed all the persistence he had learned years before in his basement laboratory. He tested thousands and thousands of other materials to use for the filament. He even thought about using tungsten, which is the metal used for light bulb filaments now, but he couldn’t work with it given the tools available at that time. He tested the carbonized filaments of every plant imaginable, including bay wood, boxwood, hickory, cedar, flax, and bamboo. He even contacted biologists who sent him plant fibers from places in the tropics. Edison acknowledged that the work was tedious and very demanding, especially on his workers helping with the experiments. He always recognized the importance of hard work and determination. "Before I got through," he recalled, "I tested no fewer than 6,000 vegetable growths, and ransacked the world for the most suitable filament material." Edison decided to try a carbonized cotton thread filament. When voltage was applied to the completed bulb, it began to radiate a soft orange glow. Just about fifteen hours later, the filament finally burned out. Further experimentation produced filaments that could burn longer and longer with each test. By the end of 1880, he had produced a 16-watt bulb that could last for 1500 hours and he began to market his new invention." Source and further information: http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/lightbulb.htm 3) "During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple. I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem. ... I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory. My chief difficulty was in constructing the carbon filament. . . . Every quarter of the globe was ransacked by my agents, and all sorts of the queerest materials used, until finally the shred of bamboo, now utilized by us, was settled upon. On his years of research in developing the electric light bulb, as quoted in "Talks with Edison" by George Parsons Lathrop in Harpers magazine, Vol. 80 (February 1890), p. 425" Source and further information: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison Further information: - "How many tries did it take before thomas edison invented the light bulb?": http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060727064909AA1jIxK - "How many times did Thomas Edison fail doing his inventions?": http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090218050711AAw6KhA