In 1882 Edison helped form the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York, which brought electric light to parts of Manhattan. But progress was slow. Most Americans still lit their homes with gas light and candles for another fifty years. Only in 1925 did half of all homes in the U.S. have electric power.

When was the electric light widely used?

Efforts by Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison led to commercial incandescent light bulbs becoming widely available in the 1880s, and by the early twentieth century these had completely replaced arc lamps.

When did homes start having electricity?

The small NSW town of Tamworth, with a population of around 3000, was the first place in Australia to supply electricity to the public at large. Tamworth switched on arc and incandescent street lighting on the 9th of November 1888.