Did alexander graham bell invent the lightbulb?

It is a little-known fact that Alexander Graham Bell, best known for his invention of the telephone, also played a key role in the development of the electric lightbulb. While Bell is not credited with inventing the lightbulb, his work was instrumental in bringing the invention to fruition. Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, was a professor of elocution, and his mother, Eliza Grace, was a hearing-impaired daughter of a wealthy family. The younger Bell showed an early interest in his father's work, and also in music and mechanics. In 1867, Bell moved to London to study at University College London. While there, he worked with his father on research into visible speech, a system of symbols that could be used to teach deaf people to communicate. In 1876, Bell moved to Boston, where he opened a school for the deaf. It was there that he met Thomas Edison, who was working on developing a practical electric light. Edison had invented the carbon-filament lightbulb, but it was not yet commercially viable. Bell and Edison became friends, and Bell began working on ways to improve the lightbulb. He experimented with different materials for the filament, and eventually settled on carbonized bamboo. This new filament was much more durable than Edison's original carbon filaments, and it was also cheaper to produce. With the help of his funding from the Bell Telephone Company, Bell set up a laboratory in Washington, D.C., and continued his work on the lightbulb. In 1879, he was awarded a patent for his improvements to the lightbulb. While Edison is usually credited with inventing the lightbulb, it was actually Bell's work that made the invention commercially viable. Without Bell's work on the filament, the lightbulb would not have been able to be mass-produced, and it would not have become the ubiquitous household item that it is today.