Edison helped to perfect the lightbulb, but he wasn't the first person who ever came up with the idea. Other people had essentially created lightbulbs that worked the same way, but nobody else had been able to create a filament that lasted for longer than an hour or two before burning out. Even the final version he ultimately patented probably wasn't his invention alone – he ran a big laboratory staffed by scores of technicians. Though Edison ended up getting most of the credit, the filament-perfecter was likely one (or a couple) of his paid employees, not Edison himself.