Here we see a significant leap away from Edison's lighting concepts, which Nikola Tesla knew all too well after working there 2 years before this patent was taken out. Nothing in Edison's lab was even close to this. Most likely the idea had been presented to him, and he refused to look at it. Here, Nikola Tesla uses electromagnetism as an essential element of lighting. All other lights before this one relied on wasteful processes that generated more heat than light. This looks a lot like later carbon-arc lamps used in movie theater projectors.