In six weeks he had gone through the books, written a volume of abstracts, and made two thousand experiments ... and produced a solution.Johnson later was a prominent supporter of Edison, helping him establish his "invention factory" in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

[2] In 1883, Johnson is also credited with recruiting into Edison's organization naval officer Frank J. Sprague, whom he met at an international electrical exposition.

The story was reported in the Detroit Post and Tribune by a writer named William Augustus Croffut, who called it "a superb exhibition" and noted that "the fantastic tree itself with its starry fruit were kept going by the slight electric current brought from the main office on a filmy wire.

"[5][6] Another description of the tree appeared the following month in Electrical World, which noted that it was located in Johnson's parlor at 56 West 12th Street in Greenwich Village.

[7][8] In December 1883, Johnson decorated a 45-foot-high (14 m) revolving Christmas tree with 225 red, white and blue electric light bulbs that was displayed at the Foreign Exhibition in Boston.

The first commercially produced Christmas tree lamps were manufactured in strings of nine sockets by the Edison General Electric Company of Harrison, New Jersey and advertised in the December 1901 issue of the Ladies' Home Journal.