Electric Lighting Historical Timeline
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Timeline Begins |
Let There Be Electric Light! |
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1809 |
An English chemist named Humphry Davy was the first to invent an electric light. He achieved this by passing an electric current through a charcoal strip which then glowed. This made it the very first arc lamp in history. |
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1835 |
James Bowman Lindsay demonstrated constant electric lighting system using a prototype lightbulb. |
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1840 |
Warren De la Rue enclosed a platinum coil in an evacuated tube and passed an electric current through it. His lamp design worked but the cost of the precious metal platinum made this an impossible invention for wide-spread use. |
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1850 |
Edward Shepard invented an electrical incandescent arc lamp using a charcoal filament. Joseph Wilson Swan started working with carbonized paper filaments the same year. |
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1854 |
Henricg Globel, a German watchmaker, invented the first true lightbulb. He used a carbonized bamboo filament placed inside a glass bulb. |
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1856 |
1856, Heinrich Geissler possibly created the earliest ancestor of the fluorescent lamp when he managed to obtain a bluish glow from a gas that was sealed in a tube and was being excited with an induction coil. |
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1875 |
Herman Sprengel invented the mercury vacuum pump making it possible to develop a practical electric light bulb. Making a really good vacuum inside the bulb possible. Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans patented a lightbulb. |
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1878 |
Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914), an English physicist, was the first person to invent a practical and longer-lasting electic lightbulb (13.5 hours). Swan used a carbon fiber filament derived from cotton. |
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1879 |
Thomas Alva Edison invented a carbon filament that burned for forty hours. Edison placed his filament in an oxygenless bulb. (Edison evolved his designs for the lightbulb based on the 1875 patent he purchased from inventors, Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans and the patents of Sir Joesph Wilson Swan.) Charles F Brush of the United States invented the carbon arc street lamp. |
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1880 |
Edison continued to improve his lightbulb until it could last for over 1200 hours using a bamboo-derived filament. he then received the US patent for the incandescent lamp. |
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1893 |
Nikola Tesla displayed his fluorescent lamps at the 1893 World’s Fair, the World Colombian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. |
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1894 |
In 1894, D. McFarlane Moore created the Moore lamp. This was a commercial gas discharge lamps that was meant to compete with the incandescent light bulb created by his former employer Thomas Edison. |
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1901 |
Peter Cooper Hewitt patented the mercury vapor lamp in 1901. This was an arc lamp that used mercury vapor enclosed in glass bulb. Mercury vapor lamps were the forerunners to fluorescent lamps. High pressure arc lights use a small bulb of high pressure gas and include: mercury vapor lamps, high pressure sodium arc lamps, and metal halide arc lamps. |
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1903 |
Willis Whitnew invented a filament that would not make the inside of a lightbulb turn dark. It was a metal-coated carbon filament (a predecessor to the tungsten filament). |
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1906 |
The General Electric Company were the first to patent a method of making tungsten filaments for use in incandesent lightbulbs. The filaments were costly. |
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1910 |
William David Coolidge (1873-1975) invented an improved method of making tungsten filaments. The tungsten filament outlasted all other types of filaments and Coolidge made the costs practical. |
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1911 |
Georges Claude of France invented the neon lamp. |
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1915 |
Irving Langmuir invented an electric gas-filled tungsten lamp. This was an incandescent lamp that used tungsten rather than carbon or other metals as a filament inside the lightbulb and became the standard. Earlier lamps with carbon filaments were both inefficient and fragile and were soon replaced by tungsten filament lamps after their invention. |
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1925 |
The first frosted lightbulbs were produced. |
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1927 |
Friedrich Meyer, Hans pner, and Edmund Germer patented a fluorescent lamp. One difference between mercury vapor and fluorescent lamps is that fluorescent bulbs are coated on the inside to increase efficiency. At first beryllium was used as a coating however, beryllium was too toxic and was replaced with safer florescent chemicals. |
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1938 |
George Inman lead a group of General Electric scientists researching an improved and practical fluorescent lamp. Under pressure from many competing companies the team designed the first practical and viable fluorescent lamp that was first sold in 1938. It should be noted that General Electric bought the patent rights to Edmund Germer's earlier patent. |
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1959 |
Elmer Fridrich and Emmett Wiley patented a tungsten halogen lamp - an improved type of incandescent lamp. |
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1960 |
A better halogen light lamp was invented by General Electric engineer Fredrick Moby. Moby was granted U.S. Patent 3,243,634 for his tungsten halogen A-lamp that could fit into a standard lightbulb socket. |
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1962 |
General Electric patented an arc lamp called a "Multi Vapor Metal Halide" lamp. |
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Early 1970s |
General Electric research engineers invented improved ways to manufacture tungsten halogen lamps. |
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1991 |
Philips invented a lightbulb that lasts 60,000 hours. The bulb uses magnetic induction. |
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The Future |
Who knows What The Future Will Hold For Electric Lighting? |
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