1809 -Humphry
Davy, an English chemist, invented the first electric light. Davy connected
two wires to a battery and attached a charcoal strip betwween the other
ends of the wires. The charged carbon glowed making the first arc lamp.
1820 - Warren De la Rue enclosed
a platinum coil in an evacuated tube and passed an electric current through
it. His lamp design was worked but the cost of the precious metal platinum
made this an impossible invention for wide-spread use.
1835 - James
Bowman Lindsay demonstrated constant electric lighting system using
a prototype lightbulb.
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.
1854 - Henricg Globel, a
German watchmaker, invented the first true lightbulb. He used a carbonized
bamboo filament placed inside a glass bulb.
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.
1875 - Henry
Woodward and Matthew Evans patented a lightbulb.
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.
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.)
1880 - Edison continued to
improved his lightbulb until it could last for over 1200 hours using a
bamboo-derived filament.
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).
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.
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.
1925 - The first frosted
lightbulbs were produced.
1991 - Philips invented a
lightbulb that lasts 60,000 hours. The bulb uses magnetic induction.
Parts
of a Lightbulb
