subject: The History of Light Bulbs [print this page] Author: Art Icklewright Author: Art Icklewright
The light bulb or lamp is an invention with many claims, experiments and improvements based around it from many different people all over the world since its first appearance in the 1800s. Thomas Edison is popularly credited with the invention of the electric light in 1879, but in fact he wasnt the first to produce a working electric light. The advantage of his work over previous work by other inventors and engineers was that he was able to create a whole working lighting system as well as his incandescent bulbs, which was a lot more commercially viable and likely to work in reality. Right back as far as 1802, Humphrey Davey (creator of the Davey Lamp or Arc Lamp) invented an incandescent light using electric current. Further working electric lights were produced by James Brown Lindsay (1835) and Warren de la Rue (1840) using e.g. platinum wires to produce the light, until the first incandescent lamp patent was granted to Englishman Frederick de Moleyns in 1841. Further variations on the theme prior to Edisons system were produced using carbon based filaments e.g. John W. Starr and Henry Woodward. Even in the same year that Edison was credited with the invention, Jospeh Wilson Swan demonstrated a working electric lamp at a meeting for the Newcastle Chemical Society. After Edisons system was popularly recognised there were further incremental changes and improvements. The first commercial metal filament incandescent lamps were produced by Carl Auer von Welsbach in 1898, and in the early 1900s Tungsten filaments were developed by Sandor Just (1903) and GEC (1906). Between 1913 and 1930 inert gases were used such as Krypton to increase the efficacy and to try and prevent blackening of the inside of the bulb. New EU regulations now mean that the days of the traditional incandescent bulb are numbered in favour of low energy / energy saving light bulbs see my post on low energy light bulbs.About the Author:
