Fascinating Facts about Light Bulbs
Some of the earliest lighting fixtures were candles, oil lanterns, and gas
lamps. From this history came the invention of the light bulb.
The concept of the light bulb began in 1809. Below we will take you through time
to look at the history and development of this modern day necessity.
1809 – Electric luminosity was invented by English scientist Sir Humphrey Davy.
The first glowing lamp consisted of a battery connected to two wires with
charcoal strips on the ends.
1820 – Scientist Warren De la passed electric energy through a platinum coil in
an evacuation tube to create a lamp.
1835 – A prototype light bulb was presented by James Bowman Lindsay. Later his
invention was improved upon by Edward Shepard who invented the incandescent arc
lamp in 1850. This new innovation made use of a charcoal filament.
1854 - Henricg Globel, a German watchmaker, introduced what was probably the
first true light bulb. He placed a bamboo strand within a flute bulb in order to
produce this new light bulb. A tighter tube was introduced by Herman Sprengel in
1875 who added a mercury vacuum pump.
1878 – 1880 – This was a time of dramatic improvements to the light bulb. For
example Sir Joseph Wilson created a longer lasting light bulb in 1878. In 1880
Edison used a bamboo derived filament which enabled the light bulb to last for
1200 hours.
1906 – General Electric patented the procedure for making tungsten strand
filaments to use with light bulbs.
The history of the light bulb continues to open up before us. In 1921 we saw the
first frosted light bulbs introduced and in 1991 a light bulb that lasted 60,000
hours was introduced by Philips. |
