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Who invented the electric light bulb?
Question
#44157. Asked by Hamlet.. (Feb 08 04 10:09 PM)
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gmackematix
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The tungsten filament was invented independently at about the same time by Joseph Swan in England and Thomas Alva Edison in America, 1878.
[Feb 08 04 10:33 PM] gmackematix writes:
I'm getting in a mess here.
I meant tungsten filament bulb and it turns out that both Edison and Swan were using carbon filament bulbs.
What is more, while Edison and Swan produced the first commercial incandescent lamps in October 1880 and early 1881 respectively, neither created the first practical electric lamp.
This was produced much earlier, in 1835, by a self-taught Scottish scientist called James Bowman Lindsay. Whether this lamp, which didn't have a filament, but provided enough light for him to write up his results by, counts as a bulb is debatable.
As with many inventions, this looks like a series of developments by several men rather than the invention of an individual genius.
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Hamlet.
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Edison did create the first practical light bulb in 1878.
However, the person I have named for the first electric light bulb creation is a Sir Humphrey Davy.
Davy was known for his work on electric arcs in the early 1800s, and his breakthrough discovery was the electric light. His light was created by passing electricity through a very thin piece of platinum wire. The light that Davy produced was by no means practical or even useful, but it did pave the way for others to create electric lamps.
 http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SCdavy.htm
And Gmax, I couldn't find any info on Joseph Swan, but I am by no means an expert on the subject. Please tells us more, perhaps he predates Davy.
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RickF
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Hamlet, I guess the reason that you have never heard of Joseph Swan is that he was not an American! He is credited with inventing the light bulb before Edison, but thought the idea so obvious he didn't bother to patent it. Edison, the great patenter, did and the dispute between them was resolved by the formation of the Ediswan Company.
http://www.norskfysikk.no/nfs/epsbiografer/SWAN.PDF
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Kainantu
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In suppoprt of gmackematix
Joseph Swan worked on developing a filament lamp before Thomas Edison and patented a design for an electric bulb. The patent however was ultimately acquired by Edison buying the company that owned the patent.
www.design-technology.info/inventors/page27.htm
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guiscard
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Swan made the principle discovery, however Edison's workshop produced the systems which would make the light bulb usable and modified the design (and held the patent).
One of the problems is with the terminology. The term "light bulb" is almost never used. Indeed today's dictionaries do not have the term, but rather "incandescant lamp". My huge Macquarie has "light globe" and "incandescant lamp" but not "light bulb".
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sequoianoir
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c. 3000 BC - Candles are invented.
??? BC - Oil lamps.
1840 - First kerosene lamps (oil lamps that burn fuel from petroleum.)
1853 - Ignacy Lukasiewicz invents petrol lamp.
1792 - William Murdoch lights his house and office by means of gas.
c. 1802 - Humphry Davy demonstrates arc-lighting.
1815 - Humphry Davy invents the miner's safety lamp.
1835 - James Bowman Lindsay demonstrates a light bulb based electric lighting system to the citizens of Dundee.
1841 - Arc-lighting used as experimental public lighting in Paris.
1867 - A.E. Becquerel demonstrates the first fluorescent lamp.
1875 - Henry Woodward patents the electric light bulb.
1876 - Paul Jablochkoff invents the Jablochkoff candle, the first practical carbon arc lamp, for public street lighting in Paris.
1879 - Thomas Edison and Joseph Wilson Swan patent the carbon-thread incandescent lamp.
c. 1889 - Incandescent gas mantle invented, revolutionises gas lighting.
c. 1893 - Nikola Tesla uses cordless low pressure gas discharge lamps, powered by a high frequency electric field, to light his laboratory.
1903 - Peter Cooper Hewitt demonstrates the mercury-vapour lamp.
1911 - Georges Claude develops the neon lamp.
1962 - Nick Holonyak Jr. developed the first practical visible-spectrum LED.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_lighting_technology
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sequoianoir
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Hamlet, your reference ("Davy was known for his work on electric arcs in the early 1800s, and his breakthrough discovery was the electric light. His light was created by passing electricity through a very thin piece of platinum wire") is all about the safety lamp.
What Davy invented was the fuse!
"In 1801 Sir Humphry Davy, an English chemist, made platinum strips glow by passing an electric current through them, but the strips evaporated too quickly to make a useful lamp."
gmack re - Tungsten Filament Bulb
1906 saw tungsten making its appearance as the General Electric Company patented a way of producing filaments from this excellent candidate metal. Indeed Edison himself had known tungsten would eventually prove to be the best choice for filaments in incandescent light bulbs, but in his day, the machinery needed to produce the wire in such a fine form was not available. Engineering had come on in leaps and bounds in the intervening years but tungsten filament production was still a costly pastime for business until 1910 when William David Coolidge of General Electric improved the process of manufacture to make the longest lasting tungsten filaments available to all.
http://www.the-history-of.net/the-history-of-the-light-bulb.html
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sequoianoir
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Anyway - re the ORIGINAL question
In 1820, Warren De la Rue made the first known attempt to produce an incandescent light bulb. He enclosed a platinum coil in an evacuated tube and passed an electric current through it. The design was based on the concept that the high melting point of platinum would allow it to operate at high temperatures and that the evacuated chamber would contain less gas particles to react with the platinum, improving its longevity. Although it was an efficient design, the cost of the platinum made it prohibitive for commercial use.
http://www.light-it.org.uk/history/history_2.htm
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