Discovering LightThe history of light
For tens of thousands of years, our world was lit only by fire and natural light. Nobody can say for sure when the first lamp was invented. The oldest ones ever recovered date from around 70,000 BC. These were made using objects found in nature — hollowed out rocks, shells, or bones — filled with moss soaked in animal fat and ignited.
Gaslight first became commercially available in 1804, when German inventor Freidrich Winzer patented coal gas lighting. This technology developed until most streetlights, around the end of the nineteenth century, were gaslight.
Lighting as we know it today really starts in the late 1800s.
A British chemist and poet called Humphrey Davy decided to try and use a new energy called electricity to see if he could make a better, safer light. And he did. But it only lit up for ten seconds. This launched the race to be the first to invent a working light bulb.
Twenty-two men over 70 years tried to do it.
In 1875, two Canadian inventors, Henry Woodward and Michael Evans, patented the first light bulb. But their bulb was still too expensive and complex to be readily available. English physicist and chemist, Joseph Swan, invented the light bulb this side of the Atlantic and registered his patent in 1878. In fact, his home in Gateshead was the first in the world to have working light bulbs installed. But, American Thomas Edison is often credited with inventing the light bulb because with the backing of corporate investors and a patent in tow, Edison improved on the Canadian light bulb until it was inexpensive and easy to mass-produce and also got Swan’s permission to use his patent.
Lighting continues to develop at an amazing rate. Neon, halogen and fluorescent lights were all invented within a twenty-year span, between 1911 and 1927. Although the standard incandescent bulb is far from extinct, it is quickly being overtaken by more energy efficient models – the rest (as Professor Bright would say) is elementary!