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One of the biggest changes in domestic life ever must have been the moment when the lights came on in the late nineteenth century. Before that, people must have had a cat-like ability to manage in low light levels. For centuries, rushlights were the poor person’s light-source of choice.
Apr 3, 2009 · Indeed, from prehistoric times through the first quarter of the 19th Century A.D. the lamp of the average citizen was a shallow little dish, filled with oil or grease in which a wick or rag floated. Such a device produced a little light and a lot of carbon.
- Early History
- The Incandescent Bulb
- The Tungsten Filament
- The Fluorescent Lamp
- Light-Emitting Diodes
The first demonstration of incandescence is credited to Ebenezer Kinnersley. An English scientist and inventor, he wrote to Benjamin Franklin in 1761 that he had heated a metal wire to the point of it glowing red hot. In 1802, Humphry Davy, a British chemist, connected a battery he made to a thin strip of platinum, causing the metal to glow, althou...
The incandescent bulb as we know it today has its origins in the works of two men: Joseph Swan, a British physicist and chemist, and Thomas Edison, the American inventor and businessman. In 1850, Swan worked with carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated bulb, and by 1860 was able to demonstrate the invention. Swan used a pump to evacuate the bulb...
Although in widespread use by the 1890s, the use of a carbon filament would ultimately prove inefficient. In 1904, Sándor Just, an Austro-Hungarian chemist and Franjo Hanaman, a Croatian inventor and engineer, patented a tungsten filament lamp that lasted longer and emitted brighter light than carbon filaments. By 1911, with developments from Willi...
Alongside the development of the incandescent lamp was the fluorescent bulb. Credited to Heinrich Geissler in 1856, the fluorescent lamp saw its beginnings with the Geissler tube, a partially evacuated tube with electrodes at either end. When different chemicals were placed inside, the tube would glow in various colors. The Geissler tube was mainly...
The most recent incarnation of the light bulb comes in the form of the LED. A light-emitting diode is a semiconductor that emits light when a current flows through it. This current is produced by electrons and electron holes (a lack of an electron) interacting. To keep it simple, electrons orbit around atoms at various levels. When an electron move...
The invention builds on acetylene lamps from the 1890s. 1901 Peter Cooper Hewitt creates the first commercial mercury-vapor lamp. 1904 Alexander Just and Franjo Hanaman invent the tungsten filament for incandescent lightbulbs. 1910 Georges Claude demonstrates neon lighting at the Paris Motor Show.
By 1918 lamps were being filled with Argon thanks to Cooper-Hewitt finding a method of separating the inert gases from air. Philips and others produced gas filled coiled filament lamps from 1914. Although marked ‘½ WATT’ they only achieved about one watt per candlepower output.
Mar 10, 2013 · But by then more than a million Americans were working to manufacture, connect, sell and power the electric light, and a light bulb cost only 17 cents. The triumph of electricity was a matter...
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This table lists well known American lamp manufacturers of the early twentieth century, their locations, dates of operation, and marks. Many of the manufacturers listed here also worked in furniture, metalcraft, and other decorative arts.
