1809 - Humphry Davy, an English chemist, invented the first electric light. Davy connected two wires to a battery and attached a charcoal strip between the other ends of the wires. The charged carbon glowed making the first arc lamp.

1820 - Warren De la Rue enclosed a platinum coil in an evacuated tube and passed an electric current through it. His lamp design was worked but the cost of the precious metal platinum made this an impossible invention for wide-spread use.

1835 - James Bowman Lindsay demonstrated constant electric lighting system using a prototype light-bulb.

1850 - Edward Shepard invented an electrical incandescent arc lamp using a charcoal filament. Joseph Wilson Swan started working with carbonised paper filaments the same year.

1854 - Henricg Globel, a German watchmaker, invented the first true light-bulb. He used a carbonised bamboo filament placed inside a glass bulb.

1875 - Herman Sprengel invented the mercury vacuum pump making it possible to develop a practical electric light bulb. Making a really good vacuum inside the bulb possible.

1875 - Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans patented a light-bulb.

1878 - Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914), an English physicist, was the first person to invent a practical and longer-lasting electric light-bulb (13.5 hours). Swan used a carbon fibre filament derived from cotton.

1879 - Thomas Alva Edison invented a carbon filament that burned for forty hours. Edison placed his filament in an oxygen-less bulb. (Edison evolved his designs for the light-bulb based on the 1875 patent he purchased from inventors, Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans.)

1880 - Edison continued to improved his light-bulb until it could last for over 1200 hours using a bamboo-derived filament.

1903 - Willis Whitnew invented a filament that would not make the inside of a light-bulb turn dark. It was a metal-coated carbon filament (a predecessor to the tungsten filament).

1906 - The General Electric Company were the first to patent a method of making tungsten filaments for use in incandescent light-bulbs. The filaments were costly.

1910 - William David Coolidge (1873-1975) invented an improved method of making tungsten filaments. The tungsten filament outlasted all other types of filaments and Coolidge made the costs practical.

1925 - The first frosted light-bulbs were produced.

Highlights - History of the Lamp

The first lamp was invented around 70,000 BC. A hollow rock, shell or other natural found object was filled with moss or a similar material that was soaked with animal fat and ignited. Humans began imitating the natural shapes with manmade pottery, alabaster, and metal lamps. Wicks were later added to control the rate of burning. Around the 7th century BC, the Greeks began making terra cotta lamps to replace handheld torches. The word lamp is derived from the Greek word lampas, meaning torch.

In the 18th century, the central burner was invented, a major improvement in lamp design. The fuel source was now tightly enclosed in metal, and a adjustable metal tube was used to control the intensity of the fuel burning and intensity of the light. Around the same time, small glass chimneys were added to lamps to both protect the flame and control the flow of air to the flame.

Ami Argand, a Swiss chemist is credited with first developing the principal of using an oil lamp with a hollow circular wick surrounded by a glass chimney in 1783.

Early lighting fuels consisted of olive oil, beeswax, fish oil, whale oil, sesame oil, nut oil, and similar substances. These were the most commonly used fuels until the late 18th century. However, the ancient Chinese collected natural gas in skins that was used for illumination.

In 1859, drilling for petroleum oil began and the kerosene (a petroleum derivative) lamp grew popular, first introduced in 1853 in Germany. Coal and natural gas lamps were also becoming wide-spread. Coal gas was first used as a lighting fuel as early as 1784.

In 1792, the first commercial use of gas lighting began when William Murdoch used coal gas for lighting his house in Redruth, Cornwall. German inventor Freidrich Winzer (Winsor) was the first person to patent coal gas lighting in 1804 and a “thermo-lamp” using gas distilled from wood was patented in 1799.

Early in the 19th century, most cities in the United States and Europe had streets that were gas-lighted. Gas lighting for streets gave way to low pressure sodium and high pressure mercury lighting in the 1930s and the development of the electric lighting at the turn of the 19th century replaced gas lighting in homes.