Timeline of lighting technology
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BackgroundColors = canvas:lightgrey ImageSize = width:240 height:1024 PlotArea = width:200 height:1000 left:40 bottom:20 DateFormat = yyyy Period = from:1780 till:2023 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical order:reverse ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:10 start:1786 ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:1 start:1780
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mark:(line,black) shift:(15,-5) at:1780 text:"Argand lamp at:1794 text:"Gas lighting" at:1802 text:"Arc lamp" at:1856 text:"Geissler tube" at:1867 text:"Fluorescent lamp" at:1875 text:"Electric light bulb" at:1880 text:"Long lasting filament" at:1885 text:"Gas mantle" at:1893 text:"Gas-discharge lamp" at:1901 text:"Mercury-vapor lamp" at:1904 text:"Tungsten filament" at:1910 text:"Neon lighting" at:1913 text:"Inert gas in bulb" at:1917 text:"Coiled coil filament" at:1920 text:"Sodium-vapor lamp" at:1927 text:"Light-emitting diode" at:1953 text:"Halogen light bulb" shift:(15,1) at:1962 text:"Red LED" shift:(15,-4) at:1963 text:"High pressure sodium-vapor lamp" at:1976 text:"Compact fluorescent lamp" at:1987 text:"OLED" at:1990 text:"Sulfur lamp" at:1995 text:"Blue LED" shift:(15,1) at:2008 text:"LED filament" shift:(15,-4) at:2009 text:"Phase-out of incandescent light bulbs" at:2018 text:"Phase-out of halogen light bulbs at:2021 text:"Phase-out of compact fluorescent light bulbs</timeline>
Artificial lighting technology began to be developed tens of thousands of years ago and continues to be refined in the present day.
Antiquity
- 125,000 BC – Widespread control of fire by early humans.[1]
- 17,500 BC – Oldest documented lamp, utilizing animal fat as fuel[2]
- c. 4500 BC – Oil lamps
- c. 3000 BC – Candles are invented.
- 577 CE – Use of matches in China.[3]
18th century
- 1780 – Ami Argand invents the central draught fixed oil lamp.
- 1784 – Argand designs a central draught lamp with a glass chimney.
- 1792 – William Murdoch begins experimenting with gas lighting and produces the first gas light.
- 1800 – French watchmaker Bertrand Guillaume Carcel overcomes the disadvantages of the Argand-type lamps with his clockwork-fed Carcel lamp.
19th century
- 1802 – Vasily Vladimirovich Petrov developed the first persistent electric arc.[4]
- 1802 – William Murdoch illuminates the exterior of the Soho Foundry with gas.
- 1805 – Philips and Lee's Cotton Mill, Manchester was the first industrial factory to be fully lit by gas.
- 1807 – Humphry Davy invents the arc lamp when using Voltaic piles (battery) for his electrolysis experiments.
- 1809 – Humphry Davy publicly demonstrates the first electric lamp over 10,000 lumens, at the Royal Society.[5]
- 1813 – Frederick Albert Winsor establishes the National Heat and Light Company.
- 1815 – Humphry Davy invents the miner's safety lamp.
- 1823 – Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner invents the Döbereiner's lamp.
- 1835 – James Bowman Lindsay demonstrates a light bulb based electric lighting system to the citizens of Dundee.
- 1841 Arc-lighting is used as experimental public lighting in Paris.
- 1853 – Ignacy Łukasiewicz invents the modern kerosene lamp.
- 1856 – glassblower Heinrich Geissler confines the electric arc in a Geissler tube.
- 1867 – Edmond Becquerel demonstrates the first fluorescent lamp.[6]
- 1874 – Alexander Lodygin patents an incandescent light bulb.
- 1875 – Henry Woodward patents an electric light bulb.
- 1876 – Pavel Yablochkov invents the Yablochkov candle, the first practical carbon arc lamp, for public street lighting in Paris.
- 1879 (About Christmas time) – Col. R. E. Crompton illuminated his home in Porchester Gardens, using a primary battery of Grove Cells, then a generator which was better. He gave special parties and illuminated his drawing room and dining room. Source: Practical Electrical Engineering, Newnes. Article entitled "The Development of Electric Lighting".
- 1879 – Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan patent the carbon-thread incandescent lamp. It lasted 40 hours.
- 1880 – Edison produced a 16-watt lightbulb that lasted 1,500 hours.
- 1882 – Introduction of large-scale direct current based indoor incandescent lighting and lighting utility with Edison's first Pearl Street Station.
- c. 1885 – Incandescent gas mantle invented, revolutionises gas lighting.
- 1886 – Great Barrington, Massachusetts demonstration project, a much more versatile (long-distance transmission) transformer based alternating current based indoor incandescent lighting system introduced by William Stanley, Jr. working for George Westinghouse.[7] Stanley lit 23 businesses along a 4,000-foot length of main street stepping a 500 AC volt current at the street down to 100 volts to power incandescent lamps at each location.[8]
- 1893 – General Electric introduces the first commercial fully enclosed carbon arc lamp. Sealed in glass globes, it lasts 100 hours and therefore 10 times longer than hitherto carbon arc lamps.[5][9]
- 1893 – Nikola Tesla puts forward his ideas on high frequency and wireless electric lighting[10][11] which included public demonstrations where he lit a Geissler tube wirelessly.
- 1894 – Daniel McFarlan Moore creates the Moore tube, precursor of electric gas-discharge lamps.
- 1897 – Walther Nernst invents and patents his incandescent lamp, based on solid state electrolytes.
20th century
- 1900 – Frederick Baldwin patents a carbide lamp for use on bicycles.[12] 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.
- 1912 – Charles P. Steinmetz invents the metal-halide lamp.[13]
- 1913 – Irving Langmuir discovers that inert gas could double the luminous efficacy of incandescent lightbulbs.
- 1917 – Burnie Lee Benbow patents the coiled coil filament.
- 1920 – Arthur Compton invents the sodium-vapor lamp.[14]
- 1921 – Junichi Miura creates the first incandescent lightbulb to utilize a coiled coil filament.
- 1925 – Marvin Pipkin invents the first internal frosted lightbulb.
- 1926 – Edmund Germer patents the modern fluorescent lamp.
- 1927 – Oleg Losev creates the first LED (light-emitting diode).
- 1953 – Elmer Fridrich invents the halogen lamp.[15]
- 1953 – André Bernanose and several colleagues observe electroluminescence in organic materials.[16][17]
- 1960 – Theodore H. Maiman creates the first laser.
- 1962 – Nick Holonyak Jr. develops the first practical visible-spectrum (red) light-emitting diode.
- 1963 – Kurt Schmidt invents the first high pressure sodium-vapor lamp.[18]
- 1972 – M. George Craford invents the first yellow light-emitting diode.
- 1972 – Herbert Paul Maruska and Jacques Pankove create the first violet light-emitting diode.
- 1981 – Philips sells their first Compact Fluorescent Energy Saving Lamps, with integrated conventional ballast.
- 1981 – Thorn Lighting Group exhibits the ceramic metal-halide lamp.
- 1985 – Osram answers with the first electronic Energy Saving Lamps to be very successful.[5]
- 1987 – Ching Wan Tang and Steven Van Slyke at Eastman Kodak create the first practical organic light-emitting diode (OLED).
- 1990 – Michael Ury, Charles Wood, and several colleagues develop the sulfur lamp.
- 1991 – Philips invents a fluorescent lightbulb that lasts 60,000 hours using magnetic induction.
- 1994 – T5 lamps with cool tips are introduced to become the leading fluorescent lamps with up to 117 lm/W with good color rendering. These and almost all new fluorescent lamps are to be operated on electronic ballasts only.[5]
- 1994 – The first commercial sulfur lamp is sold by Fusion Lighting.
- 1995 – Shuji Nakamura at Nichia labs invents the first practical blue and with additional phosphor, white LED, starting an LED boom.[5]
21st century
- 2008 – Ushio Lighting demonstrates the first LED filament.[19]
- 2011 – Philips wins L Prize for LED screw-in lamp equivalent to 60 W incandescent A-lamp for general use.
References
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- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."First Control of Fire by Human Beings—How Early?". Retrieved 2007-11-12.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.de Beaune, Sophie A.; White, Randall (1993). "Ice Age Lamps". Scientific American. 268 (3): 108–113. Bibcode:1993SciAm.266c.108D. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0393-108. ISSN 0036-8733. JSTOR 24941409.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Needham, Joseph (1 January 1962). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology; Part 1, Physics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 70–71. ISBN 978-0-521-05802-5. Archived from the original on 2 January 2014.
sulphur matches were certainly sold in the markets of Hangchow when Marco Polo was there
{{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) - ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Guarnieri, M. (2015). "Switching the Light: From Chemical to Electrical" (PDF). IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine. 9 (3): 44–47. Bibcode:2015IIEM....9c..44G. doi:10.1109/MIE.2015.2454038. hdl:11577/3164116. S2CID 2986686. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-02-14. Retrieved 2019-09-02.
- ^ a b c d e Dr. Thomas Klett, Geschichte der Lichttechnik [History of Lighting]
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."In The Beginning: 10 Inventors of the Incandescent Lightbulb". Txchnologist. Archived from the original on 2021-04-17. Retrieved 2025-05-06.
- ^ Great Barrington Historical Society, Great Barrington, Massachusetts
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Great Barrington Experiment". edisontechcenter.org. Retrieved 2025-05-06.
- ^ Bernard Gorowitz Ed., The General Electric Story
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Carlson, W. Bernard (April 27, 2015). Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age. Princeton University Press. p. 132. ISBN 978-0691165615.
- ^ note: at St. Louis, Missouri, Tesla public demonstration called, "On Light and Other High-Frequency Phenomena", (Journal of the Franklin Institute, Volume 136 By Persifor Frazer, Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pa)
- ^ U.S. patent 656874
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."A brief history of high intensity discharge hid lighting". Shine Retrofits. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."Sodium Lamp". Edison Center. Archived from the original on 20 September 2014. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."20th Century Inventors: Tungsten Halogen Lamp". American History. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Bernanose, A.; Comte, M.; Vouaux, P. (1953). "A new method of light emission by certain organic compounds". J. Chim. Phys. 50: 64. doi:10.1051/jcp/1953500064.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Bernanose, A.; Vouaux, P. (1953). "Organic electroluminescence type of emission". J. Chim. Phys. 50: 261. doi:10.1051/jcp/1953500261.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Schmidt, Kurt. "High pressure sodium vapor lamp". Google Patents. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
- ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content."The Next Generation of LED Filament Bulbs". Retrieved 2025-05-10.
