INFOGRAPHIC
They’re simple in concept: a glass sphere with material inside that glows. But over the last two centuries, light bulbs have changed in composition and design, always aiming for greater efficiency and better illumination, along with improved materials. Here’s a look back at some of the most notable light bulbs that scientists and engineers have developed since the 1800s.
1800-1809
Carbon Arc Lamp
Inventor: Humphry Davy, British chemist
Credit for the first arc lamp is given to Sir Humphry Davy of England, who connected two wires to a battery using charcoal strips as electrodes. The exact year is unknown, but Davy is believed to have demonstrated his experiment between 1800 and 1809—around the same time scientists built the first large batteries and observed an electric current light effect occurring across a gap in the circuit. By the mid-1800s, arc lamps incorporated mechanical regulators that helped to maintain a consistent gap and extend operating time. This was further refined in the Yablochkov Candle, which replaced complex gap-control mechanisms with two parallel carbon rods separated by insulation. Refinements like improved dynamos, steadier currents, and better carbon rods made arc lighting reliable enough to debut as street lights in Paris by the 1870s.
1878
Incandescent Light Bulb
Inventor: Joseph Swan, British physicist and chemist
One year before Thomas Edison’s widely-publicized demonstration of an incandescent light bulb, Joseph Swan announced the success of his own electric bulb to the Newcastle Chemical Society in 1878. Swan’s early experiments with a carbonized paper filament enclosed inside a partially evacuated glass chamber had burned out after just 13 hours, but demonstrated real potential. By working over a decade to improve the pumps, Swan was able to create a stronger vacuum in the glass enclosure, leading to a successful public demonstration of 40 hours of light before his lamp burned out.
1879
Edison Light Bulb
Inventor: Thomas Edison, American inventor
Thomas Edison’s critical breakthrough came from solving the constraint of filament resistance at his Menlo Park laboratory in New Jersey. Edison recognized that for a lamp to be commercially viable, it would require a thin, high-resistance filament drawing lower current, which would make longer, more economical copper conductors feasible. In testing thousands of materials, he and his staff developed carbon filaments that extended burn time to around 150 hours in 1879. Continued experiments led to a bamboo versions that lasted up to 1,200 hours. The combination of higher resistance, longer life, and ability to integrate into a centralized electric system secured Edison’s reputation as developer of the first commercially viable light bulb.
1890
The Centennial Bulb
Inventor: Shelby Electric, American company
The Centennial Light, installed in 1901 in Livermore, California, is a carbon-filament incandescent bulb. Handmade by Shelby Electric in the 1890s, it is the world’s longest burning light bulb. It started as a 60-watt bulb and has seldom been turned off. It now emits a dim light—equivalent to a 4-watt bulb—about the strength of a typical nightlight. It’s still on to this day.
1901
Fluorescent
Inventor: Peter Cooper Hewitt, American electrical engineer and inventor
Peter Cooper Hewitt is credited, in 1901, for inventing the first enclosed arc-type lamp using metal vapor. However, it was Edmund Germer, more than 30 years later, that came up with a high-pressure arc lamp that could handle a lot more power in a smaller space. History recognizes this German inventor as the father of the fluorescent lamp whose U.S. patent was purchased by General Electric, which also licensed his patent for the high-pressure mercury-vapor lamp. This kind of lighting—generated from chemical reactions that come about when electricity is applied to gases enclosed in a glass vacuum chamber—is more efficient than incandescent bulbs.
1927
LED
Inventor: Oleg Losev, Russian inventor
Instead of a filament, LED bulbs rely on electrons moving within a semiconductor material, which allows for the same amount of light as an incandescent bulb, but use far less energy. Although LEDs are often viewed as a more recent discovery, they’ve actually been around since 1927, when Russian scientist Oleg Losev developed the first LED. After American engineer Nick Holonyak developed a red light LED that generated visible light in 1962, the use of LEDs began to spread. Commercialization soon followed in the 1970s. Then in the 1990s, two physicists, Isamu Akaski and Hiroshi Amano, along with electrical engineer Shuji Nakamura, developed a blue LED that uses gallium nitride and could generate white light, for which they won the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics. Most light bulbs used today are LEDs.
1959
Halogen
Developers: Elmer Fridrich and Emmitt Wiley, American inventors
A halogen lamp is a kind of incandescent lamp consisting of a tungsten filament sealed in a compact transparent envelope that is filled with a mixture of an inert gas and a small amount of a halogen, such as iodine or bromine. The first lamp to use halogen gas (chlorine) was patented in 1882, but the first commercial halogen lamp that used iodine as a halogen gas wasn’t patented until 1959 by General Electric. It was developed by Elmer Fridrich and Emmet Wiley, who worked at the company. They found that by adding iodine, they were able to produce an intense, natural-looking light.
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