An Enlightenment for the History of Light Bulb

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Our lives are brimming with light, from the billboard on your streets to the light bulb in your lamp. But have you ever imagined the journey of inventors around the world to build the simplest technology? And how do inventors keep improving the existing simple light bulb? Let’s enlighten ourselves about the journey of the light bulb discovery and improvement.

The first light, the first race: incandescent bulb

“We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles”, announced by the infamous light bulb pioneer, Thomas Alfa Edison, during his discovery of the incandescent light bulb on December 31st, 1879.?This mark the first modern incandescent light bulb, which generate light through electric arc lighting, a lighting system in which lights were connected in a series circuit and give off light when heated to hot enough to emit light, namely incandescence, by an electric current. However, it was not the first incandescence light bulb; Edison simply ends the light bulb patent war that is applicable for households during the 1800s.

It all started in 1840 when Warren de la Rue pioneers the race; he invents the first applicable incandescent light bulb, which used an expensive coiled platinum filament. It was not until decades later that a cheaper technology was made by a British scientist, named Joseph Swan, by using a carbonized cotton thread filament in a vacuum. For his efforts, he was awarded a patent in 1878. At the same time, Edison started his journey to research the alternative filament for an even cheaper light bulb, that yields a successful result.

However, as the name incandescent suggests, according to Keefe, 2007, this process does not use the energy input efficiently; many are lost in heat and vibration energy. Just like log fires, candles, oil or gas, the light comes from heat, meaning incandescent bulbs waste more than 95% of their energy.

Looking for efficiency, fluorescent bulb takes the stage

Based on Smith, 2018, applications for light bulbs were limitless, ranging from the extremely modest (such as bicycle headlamps) to national infrastructure (such as road lighting). The technology was accepted by the market and was soon awash with manufacturers hoping to cash in on the gold rush in artificial lighting. However, higher market demand, more energy consumption, which leads to researches focus on efficient light bulbs. This is where the fluorescent bulb takes the stage, that actually already been discovered by glassblower Heinrich Geissler and physician Julius Plücker in the 19th century. Both Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla also experimented with fluorescent lamps in the 1890s, but neither ever commercially produced them. Instead, it was Peter Cooper Hewitt’s breakthrough in the early 1900s that became one of the precursors to the fluorescent lamp. Hewitt created a blue-green light by passing an electric current through mercury vapour and incorporating a ballast (a device connected to the light bulb that regulates the flow of current through the tube).?

However, consumers pointed to the high price as their number one obstacle in purchasing fluorescent bulbs. There were other problems – many fluorescent bulbs were big and bulky, they didn’t fit well into fixtures, and they had low light output and inconsistent performance.

The future is led by LED

As stated by Palermo, 2017, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are now considered the future of lighting due to the lower energy required to run, a lower monthly price tag, compact design, and longer life than traditional incandescent light bulbs and fluorescent bulbs.?

Nick Holonyak started the LED era when invented the first visible-spectrum red LED in 1962. This invention was then commercially mass-produced by Monsanto in 1968. According to Shams, 2018, these red LEDs were popular as backlighting inexpensive watches and calculators through the 1970s and early 1980s. As costs of producing LEDs reduced and more colours became available, they were also added to information displays in VHS machines, televisions and HiFi systems. With these additional benefits, to the fluorescent bulbs, which produced excess heat and other disadvantages, LEDs had found a good home.

The radical step required to make LEDs a useful lighting technology came with the invention of blue LED light. The first commercially viable blue LED was created by Nobel Prize winner Shuji Nakamura in 1994, who invented the ultra-bright blue Gallium Nitride LED. This invention produces white light with an LED, not red.

Extending our grid to LTSHE

The journey does not end here, these stories spark innovators around the world to produce light bulbs that are even brighter and more efficient. Put in mind that engineers and inventors always put energy efficiency as their fuel to keep researching. It is the utmost important issue that light bulb needs to use as few as possible energy, meaning pollution from the energy source, such as fossil fuel and oil, is greatly reduced. The alternative solution is to incorporate efficient light bulbs with renewable energy; thus, producing clean light, as opposed to using fossil fuel to light the household. One of the inventions is named “Lampu Tenaga Surya Hemat Energi” or LTSHE. LTSHE integrates solar panels with a rechargeable light bulb, where the system consists of a decentralized power plant with local batteries and a charging port for each house. ACCESS project utilizes this technology to provide electricity for remote and off-grid villages in Indonesia, while also building capabilities and enterprise for this local power plant.

Read more at the following link. Follow our social media and website for more updates about #accesstoenergy for our electrification?project in Indonesia.

Author:?Adream Bais Junior, Communication ACCESS Project