Timeline of lighting technology
Manjunath R
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Manjunath R
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- 125,000 BC: Widespread control of fire by early humans.
- 70,000 BC: A hollow rock, shell, or other natural found object was filled with moss or a similar material that was soaked in animal fat and ignited.
- c. 4500 BC: oil lamps
- c. 3000 BC: candles are invented.
- 1780: Aimé Argand invents the central draught fixed oil lamp.
- 1784: Argand adds glass chimney to central draught lamp.
- 1792: William Murdoch begins experimenting with gas lighting and probably produced the first gas light in this year.
- 1800: French watchmaker Bernard Guillaume Carcel overcomes the disadvantages of the Argand-type lamps with his clockwork fed Carcel lamp.
- 1800-1809: Humphry Davy invents the arc lamp when using Voltaic piles (battery) for his electrolysis experiments.
- 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.
- 1809: Humphry Davy publicly demonstrates first electric lamp over 10,000 lumens, at the Royal Society.
- 1813: National Heat and Light Company formed by Fredrich Winzer (Winsor)
- 1815: Humphry Davy invents the miner's safety lamp.
- 1823: Johann Wolfgang D?bereiner invents the D?bereiner'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 Lukasiewicz invents the modern kerosene lamp.
- 1856: glassblower Heinrich Geissler confines the electric arc in a Geissler tube.
- 1867: A. E. Becquerel demonstrates the first fluorescent lamp.
- 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: Thomas Edison and Joseph Wilson Swan patent the carbon-thread incandescent lamp. It lasted 40 hours.
- 1880: Edison produced a 16-watt lightbulb that lasts 1500 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. Stanley lit 23 businesses along a 4000 feet length of main street stepping a 500 AC volt current at the street down to 100 volts to power incandescent lamps at each location.
- 1893: GE introduces first commercial fully enclosed carbon arc lamp. Sealed in glass globes, it lasts 100h and therefore 10 times longer than hitherto carbon arc lamps
- 1893: Nikola Tesla puts forward his ideas on high frequency and wireless electric lighting which included public demonstrations where he lit a Geissler tube wirelessly.
- 1894: D. 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.
- 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.
- 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 H. Compton invents the sodium-vapor lamp.
- 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 light bulb.
- 1953: André Bernanose and several colleagues observe electroluminescence in organic materials.
- 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.
- 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 discharge metal-halide lamp.
- 1985: Osram answers with the first electronic Energy Saving Lamps to be very successful
- 1987: Ching W. 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 tip 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.
- 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.
- 2008: Ushio Lighting demonstrates the first LED Filament.
- 2011: Philips wins L Prize for LED screw-in lamp equivalent to 60W incandescent A-lamp for general use.