Timeline of lighting technology
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.