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. 17,500 BC – Oldest documented lamp, utilizing animal fat as fuel c. 4500 BC – Oil lamps c. 3000 BC – Candles are invented. 577 CE – Use of matches in China.
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 – 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 metal-halide lamp. 1985 – Osram answers with the first electronic Energy Saving Lamps to be very successful. 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. 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.
21st century 2008 – Ushio Lighting demonstrates the first LED filament. 2011 – Philips wins L Prize for LED screw-in lamp equivalent to 60 W incandescent A-lamp for general use.
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