Artificial

lighting Lighting or illumination is the deliberate use of light to achieve practical or aesthetic effects. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing dayl ...

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 The control of fire by early humans was a critical technology enabling the evolution of humans. Fire provided a source of warmth and lighting, protection from predators (especially at night), a way to create more advanced hunting tools, and a ...

. * 17,500 BC oldest documented lamp, utilizing animal fat as fuel * c. 4500 BC

oil lamp An oil lamp is a lamp used to produce light continuously for a period of time using an oil-based fuel source. The use of oil lamps began thousands of years ago and continues to this day, although their use is less common in modern times. Th ...

s * c. 3000 BC

candle A candle is an ignitable wick embedded in wax, or another flammable solid substance such as tallow, that provides light, and in some cases, a fragrance. A candle can also provide heat or a method of keeping time. A person who makes candle ...

s are invented.

18th century

* 1780

Aimé Argand François-Pierre-Amédée Argand, known as Ami Argand (5 July 1750 – 14 or 24 October 1803) was a Genevan physicist and chemist. He invented the Argand lamp, a great improvement on the traditional oil lamp. Early years Francois-Pierre-Améd ...

invents the central draught fixed oil lamp. * 1784 Argand adds glass chimney to central draught lamp. * 1792

William Murdoch William Murdoch (sometimes spelled Murdock) (21 August 1754 – 15 November 1839) was a Scottish engineer and inventor. Murdoch was employed by the firm of Boulton & Watt and worked for them in Cornwall, as a steam engine erector for ten yea ...

begins experimenting with

gas lighting Gas lighting is the production of artificial light from combustion of a gaseous fuel, such as hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, propane, butane, acetylene, ethylene, coal gas (town gas) or natural gas. The light is produced either directly ...

and probably produced the first gas light in this year. * 1800 French watchmaker

Bernard Guillaume Carcel Bernard ('' Bernhard'') is a French and West Germanic masculine given name. It is also a surname. The name is attested from at least the 9th century. West Germanic ''Bernhard'' is composed from the two elements ''bern'' "bear" and ''hard'' "brav ...

overcomes the disadvantages of the Argand-type lamps with his clockwork fed

Carcel lamp The Carcel lamp was an efficient lighting device used in the nineteenth century for domestic purposes and in France as the standard measure for illumination. The lamp was invented by the French watchmaker Bernard Guillaume Carcel (1750–1818) t ...

19th century

* 1800-1809

Humphry Davy Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet, (17 December 177829 May 1829) was a British chemist and inventor who invented the Davy lamp and a very early form of arc lamp. He is also remembered for isolating, by using electricity, several elements for ...

invents the

arc lamp An arc lamp or arc light is a lamp that produces light by an electric arc (also called a voltaic arc). The carbon arc light, which consists of an arc between carbon electrodes in air, invented by Humphry Davy in the first decade of the 1800s, ...

when using Voltaic piles (battery) for his electrolysis experiments. * 1802 William Murdoch illuminates the exterior of the

Soho Foundry Soho Foundry is a factory created in 1775 by Matthew Boulton and James Watt and their sons Matthew Robinson Boulton and James Watt Jr. at Smethwick, West Midlands, England (), for the manufacture of steam engines. Now owned by Avery Weigh-Tr ...

with gas. * 1805 Philips and Lee's Cotton Mill,

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

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.Dr. Thomas Klett, Geschichte der Lichttechnik/History of Lighting * 1813 National Heat and Light Company formed by Fredrich Winzer (Winsor) * 1815 Humphry Davy invents the miner's safety lamp. * 1823

Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner (13 December 1780 – 24 March 1849) was a German chemist who is best known for work that foreshadowed the periodic law for the chemical elements, and for inventing the first lighter, which was known as the Döbere ...

invents the Döbereiner's lamp. * 1835 James Bowman Lindsay demonstrates a

light bulb An electric light, lamp, or light bulb is an electrical component that produces light. It is the most common form of artificial lighting. Lamps usually have a base made of ceramic, metal, glass, or plastic, which secures the lamp in the soc ...

based electric lighting system to the citizens of

Dundee Dundee (; sco, Dundee; gd, Dùn Dè or ) is Scotland's fourth-largest city and the 51st-most-populous built-up area in the United Kingdom. The mid-year population estimate for 2016 was , giving Dundee a population density of 2,478/km2 or ...

. * 1841 Arc-lighting is used as experimental public lighting in Paris. * 1853 Ignacy Lukasiewicz invents the modern

kerosene lamp A kerosene lamp (also known as a paraffin lamp in some countries) is a type of lighting device that uses kerosene as a fuel. Kerosene lamps have a wick or mantle as light source, protected by a glass chimney or globe; lamps may be used on a ta ...

. * 1856 glassblower

Heinrich Geissler Heinrich may refer to: People * Heinrich (given name), a given name (including a list of people with the name) * Heinrich (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name) *Hetty (given name), a given name (including a list of peo ...

confines the electric arc in a

Geissler tube A Geissler tube is an early gas discharge tube used to demonstrate the principles of electrical glow discharge, similar to modern neon lighting. The tube was invented by the German physicist and glassblower Heinrich Geissler in 1857. It cons ...

. * 1867

A. E. Becquerel Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel (24 March 1820 – 11 May 1891), known as Edmond Becquerel, was a French physicist who studied the solar spectrum, magnetism, electricity and optics. He is credited with the discovery of the photovoltaic effect, the ope ...

demonstrates the first

fluorescent lamp A fluorescent lamp, or fluorescent tube, is a low-pressure mercury-vapor gas-discharge lamp that uses fluorescence to produce visible light. An electric current in the gas excites mercury vapor, which produces short-wave ultraviolet, ult ...

. * 1874 Alexander Lodygin patents an

incandescent light bulb An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb with a vacuum or inert gas to protect the filament from oxi ...

. * 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 Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...

and Joseph Wilson Swan patent the carbon-thread

incandescent lamp An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric light with a wire filament heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb with a vacuum or inert gas to protect the filament from oxida ...

. It lasted 40 hours. * 1880 Edison produced a 16-watt lightbulb that lasts 1500 hours. * 1882 Introduction of large scale

direct current Direct current (DC) is one-directional flow of electric charge. An electrochemical cell is a prime example of DC power. Direct current may flow through a conductor such as a wire, but can also flow through semiconductors, insulators, or ev ...

based indoor incandescent lighting and lighting

utility As a topic of economics, utility is used to model worth or value. Its usage has evolved significantly over time. The term was introduced initially as a measure of pleasure or happiness as part of the theory of utilitarianism by moral philosophe ...

with Edison's first

Pearl Street Station Pearl Street Station was the first commercial central power plant in the United States. It was located at 255–257 Pearl Street in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City, just south of Fulton Street on a site measuring . The statio ...

* c. 1885 Incandescent

gas mantle A Coleman white gas lantern mantle glowing at full brightness An incandescent gas mantle, gas mantle or Welsbach mantle is a device for generating incandescent bright white light when heated by a flame. The name refers to its original heat sou ...

invented, revolutionises

. * 1886

Great Barrington, Massachusetts Great Barrington is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,172 at the 2020 census. Both a summer resort and home to Ski Butternut, ...

demonstration project, a much more versatile (long-distance transmission)

transformer A transformer is a passive component that transfers electrical energy from one electrical circuit to another circuit, or multiple circuits. A varying current in any coil of the transformer produces a varying magnetic flux in the transformer' ...

based

alternating current Alternating current (AC) is an electric current which periodically reverses direction and changes its magnitude continuously with time in contrast to direct current (DC) which flows only in one direction. Alternating current is the form in whic ...

based indoor incandescent lighting system introduced by William Stanley, Jr. working for

George Westinghouse George Westinghouse Jr. (October 6, 1846 – March 12, 1914) was an American entrepreneur and engineer based in Pennsylvania who created the railway air brake and was a pioneer of the electrical industry, receiving his first patent at the age ...

. 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 Bernard Gorowitz Ed., The General Electric Story * 1893

Nikola Tesla Nikola Tesla ( ; ,"Tesla"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. ; 1856 – 7 January 1943 ...

puts forward his ideas on high frequency and wireless electric lighting which included public demonstrations where he lit a

wirelessly. * 1894 D. McFarlan Moore creates the

Moore tube Daniel McFarlan Moore (February 27, 1869 – June 15, 1936) was a U.S. electrical engineer and inventor. He developed a novel light source, the "Moore lamp", and a business that produced them in the early 1900s. The Moore lamp was the first co ...

, precursor of electric gas-discharge lamps. * 1897

Walther Nernst Walther Hermann Nernst (; 25 June 1864 – 18 November 1941) was a German chemist known for his work in thermodynamics, physical chemistry, electrochemistry, and solid state physics. His formulation of the Nernst heat theorem helped pave the w ...

invents and patents his

, based on solid state

electrolyte An electrolyte is a medium containing ions that is electrically conducting through the movement of those ions, but not conducting electrons. This includes most soluble salts, acids, and bases dissolved in a polar solvent, such as water. Upon ...

20th century

* 1901

Peter Cooper Hewitt Peter Cooper Hewitt (May 5, 1861 – August 25, 1921) was an American electrical engineer and inventor, who invented the first mercury-vapor lamp in 1901. Hewitt was issued on September 17, 1901. In 1903, Hewitt created an improved version t ...

creates the first commercial

mercury-vapor lamp A mercury-vapor lamp is a gas-discharge lamp that uses an electric arc through vaporized mercury to produce light. The arc discharge is generally confined to a small fused quartz arc tube mounted within a larger soda lime or borosilicate gl ...

. * 1904

Alexander Just Alexander Friedrich Just (12 April 1874, in Bremen – 30 May 1937, in Budapest) was an Austria-Hungary, Austro-Hungarian chemist and inventor. Later, in Hungary he used the name Just Sándor Frigyes. In 1904 with Austro-Hungarian Franjo Hanaman ...

and Franjo Hanaman invent the

tungsten Tungsten, or wolfram, is a chemical element with the symbol W and atomic number 74. Tungsten is a rare metal found naturally on Earth almost exclusively as compounds with other elements. It was identified as a new element in 1781 and first isol ...

filament for incandescent lightbulbs. * 1910

Georges Claude Georges Claude (24 September 187023 May 1960) was a French engineer and inventor. He is noted for his early work on the industrial liquefaction of air, for the invention and commercialization of neon lighting, and for a large experiment on gener ...

demonstrates neon lighting at the

Paris Motor Show The Paris Motor Show (french: Mondial de l'Automobile) is a biennial auto show in Paris. Held during October, it is one of the most important auto shows, often with many new production automobile and concept car debuts. The show presently take ...

. * 1912 Charles P. Steinmetz invents the

metal-halide lamp A metal-halide lamp is an electrical lamp that produces light by an electric arc through a gaseous mixture of vaporized mercury and metal halides (compounds of metals with bromine or iodine). It is a type of high-intensity discharge (HID) g ...

. * 1913

Irving Langmuir Irving Langmuir (; January 31, 1881 – August 16, 1957) was an American chemist, physicist, and engineer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932 for his work in surface chemistry. Langmuir's most famous publication is the 1919 ar ...

discovers that

inert gas An inert gas is a gas that does not readily undergo chemical reactions with other chemical substances and therefore does not readily form chemical compounds. The noble gases often do not react with many substances and were historically referred to ...

could double the luminous efficacy of incandescent lightbulbs. * 1917 Burnie Lee Benbow patents the

coiled coil A coiled coil is a structural motif in proteins in which 2–7 alpha-helices are coiled together like the strands of a rope. (Dimers and trimers are the most common types.) Many coiled coil-type proteins are involved in important biological fu ...

filament. * 1920

Arthur H. Compton Arthur Holly Compton (September 10, 1892 – March 15, 1962) was an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 for his 1923 discovery of the Compton effect, which demonstrated the particle nature of electromagnetic radia ...

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 A halogen lamp (also called tungsten halogen, quartz-halogen, and quartz iodine lamp) is an 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 ...

. * 1953 André Bernanose and several colleagues observe

electroluminescence Electroluminescence (EL) is an optical and electrical phenomenon, in which a material emits light in response to the passage of an electric current or to a strong electric field. This is distinct from black body light emission resulting fro ...

in organic materials. * 1960

Theodore H. Maiman Theodore Harold Maiman (July 11, 1927 – May 5, 2007) was an American engineer and physicist who is widely credited with the invention of the laser.Johnson, John Jr. (May 11, 2008). "Theodore H. Maiman, at age 32; scientist created the first LA ...

creates the first

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The ...

. * 1962

Nick Holonyak Nick Holonyak Jr. ( ; November 3, 1928September 18, 2022) was an American engineer and educator. He is noted particularly for his 1962 invention and first demonstration of a semiconductor laser diode that emitted visible light. This device was ...

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 A ceramic metal-halide lamp (CMH), also generically known as a ceramic discharge metal-halide (CDM) lamp, is a type of metal-halide lamp that is 10–20% more efficient than the traditional quartz metal halide and produces a superior color rend ...

. * 1985 Osram answers with the first electronic Energy Saving Lamps to be very successful * 1987

Ching W. Tang Ching Wan Tang (; born July 23, 1947) is a Hong Kong Americans, Hong Kong–American Physical chemistry, physical chemist. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2018 for inventing OLED (together with Steven Van Slyke), and ...

and Steven Van Slyke at

Eastman Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...

create the first practical

organic light-emitting diode An organic light-emitting diode (OLED or organic LED), also known as organic electroluminescent (organic EL) diode, is a light-emitting diode (LED) in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound that emits light i ...

(OLED). * 1990 Michael Ury, Charles Wood, and several colleagues develop the

sulfur lamp The sulfur lamp (also sulphur lamp) is a highly efficient full-spectrum electrodeless lighting system whose light is generated by sulfur plasma that has been excited by microwave radiation. They are a particular type of plasma lamp, and one ...

. * 1991

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is ...

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

is sold by Fusion Lighting. * 1995

Shuji Nakamura is a Japanese-born American electronic engineer and inventor specializing in the field of semiconductor technology, professor at the Materials Department of the College of Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and is rega ...

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 A LED filament light bulb is a LED lamp which is designed to resemble a traditional incandescent light bulb with visible filaments for aesthetic and light distribution purposes, but with the high efficiency of light-emitting diodes (LEDs). It pr ...

. * 2011

wins L Prize for LED screw-in lamp equivalent to 60W incandescent A-lamp for general use.

References

{{More citations needed, date=June 2008 Lighting

Lighting Lighting or illumination is the deliberate use of light to achieve practical or aesthetic effects. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing dayl ...

Types of lamp