Timeline of lighting technology

Artificial lighting technology began to be developed tens of thousands of years ago and continues to be refined in the present day.

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Lighting through the ages (legend)

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The price of lighting through the ages

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.