You arrive home, flip a switch and the light comes on, is it magic? No, it’s the light bulb and the electricity. Today we want to bring you step by step the evolution of the light bulb, that invention that changed the lives of human beings.

The light bulb revolutionized history, the issue of who its creator is still raises different options. The first name that comes to mind is Thomas Alva Edison. The reality is that Joseph Swan, Humphry Davy and Henry Woodward showed that they have also invented other types of light bulbs prior to Edison’s.

History of the light bulb year by year

  • 1809 :Humphry Davy, British chemist, connected a carbon filament to the two poles of a battery. In this way, he achieved the first source of electrical lighting producing light. It was a really unstable source that lasted only a few minutes before the filament broke.
  • 1820: Warren de la Rue, British chemist and astronomer, changed the carbon filament for platinum. Thus, it worked much better but raised the cost a lot, which made it difficult to market.
  • 1835: James Bowman Lindsay, inventor, built a lamp that allowed him to read a book in the dark.
  • 1850: Joseph Wilson Swan, British physicist and chemist, worked with tungsten filaments and carbonized paper. He was responsible for making the first incandescent light bulb.
  • 1860: Swan continues to improve on his previous work. He was able to demonstrate a functional device. The carbon filament incandescent lamp. Thanks to this, he obtained the British patent on the light bulb. However, the lack of an adequate electrical source resulted in an inefficient lamp with a short lifespan.
  • 1879, October 21: Thomas Alva Edison first showed the practical and viable electric lamp. He kept a light bulb on for 48 hours straight after many years of experiments and failures. He developed it until he achieved the commercially profitable light bulb.
  • 1879, December 31: Edison designs a circuit made up of 40 incandescent light bulbs in New Jersey.
  • 1880, January 27: obtains the patent for the light bulb from the United States (patent number 223,898) and claims to be the inventor and creator of the light bulb.
  • 1881: Edison meets with Wilson Swan and they found Edison & Swan United Electric LightCompany Limited”. This company sets out to improve the light bulb and succeeds. It provides the bulb with new elements that allow for greater durability and the beginning of mass manufacturing. In any case, the incandescent bulb continues to be inefficient. Of all the electricity it uses, only 15% is converted into light, the rest is lost as heat.
  • 1884: Nikola Tesla, Serbian engineer and the great forgotten. He began working alongside Edison and ended up staying in his shadow. Nikola discovered alternating current which made light bulbs much more durable. In fact, it is the type of electricity that we use today throughout Europe and in most of the planet.
  • 1901: the most famous light bulb in the world was lit. It is located at the firehouse in Livermore, California. It has even survived renovations at the station and has been on since then except for some power outages. Declared as the oldest working light bulb in the world by the Guinness Book.
  • 1913: Irving Langmuir, physicist and chemist, postulated that if gases were used inside light bulbs they would last longer. It was the precursor to neon lights .
  • 1987: the Frenchman, Jean Fristch, solves the hassle of changing a light bulb. We will no longer burn ourselves trying. Thanks to his invention he won the prize at the Geneva International Inventors’ Salon.
  • Today, the energy saving revolution is LED.

The light bulb in Spain

The first power plant in our country dates back to 1873 and was built in Barcelona.

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A few years later, in 1881, Tomás Dalmau also established in Barcelona a “Electricity Society” dedicated to the manufacture of light bulbs and incandescent lamps. It becomes the first company in our country dedicated to this function. That same year, a test of electric lighting with bulbs was carried out in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol.

It all began a few years later with the creation of public lighting in cities. It was Girona, the city that in 1886 became the first to inaugurate a public lighting network.

Like a pioneer, there are areas where public lighting has taken a long time to reach. Specifically, Sostres in Asturias is believed to be the last, getting its lighting in 1981.

What do you know about Thomas Alva Edison?

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Born on February 11, 1847 in Ohio. Thomas was only able to go to school for three months. At the age of 12, he started selling newspapers to help the family finances. However, his restlessness led him to dedicate his free time to experimenting with mechanical and electrical devices.

He was a scholarship for a telegraphy course after saving the life of a station chief’s son, and with which he created his first invention. He made simplified telegraph equipment while working as a telegrapher on the railway. He lost his job when he set a train car on fire during an experiment, but he did not give up, he sold all his inventions and with them he was able to set up his own laboratory.

In 1869, he patented the electronic vote recorder. Then came the phonograph, precursor to the record player and lead fuses.

Finally, after everything we already know about Edison and electricity, he died on October 18, 1931 in New Jersey.

We hope to have cleared up your uncertainties about the creation of the light bulb. If you want to share a modern day light bulb, and who knows, to experiment with it, you just have to visit our website.