-
Humphry Davy, an English chemist and inventor, produced the world's first electric lamp by connecting voltaic piles to charcoal electrodes.
-
British scientist Warren de la Rue developed an efficiently designed light bulb using a coiled platinum filament in place of copper, but the high cost of platinum kept the bulb from becoming a commercial success.
-
In 1850, English chemist Joseph Swan tackled the cost-effectiveness problem of previous inventors and by 1860 he had developed a light bulb that used carbonized paper filaments in place of ones made of platinum.
-
Canadian patent was filed by a Toronto medical electrician named Henry Woodward and a colleague Mathew Evans. They built their lamps with different sizes and shapes of carbon rods held between electrodes in glass cylinders filled with nitrogen.
-
In 1878, Joseph Wilson Swan developed a longer lasting light bulb using a treated cotton thread that also removed the problem of early bulb blackening.
-
In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Edison built his first high resistance, incandescent electric light. It worked by passing electricity through a thin platinum filament in the glass vacuum bulb, which delayed the filament from melting.
-
Peter Cooper Hewitt the first mercury vapor lamp in 1901. It excites mercury vapor to create luminescence.
-
British experimenter in Marconi labs Henry Joseph Round noticed for the first time that when a potential of 10volts is applied to carborundum (silicon carbide) crystal, it emits yellowish light.
-
Edmund Germer created a high-pressure arc lamp that could handle a lot more power in a smaller space.
-
Nick Holonyak Jr., employed in General Electric, developed in 1962 first light-emitting diode that emitted light in the visible part of the frequency range. It was a red LED.
-
Shuji Nakamura invented the first high brightness gallium nitride (GaN) LED whose brilliant blue light, when partially converted to yellow by a phosphor coating, is the key to white LED lighting.
