Who invented the light bulb?
WITH energy prices on the rise, homeowners are looking for ways to control their bills.
And one of the first swaps they are making is simple: they are updating their light bulbs.
Who invented the light bulb?
It took almost 80 years from when the first incandescent lighting was created, to when the light bulb actually became commercially successful - so who was this thanks to?
Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan fought for the patent of the first light bulb in 1879.
They joined forces shortly after and formed Edison-Swan - probably the largest light bulb manufacturing company.
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But although these two inventors created the first commercially successful light bulb in 1879, their glory rested on the shoulders of many others before them.
It was Italian inventor Alessandro Volta who generated the first incandescent lighting, almost 80 years earlier in 1800.
The lighting was a by-product of the glowing of charged copper wire, connected to a voltaic pile - the forerunner to the modern battery.
Shortly after that, in 1802, English chemist Humphrey Davy created the first electric lamp, the ark lamp - made by connecting voltaic piles to charcoal electrodes.
This lamp burned out fast and was extremely bright, so was more a springboard to other successes than of much practical use in itself.
But arguably the first modern-style light bulb was created in 1840, by British scientist Warren de La Rue.
However, the platinum filament he used was too expensive for mass-production or everyday use.
It took British chemist Swan 29 years of work to replace the platinum with carbonised paper - finally presenting his first working light bulb lamp in 1879.
In the same year, American inventor Edison also brought his first light bulb to the scene, replacing the filament with his own design, which had high electrical resistance but was thin in construction.
Canadian inventors Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans had previously filed a patent for an electric lamp, in 1874.
Their bulb was made from a nitrogen-filled glass cylinder containing different-sized carbon rods held between electrodes.
They eventually sold this patent to Edison.
Who was Thomas Edison?
Born in 1847, Thomas Edison was an American inventor, who is attributed with creating the first commercially successful incandescent light bulb.
He is also known for his success in early motion picture, and the phonograph.
He acquired a whopping 1,093 patents, some of them shared.
In his work on the light bulb, Edison and his team are said to have experimented with over 6,000 plant materials in seeking the best filament for a bulb that was cheap to produce and run.
One of his earliest mass-produced light bulbs used a bamboo filament and another the more well-known carbon filament.
As well as Edison-Swan, he established the Edison Electric Illuminating Company of New York in 1880, to construct electrical generating stations.
He died at the age of 84 in 1931.
Was Nikola Tesla involved in the invention of the light bulb?
Serbian-American genius Nikola Tesla spent little, if any, of his time, developing incandescent electrical lighting of any kind - including light bulbs.
Edison became his boss and the pair worked together briefly while Tesla was in the US in the mid 1880s.
Their working relationship only lasted a matter of months, by all accounts because of their very different personalities and work priorities.
They finally fell out and separated over a dispute about the amount of money Edison is said to have promised Tesla for a large amount of work.
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Edison is also believed to have been displeased about the considerable success Tesla achieved in improving the efficiency of Edison’s dynamos.
Later, the pair were to clash over competition between Tesla’s highly successful alternating current (AC) electricity and Edison’s less flexible direct current (DC) system.