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Antiquity

• 125,000 BC Widespread control of fire by early humans.¹
• 17,500 BC oldest documented lamp, utilizing animal fat as fuel²
• c. 4500 BC oil lamps
• c. 3000 BC candles are invented.
• 577 CE Use of matches in China.³

18th century

• 1780 Ami Argand invents the central draught fixed oil lamp.
• 1784 Argand adds glass chimney to central draught lamp.
• 1786 William Nicholson proposes use of concentric wicks.⁴
• 1792 William Murdoch begins experimenting with gas lighting and probably produced the first gas light in this year.
• 1800 French watchmaker Bertrand Guillaume Carcel [fr] overcomes the disadvantages of the Argand-type lamps with his clockwork fed Carcel lamp.

19th century

• 1800–1809 Humphry Davy invents the arc lamp when using Voltaic piles (battery) for his electrolysis experiments.
• 1802- Vasily Vladimirovich Petrov developed the first persistent electric arc.⁵
• 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.
• 1809 Humphry Davy publicly demonstrates the first electric lamp over 10,000 lumens, at the Royal Society.⁶
• 1813 National Heat and Light Company formed by Frederick Albert Winsor.
• 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.⁷
• 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 1500 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.⁸ 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.⁹
• 1893 GE introduces the first commercial fully enclosed carbon arc lamp. Sealed in glass globes, it lasts 100h and therefore 10 times longer than hitherto carbon arc lamps ¹⁰¹¹
• 1893 Nikola Tesla puts forward his ideas on high frequency and wireless electric lighting¹²¹³ 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.¹⁴ 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.¹⁵
• 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.¹⁶
• 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.¹⁷
• 1953 André Bernanose and several colleagues observe electroluminescence in organic materials.¹⁸¹⁹
• 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.²⁰
• 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.²¹
• 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.²²
• 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.²³

21st century

• 2008 Ushio Lighting demonstrates the first LED filament.²⁴
• 2011 Philips wins L Prize for LED screw-in lamp equivalent to 60 W incandescent A-lamp for general use.

References

1. "First Control of Fire by Human Beings—How Early?". Retrieved 2007-11-12. http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/hb/hb-interview2c.shtml ↩

2. de Beaune, Sophie A.; White, Randall (1993). "Ice Age Lamps". Scientific American. 268 (3): 108–113. Bibcode:1993SciAm.266c.108D. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0393-108. ISSN 0036-8733. JSTOR 24941409. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24941409 ↩

3. Needham, Joseph (1 January 1962). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology; Part 1, Physics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 70–71. ISBN 978-0-521-05802-5. Archived from the original on 2 January 2014. sulphur matches were certainly sold in the markets of Hangchow when Marco Polo was there {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help) 978-0-521-05802-5 ↩

4. Nicholson, William (May 1785). "The London Magazine, of May 1785". Hathi Trust. Retrieved 28 October 2024. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433081682787&seq=7 ↩

5. Guarnieri, M. (2015). "Switching the Light: From Chemical to Electrical" (PDF). IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine. 9 (3): 44–47. doi:10.1109/MIE.2015.2454038. hdl:11577/3164116. S2CID 2986686. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-02-14. Retrieved 2019-09-02. https://www.research.unipd.it/bitstream/11577/3164116/5/21%20LightElectric.pdf ↩

6. Dr. Thomas Klett, Geschichte der Lichttechnik [History of Lighting] ↩

7. "In The Beginning: 10 Inventors of the Incandescent Lightbulb". Txchnologist. Archived from the original on 2021-04-17. Retrieved 2025-05-06. http://web.archive.org/web/20210417195155/https://txchnologist.com/post/77710091911/in-the-beginning-10-inventors-of-the-incandescent#_=_ ↩

8. Great Barrington Historical Society, Great Barrington, Massachusetts ↩

9. "Great Barrington Experiment". edisontechcenter.org. Retrieved 2025-05-06. http://edisontechcenter.org/GreatBarrington.html ↩

10. Dr. Thomas Klett, Geschichte der Lichttechnik [History of Lighting] ↩

11. Bernard Gorowitz Ed., The General Electric Story ↩

12. Carlson, W. Bernard (April 27, 2015). Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age. Princeton University Press. p. 132. ISBN 978-0691165615. 978-0691165615 ↩

13. note: at St. Louis, Missouri, Tesla public demonstration called, "On Light and Other High-Frequency Phenomena", (Journal of the Franklin Institute, Volume 136 By Persifor Frazer, Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pa) /wiki/St._Louis,_Missouri ↩

14. U.S. patent 656,874 https://patents.google.com/patent/US656874 ↩

15. "A brief history of high intensity discharge hid lighting". Shine Retrofits. Retrieved 21 December 2017. https://www.shineretrofits.com/knowledge-base/lighting-learning-center/a-brief-history-of-high-intensity-discharge-hid-lighting.html ↩

16. "Sodium Lamp". Edison Center. Archived from the original on 20 September 2014. Retrieved 21 December 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20140920234320/http://www.edisontechcenter.org/SodiumLamps.html ↩

17. "20th Century Inventors: Tungsten Halogen Lamp". American History. Retrieved 21 December 2017. http://americanhistory.si.edu/lighting/bios/frid.htm ↩

18. Bernanose, A.; Comte, M.; Vouaux, P. (1953). "A new method of light emission by certain organic compounds". J. Chim. Phys. 50: 64. doi:10.1051/jcp/1953500064. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩

19. Bernanose, A.; Vouaux, P. (1953). "Organic electroluminescence type of emission". J. Chim. Phys. 50: 261. doi:10.1051/jcp/1953500261. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩

20. Schmidt, Kurt. "High pressure sodium vapor lamp". Google Patents. Retrieved 21 December 2017. https://patents.google.com/patent/US3248590 ↩

21. Dr. Thomas Klett, Geschichte der Lichttechnik [History of Lighting] ↩

22. Dr. Thomas Klett, Geschichte der Lichttechnik [History of Lighting] ↩

23. Dr. Thomas Klett, Geschichte der Lichttechnik [History of Lighting] ↩

24. "The Next Generation of LED Filament Bulbs". Retrieved 2025-05-10. https://www.ledinside.com/knowledge/2015/2/the_next_generation_of_led_filament_bulbs ↩