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.

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.

18th century

 * 1780 Ami Argand invents the central draught fixed oil lamp.
 * 1784 Argand adds glass chimney to central draught lamp.
 * 1792 William Murdoch begins experimenting with gas lighting and probably produced the first gas light in this year.
 * 1800 French watchmaker Bernard Guillaume Carcel 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 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 first electric lamp over 10,000 lumens, at the Royal Society.
 * 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.
 * 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 lasts 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. 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.
 * 1893 GE introduces first commercial fully enclosed carbon arc lamp. Sealed in glass globes, it lasts 100h 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 tip 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.