The Beginning

The history of incandescent lighting dates back to 1809 where Humphry Davy, an English chemist, invented the lightbulb.

He connected two wires to a battery and attaching a charcoal strip between the ends of the wires, the charged carbon glowed; making the first arc lamp. From that invention, several other ideas spawned, but one of the most famous lighting inventors was Thomas Alva Edison who invented the carbon filament which burned for 40 hours. In 1880 Edison invented the bamboo filament which burned for over 1200 hours.

In 1906, General Electric invented the tungsten fi lament, a revolution at the time; it’s still in use today. One of the greatest minds of the 19th and 20th centuries, responsible for today’s modern world, Nikola Tesla is still virtually unknown to today’s textbooks, teachers, and general public. Aside from inventing AC current transmission and the modern electric motor, Tesla developed and used fluorescent bulbs in his lab some 40 years before industry “invented” them. At the World’s Fair, Tesla took glass tubes and bent them into famous scientists’ names- the first neon signs.

Now, LED lighting in the visible spectrum was discovered in 1902; however LED’s were primarily offered in a fixed array of colors such as red, blue, or green. In 2003 a white LED was demonstrated which operated at levels 4 times more efficient than incandescent bulbs. LED’s have the theoretical possibility of performance that is up to 18 times the efficiency of a conventional incandescent bulb. Thus, LED’s are the Next Giant Leap in Lighting Technology.