Who invented the light bulb? Easy. Everyone knows it’s great us inventor Thomas Alva Edison. But was he really invented the incandescent light bulb? Today we going to discuss that.
So, before all, let’s see what is the incandescent light bulb. It’s an electric light which has a wire filament. The filament is enclosed by glass to prevent oxidation of filament. The current is supplying to the filament by wires.
The concept of the incandescent light bulb was first introduced to the world by Humphrey Davy. He is an English chemist. It was in early 1802. It’s actually more than half of a century earlier Thomas Edison genuinely invented it. He connected voltaic piles to charcoal electrodes. The unit is named as ‘electric arc lamp’. He showed when an electric current goes through a wire, a resistance emerges there and it caused them to heat up. At some point, because of the heat up, wires will give out light. Then why he couldn’t make it. The reason also identified by him that he couldn’t solve. It’s because hardness to finding out a cheap material that would bear brightly and be lasted for many hours.
Then after 40 years, in 1840 British astronomer and scientist Warren De La Rue developed a more efficient light bulb using thin and high resistance coiled platinum filament. It’s a more advanced one than the electric arc lamp with the brightness and delayed burn out because of the high melting point of Platinum. He made it from using Davy’s principles. But platinum is an expensive element and he couldn’t find a good vacuum also. So, this light bulb didn’t make a commercial success like Davy’s electric arc lamp.
English physicist Sir Joseph Swan identified by using Carbon he could make light bulbs at a lower cost. In 1860, he developed a light bulb using carbonized paper filament. Swan received a patent for his invention in the United Kingdom in 1978. It’s one year before Edison invented his light bulb. Swan’s light bulbs demonstrated in public events also. But unfortunately, he only succeeded until his light bulbs met rapid burnouts in actual use. It lasted only for 13 and a half hours. The reason for failure is the thickness of his carbonized paper filaments.
So Edison took the advantage of being the last and constructed a more advanced light bulb by learning from failures of unsuccessful light bulbs before. He identified the problem of Swan’s light bulb and finally developed the incandescent light bulb with a thin carbon filament in 1879 which went well more than 1,200 hours. Edison received the patent for his version of the light bulb in the same year.
So the two scientists, Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison began for suing each other. But after all arguments, the two scientists were able to come on to the same side and form a business named, Edison and Swan Electric Light Company by merging their respective companies in 1883. It was one of the largest light bulb manufacturers in the world at that time.
So, the invention of the incandescent light bulb is not a project solely done by Edison. There were so many scientists and engineers who worked hard to make the glowing world today we have. We must surely grateful for those legends.You can now gain more knowledge about inventions and scientific experiments by subscribing to Inventho and our Facebook page. Stay tuned with us.
