An incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is an electric

light with a filament that is heated until it glows. The filament is enclosed in a glass bulb that
is either evacuated or filled with inert gas to protect the filament from oxidation. Electric
current is supplied to the filament by terminals or wires embedded in the glass. A bulb socket
provides mechanical support and electrical connections.
Incandescent bulbs are manufactured in a wide range of sizes, light output,
and voltage ratings, from 1.5 volts to about 300 volts. They require no external regulating
equipment, have low manufacturing costs, and work equally well on either alternating
current or direct current. As a result, the incandescent bulb became widely used in household
and commercial lighting, for portable lighting such as table lamps, car headlamps,
and flashlights, and for decorative and advertising lighting.
Incandescent bulbs are much less efficient than other types of electric lighting. Less than 5%
of the energy they consume is converted into visible light; the rest is lost as heat.[1]
[2]
The luminous efficacy of a typical incandescent bulb for 120 V operation is 16 lumens per
watt (lm/W), compared with 60 lm/W for a compact fluorescent bulb or 100 lm/W for typical
white LED lamps.[3]
The heat produced by filaments is used in some applications, such as heat
lamps in incubators, lava lamps, Edison effect bulbs, and the Easy-Bake Oven toy. Quartz
envelope halogen infrared heaters are used for industrial processes such as paint curing and
space heating.
Incandescent bulbs typically have short lifetimes compared with other types of lighting;
around 1,000 hours for home light bulbs versus typically 10,000 hours for compact
fluorescents and 20,000–30,000 hours for lighting LEDs. Most incandescent bulbs can be
replaced by fluorescent lamps, high-intensity discharge lamps, and light-emitting diode
lamps (LED). Some governments have begun a phase-out of incandescent light bulbs to
reduce energy consumption.
History[edit]
Historians Robert Friedel and Paul Israel list inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Joseph
Swan and Thomas Edison of General Electric.[4]: 91–93 They conclude that Edison's version was
the first practical implementation, able to outstrip the others because of a combination of four
factors: an effective incandescent material; a vacuum higher than other implementations
which was achieved through the use of a Sprengel pump; a high resistance that made power
distribution from a centralized source economically viable, and the development of the
associated components required for a large-scale lighting system.
Historian Thomas Hughes has attributed Edison's success to his development of an entire,
integrated system of electric lighting.
The lamp was a small component in his system of electric lighting, and no more critical to its
effective functioning than the Edison Jumbo generator, the Edison main and feeder, and the
parallel-distribution system. Other inventors with generators and incandescent lamps, and
with comparable ingenuity and excellence, have long been forgotten because their creators
did not preside over their introduction in a system of lighting.
— Thomas P. Hughes, in Technology at the Turning Point, edited by W. B. Pickett[5][6]

showTimeline of the early evolution of the light bulb[7]

Early pre-commercial research[edit]

Original carbon-filament bulb from Thomas Edison's shop in

Menlo Park
In 1761, Ebenezer Kinnersley demonstrated heating a wire to incandescence.[8] However such
wires tended to melt or oxidize very rapidly (burn) in the presence of air.[9] Limelight became
a popular form of stage lighting in the early 19th century, by heating a piece of calcium
oxide to incandescence with an oxyhydrogen torch.[10]
In 1802, Humphry Davy used what he described as "a battery of immense size",[11] consisting
of 2,000 cells housed in the basement of the Royal Institution of Great Britain,[12] to create an
incandescent light by passing the current through a thin strip of platinum, chosen because the
metal had an extremely high melting point. It was not bright enough nor did it last long
enough to be practical, but it was the precedent behind the efforts of scores of experimenters
over the next 75 years.[13] Davy also demonstrated the electric arc, by passing high current
between two pieces of charcoal.
For the next 40 years much research was given to turning the carbon arc lamp into a practical
means of lighting.[14] The carbon arc itself was dim and violet in color, emitting most of its
energy in the ultraviolet, but the positive electrode was heated to just below the melting point
of carbon and glowed very brightly with incandescence very close to that of sunlight.[15] Arc
lamps burned up their carbon rods very rapidly, expelled dangerous carbon monoxide, and
tended to produce outputs in the tens of kilowatts. Therefore, they were only practical for
lighting large areas, so researchers continued to search for a way to make lamps suitable for
home use.[16]
Over the first three-quarters of the 19th century, many experimenters worked with various
combinations of platinum or iridium wires, carbon rods, and evacuated or semi-evacuated
enclosures. Many of these devices were demonstrated and some were patented.[17]
In 1835, James Bowman Lindsay demonstrated a constant electric light at a public meeting
in Dundee, Scotland. He stated that he could "read a book at a distance of one and a half
feet". However he did not develop the electric light any further.[18]
In 1838, Belgian lithographer Marcellin Jobard invented an incandescent light bulb with a
vacuum atmosphere using a carbon filament.[19]
In 1840, British scientist Warren De la Rue enclosed a coiled platinum filament in
a vacuum tube and passed an electric current through it. The design was based on the concept
that the high melting point of platinum would allow it to operate at high temperatures and that
the evacuated chamber would contain fewer gas molecules to react with the platinum,
improving its longevity. Although a workable design, the cost of the platinum made it
impractical for commercial use.
In 1841, Frederick de Moleyns of England was granted the first patent for an incandescent
lamp, with a design using platinum wires contained within a vacuum bulb. He also used
carbon.[20][21]
In 1845, American John W. Starr patented an incandescent light bulb using carbon filaments.
[22][23]
His invention was never produced commercially.[24]
In 1851, Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin publicly demonstrated incandescent light bulbs on his
estate in Blois, France. His light bulbs are on display in the museum of the Château de Blois.
[a]

In 1859, Moses G. Farmer built an electric incandescent light bulb using a platinum filament.
[25]
Thomas Edison later saw one of these bulbs in a shop in Boston, and asked Farmer for
advice on the electric light business.

Alexander Lodygin on 1951 Soviet postal stamp

In 1872, Russian Alexander Lodygin invented an incandescent light bulb and obtained a
Russian patent in 1874. He used as a burner two carbon rods of diminished section in a glass
receiver, hermetically sealed, and filled with nitrogen, electrically arranged so that the current
could be passed to the second carbon when the first had been consumed.[26] Later he lived in
the US, changed his name to Alexander de Lodyguine and applied for and obtained patents
for incandescent lamps
having chromium, iridium, rhodium, ruthenium, osmium, molybdenum and tungsten filament
s,[27] and a bulb using a molybdenum filament was demonstrated at the world fair of 1900 in
Paris.[28]
On 24 July 1874, a Canadian patent was filed by Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans for a
lamp consisting of carbon rods mounted in a nitrogen-filled glass cylinder. They were
unsuccessful at commercializing their lamp, and sold rights to their patent (U.S. patent
181,613) to Thomas Edison in 1879. (Edison needed ownership of the novel claim of lamps
connected in a parallel circuit).[29][30]
On 4 March 1880, just five months after Edison's light bulb, Alessandro Cruto created his
first incandescent lamp. Cruto produced a filament by deposition of graphite on thin platinum
filaments, by heating it with an electric current in the presence of gaseous ethyl alcohol.
Heating this platinum at high temperatures leaves behind thin filaments of platinum coated
with pure graphite. By September 1881 he had achieved a successful version of this the first
synthetic filament. The light bulb invented by Cruto lasted five hundred hours as opposed to
the forty of Edison's original version. In 1882 Munich Electrical Exhibition in Bavaria,
Germany Cruto's lamp was more efficient than the Edison's one and produced a better, white
light.[31]
In 1893, Heinrich Göbel claimed he had designed the first incandescent light bulb in 1854,
with a thin carbonized bamboo filament of high resistance, platinum lead-in wires in an all-
glass envelope, and a high vacuum. Judges of four courts raised doubts about the alleged
Göbel anticipation, but there was never a decision in a final hearing due to the expiration of
Edison's patent. A research work published in 2007 concluded that the story of the Göbel
lamps in the 1850s is fictitious.[32]
Commercialization[edit]
Carbon filament and vacuum[edit]
 Carbon filament lamps, showing darkening of bulb

Sir Joseph Wilson Swan

Joseph Swan (1828–1914) was a British physicist and chemist. In 1850, he began working
with carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated glass bulb. By 1860, he was able to
demonstrate a working device but the lack of a good vacuum and an adequate supply of
electricity resulted in a short lifetime for the bulb and an inefficient source of light. By the
mid-1870s better pumps had become available, and Swan returned to his experiments.[33]

Historical plaque at Underhill, the first house to be lit by

electric lights
With the help of Charles Stearn, an expert on vacuum pumps, in 1878, Swan developed a
method of processing that avoided the early bulb blackening. This received a British Patent in
1880.[34] On 18 December 1878, a lamp using a slender carbon rod was shown at a meeting of
the Newcastle Chemical Society, and Swan gave a working demonstration at their meeting on
17 January 1879. It was also shown to 700 who attended a meeting of the Literary and
Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne on 3 February 1879.[35] These lamps used a
carbon rod from an arc lamp rather than a slender filament. Thus they had low resistance and
required very large conductors to supply the necessary current, so they were not
commercially practical, although they did furnish a demonstration of the possibilities of
incandescent lighting with relatively high vacuum, a carbon conductor, and platinum lead-in
wires. This bulb lasted about 40 hours.[35]
Swan then turned his attention to producing a better carbon filament and the means of
attaching its ends. He devised a method of treating cotton to produce 'parchmentised thread'
in the early 1880s and obtained British Patent 4933 that same year.[34] From this year he began
installing light bulbs in homes and landmarks in England. His house, Underhill, Low Fell,
Gateshead, was the first in the world to be lit by a lightbulb. In the early 1880s he had started
his company.[36] In 1881, the Savoy Theatre in the City of Westminster, London was lit by
Swan incandescent lightbulbs, which was the first theatre, and the first public building in the
world, to be lit entirely by electricity.[37] The first street in the world to be lit by an
incandescent lightbulb was Mosley Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. It was lit
by Joseph Swan's incandescent lamp on 3 February 1879.[38][39]

Comparison of Edison, Maxim, and Swan bulbs, 1885

Edison carbon filament lamps, early 1880s

Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Edison began serious research into developing a practical incandescent lamp in
1878. Edison filed his first patent application for "Improvement in Electric Lights" on 14
October 1878.[40] After many experiments, first with carbon in the early 1880s and then
with platinum and other metals, in the end Edison returned to a carbon filament.[41] The first
successful test was on 22 October 1879,[42][43] and lasted 13.5 hours. Edison continued to
improve this design and by 4 November 1879, filed for a US patent for an electric lamp using
"a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected ... to platina contact wires."[44] Although the
patent described several ways of creating the carbon filament including using "cotton and
linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways,"[44] Edison and his team later
discovered that a carbonized bamboo filament could last more than 1200 hours.[45] In 1880,
the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company steamer, Columbia, became the first
application for Edison's incandescent electric lamps (it was also the first ship to use
a dynamo).[46][47][48]
Albon Man, a New York lawyer, started Electro-Dynamic Light Company in 1878 to exploit
his patents and those of William Sawyer.[49][50] Weeks later the United States Electric Lighting
Company was organized.[49][50][51] This company did not make their first commercial
installation of incandescent lamps until the fall of 1880, at the Mercantile Safe Deposit
Company in New York City, about six months after the Edison incandescent lamps had been
installed on the Columbia. Hiram S. Maxim was the chief engineer at the United States
Electric Lighting Company.[52] After the great success in the United States, the incandescent
light bulb patented by Edison also began to gain widespread popularity in Europe as well;
among other places, the first Edison light bulbs in the Nordic countries were installed at the
weaving hall of the Finlayson's textile factory in Tampere, Finland in March 1882.[53]
Lewis Latimer, employed at the time by Edison, developed an improved method of heat-
treating carbon filaments which reduced breakage and allowed them to be molded into novel
shapes, such as the characteristic "M" shape of Maxim filaments. On 17 January 1882,
Latimer received a patent for the "Process of Manufacturing Carbons", an improved method
for the production of light bulb filaments, which was purchased by the United States Electric
Light Company.[54] Latimer patented other improvements such as a better way of attaching
filaments to their wire supports.[55]
In Britain, the Edison and Swan companies merged into the Edison and Swan United Electric
Company (later known as Ediswan, and ultimately incorporated into Thorn Lighting Ltd).
Edison was initially against this combination, but Edison was eventually forced to cooperate
and the merger was made. Eventually, Edison acquired all of Swan's interest in the company.
Swan sold his US patent rights to the Brush Electric Company in June 1882.
 U.S. patent 0,223,898 by Thomas Edison for an improved electric lamp,
27 January 1880
The United States Patent Office gave a ruling 8 October 1883, that Edison's patents were
based on the prior art of William Sawyer and were invalid. Litigation continued for a number
of years. Eventually on 6 October 1889, a judge ruled that Edison's electric light
improvement claim for "a filament of carbon of high resistance" was valid.[56]
The main difficulty with evacuating the lamps was moisture inside the bulb, which split when
the lamp was lit, with resulting oxygen attacking the filament.[57] In the 1880s, phosphoric
anhydride was used in combination with expensive mercury vacuum pumps.[58] However,
about 1893, Italian inventor Arturo Malignani [it] (1865–1939), who lacked these pumps,
discovered that phosphorus vapours did the job of chemically binding the remaining amounts
of water and oxygen.[57][58] In 1896 he patented a process of introducing red phosphorus as the
so-called getter inside the bulb [57]), which allowed obtaining economic bulbs lasting 800
hours; his patent was acquired by Edison in 1898.[33]
In 1897, German physicist and chemist Walther Nernst developed the Nernst lamp, a form of
incandescent lamp that used a ceramic globar and did not require enclosure in a vacuum or
inert gas.[59][60] Twice as efficient as carbon filament lamps, Nernst lamps were briefly popular
until overtaken by lamps using metal filaments.
Metal filament, inert gas[edit]
 Hanaman (left) and Just (right), the inventors of the tungsten bulbs

Hungarian advertising of the Tungsram-bulb from 1906. This was

the first light bulb that used a filament made from tungsten instead of carbon. The inscription
reads: wire lamp with a drawn wire – indestructible.
US575002A patent on 01.Dec.1897 to Alexander Lodyguine (Lodygin, Russia) describes
filament made of rare metals, amongst them was tungsten. Lodygin invented a process where
rare metals such as tungsten can be chemically treated and heat-vaporized onto an electrically
heated thread-like wire (platinum, carbon, gold) acting as a temporary base or skeletal form.
(US patent 575,002). Lodygin later sold the patent rights to GE. In 1902, Siemens developed
a tantalum lamp filament that was more efficient than even graphitized carbon filaments since
they could operate at higher temperature. Since tantalum metal has a lower resistivity than
carbon, the tantalum lamp filament was quite long and required multiple internal supports.
The metal filament gradually shortened in use; the filaments were installed with large slack
loops. Lamps used for several hundred hours became quite fragile.[61] Metal filaments had the
property of breaking and re-welding, though this would usually decrease resistance and
shorten the life of the filament. General Electric bought the rights to use tantalum filaments
and produced them in the US until 1913.[62]
From 1898 to around 1905, osmium was also used as a filament in lamps made by Carl Auer
von Welsbach. The metal was so expensive that used lamps could be returned for partial
credit.[63] It could not be made for 110 V or 220 V so several lamps were wired in series for
use on standard voltage circuits. These were primarily sold in Europe.
Tungsten filament[edit]
On 13 December 1904, Hungarian Sándor Just and Croatian Franjo Hanaman were granted a
Hungarian patent (No. 34541) for a tungsten filament lamp that lasted longer and gave
brighter light than the carbon filament.[33] Tungsten filament lamps were first marketed by
the Hungarian company Tungsram in 1904. This type is often called Tungsram-bulbs in many
European countries.[64] Filling a bulb with an inert gas such as argon or nitrogen slows down
the evaporation of the tungsten filament compared to operating it in a vacuum. This allows
for greater temperatures and therefore greater efficacy with less reduction in filament life.[65]
In 1906, William D. Coolidge developed a method of making "ductile tungsten"
from sintered tungsten which could be made into filaments while working for General
Electric Company.[66] By 1911 General Electric had begun selling incandescent light bulbs
with ductile tungsten wire.[67]
In 1913, Irving Langmuir found that filling a lamp with inert gas instead of a vacuum resulted
in twice
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