A Short History of Electric Lighting – Colite Technologies

Thomas Edison was by no means the only person to experiment with incandescent bulbs nor was his bulb the most advanced, yet he is often considered the inventor of the common light bulb. While that title may be incorrect, he is largely responsible for the widespread use of incandescent bulbs due to his practical design and efforts to distribute electricity to end users from one centralized power generation station. This allowed individuals to purchase just the incandescent lamps and the electricity to power them, rather than pay for the construction of a whole generating plant onsite. It made electricity more accessible to the average person and led to the construction of centralized power grids all over the world – an electric grid structure we still use today.

With the expiration of Edison’s basic lamp patent in 1893, many new competitors entered the market and resulted in a significant decline in prices. It also helped spur innovation and the development of new lighting technologies.

Gas Discharge Lamps

Gas discharge lamps became more widely used in the early 20th century, but the technology is much older. The original gas discharge tube was invented by Heinrich Geissler in 1857 and is often used as a blueprint for other types of discharge lamps. For example, neon lamps invented by French chemist George Claude in 1909 derived from the Geissler tube. These were introduced in the US in 1923 and became extremely popular for storefront signage and advertising. We still see neon signage today, though these lights are most likely faux-neon lights using LED technology to give the appearance of neon lights.

Fluorescent tube lights commonly used in office and retail settings also borrowed from Geissler’s technology. The design was patented in 1926 by Edmund Germer in Germany and has a powder coating on the inside of the glass that acts as a frequency converter, producing a more pleasant light for indoor applications. The electronics manufacturer GE acquired the rights to the fluorescent tube in 1939 and reached large-scale commercial production after World War II. These lights have become a staple in commercial buildings and can be found in almost any lighting supply store. Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) were introduced by Philips, another electronics manufacturer, in 1980 and quickly established themselves as a better alternative to incandescent light bulbs for residential use.

In the outdoor lighting realm, different technologies prevail. In 1927, the high-pressure mercury vapor lamp was developed by Hungarian physicist and engineer Dénes Gabor. It was used as street lighting throughout the thirties but was superseded by the low-pressure sodium vapor lamp shortly after. Sodium vapor dominated the street lighting market because of its unparalleled efficiency of 200 lumens per watt – twenty times higher than incandescent lights and almost five times higher than high-pressure mercury vapor lights. However, their distinct yellow light made them only suitable for outdoor use. By the end of the 1930s, rural areas of Europe and North America were electrified and featured sodium vapor lamps along their streets.

Then in the 1960s, advancements in incandescent technology led to halogen lamps. Halogen lamps use any halogen (iodine, bromine, chlorine, and fluorine) to prevent the evaporation of a filament inside a light bulb. Metal halide lamps combine a halogen with a metal to create bright light that looks more white than other combinations of gases. The better color rendering resulted in the greater use of metal halide fixtures in parking lots and streetlights and they are the most common outdoor lighting technology seen today.