Illuminating Progress: From Burning Sticks to Electric Marvels – The Evolution of Lighting Technology

-Karthik Gurumurthy

I’m amazed at how something we take for granted today – flipping a switch for instant light – was once a revolutionary innovation that took centuries to develop.

Humans started with the basics: burning sticks, then animal fat lamps, and later kerosene. The first big leap came in the late 1700s with gas lighting, pioneered by William Murdock who lit his house in 1792 by burning coal gas. This technology spread quickly – by 1820, many British cities had gas lighting for streets and homes, and by the late 1800s, nearly a thousand American companies were producing coal gas.

The journey toward electric light began in 1802 when Humphry Davy passed electric current through thin metal strips, making them glow – the first crude incandescent light. This led to arc lamps, which created light between two carbon electrodes. They worked well outdoors but were too dangerous for indoor use because of their unprotected electrical surge.

The real challenge was finding a material that could glow without quickly burning up. Scientists tried platinum in the 1820s and 1830s, discovering it lasted longer in a vacuum. Frederick de Moleyns received the first patent for an incandescent bulb in 1841, but his platinum filament design wasn’t practical.

The breakthrough came in the late 1870s with better vacuum pump technology. In 1879, both Thomas Edison and Joseph Wilson Swan independently created long-lasting bulbs using carbon filaments in near-vacuum conditions. Edison’s October 1879 demonstration is generally accepted as the first practical light bulb – his carbonized cotton filament lasted forty hours.

Edison didn’t stop there. Recognizing that expensive, short-lived batteries couldn’t support widespread lighting adoption, he pioneered the concept of power plants. In 1881, he established his own in New York. Electric lighting quickly became cheaper than gas, and by 1885, there were 250,000 incandescent bulbs in use across the United States.

The light bulb continued evolving through three significant improvements:

1. African American inventor Lewis Howard Latimer developed a longer-lasting carbon filament in the early 1880s
2. In 1910, tungsten filaments replaced carbon – tungsten could withstand higher temperatures, lasted longer, and was relatively inexpensive
3. In 1913, GE chemist Irving Langmuir discovered that filling bulbs with nitrogen and argon gases extended filament life

Incandescent bulbs dominated indoor lighting until 1936 when GE researchers developed the fluorescent lamp. These work completely differently – electrons flowing through a tube react with mercury vapor to produce ultraviolet light, which then strikes phosphor coating on the glass to emit visible light. Fluorescents eventually took over in offices and factories, providing two-thirds of the world’s indoor lighting.

Other lighting technologies developed include:

• Mercury vapor lamps with pressurized mercury in quartz tubes
• Metal halide (halogen) lights containing iodine or bromine, used mainly in stadiums and car headlights
• High-pressure sodium lamps emitting bright yellow-orange light for street lighting
• Neon lamps filled with neon gas that glows red when electrified (can be mixed with other gases for different colors)
• Radio-wave bulbs using radio waves to excite mercury atoms, producing ultraviolet light that reacts with phosphor coating

What fascinates me is how each lighting advance solved problems from previous technologies – from the fire hazards of gas lighting to the inefficiency of incandescent bulbs. Today’s LED lights continue this progression, using even less energy while lasting far longer than earlier technologies. It’s a perfect example of how persistent innovation over centuries can transform something as fundamental as lighting.