CHRONOLOGY OF ELECTRIC LIGHT
1800—Allesandro Volta demonstrated his discovery that electricity can be generated by chemical means. The Volt, the unit of electric pressure, is named in his honor for this discovery of the electric battery.
1802—Sir Humphry Davy demonstrated that electric current can heat carbon and strips of metal to incandescence and give light.
1809—Sir Humphry Davy demonstrated that current will give a brilliant flame between the ends of two carbon pencils which are first allowed to touch each other and then pulled apart. This light he called the “arc” on account of its arch shape.
1820—André Marie Ampère discovered that current flowing through a coiled wire gives it the properties of a magnet. The Ampere, the unit of flow of electric current, is named in his honor for this discovery.
1825—Georg Simon Ohm discovered the relation between the voltage, ampereage and resistance in an electric circuit, which is called Ohm’s Law. The Ohm, the unit of electric resistance, is named in his honor for this discovery.
1831—Michael Faraday discovered that electricity can be generated by moving a wire in the neighborhood of a magnet, the principle of the dynamo.
1840—Sir William Robert Grove demonstrated his experimental incandescent lamp in which platinum is made incandescent by current flowing through it.
1841—Frederick De Moleyns obtained the first patent on an incandescent lamp. The burner was powdered charcoal operating in an exhausted glass globe.
1845—Thomas Wright obtained the first patent on an arc light.
1845—J. W. Starr invented an incandescent lamp consisting of a carbon pencil operating in the vacuum above a column of mercury.
1856—Joseph Lacassagne and Henry Thiers invented the “differential” method of control of the arc which was universally used twenty years later when the arc lamp was commercially established.
1862—The first commercial installation of an electric light. An arc light was put in a lighthouse in England.
1866—Sir Charles Wheatstone invented the “self-excited” dynamo, now universally used.
1872—Lodyguine invented an incandescent lamp having a graphite burner operating in nitrogen gas.
1876—Paul Jablochkoff invented the “electric candle,” an arc light commercially used for lighting the boulevards in Paris.
1877–8—Arc light systems commercially established in the United States by William Wallace and Prof. Moses Farmer, Edward Weston, Charles F. Brush and Prof. Elihu Thomson and Edwin J. Houston.
1879—Thomas Alva Edison invented an incandescent lamp consisting of a high resistance carbon filament operating in a high vacuum maintained by an all glass globe. These principles are used in all incandescent lamps made today. He also invented a completely new system of distributing electricity at constant pressure, now universally used.
1882—Lucien Goulard and John D. Gibbs invented a series alternating current system of distributing electric current. This has not been commercially used.
1886—William Stanley invented a constant pressure alternating current system of distribution. This is universally used where current is to be distributed long distances.
1893—Louis B. Marks invented the enclosed carbon arc lamp.
1898—Bremer’s invention of the flame arc lamp, having carbons impregnated with various salts, commercially established.
1900—Dr. Walther Nernst’s invention of the Nernst lamp commercially established. The burner consisted of various oxides, such as zirconia, which operated in the open air.
1901—Dr. Peter Cooper Hewitt’s invention of the mercury arc light commercially established.
1902—The magnetite arc lamp was developed by C. A. B. Halvorson, Jr. This has a new method of control of the arc. The negative electrode consists of a mixture of magnetite and other substances packed in an iron tube.
1904—D. McFarlan Moore’s invention of the Moore vacuum tube light commercially established. This consisted of a long tube, made in lengths up to 200 feet, from which the air had been exhausted to about a thousandth of an atmosphere. High voltage current passing through this rarefied atmosphere caused it to glow. Rarefied carbon dioxide gas was later used.
1905—Dr. Auer von Welsbach’s invention of the osmium incandescent lamp commercially established, but only on a small scale in Europe. The metal osmium, used for the filament which operated in vacuum, is rarer and more expensive than platinum.
1905—Dr. Willis R. Whitney’s invention of the Gem incandescent lamp commercially established. The carbon filament had been heated to a very high temperature in an electric resistance furnace invented by him. The lamp was 25 per cent more efficient than the regular carbon lamp.
1906—Dr. Werner von Bolton’s invention of the tantalum incandescent lamp commercially established.
1907—Alexander Just and Franz Hanaman’s invention of the tungsten filament incandescent lamp commercially established.
1911—Dr. William D. Coolidge’s invention of drawn tungsten wire commercially established.
1913—Dr. Irving Langmuir’s invention of the gas-filled tungsten filament incandescent lamp commercially established.