THE FORGOTTEN STORY ABOUT… The electric light bulb
We investigate the history of science: its forgotten drama and magnificent ‘aha’ moments that preceded the most exceptional inventions and scientific breakthroughs.
Crowds of people had gathered around a street lamp in Newcastle, in the north of England. They looked up at the light – which was nothing new in itself; street lamps had been around for more than 50 years, lighting city streets with the flckering light of gas flames. But for this demonstration in February 1879, the gas had been replaced by an incandescent bulb – and its electric light fascinated the locals.
The bulb emitted a steady light. There was no gas fluttering, no long creepy shadows. The street lamp illuminated the city in a way that nobody had witnessed before – either in England or anywhere else.
Most of us will have learned that it was Thomas Edison who invented the incandescent light bulb. But he was not the man behind the lamp in Newcastle. Indeed at that point in time Edison had not even begun his experiments with electric light.
The inventor was Joseph Swan of the UK, a local chemist. Two months previously, he had introduced his incandescent bulb to the city’s intellectual elite, and the reaction had been overwhelming – so overwhelming that he had been invited to install a bulb on one of Newcastle’s busiest roads, Mosley Street.
The 51-year-old Joseph Swan was about to make a major breakthrough. Or so he thought – because Edison had realised the huge potential of the new light source, and he planned to make the epoch-making invention his own.
Gas was an invisible killer
When gas lighting had been introduced in the previous century, it was hailed as civilisation’s most useful innovation. Until then, all
