A Brief History of The Light Bulb

Lighting has certainly come a long way. Energy saving, long lasting solutions such as those in our range of LED light bulbs are becoming commonplace and its all too easy to take the ubiquitous light bulb for granted. At Ryness (http://www.ryness.co.uk/) we thought we’d pay homage to such a vital piece of everyday life by taking a look at the history of the humble light bulb.

As suppliers of LED light bulbs, as well as many other lighting solutions, we owe a debt of gratitude to the early pioneers. The history of light bulbs can be traced back to the early 1800s, before which lighting consisted primarily of candles, oil lanterns and gas lamps. These were of course, highly dangerous and after a series of terrible mining accidents caused by naked flame lighting, Humphry Davy invented the Davy Lamp in which the flame was protected from the general atmosphere behind gauze and glass. It saved many lives. A talented chemist, Humphry Davy also started work on an early incandescent light source. Using a high power battery to induce current between two charcoal strips, he created the first arc lamp. It was hugely expensive, and therefore not scalable, but it showed what could be done.

The first attempt to make an actual incandescent light bulb came in 1820 when Warren De La Rue enclosed a platinum coil in an evacuated tube and passed an electric current through it. Perhaps understandably the use of platinum made it very, very expensive to produce. From then the race to produce an affordable, reliable bulb was on. The breakthrough came when Edison and Swan, independently of each other, produced a carbon fiber filament. It still only glowed for 12 hours or so. Practical changes were made to the filament and the use of osmium and tantalum gave improvements, though the frustration remained that a brighter bulb meant a shorter life span.

The incandescent bulb we all recognize came about when General Electric invented the ductile tungsten filament with tensile strength greater than steel, a very bright glow and a long life span. That was in 1910 and not a lot changed for nigh-on 100 years. The invention of LED light bulbs in their current form has been attributed to Philips Electronics in 2009 and was hailed as a real game changer.

We at Ryness (http://www.ryness.co.uk/) certainly think so. The benefits of LED light bulbs are obvious. A much longer life, the average incandescent bulb lasts 1000 hours whilst a, LED bulb 25,000, and much lower energy use; up to 90%. So we’ve certainly come a long way from naked flames and oil lamps! And now we have a new leap forward in the form of the energy saving, long life LED light bulbs. Ryness can’t take the credit for inventing the light bulb, but we can take credit for our great range, exceptional customer service, and low, low prices.