ELECTRIC LIGHT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 775, 23 September 1929, Page 13

ELECTRIC LIGHT

ENGLAND AND U.S.A. CLAIM INVENTION

Last December the Institution of Electrical Engineers held a celebration in London of the jubilee of the discovery of electric lighting by an Englishman. Last month the Pnited States issued a special postage stamp for the same purpose, with tho difference that they claim it is an American invention, says the “Daily Mail.” It was Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, F.R.S., a native of Sunderland, who discovered electric lighting. Edisou followed up Swan’s work, and the two subsequently entered into a business partnership, although they never met personally. Edison obtained bis patent in 1873, a year before Swan. Hut in 185 G Swan had demonstrated the possibility of illuminating the South Foreland (Kent) lighthouse experimentally in the presence of the great scientist Faraday himself, and in 18G2 lighting by carbon filaments was officially installed in the lighthouse at Dungeness.

It was in 1545, when he was only 17 | years of age. that Swan listened to a lecture at the Sunderland A t henaeum ! that gave him his first idea. He tried to use pieces of paper imi pregnated with carbon as his illuminant, but found that the soot clouded the glass so quickly that they were useless. Then it struck him that the soot particles were only passengers , on the air inside the bulb. He devised a means of removing all the air from the bulb, with the help ! of a bank clerk in Birk«ihead named Charles H. Steam, and the modern electric globe was born. Swan was knighted in 1904 and died in 1914. He had left to his country, to industry and to the world three great bequests—electric lighting, artificial ' silk and bromide printing.