First Electric Lamp

Radio Record, Volume III, Issue 31, 14 February 1930, Page 27

First Electric Lamp

Invented by Si+ Joseph Swan UBILEE festivals were carried out with great felicitations in America, lauding Mr. Edison, the great inventor, as the creator of the first electric incandescent lamp, and a picture is now being shown in this country, where Mr. Edison is receiving the congratulations of President Hoover on that. score. Great inventor as Mr. Edison is, and none would wish to belittle his achieveefits, this honour is, intentionally or unintentionally, claimed for him in error, October, 1879, was the date of Mr. Edison’s first ineandescent electric lamp, but it was not the first in the field, Joseph William Swan having exhibited a successful carbon filament lamp at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1878. When Sir Joseph Swan was interviewed in 1914 he was 85 years of age, but the white hair which stood high from his broad forehead was as thick as in the days of his youth; his eyes were bright with intellectual energy, and his voice had the ring of an intense vitality. He it is to whom we owe the incandescent lamp and many of the inventions which have made photography an art. He was born before Queen Victoria ame to the throne, was grown up "when he travelled by stage-coach, and theard the watchman call the hours of the night as he lay in bed. He was an inventor before Darwin published "The Origin of Species’; and on the banks of the river Wear, he had watched nails being hammered into the walls of the old wooden ships of Old England. Yet he lived in full possession of his great faculties, on to that catastrophic year of 1914, and as though he foresaw what was to come, he spoke in the January of that year of the madness and wickedness of war. PEAKING of Christianity and its message of goodwill to men, its promise of peace to mankind, he suddenly exclaimed that the civilisation ’ of the world was threatened not by its most backward nations, but by the foremost Christian nation of enlightened Burope. e said that the peril of war existed Europe because Huropeans do not love truth as the man of science loves it. "Science sets an example to philosophy, to religion, and te politics," he said. "Science has no prejudices, no superstitions. It desires trust and is willing to accept its consequences. Truth is the greatest thing of all except love." From his youth up, Sir Joseph Swan loved truth more than his own ease. He was born in humble circumstances, had at first but a poor education and was early put to work. But he loved truth, and striving valiantly in her service he rose to high honour and eomfortable wealth. ~ Surely it is significant that the greatest contribution made to human happiness by this devoted disciple of truth came in the form of light, light for our darkness, and we think his name should be remembered both for the work he did and the high example he set,