A short history of lighting

If you’ve ever felt there aren’t enough hours in the day, you’re not alone. Human beings have been feeling this way since the beginning of time. And we’ve been trying to lengthen our day with artificial lighting for thousands of years.
Nobody can say for sure when the first lamp was invented. The oldest ones ever recovered, however, date from around 70,000 BC. These were made using objects found in nature — hollowed out rocks, shells, or bones — filled with moss soaked in animal fat and ignited. Much later, wicks were added to control the burning rate of the lamp. By this time, lamps were being made out of terra cotta, clay, and metals as well as natural materials.

For tens of thousands of years, our world was lit only by fire and natural light. Lamps always required something to burn, and throughout the ages people used olive oil, beeswax, fish oil, nut oil, whale oil, and sesame oil — and in more modern times, kerosene. Ancient Chinese civilizations were believed to use natural gas as well, which they collected in airtight animal skin containers. But it took Western civilization much longer to catch on to using gas to light their homes.
Gaslight first became commercially available in 1804, when German inventor Freidrich Winzer patented coal gas lighting. This technology developed until most streetlights, around the end of the nineteenth century, were gaslight. This light was not as high quality as what we’re used to now; gaslight was dim and flickering compared to modern standards. But in comparison to candles, oil lamps, and torches, it was a definite improvement.

Lighting as we know it today really begins in 1879, when Thomas Alva Edison introduced the incandescent bulb. But Edison didn’t invent the lightbulb from scratch — he simply refined ideas that had been around for fifty years.
In 1875, two Canadian inventors, Henry Woodward and Michael Evans, patented the first light bulb. But their bulb was still too expensive and complex to be commercialized — and they did not have the money to further improve on their idea. So Edison bought their patent. With the backing of corporate investors, Edison improved upon their lightbulb design until it was inexpensive and easy to mass-produce. The rest, as they say, is history.

Lighting, however, continues to develop. Neon, halogen, and fluorescent lights were all invented within a twenty-year span, between 1911 and 1927. Although the standard incandescent bulb is far from extinct, it is quickly being overtaken in energy efficiency. In another hundred years, it just may be as old-fashioned as gaslight.