The Invention of the Light Bulb

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Recommended: How light bulbs changed our lives essay

The light bulb is the most important invention in history. This invention helps in

so many ways, most importantly; it helps us see when we are not able to, mostly at night.

The light bulb is an invention that is used all the time. The light bulb has impacted the

world in various ways. The only light source that was available consisted of candles, oil

lanterns, and gas lamps. It was a very long process to create the light bulb known today.

What the inventors mostly did was they kept on adding different filaments, or trying out

new filaments. It didn’t happen all at once, it took various people to keep on making it

better, to what the typical light bulb is today. Many people helped with the light bulb that

we know today.

The following people, Humphry Davy, Warren De La Rue, James Bowman

Lindsay, Edward Shepard, Joseph Wilson Swan, Heinrich Goebel, Hermann Sprengel,

Henry Woodward, Matthew Evans, Thomas Edison, Willis Whitney, and William David

Coolidge were all amazing people in which helped to make the light bulb we have today.

A science experiment will also be discussed in this essay. In the science experiment, it

will show which light bulb produces the most heat. The materials that will be used in this

experiment will be two light bulbs, a lamp, and a thermometer used to measure the heat

produced. The two light bulbs getting compared are an incandescent and a fluorescent

light bulb.

The invention of the incandescent light bulb has a history spanning as early as the

1800s. The only light source that was available before the light bulb consisted of candles,

oil lanterns, and gas lamps (invsee.asu.edu). In 1809, Humphry Davy, an English

Chemist began to work on the invention of the incandescent light source....

... middle of paper ...

...ilament. It was a predecessor to the tungsten filament. In 1906 The General Electric

Company was the first to patent a method. It was to make tungsten filaments that were

used in incandescent light bulbs. The filaments were very expensive at that time when

In 1910 William David Coolidge then invented an improved method of making

tungsten filaments. This outlasted all the other types of filaments. This filament, unlike

the one The General Electric Company made, was much more cheaper and affordable for

the people. Coolidge made the price practical. Then later on in 1925 the first frosted light

bulbs were produced. Finally, in 1991, Philips, using magnetic induction, invented a light

bulb that lasted 60,000 hours (inventors.about.com). Although there were many light

bulbs being made, some of them were no longer going to be made or sold from the store

shelves.

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