The Incandescent Light Bulb

Ban the bulb

In March 2009 the European Union banned traditional filament style or incandescent light bulbs
(normal bulbs to me and you). This started to take effect on Tuesday September the 1st
2009.Realising an outright ban would be difficult to implement immediately, they set out a schedule
to phase them out, with the least efficient being phased out first, to give industry and the general
public time to make the switch to energy efficient lamps.
There has been some noise made by people who aren’t happy about having to use the energy efficient
type lamps, mainly because of the look of the lamps, and the type of light produced. However as our
society uses more and more electricity to power our modern way of life, we must find ways to be
more efficient energy users, and the incandescent light bulb is a very inefficient method of
producing light, with the majority of the energy used lost as heat. There is also the carbon issue, and
while we still burn fossil fuels, energy efficiency is the best method we have as consumers to reduce
our carbon footprint.
To put this in perspective, if every home in the U.K. were to change one 100watt incandescent light
bulb for an energy efficient type, the energy saved would be the equivalent to closing a small coal
fired power station. With all this in mind I think it is important to pause and take a look at the
history of our ever faithful light bulb, including some of the key players in its development and the
basic science behind it.
Sep. 2009* Sep. 2010 Sep. 2011 Sep. 2012 Sep. 2013
15W 15W 15W 15W BAN
25W 25W 25W 25W OF
40W 40W 40W 40W ALL
60W 60W 60W 60W CLEAR
75W 75W 75W 75W GLS
100W 100W 100W 100W BULBS
= banned
= not yet banned
Schedule of dates.

1
 How do they work?
work?
Incandescent light bulbs work in this way:
• Electricity flows through the filament that is inside the bulb
• The filament has resistance to the electricity
• The resistance makes the filament heat to a high temperature
• The heated filament then radiates light
• All incandescent lamps work by using a physical filament

Key Players

There were many key players including physicists, engineers, inventors and business men, involved
with the laying of the foundations on which Joseph Willson Swan (British) and Thomas Alva
Edison (American) were able to build.
These included people like Joseph Henry (American), Benjamin Franklin (American), Michael
Faraday (British), Alessandro Volta (Italian), Samual Morse (American), Sir Humphrey Davey
(British), George Westinghouse (American) and Heinrich Göbel (German).
There were further improvements to the incandescent light bulb, by people including Willis R
Whitney (American) and William David Coolidge (American).
The importance of the work and commitment by these early pioneers can not be understated,
Thomas Edison for example remains an icon of invention, registering a total 1093 patents which is
still a record. He tested no fewer than 6,000 vegetable growths, and ransacked the world for the
most suitable filament material. Between them Edison and his colleagues worked on more than
3000 theories, and there are similar stories for nearly all the people mentioned earlier.

2
Time line

3
 A Revolution

The incandescent light bulb was no doubt one of the greatest inventions of all time.
Imagine what it must have been like to suddenly be able to keep working after the sun went down,
with lighting far superior to the oil and gas lamps that came before, and much cleaner, safer and
more reliable. Flicking a switch for instantaneous light must have seemed like magic to the general
public, and for those in power it was a new tool for driving forward economic progress. For all
people of the time it must have seemed like a new chapter in human history had arrived, with the
dark ages well and truly behind them.
It is very hard to imagine life without light at the flick of a switch in our modern lives, and it is
incandescent filament lighting and all those involved in its invention and application, we have to
thank, for enabling our modern society as we know it.
As with everything it is good to know what came before. So next time you flick that switch, and the
magic happens, give a little thought to the hard work and ingenuity that gave us that power over the
sun.
The bulb is dead.
Long live the bulb.

An extract from a newspaper article on February 3rd

1879.
1879

He makes a connection and a small glass bulb begins to glow with surprising
brilliance, and stays glowing. Swan speaks, telling the audience of his flameless
light; his “electric incandescent vacuum lamp”. Few members of the audience could
have been in any doubt that they were watching history being made.

Sources
• New Scientist
• Wikipedia
• Enchanted learning
• Idea finder
• Lightbulbs-Direct
• Americas library
• Inventors.about
• BBC news online
• Bulb collector
• The Franklin institute