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November 22, 2013 - 1:00pm

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More than 150 years ago, inventors began working on a bright idea that would have a
dramatic impact on how we use energy in our homes and offices. This invention changed Incandescents

the way we design buildings, increased the length of the average workday and
jumpstarted new businesses. It also led to new energy breakthroughs -- from power plants
and electric transmission lines to home appliances and electric motors.

Rebecca Matulka
Former Digital Communications Like all great inventions, the light bulb can’t be credited to one inventor. It was a series of
Specialist, Office of Public Affairs small improvements on the ideas of previous inventors that have led to the light bulbs we
use in our homes today.

Long before Thomas Edison patented -- first in 1879 and then a year later in 1880 -- and
began commercializing his incandescent light bulb, British inventors were demonstrating
that electric light was possible with the arc lamp. In 1835, the first constant electric light
was demonstrated, and for the next 40 years, scientists around the world worked on the
incandescent lamp, tinkering with the filament (the part of the bulb that produces light
Daniel Wood when heated by an electrical current) and the bulb’s atmosphere (whether air is vacuumed
Data Integration Specialist
out of the bulb or it is filled with an inert gas to prevent the filament from oxidizing and
burning out). These early bulbs had extremely short lifespans, were too expensive to
produce or used too much energy.

When Edison and his researchers at Menlo Park came onto the lighting scene, they
focused on improving the filament -- first testing carbon, then platinum, before finally
• Like all great inventions, the
returning to a carbon filament. By October 1879, Edison’s team had produced a light bulb
light bulb can’t be credited to
one inventor.
with a carbonized filament of uncoated cotton thread that could last for 14.5 hours. They
continued to experiment with the filament until settling on one made from bamboo that
• It was a series of small
gave Edison’s lamps a lifetime of up to 1,200 hours -- this filament became the standard
improvements on the ideas of
for the Edison bulb for the next 10 years. Edison also made other improvements to the
previous inventors that have
led to the light bulbs we use in light bulb, including creating a better vacuum pump to fully remove the air from the bulb
our homes today. and developing the Edison screw (what is now the standard socket fittings for light bulbs).

• Learn more about the history

of the incandescent light (Historical footnote: One can’t talk about the history of the light bulb without mentioning
bulb. William Sawyer and Albon Man, who received a U.S. patent for the incandescent lamp,
• Explore the history of and Joseph Swan, who patented his light bulb in England. There was debate on whether
 fluorescent lights, from the Edison’s light bulb patents infringed on these other inventors’ patents. Eventually Edison’s
Geissler tube to CFLs.
U.S. lighting company merged with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company -- the
• Read about the company making incandescent bulbs under the Sawyer-Man patent -- to form General
advancements in LED lights. Electric, and Edison’s English lighting company merged with Joseph Swan’s company to
form Ediswan in England.)

What makes Edison’s contribution to electric lighting so extraordinary is that he didn’t

stop with improving the bulb -- he developed a whole suite of inventions that made the use
of light bulbs practical. Edison modeled his lighting technology on the existing gas lighting
system. In 1882 with the Holborn Viaduct in London, he demonstrated that electricity could
be distributed from a centrally located generator through a series of wires and tubes (also
called conduits). Simultaneously, he focused on improving the generation of electricity,
developing the first commercial power utility called the Pearl Street Station in lower
Manhattan. And to track how much electricity each customer was using, Edison developed
the first electric meter.

While Edison was working on the whole lighting system, other inventors were continuing to
make small advances, improving the filament manufacturing process and the efficiency of
the bulb. The next big change in the incandescent bulb came with the invention of the
tungsten filament by European inventors in 1904. These new tungsten filament bulbs
lasted longer and had a brighter light compared to the carbon filament bulbs. In 1913,
Irving Langmuir figured out that placing an inert gas like nitrogen inside the bulb doubled
its efficiency. Scientists continued to make improvements over the next 40 years that
reduced the cost and increased the efficiency of the incandescent bulb. But by the 1950s,
researchers still had only figured out how to convert about 10 percent of the energy the
incandescent bulb used into light and began to focus their energy on other lighting
solutions.

In the 19th century, two Germans -- glassblower Heinrich Geissler and physician Julius
Plücker -- discovered that they could produce light by removing almost all of the air from a
long glass tube and passing an electrical current through it, an invention that became
known as the Geissler tube. A type of discharge lamp, these lights didn’t gain popularity
until the early 20th century when researchers began looking for a way to improve lighting
efficiency. Discharge lamps became the basis of many lighting technologies, including
neon lights, low-pressure sodium lamps (the type used in outdoor lighting such as
streetlamps) and fluorescent lights.
Both Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla experimented with fluorescent lamps in the
1890s, but neither ever commercially produced them. Instead, it was Peter Cooper
Hewitt’s breakthrough in the early 1900s that became one of the precursors to the
fluorescent lamp. Hewitt created a blue-green light by passing an electric current through
mercury vapor and incorporating a ballast (a device connected to the light bulb that
regulates the flow of current through the tube). While the Cooper Hewitt lamps were more
efficient than incandescent bulbs, they had few suitable uses because of the color of the
light.

By the late 1920s and early 1930s, European researchers were doing experiments with
neon tubes coated with phosphors (a material that absorbs ultraviolet light and converts
the invisible light into useful white light). These findings sparked fluorescent lamp research
programs in the U.S., and by the mid and late 1930s, American lighting companies were
demonstrating fluorescent lights to the U.S. Navy and at the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
These lights lasted longer and were about three times more efficient than incandescent
bulbs. The need for energy-efficient lighting American war plants led to the rapid adoption
of fluorescents, and by 1951, more light in the U.S. was being produced by linear
fluorescent lamps.

It was another energy shortage -- the 1973 oil crisis -- that caused lighting engineers to
develop a fluorescent bulb that could be used in residential applications. In 1974,
researchers at Sylvania started investigating how they could miniaturize the ballast and
tuck it into the lamp. While they developed a patent for their bulb, they couldn’t find a way
to produce it feasibly. Two years later in 1976, Edward Hammer at General Electric
figured out how to bend the fluorescent tube into a spiral shape, creating the first compact
fluorescent light (CFL). Like Sylvania, General Electric shelved this design because the
new machinery needed to mass-produce these lights was too expensive.

Early CFLs hit the market in the mid-1980s at retail prices of $25-35, but prices could vary
widely by region because of the different promotions carried out by utility companies.
Consumers pointed to the high price as their number one obstacle in purchasing CFLs.
There were other problems -- many CFLs of 1990 were big and bulky, they didn’t fit well
into fixtures, and they had low light output and inconsistent performance. Since the 1990s,
improvements in CFL performance, price, efficiency (they use about 75 percent less
energy than incandescents) and lifetime (they last about 10 times longer) have made them
a viable option for both renters and homeowners. Nearly 30 years after CFLs were first
introduced on the market, an ENERGY STAR® CFL costs as little as $1.74 per bulb when
purchased in a four-pack.
One of the fastest developing lighting technologies today is the light-emitting diode (or
LED). A type of solid-state lighting, LEDs use a semiconductor to convert electricity into
light, are often small in area (less than 1 square millimeter) and emit light in a specific
direction, reducing the need for reflectors and diffusers that can trap light.

They are also the most efficient lights on the market. Also called luminous efficacy, a
light bulb’s efficiency is a measure of emitted light (lumens) divided by power it draws
(watts). A bulb that is 100 percent efficient at converting energy into light would have an
efficacy of 683 lm/W. To put this in context, a 60- to 100-watt incandescent bulb has an
efficacy of 15 lm/W, an equivalent CFL has an efficacy of 73 lm/W, and current LED-based
replacement bulbs on the market range from 70-120 lm/W with an average efficacy of 85
lm/W.

In 1962 while working for General Electric, Nick Holonyak, Jr., invented the first visible-
spectrum LED in the form of red diodes. Pale yellow and green diodes were invented next.
As companies continued to improve red diodes and their manufacturing, they began
appearing as indicator lights and calculator displays in the 1970s. The invention of the blue
diode in the 1990s quickly led to the discovery of white LEDs -- researchers simply coated
the blue diodes with a phosphor to make it appear white. Shortly thereafter, researchers
demonstrated white light using red, green and blue LEDs. These breakthroughs led to
LEDs being used in a variety of applications including traffic lights, flashlights and TVs.

To make LEDs an option for general lighting, researchers next had to focus on improving
the efficiency of LEDs -- which in the beginning were no more efficient than incandescent
bulbs. In 2000, the Energy Department partnered with private industry to push white LED
technology forward by creating a high-efficiency device that packaged LEDs together.

When the Department announced the L Prize competition in 2008 (a competition designed
to spur the development of ultra-efficient solid-state lighting products to replace common
lighting technologies), there were just a few LED bulbs on the market that could serve as a
replacement for incandescents, and most were 25-40 watt equivalents. In late 2009,
Philips Lighting North America entered its LED bulb in the L Prize 60-watt replacement
category. (Why focus on this type of bulb? In 2010, the Department estimated there were
approximately 971 million 60-watt incandescent bulbs in use.) After a rigorous evaluation
process, including testing by independent laboratories and field assessments, the Energy
Department announced that Philips Lighting North America won the first L Prize in 2011.
The ability to hit the tough L Prize performance targets showed it could be done and drove
 others in the market to strive higher.

Lighting companies continued to make improvements to both the quality of light and the
energy efficiency of LEDs while cutting their costs. Since 2008, the cost of LED bulbs has
fallen more than 85 percent, and most recently, a number of retailers announced that
they will sell LEDs at $10 or less. Today’s LED bulbs are also six to seven times more
energy efficient than conventional incandescent lights, cut energy use by more than 80
percent and can last more than 25 times longer. Taken together, these advancements
have led to rapid deployment in the past of couple years in both commercial and
residential applications. In 2012 alone, more than 49 million LEDs were installed in the
U.S. -- saving about $675 million in annual energy costs -- and as prices continue to drop,
LEDs are expected to become a common feature in homes across the country.

Incandescents and existing lighting fixtures use designs that date back to Edison’s days.
Replacing the old bulbs with LEDs is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to saving
energy on lighting. LED lighting systems designed to take full advantage of LED’s
strengths have even greater energy-savings potential than forcing LEDs into 19th century
fixtures.

It’s hard to tell where lighting technology will go in the future, but one thing is clear: it won’t
be your grandfather’s light bulb.

To learn how the Energy Department is working to accelerate the efficiency and quality of
LEDs, visit the Solid-State Lighting Program’s website.

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