Hello everyone, dear fans of interesting facts. I think that none of us can imagine our life without light. Therefore, today we will find out who was the first in the world to invent a light bulb that resembled a modern one, as well as what and who contributed to this.
The invention of the incandescent light bulb, like all others, was carried out by many people in different countries. The first to demonstrate his brainchild was the Englishman Humphrey Davy back in 1806. It was a rather primitive invention. Davy created lighting with electric sparks between a pair of carbon rods. The so-called arc candle was unsuitable for practical widespread use. The device itself did not find support, but the idea of creation, after this demonstration, excited the "bright" heads of many inventors.
Years passed ...
Dozens of people worked on the birth of the light bulb, picking up Davy's idea:
Year 1840 - Englishman Delarue;
Year 1854 - German Heinrich Goebel;
Year 1860, English chemist and physicist Joseph Wilson Swan showed his work;
Year 1872-1873 - Alexander Lodygin;
Year 1875 - VF Didrikhson improved the work of Lodygin;
Year 1875-1876 - Russian electrical engineer Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov, worked on the "electric candle";
Thomas Edison in 1879 brought to the end what his predecessors could not do.
Russian engineer, and his invention
Many people in different countries created their creations. Many were haunted by failure. But the lamp of Alexander Lodygin was able to withstand all the tests. She shone for thirty whole minutes! This was already an unprecedented achievement. On the streets of St. Petersburg as many as two pieces of these "miracle candles" shone! Hundreds of people came to see them specially. It was a real sensation, but ... Not everything was so simple. Due to the circumstances, Lodygin could not achieve widespread dissemination of his creation.
The Russian engineer did not manage to finish his job, but Thomas Edison did it. The American scientist learned about the experiments of his Russian colleague. He decided to improve on an existing invention. His work deserves respect - the scientist conducted 1,500 experiments, testing various materials. But this was not the end - 6,000 experiments with carbon filaments - this is the contribution that the inventor made to the history of the appearance of the light bulb.
Is the invention so unambiguous?
Without the ideas of all his predecessors and the invention of Alexander Nikolaevich, probably, Thomas Edison would not have succeeded. This fact is obvious, but unprovable. The painstaking persistent work of the American gave mankind a thread that burned for hundreds of hours without burning out. And he was also able to organize the production of light bulbs at the first specialized factory, they were sold all over the world, replacing traditional candles. This is how the Edison Electrical Light Company was born.
No one dares to say unequivocally that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but no one has yet been able to refute this either. The incandescent lamp was invented before him. However, he created the first practical model together with an electrical system, which is his undeniable achievement. Well, now you know who was the first in the world to invent a light bulb, without which today's life simply cannot be imagined.
The answers to this seemingly simple question can be heard in different ways. Americans will no doubt insist that it was Edison. The British will say that this is their compatriot Swann. The French may remember the "Russian light" of the inventor Yablochkov, who began illuminating the streets and squares of Paris in 1877. Someone will name another Russian inventor - Lodygin. There will probably be other answers. So who's right? Yes, perhaps that's all. The history of the light bulb represents a whole chain of discoveries and inventions made by different people at different times.
Before moving on to the chronology of the invention of the light bulb, I would like to note what we mean by the concept of "light bulb". First of all, it is a light source, a device, a device in which electrical energy is converted into light energy. But the conversion methods can be different. In the 19th century, several of these methods were known. Therefore, even then, several types of electric lamps appeared: arc, incandescent and gas-discharge lamps. An electric lamp is a technical system, i.e. a set of individual elements necessary to perform the main useful function - lighting.
The history of the appearance and development of the electric lamp is inseparable from the history of electrical engineering, which begins with the discovery of electric current in the 18th century. Later, in the 19th century, a wave of discoveries related to electricity swept around the world. It was like a chain reaction, when one discovery opened the way for the next. Electrical engineering from the section of physics emerged into an independent science, on the development of which a whole galaxy of scientists and inventors worked: the Frenchman Andre-Marie Ampere, the Germans Georg Simon Ohm and Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, British Michael Faraday and James Maxwell and others.
The amazing 19th century, which laid the foundations for the scientific and technological revolution that changed the world, began with the invention of a chemical current source (voltaic pillar). With this extremely important invention, the Italian scientist A. Volta met the new 1800 year. And already in 1801, Professor of the St. Petersburg Medical-Surgical Academy Vasily Petrov managed to persuade his superiors to purchase for his physical office the most powerful electric battery at that time, consisting of 4200 pairs of galvanic cells. Conducting experiments with this battery, Petrov in 1802 discovered an electric arc - a bright discharge that occurs between carbon rods-electrodes brought together at a certain distance. He also suggested using an arc for lighting.
However, in the practical implementation of this idea, many difficulties arose. Experiments have shown that the arc burns brightly and steadily only at a certain distance between the electrodes. And during the burning of the arc, the carbon electrodes gradually burn out, increasing the arc gap. A regulating mechanism was required to maintain a constant distance between the electrodes.
The inventors offered different solutions. But they all had the disadvantage that it was impossible to include several lamps in one circuit. I had to use a different power source for each luminaire. This problem was solved in 1856 by the inventor A.I.Shpakovsky, who created a lighting installation with eleven arc lamps equipped with original regulators. This installation illuminated Red Square in Moscow during the coronation of Alexander II.
In 1869, another Russian inventor, V.I. Chikolev, applied a differential regulator to an arc lamp and used it in powerful marine searchlights. Similar controls are still used today in large floodlight installations. Unfortunately, all arc controllers were unreliable and expensive.
The decisive role in the transition from experiments on electricity to mass electric lighting was played by the Russian electrical engineer Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov. Yablochkov began his work in Russia, having organized a workshop of physical instruments in St. Petersburg in 1875. In the same year, he got the idea to create a simple and reliable arc lamp. However, the financial collapse of the enterprise forced Yablochkov to leave for Paris in 1876, where he continued his work on the arc lamp at the famous watch and precision instrument company Breguet.
The problem was the same - a regulator was needed. The idea came unexpectedly as always. The case helped. Thinking hard about this problem, Yablochkov went to have a bite to eat in a small Parisian cafe. The waiter came. Yablochkov, continuing to think about his own, mechanically watched as he put the dish, spoon, fork, knife ... And suddenly ... Yablochkov abruptly got up from the table and went to the exit. He hurried to his workshop. The solution has been found! Simple and reliable! It came to him as soon as he glanced at the cutlery lying next to each other, parallel to each other.
Yes, this is how the carbon electrodes should be placed in the lamp - not horizontally, as in all previous designs, but parallel (!). Then both will burn out exactly the same, and the distance between them will always be constant. And no complex regulators are needed.
The Parisian waiter did not even suspect that he had become, as it were, a co-author of the invention. But who knows, if he had not then put the knife and spoon so neatly in front of Yablochkov, perhaps a lightning guess would not have dawned on the inventor. True, the "hint" of the waiter found fertile ground. After all, Yablochkov was looking for his solution even at a cafe table, waiting for an order. By the way, this is an excellent example of the use of associative thinking in solving a complex technical problem. On the other hand, this case is an example of a solution to a technical problem, when an ideal device (in this case, a regulator) is something that actually does not exist, but functions are performed.
Of course, this was just an idea, not a complete solution to the problem - creating an inexpensive and reliable lamp. It took a lot of work to achieve this. First of all, with the parallel arrangement of the electrodes, the arc can burn not only at the ends of the electrodes, but also along their entire length, and most likely, it will roll to their base - to the current-carrying clamps. This problem was solved by filling the space between the electrodes with an insulator, which gradually burned out along with the electrodes.
The composition of this insulator still had to be selected, which was done using clay (kaolin) for this. How to light a lamp? Then at the top, between the electrodes, a thin carbon bridge was placed, which burned out at the moment of switching on, igniting the arc. There was still the problem of uneven combustion of the electrodes associated with the polarity of the current. Because electrode "+" burned out faster, initially it had to be made thicker. Another ingenious solution to this problem was the use of alternating current.
The design of the arc lamp turned out to be simple: two carbon rods separated by an insulating layer of kaolin and mounted on a simple stand resembling a candlestick. The electrodes burned out evenly, and the lamp gave a bright light, and for a rather long time. This "electric candle" was easy to make and cheap.
In 1876, a Russian inventor presented his invention at the London Exhibition. A year later, the enterprising Frenchman Deneiruz achieved the establishment of the joint-stock company "Society for the Study of Electric Lighting by Yablochkov's Methods". Yablochkov's lamps appeared in the most visited places in Paris, on the street - Avenue de l'Opera and on the Place de l'Opera, as well as in the Louvre store, dim gas and liquid lighting replaced matte balls, which glowed with white, soft light. The triumphal procession "La lumiere russe "(Russian light) around the world. In two years, the Yablochkov candle conquered the entire Old World, spreading in the East to the palaces of the Persian Shah and the King of Cambodia.
Rice. 1. Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov and his candle.
In 1876-77, several French patents were obtained, both for the design of the bulb itself and for their power supply systems. The production was put on an industrial basis. A small factory in Paris produced over 8,000 candles a day and several dozen electrical generators a month. However, soon all this prosperity came to an end. The Yablochkov candle began to be gradually replaced by a cheaper and more durable incandescent lamp.
It is believed that the inventor of the incandescent lamp is the famous American inventor Thomas Alva Edison. On December 21, 1879, an article appeared in the New York Herald about a new invention of T.A. Edison - "Edison" s light, about an incandescent lamp with a carbon filament. A few days later, January 1, 1880, 3 thousand people attended the demonstration of electric lighting for houses and streets in Menlo Park (USA) and on January 27 of the same year they received US patent No. 223898 "Electric-Lamp" (see Fig. 2.). But in reality, the story with this patent and with the incandescent lamp is much more complicated and interesting.
Rice. 2. Thomas A. Edison patent for an electric lamp
The first experiments with heating conductors with electric current were carried out at the beginning of the 19th century by the English scientist Humphry Davy. One of the first attempts to apply incandescence of conductors with current, precisely for the purpose of lighting, was carried out in 1844 by the engineer de Molein, who incandescent platinum wire placed inside a glass ball. These experiments did not bring the desired results, since platinum wire melted too quickly.
In 1845, in London, King replaced platinum with sticks of coal and received a patent for "The Use of Hot Metal and Carbon Conductors for Lighting."
In 1954, 25 years before Edison, the German watchmaker Heinrich Goebel presented in New York the first practical incandescent carbon filament lamps with a burning life of about 200 hours. As a thread, he used a charred bamboo thread 0.2 mm thick, placed in a vacuum. Instead of a flask, for reasons of economy, Gebel first used cologne bottles, and later - glass tubes. He created a vacuum in a glass flask by filling and pouring out mercury, that is, using the method used in the manufacture of barometers.
Gebel used the created lamps to illuminate his watch store. To improve his financial situation, he drove around New York in a wheelchair and invited everyone to look at the stars through a telescope. The stroller, however, was decorated with his bulbs. Thus, Gebel became the first person to use light for advertising purposes. Due to the lack of money and connections, the German émigré could not obtain a patent for his lamp with carbon filament and his invention was quickly forgotten.
Since 1872, Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin began experiments on electric lighting in St. Petersburg. In his first lamps, a thin stick of coal was sandwiched between massive copper rods in a hermetically sealed glass sphere. Despite the imperfection of the lamp, in the same year the banker Kozlov, in partnership with Lodygin, founded a society to exploit this invention. The Academy of Sciences awarded Lodygin the Lomonosov Prize of 1000 rubles.
Incandescent lamps with a carbon rod built by Lodygin in 1874 were used to illuminate the St. Petersburg Admiralty. In 1875, Kon became the head of the partnership, releasing under his own name an improved Lodygin lamp, designed by V.F. Didrikhson. In this lamp, the embers were placed in a vacuum, and the burned out ember was automatically replaced by another. Three such lamps for two months illuminated in 1875 Florent's linen store in St. Petersburg, and also, at the suggestion of P. Struve, caissons were illuminated under water during the construction of the Alexander Bridge across the Neva.
In 1875, Didrichson began to make coal from wood by charring wooden cylinders without air access in graphite crucibles filled with coal powder. In 1876, after Cohn's death, the partnership fell apart. Further improvement of the lamp was made by N.P. Bulygin in 1876. In its lamp, the end of a long coal was glowing, which was pulled out automatically as its end burned. The design of the lamps turned out to be difficult and low-tech to manufacture, and therefore not cheap, although it was constantly being improved.
In the late 70s of the same century, ships were being built for Russia at one of the North American shipyards, and when the time came to accept them, the lieutenant of the Russian fleet A. N. Khotinsky went there. He took with him several Lodygin incandescent lamps. The invention was already patented in France, Russia, Belgium, Austria and Great Britain. He showed Russian lamps to an inventor named Thomas Edison, who was also working on the problem of electric lighting at the time.
Now it is difficult to establish how much the described circumstance influenced Edison's invention. However, in the end, thanks to his work, a qualitative leap was made in the improvement of the incandescent lamp. Edison did not make any revolutionary changes to Lodygin's light bulb. His lamp was a glass flask with a carbon thread, from which air was pumped out, however, much more carefully than Lodygin's. But the merit of Edison, first of all, is that he invented and created a supersystem for this lamp and put its production on stream, which led to a strong reduction in cost. He invented a screw base for a lamp and a socket for it, invented fuses, switches, the first energy meter. It was with the Edison light bulb that electric lighting became really massive, coming to the homes of ordinary people.
Edison's approach to solving the problem of finding a material for a filament deserves special attention. He just went by going through all the substances and materials available to him (trial and error). Edison tried 6,000 carbon-containing substances, from ordinary sewing thread covered with charcoal to food and tar. The best turned out to be bamboo, from which the case of the Japanese palm fan was made. This titanic work took about two years.
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in England, at about the same time as Lodygin and Edison, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan was working on a light bulb. He used a charred cotton thread as a heating element and also pumped air out of the flask. Swann received a British patent for his device in 1878, about a year before Edison. Beginning in 1879, he began installing electric lamps in English homes. Establishing The Swan Electric Light Company in 1881, he began commercial production of lamps. Swan later teamed up with Edison to commercialize the Edi-Swan brand.
It follows from what has been said that the electric incandescent lamp had several inventors at a very early stage. Almost all of them had patents. As for the most famous of them, the American Edison patent, it was declared invalid by the court until the expiration of the protection rights. The court found that the incandescent lamp was invented by Heinrich Gebel several decades before Edison.
In 1890, Lodygin patented in the USA a lamp with a metal thread made of refractory metals - octium, iridium, rhodium, molybdenum and tungsten. Lodygin lamps with molybdenum filament were exhibited at the Paris exhibition in 1900 and were such a great success that in 1906 the American company General Electric bought this patent from him. The most interesting thing is that General Electric was founded by Thomas Edison himself. This was the end of the correspondence dispute between the great inventors.
However, the improvement of the incandescent lamp did not end there. Since 1909, incandescent lamps with a zigzag tungsten filament were used, and in 1912-13, lamps filled with nitrogen and inert gases (Ar, Kr) appeared. And finally, the latest improvement at the beginning of the 20th century - the tungsten filament began to be made, first, in the form of a spiral, and then in the form of a bis-spiral (a spiral wound from a spiral) and a trispiral. The electric incandescent lamp finally got the look we are used to seeing.
So who invented the light bulb? The names have already been named: Petrov, Shpakovsky, Chikolev, Yablochkov, Edison, Devi, King, Gebel, Lodygin, Svan. It would seem enough. But if you take the "Small Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron" published at the beginning of the XX century, then you can read there: Incandescent bulbs are a glass cap from which air is pumped out, and where a coal or metal thread is placed, heated by an electric current. Carbon filament is mined by charring bamboo fibers (Edison bulb), silk, cotton paper (Swann bulb). Since the end of the 1890s. new incandescent light bulbs appeared: instead of a carbon filament, a rod pressed from fire-resistant substances is exposed to incandescence: magnesium oxide, thorium, zirconium and yttrium (Nernst lamp) or a thread of metallic osmium (Auer lamps) and tantalum (Bolton and Feuerlein lamps).
Apparently new names have appeared - Nernst, Auer, Bolton, Feuerlein. If you wish, by conducting a more in-depth search, this list can still be replenished.
Probably, it makes no sense to look for an unambiguous answer to the question "Who invented the light bulb". Many inventors have applied their intelligence, knowledge, work and talent to this. And this applies only to the types of light bulbs that were developed at the initial stage of the introduction of electric lighting: arc and incandescent.
At the very beginning of the development of incandescent lamps, it was noticed that they have a low efficiency, i.e. a very small percentage of the energy of the electric current is converted into light energy. Therefore, the search continued for other methods of converting electrical energy into light, and attempts were made to use them in new types of electrical light sources. Gas-discharge lamps - devices in which electrical energy is converted into optical radiation when an electric current passes through gases and other substances (for example, mercury) - have become such light sources.
The first experiments with gas-discharge lamps began almost simultaneously with incandescent lamps. In 1860, the first mercury discharge lamps appeared in England. However, up to the beginning of the 20th century, all these experiments were few in number and remained only experiments, without real practical application.
In the first decade of the 20th century, during the period of the massive introduction of electric lighting using incandescent lamps, work on gas-discharge lamps intensified, which led to a number of inventions and discoveries. In 1901, Peter Cooper Hewitt invents the low pressure mercury lamp. In 1906, the high pressure mercury lamp was invented. 1910 - opening of the halogen cycle. The neon lamp was developed by the French physicist Georges Claude in 1911 and quickly found use for advertising purposes.
In the 1920s and 1940s, work on gas-discharge lamps continued in many countries, which led to the improvement of already known types of lamps and the discovery of new ones. Were developed: low pressure sodium lamp, fluorescent lamp, xenon lamp and others. In the 40s, the massive use of fluorescent lamps for lighting began.
Later, other types of electric lamps were invented: sodium high pressure; halogen; compact fluorescent; LED light sources and others. Now in the world there are about 2000 types of light sources.
Despite such a huge number of types of electric lamps, the inventive idea does not stand still. The already known light sources continue to be improved. An example of this improvement is the creation in 1983 of compact fluorescent lamps, which became the size of an ordinary incandescent lamp. To turn them on, no special starting equipment is required, they are connected to a standard socket for incandescent lamps, and most importantly, with the same amount of light produced, these lamps consume several times less electricity and last several times longer. In recent years, such energy-saving light bulbs have found more and more use, despite their still higher cost than traditional incandescent bulbs.
However, the inventive idea does not stop there either. Almost simultaneously, two American firms, Technical Consumer Products (TCP) and O · ZONELite, launched energy-saving fluorescent light bulbs with unexpected new properties. According to these manufacturers, their Fresh2 and O · ZONELite bulbs (both names are registered trademarks), in addition to lighting the room, also eliminate unpleasant odors, purify the air, and kill bacteria, viruses and fungi. Isn't it a miracle?
The secret is that the bulbs are coated with titanium dioxide (TiO2), when irradiated with fluorescent light, a photocatalytic reaction occurs. During this reaction, negatively charged particles - electrons - are released, leaving positively charged "holes" in their place. Due to the appearance of a combination of pros and cons on the surface of the light bulb, water molecules contained in the air turn into very strong oxidants - hydroxide radicals (HO), which is why these bulbs have such unusual and wonderful properties.
Rice. 3. Gas-discharge fluorescent energy-saving lamps Fresh2 and O.ZONELite
As can be seen from Figure 3, these bulbs are even outwardly very similar, and their characteristics are approximately the same. Noteworthy is the spiral shape of both lamps. Their creators went for it to increase light output, just like their predecessors - the creators of incandescent lamps. Indeed, history moves in a spiral.
It can be concluded that gas-discharge lamps in recent years are gaining more and more popularity even in household lighting, displacing incandescent lamps. They consume less energy, are just as easy to use and can have a number of other wonderful and useful properties. The higher price, which is still holding back the spread of these lamps, is offset by 8-10 times the lifespan and 3-5 times the efficiency. And with more mass production, the price will gradually decrease. And when you take into account the ever-increasing energy and environmental problems that are driving up the cost of electricity and forcing austerity measures to be taken, it becomes clear that the prospects for compact fluorescent lamps are very bright. And in the coming years they have practically no alternative.
But, nothing stands still. Although the last 100 years in the development of lighting technology have passed under the triumphant march of gas-discharge lamps, other types of light sources have appeared. The most promising direction now seems to be the direction associated with the use of LED light sources, because they are even more efficient than gas discharge lamps.
The first industrial LEDs appeared in the 60s of the XX century. However, the low power did not allow them to be used for lighting. They have found application as indicators in various electronic devices, in particular, in microcalculators, clocks and other household and scientific devices.
So everything would have continued if humanity had not faced the problem of energy conservation. It turned out that today, LEDs have the highest percentage of converting electrical energy into light energy. It was impossible not to try to use LEDs as light sources. They found, initially, application in hand-held electric flashlights. In addition, these were small flashlights, which did not shine very much, but were miniature, which made it possible to use them even as key chains.
Of course, there are still many problems with LED bulbs. Many of them are being successfully resolved, especially since now large capital is investing a lot of money in this direction. And the success is already evident - energy-saving LED lamps have already appeared on sale.
Literature
* 1. N.A. Kaptsov, Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov 1894-1944. OGIZ. State publishing house of technical and theoretical literature. Moscow, Leningrad, 1944.
* 2. V. Malov, How a Parisian waiter helped a Russian inventor. / Sputnik UT - popular science digest / №4, 2001 / http://jtdigest.narod.ru/dig4_01/offic.htm
* 3. Ya.I. Khurgin, Yes, no, maybe ... - Moscow,: Nauka, 1977, p. 208
* 4. History of lighting technology. / 2003-2005 ZAO NPK "Daleks" / http://www.daleks.ru
* 5. Fresh2 compact fluorescent light bulbs remove odor while emitting energy efficient light./ http://www.fresh2.com/
* 6. The Bright Future of Indoor Air Quality! / http://www.ozonelite.com/index.html
The question of who first developed the idea of a light bulb again and again gives rise to various theories.
There are so many options that every nation seeks to attribute this merit to its compatriots.
The idea of a permanent light source dates back to the early 19th century. During this period, scientists from all over the world created various projects.
So in 1820, the French scientist Delacrue created the first copy of an electric light bulb with a platinum wire. When an electric current was passed through it, the thread was heated and gave light.
Unfortunately, this expensive metal (platinum) was not available for mass production and remained a model of the experimental laboratory.
Heinrich Goebel
In the second half of the 19th century, the German scientist Heinrich Goebel first proposed pumping air out of a lamp.
This allowed her to burn much longer. His project still required additional work and was not continued.
Yablochkov
At the same time, the invention of the Russian experimental mechanic Yablochkov was gaining momentum on the streets of France.
His candles in lanterns lit up the city streets. Auto-change of lamps made it possible to increase the burning time up to one and a half hours.
A. N. Lodygin
In 1872, the tests of the scientist A.N. Lodygin were crowned with success. His newest invention was fundamentally different from all the previous ones. The cost of manufacturing the light bulb was minimal.
The carbon rod for the filament allowed the lamp to burn for about half an hour. For his invention, Lodygin received a patent, and soon his lamps began to illuminate the streets of St. Petersburg.
In the future, interest in his work subsides. The scientist made every effort, but never achieved worldwide fame.
Thomas Edison
Lodygin's competitor in the 1870s was Thomas Edison. It was he who, in collaboration with other famous scientists and the American energy company, improved the known model and thus received a new invention.
The incandescent lamp has become an integral part of everyday life in every home. The familiar device was obtained by the efforts of many scientists.
The succession of their inventions gave rise to discussions about the right of primacy, which continue to this day.
But we will not belittle the merits of any scientist, since everyone is worthy of glory.
Today it’s hard to believe, but just a hundred years ago, electric lamps were available only to the wealthiest residents of large cities. The rest of humanity whiled away the evenings by candlelight or, at best, with kerosene lamps.
Who and when invented the incandescent light bulb and thereby brought comfortable and bright light to our homes? It is difficult to give an exact answer to this question, since this invention, like many other technical ideas, has several authors.
History of the issue
In the nineteenth century, many researchers became interested in electricity and the possibilities that could be realized using this type of energy. Convenient lighting was one of those possibilities. The phenomenon of glow of a red-hot conductor when an electric current passes through it has been known for a long time.
The only thing left to do was to find a material that would withstand high temperatures for a long time, while not breaking down and being quite cheap to manufacture. The most suitable substances were platinum, coal and, but only coal at that time met all the requirements, including in terms of cost.
The first electric lamps
The very first light bulb was made back in 1820 by the Englishman Warren Delarue. As a light-emitting element, he used a platinum wire, which heated up when a current was passed through it and emitted a fairly bright light. Delarue's light bulb showed excellent results, but was too expensive to be put into production. She remained a prototype. 
18 years later, a light bulb with a carbon filament was created in Belgium. Its author was an engineer named Zhobar. The next version of the light bulb was made in Germany by Heinrich Gebel. In it, a red-hot bamboo stick emitted light. To prevent the bamboo from burning out longer, Gebel pumped air out of the glass vessel, i.e. the light bulb of the German inventor became the first prototype of modern incandescent lamps.
Electricity on the streets of St. Petersburg
In 1873, electric lighting was installed on the central streets of the Russian capital. The author of the project was the Russian designer Pavel Yablochkov, who created a light bulb called an electric candle. The electric current heated a special wick until it glowed, due to which the lighting was realized. Subsequently, Yablochkov improved the candle, since in the original version the wick burned out in just one and a half to two hours, and the next day it was necessary to replace it. In the subsequent design, the replacement of the candle was automatically carried out by a special mechanism.
In the same 1873, the Russian electrical engineer Alexander Lodygin patented a vacuum electric lamp with a carbon filament element, the design of which was almost identical to modern lamps. Subsequently, Lodygin worked a lot to improve his lamp, experimenting with various refractory metals. In 1890, he concluded that a thin tungsten filament was the best substitute for the carbon element.
In this case, air was pumped out of the glass bulb, and instead of it the lamp was filled with an inert gas. As a matter of fact, Lodygin can be considered the inventor of the incandescent light bulb that is modern to us, which has been used in our homes for more than a hundred years.
Edison's light bulb
The American self-taught experimenter T. Edison, who in the West is considered the inventor of the light bulb, registered a patent for a carbon lamp in 1879, i.e. six years after Lodygin. However, he owns the indisputable right to the title of the creator of the base and holder for electric lamps, as well as the invention of a convenient switch. 
Edison was not only a talented inventor, but also a good businessman, thanks to which he quickly founded his own company and started producing electric lamps of his design.
It is difficult for a modern person to imagine that just a little over a hundred years ago, electric bulbs took their first steps in our everyday life.
The list of inventors of most modern devices, as a rule, is limited to one or two persons (it often happens that two talented inventors come to the embodiment of the same idea with a small time gap from each other). But there are some very interesting exceptions to this rule. For example, an incandescent lamp. It is quite difficult to believe that a simple light bulb was invented by not one, not two, or even three, but thirteen scientists. But this is actually the case. And the reason for this is simple: the fact is that the first patented incandescent lamp, and the lamp we use today, are exactly 100 years apart from constant improvements, which were carried out by a variety of inventors around the world.
And each of them contributed to the history of the invention of a simple household light bulb. This means that you cannot unequivocally answer the question: who invented the light bulb, alas, will not work.
The beginning of the transformation of electrical energy into light was laid by the experiments of the scientist Vasily Petrov, who observed the phenomenon of a voltaic arc in 1803. In 1810, the English physicist Devi made the same discovery. They both got a voltaic arc using a large battery of cells between the ends of the charcoal rods.
Both he and the other wrote that the voltaic arc can be used for lighting purposes. But first it was necessary to find a more suitable material for the electrodes, since the charcoal rods burned out in a few minutes and were of little use for practical use.
In the 19th century, two types of electric lamps became widespread: incandescent and arc lamps. Arc bulbs appeared a little earlier. Their glow is based on such an interesting phenomenon as a voltaic arc. If you take two wires, connect them to a sufficiently strong current source, connect them, and then move them apart a few millimeters apart, something like a flame with a bright light is formed between the ends of the conductors. The phenomenon will be more beautiful and brighter if, instead of metal wires, you take two sharpened carbon rods.
The Englishman Delarue created the first incandescent light bulb with a platinum filament in 1809. The first manually controlled arc lamp was designed in 1844 by the French physicist Foucault. He replaced charcoal with sticks of hard coke. In 1848, he first used an arc lamp to illuminate one of the Parisian squares.
In 1875, Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov proposed a reliable and simple solution for arc lamps. He placed the carbon electrodes in parallel, separating them with an insulating layer. The invention was a tremendous success. In 1877, with their help, street electricity was first installed on the Avenue de L'Opera in Paris. The World's Fair, which opened next year, provided an opportunity for many electrical engineers to get to know this remarkable invention. Under the name "Russian light", Yablochkov's candles were later used for street lighting in many cities around the world.
In 1874, engineer Alexander Lodygin patented the "filament lamp". A carbon rod was used as a filament, again placed in a vessel with a vacuum. In 1890, Lodygin came up with the idea of replacing the carbon filament with a wire made of refractory tungsten, which had a heating temperature of 3385 degrees. In 1906, Lodygin sold a patent for a tungsten filament to General Electric. Due to the high cost of tungsten, the invention finds limited application.
The first cases of the use of electricity in Ukraine for the needs of lighting have been known since the 70s of the last century.
In 1878, engineer A.P. Borodin equipped the lathe shop of the Kiev railway workshops with four electric arc lights. Each lantern had its own electromagnetic Gram machine. The lanterns were staggered in two rows. Coals are designed for 3 hours of work.
In 1886, electric lighting was installed in the Château de Fleur park in Kiev. In 1996, the first public power station began operating in the same city.
A real revolution in the creation of a light bulb was made by the experiments of the American inventor Edison. Before embarking on the experiments, he studied the entire experience of gas-holder companies in lighting cities and premises. He developed on paper detailed diagrams of the power plant and communication lines to homes and factories. I calculated the cost of all materials and calculated that the price of a light bulb for the consumer should not exceed 40 cents.
Since 1878, he has been conducting more than 12 thousand experiments in his laboratory. It is estimated that his assistants tested at least 6,000 different substances and compounds, while more than 100 thousand dollars were spent on the experiments.
First, Edison replaced the brittle ember with a more durable one made from coal, then he began to do experiments with various metals and, finally, settled on a thread made of charred bamboo fibers. In 1879, in the presence of three thousand people, Edison publicly displayed his electric bulbs, illuminating his house, laboratory and several adjacent streets with them.
It was the first long-life light bulb suitable for mass production.
The merit of Edison is not that he "invented" the light bulb, but that he gave rise to the industrial production of lamps and its components: cables, two-phase generators (invented by Edison), electricity meters. The socket and base, as well as many other elements of electric lighting that have survived unchanged to this day - switches, fuses, electric meters and much more - were also invented by Edison.
In business, after finishing work on inventions, he remained on the principle: he promised to bring the selling price to 40 cents. Sold his company to the Edison General Electric Company when the lamp reached 22 cents.
Electricity charges were charged for 1 hour of burning of the lantern lamp. The price did not discourage 
increasing the number of consumers. Homeowners in cities willingly provided electric lighting.
The average lifespan of an Edison light bulb was 800-1000 hours of continuous burning. For nearly thirty years, light bulbs had been manufactured in the manner developed by Edison, but the future was with metal filament bulbs.
The beginning of the twentieth century is the first attempt to put the production of light bulbs with tungsten filaments "on stream", to establish their mass production. Alas, this became possible only in 1906 thanks to the efforts of Alexander Lodygin and William Coolidge, who worked hard on the available methods of obtaining a tungsten filament. In 1910, William Coolidge invents an improved method for the production of tungsten filament. Subsequently, the tungsten filament displaces all other types of filaments.
The last stage in the improvement of the light bulb was the use of noble inert gases (in particular argon) to fill the cavity of the lamp. Thanks to this innovation, proposed by Irving Langmuir, modern light bulbs are not only bright, but also durable.
Nowadays modern science makes such a simple and irreplaceable invention as a light bulb even simpler and more effective, but the names of those who worked on its creation in the past have already been written in golden letters in the history of world science.
