The History of Lighting: How Humanity Conquered Darkness

On the night of September 28, 1807, a crowd gathered on Pall Mall in London — there to witness something extraordinary. One by one, flames lit along a gas pipe until the entire street blazed with light. It was the day gas lamps were installed for the first time on a public road in Britain. Eyewitnesses at the time recorded the sight as “like magic.”^[1] Yet the true reason for their astonishment was not the light itself. It was the sensation that night had opened like day in the darkness — as though the order that had been taken for granted for thousands of years was crumbling before them.

Humanity’s effort to obtain light in the darkness begins from the moment we first learned to control fire. But this article is not about the discovery of fire. It is about everything that came after: the long history of engineering through which humans crafted vessels to contain flames, refined fuels, invented filaments, and ultimately generated light itself from electricity.

The First Artificial Lighting: Oil Lamps

The history of artificial lighting begins roughly 100,000 years ago, with primitive oil lamps made by placing oil and a wick inside a shell or stone and burning them.^[2] The oldest confirmed oil lamp was found in the Lascaux cave in France, estimated to date to around 15,000 BCE. It was a piece of sandstone with a hollowed depression to hold oil, using moss or plant fiber as a wick.^[2]

In ancient Egypt and Greece, oil lamps made of clay or bronze were widely used. By the Roman era, sophisticated bronze lamps fueled by olive oil were mass-produced, and thousands of oil lamps have been excavated from the ruins of Pompeii.^[3] These lamps shared the same basic principle but diversified in form — some had multiple wicks to increase brightness, some were sealed to prevent oil from leaking, and some had rings for hanging on walls or ceilings.

Yet the fundamental limitation of ancient oil lamps was efficiency. The wick drew up oil slowly, the flame flickered, and there was considerable soot. Above all, the brightness was limited. The homes of Roman nobles and temples compensated by burning dozens of oil lamps simultaneously, but this was a privilege of the few. For most people, the world after sunset remained darkness.

Candles: Portable Light

Alongside the oil lamp — or perhaps arriving somewhat later — was another form of artificial lighting: the candle. Evidence exists that Egypt and Crete were using beeswax candles from around 3,000 BCE.^[4] Ancient China and Japan made candles by wrapping wicks in insect wax and seed oils, while in India, candles for temple use were made by boiling cinnamon tree pulp.^[4]

In Rome, candles were primarily made from tallow — fat rendered from cattle or sheep. These were cheap but produced an unpleasant smell and significant soot. Beeswax candles burned far more cleanly but were expensive, and so were used mainly in churches and noble households.

The true innovations for candles came in the 18th and 19th centuries. From the 1750s, candles made from spermaceti — oil extracted from sperm whales — began to appear, burning far brighter and with less odor than tallow candles.^[4] Then in 1811, French chemists Michel-Eugène Chevreul and Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac filed a patent for stearin. This substance, derived by separating glycerin from animal fat, produced similar brightness to tallow candles without the foul smell.^[4] The decisive turning point came in 1850, when Scotsman James Young patented a method of distilling paraffin from coal. Paraffin candles were odorless and inexpensive, completely reshaping the candle market.

Yet candles and oil lamps alike failed to solve one problem: they consumed indoor air, posed fire risks, and were easily extinguished by wind. Above all, they had an absolute ceiling on brightness.

The Argand Lamp: A Revolution in Oil Lighting

In the 1780s, Swiss physicist Aimé Argand fundamentally redesigned the oil lamp. Instead of the flat wick used in conventional oil lamps, he used a hollow cylindrical wick through which air could flow both inside and out.^[5] This allowed sufficient oxygen to reach the combustion, producing far more complete burning. Argand added a glass chimney to stabilize the airflow.

The results were dramatic. A single Argand lamp produced brightness equivalent to six to ten conventional oil lamps.^[5] Soot was greatly reduced and the flame was stable. The lamp spread rapidly among Europe’s wealthy classes and public spaces.

The Argand lamp stands as a fine example of late 18th-century technical achievement — multiplying the quality of lighting several times over through pure design improvement alone, without any new fuel or energy source. Yet even this improvement had limits. Oil was still consumed, and the flame remained vulnerable to wind.

Gas Lamps: The Light of the Industrial Revolution That Lit the City

In the early 19th century, the history of lighting entered a new phase. Rather than burning fuel directly, a new method emerged: delivering gas through pipes and burning it.

The pioneer of gas lighting was British mechanical engineer William Murdoch. In 1792 he lit his own home in Redruth, Scotland, with coal gas, and by 1802 had successfully illuminated the entire building of Boulton & Watt’s factory in Birmingham with gas lamps.^[6] Around the same time, in France, Philippe Lebon was developing a lighting system using distilled wood gas. Independently, almost simultaneously, gas lighting was born in two European countries.^[6]

The expansion of gas lighting across entire cities owed much to German-born entrepreneur Friedrich Albert Winzer (known in Britain as Frederick Winzer). He led the demonstration illumination of the aforementioned Pall Mall street in London in 1807, and in 1812 founded the world’s first commercial gas lighting company, the Gas Light and Coke Company.^[1] As a gas supply network through pipe infrastructure took root, the streets of major cities such as London, Paris, and Berlin began to brighten through the night.

Gas lamps were far brighter and more stable than oil lamps or candles. But they had grave disadvantages: the risk of carbon monoxide leaks, fire and explosion hazards, and deterioration of indoor air quality. Above all, because they required pipe infrastructure, they were difficult to deploy outside of cities.

In the late 19th century, Austrian chemist Carl Auer von Welsbach invented the gas mantle. This mesh structure, impregnated with thorium and cerium oxides, glowed incandescently within the gas flame, greatly increasing brightness.^[7] The Welsbach mantle extended the lifespan of gas lamps until the age of electric lighting arrived.

Arc Lamps: The Dawn of Electric Lighting

The first steps toward electric lighting trace back to the early 1800s and British chemist Humphry Davy. Around 1802 he passed a strong electric current between two carbon rods and produced a brilliant, intense light between them.^[8] This was the arc lamp. Carbon vapor evaporated from the tips of the carbon rods glowed within an electric arc, with flame temperatures exceeding 3,600 degrees Celsius — producing brightness incomparable to any lighting that had come before.^[8]

Arc lamps were first used in public street lighting in Paris in 1875, on the Thames Embankment in London in 1878, and in a public square in Cleveland, USA in 1879.^[8] But arc lamps had severe problems. The carbon rods wore down as they burned and required periodic replacement, they emitted harmful ultraviolet radiation, and suffered from considerable buzzing noise and flickering. Above all, they were too dangerous for use in enclosed indoor spaces. Arc lamps were suitable for large public spaces and outdoor street lighting, but they could never become domestic lighting.

The limitations of the arc lamp paradoxically defined the next challenge with clarity: electricity had to be used, but without arcs — creating light that was safe, long-lasting, and usable indoors. The answer was the incandescent bulb.

Incandescent Bulbs: Edison vs. Swan

The invention of the incandescent bulb is tied to one of the most famous inventor disputes in the history of technology. “Edison invented the light bulb” is one of the most widely spread oversimplifications in the history of technology.

The principle of the incandescent lamp — heating a filament to high temperature with electric current to produce light — had already been set in motion by Davy’s arc lamp research. In 1841, British inventor Frederick de Moleyns obtained the first patent for an incandescent electric lamp, and after that dozens of inventors competed to create a practical bulb.^[9]

British inventor Joseph Wilson Swan began incandescent lamp research in 1850. As early as 1860 he had constructed a primitive bulb using a carbonized paper filament.^[9] The problem was vacuum technology. The filament reacted with air and burned out quickly, requiring a perfect vacuum, which the vacuum pump technology of the day struggled to achieve. It was not until 1878 that Swan publicly demonstrated a practical bulb using improved vacuum technology.^[9]

American inventor Thomas Edison embarked on full-scale bulb development in 1878. He faced similar problems to Swan, but mastered the method of creating a more complete vacuum using the Sprengel pump. In October 1879, Edison achieved a lifespan of over 600 hours using a carbonized cotton thread filament.^[9] By 1883 he had switched to a bamboo carbonized filament to extend the lifespan further.

The difference between Edison and Swan was not simply in the bulbs themselves. The reason Edison was truly revolutionary was that he designed an entire lighting system. In 1882 he built the world’s first commercial central power station (Pearl Street Station) in Manhattan, New York, and supplied electricity to homes and businesses within a one-and-a-half square mile radius.^[10] He had not merely created a single bulb, but a complete electrical lighting infrastructure.

Amid all this, Swan’s technical contributions deserved recognition. The two inventors ultimately settled their patent dispute in 1883 by forming a joint venture, Ediswan.^[9] Where Edison dominated the United States, Swan maintained an independent standing in Britain.

The filament material used in incandescent bulbs continued to evolve. Tantalum filaments were introduced from 1902, and in 1908 General Electric’s William Coolidge commercialized the tungsten filament.^[9] Tungsten, with a melting point of approximately 3,422 degrees Celsius, enabled far brighter and longer-lasting bulbs. In 1913, Irving Langmuir developed the method of filling the interior of bulbs with argon gas to suppress filament evaporation,^[9] and with coiled and double-coil filament designs following, the incandescent bulb became humanity’s standard lighting throughout the 20th century.

From Gas to Electricity: The Urban Transition

The spread of incandescent bulbs and power grids fundamentally transformed urban life. But this transition did not happen overnight. Gas lighting companies held powerful vested interests, and building new electrical infrastructure required enormous capital.

From the late 1880s, electric lighting began establishing itself first in theaters, hotels, and shopping streets. New York’s Broadway, blazing with arc lamps and incandescent bulbs from the 1880s, earned the nickname “The Great White Way.”^[10] By around 1900, electric lighting had become part of daily life in advanced cities, but gas lighting continued to be used alongside it in many areas well into the 1920s and 1930s. More importantly, electric lighting transformed working hours and social life. Night-shift factory work became possible, and shops and restaurants could operate late into the night. For the first time, humanity systematically incorporated the hours after sunset into economic activity.

Edison’s direct current (DC) system had limitations for long-distance power transmission, and as George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla’s alternating current (AC) system replaced it, the spread of electric lighting accelerated further. The outcome of the so-called “War of Currents” was not merely a technology competition, but an infrastructure choice that would determine the speed of lighting’s spread for the decades that followed.

Fluorescent Lamps: The Age of Efficiency

In the mid-20th century, the next revolution in lighting technology came from an entirely different principle. Where incandescent bulbs generate heat and produce light as a byproduct, fluorescent lamps convert ultraviolet radiation into visible light.

The theoretical foundations of the fluorescent lamp were built up over several generations. In 1856, Heinrich Geissler created a vacuum discharge tube, and in 1859, Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel first observed that coating the interior of such a tube with fluorescent material could convert the light.^[11] In 1901, Peter Cooper Hewitt developed a mercury vapor discharge lamp. This lamp, which emitted strongly green-tinted light, was used in photography studios and similar settings.^[11]

In 1926, Edmund Germer produced the first fluorescent lamp combining mercury vapor with fluorescent coating. But the color was still unnatural, and practical utility was lacking. The decisive breakthrough came in 1934, when George Inman and colleagues at General Electric created the modern fluorescent lamp. In 1938, GE commercially launched fluorescent lamps under the Mazda ‘F’ brand in 18-inch, 30-inch, and 36-inch sizes.^[11] The following year, at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, fluorescent lighting was demonstrated on a large scale, leaving a strong impression on the public.

The greatest advantage of fluorescent lamps was energy efficiency. Where incandescent lamps converted less than 5% of consumed power into light, fluorescent lamps converted approximately 20 to 25%.^[11] They used four to five times less power to produce the same brightness. Fluorescent lamps spread rapidly after World War II, primarily in offices, factories, and schools, and in the latter half of the 20th century, compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) appeared for domestic use, establishing themselves as energy-saving lighting for homes as well.

Yet fluorescent lamps had their weaknesses. They contained mercury, creating environmental contamination concerns upon disposal, and they flickered or hummed when first switched on. The color of the light also differed from natural light. These limitations became the backdrop calling forth the next revolution.

LED Lighting: A Paradigm Shift in Light

If fluorescent lamps improved the conversion from heat to light, LEDs (Light-Emitting Diodes) changed the underlying principle entirely. In an LED, when electric current passes through a semiconductor, electrons release energy and directly generate photons. Heat is not an intermediate step.

The detailed history of LED’s technical invention and development is covered in a separate article, The Origin of the LED; here we focus on the LED as a lighting revolution. The first practical red LED was created in 1962 by Nick Holonyak Jr., and in the early 1990s, Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura successfully developed the blue LED, making white light LED possible.^[12] These three received the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics. Without blue, white cannot be created from the three primary colors of light — so the invention of the blue LED was the key that unlocked the era of general-purpose LED lighting.

Since the 2000s, LED lighting has rapidly improved in efficiency, saving more than 75% of the energy of incandescent bulbs while lasting more than 25 times longer.^[13] As of 2022, approximately 50% of global residential lighting sales were LED products, and that proportion continues to rise.^[14] The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that average LED efficiency has been improving by about 4 lumens per watt each year since 2010, and projects that the energy saved by LED lighting through 2035 will be equivalent to the annual output of 92 large power plants in the United States.^[13]

LEDs are not simply more efficient bulbs. Their color temperature and color can be controlled by electrical signals, they can be miniaturized, and they can be connected to smart systems for remote control, automatic dimming, and human-detection responses. Lighting is transforming from passive infrastructure into an active part of information systems.

The Exit of the Incandescent Bulb

As energy efficiency rose to the top of the policy agenda, governments around the world moved to phase out incandescent bulbs. The European Union began doing so from 2009, and the United States legislated a phased ban on inefficient incandescent bulbs through a 2007 law.^[16] By 2023, the manufacture and sale of general incandescent bulbs in the United States was effectively banned outright. Edison’s invention, which had illuminated homes and offices for over 130 years, was officially retired.

This transition is also symbolic. Just as Edison once competed against the gas lighting industry, the LED industry is now simultaneously replacing both incandescent and fluorescent lamps. Each generation of lighting technology did not abruptly displace the previous one — rather, they coexisted for a time according to use and cost before gradually giving way.

The Price of Light Disappears

There is one number that runs through the entire history of lighting. According to a study published in 1994 by American economist William Nordhaus, the labor time required to obtain a certain amount of light in Babylonia around 1750 BCE fell to one five-hundredth of that when compared to the incandescent bulb a hundred years ago, and has dropped to less than one thirty-thousandth by current LED standards.^[15] Where ancient humans had to work six hours for the same brightness of light, a modern person can cover it with a single second’s wages.

This figure is not merely an economic statistic. It is a compressed measure of how far humanity has walked from the darkness. It is the result of centuries of engineering effort — trimming the wicks of oil lamps, connecting gas pipes, experimenting thousands of times on filament materials, exploring the principles of semiconductors.

Yet one paradox remains. As a result of light becoming so inexpensive and abundant, the stars of the night sky have disappeared from cities. Research on light pollution has found that 80% of the world’s population now lives under light-polluted skies. Having succeeded in conquering darkness, humanity has begun to grapple with how to handle an excess of light. The first hands that lit a mossy wick in a cave tens of thousands of years ago could not have imagined the problem we face today.