The world has been using the wonders of electric lighting for some time but electricity was not discovered all at once.
Who were these men? Alessandro Volta,Humphry Davy, Michael Faraday, Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse or more recently Nick Holonyak?
It was in 1800 that the Italian scientist Alessandro Volta made a wonderful discovery by soaking paper in salt, placing zinc and copper on opposite sides of the paper and watched the chemical reaction produce an electric current. He had discovered the first electric cell and by connecting many cells he was able to string a currentent and created a battery. In 1809 Humphry Davy, an English Chemist invented the the first electric light by connecting two wires to a batteryand attached a chacoal strip between the other ends of the wires. The charged carbon glowed making the first arc lamp.
Now you know why we measure baterry power in Volts!
Michael Faraday, an English scientist was the first to discover that an electric current could be reduced by passing a magnet through a copper wire. Today we still use this, electricity is made with magnets and coils of copper wire in giant power plants.
Thomas Edison invented an electric lighting system, an incandescent lamp with a filament of carbonized sewing thread burned for thirteen and half hours, which contained all the necessary elements to make the incandescent light practical for home use, that is, safe and economical.
George Westinghouse, in 1895 opened the first major power plant at Niagara Falls, using alternative current which was able to transport electricity more than 200 miles.
Gerard Philips, a Dutch that invented a lightbulb that lasts 60,000 hours. The bulb uses magnetic induction.
In 1962 while working for General Electric, Nick Honoyak was making a research in electroluminescence and gallium arsenide and developed the first LED, Light Emitting Diode (originally emitting only red light). These new lights that today are shown in a rainbow of colours, are the ones which are replacing incadescent bulbs and flourescent tubes. These new bulbs present an excellent durability, about 100.000 hours.
These are the light bulbs of today! What are we to see in the future? Do you know?
