Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, D.Sc.h.c., FRS was a British physicist and chemist. He
is most famous for inventing the first incandescent light bulb.
Swan first demonstrated the light bulb at a lecture in Newcastle upon Tyne on
18 December 1878, but he did not receive a patent until 27 November 1880 after
improvement to the original lamp. His house was the first in the world to be
lit by lightbulb, and the world's first electric-light illumination in a public
building was for a lecture Swan gave in 1880. In 1881, the Savoy Theatre in the
City of Westminster, London, was lit by Swan incandescent lightbulbs, the first
theatre and the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by
electricity. In 1904 Swan was knighted by King Edward
VII, awarded the Royal Society's Hughes Medal, and was made an honorary member
of the Pharmaceutical Society. He had already received the highest decoration
in France, the Légion d'honneur, when he visited an international exhibition in
Paris in 1881. The exhibition included exhibits of his inventions, and the city
was lit with electric light, thanks to Swan's invention.
Early life Joseph Wilson Swan was born in 1828 at
Pallion Hall in Pallion in the Parish of Bishopwearmouth, near Sunderland. His
parents were John Swan and Isabella Cameron. He was said to have had an
enquiring mind even as a child. He augmented his education with a
fascination of his surroundings, the industry of the area and reading. He
attended lectures at the Sunderland Atheneum. He later became a partner in
Mawson's, a firm of manufacturing chemists in Newcastle upon Tyne, started
by John Mawson the husband of his sister, Elizabeth Swan. This company
existed as Mawson, Swan and Morgan until 1973, formerly located on Grey Street in
Newcastle upon Tyne near Grey's Monument. The premises are now owned by
the Swedish fashion retailer H&M and can be identified by a line of
Victorian-style electric street lamps in front of the store on Grey Street. Swan
lived at Underhill, a large house on Kells Lane North, Low Fell, Gateshead,
where he conducted most of his experiments in the large conservatory.
The house was later converted into a private fee paying, grant aided
co-educational grammar school named Beaconsfield School. Here, students
could still find examples of Swan's original electrical fittings.
Electric light In 1850 Swan began working on a light
bulb using carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated glass bulb. By 1860 he was
able to demonstrate a working device, and obtained a British patent covering a
partial vacuum, carbon filament incandescent lamp. However, the lack of
a good vacuum and an adequate electric source resulted in an inefficient light
bulb with a short lifetime. In 1875 Swan returned to consider the
problem of the light bulb with the aid of a better vacuum and a carbonized
thread as a filament. The most significant feature of Swan's improved
lamp was that there was little residual oxygen in the vacuum tube to ignite the
filament, thus allowing the filament to glow almost white-hot without catching
fire. However, his filament had low resistance, thus needing heavy copper
wires to supply it. Swan first publicly demonstrated his
incandescent carbon lamp at a lecture for the Newcastle upon Tyne Chemical
Society on 18 December 1878. However after burning with a bright light for
some minutes in his laboratory, the lamp broke down due to excessive current. On
17 January 1879 this lecture was successfully repeated with the lamp
shown in actual operation; Swan had solved the problem of incandescent
electric lighting by means of a vacuum lamp. On 3 February 1879 he publicly
demonstrated a working lamp to an audience of over seven hundred people in
the lecture theatre of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon
Tyne, Sir William Armstrong presiding. Swan turned his attention to producing a
better carbon filament and the means of attaching its ends. He devised a method
of treating cotton to produce "parchmentised thread" and obtained
British Patent 4933 on 27 November 1880. From that time he began installing light
bulbs in homes and landmarks in England. His house, Underhill on Kells Lane in
Low Fell, Gateshead, was the world's first to have working light bulbs
installed. The Lit & Phil Library in Westgate Road, Newcastle, was the first
public room lit by electric light during a lecture by Swan on 20 October 1880. In
1881 he founded his own company, The Swan Electric Light Company, and started
commercial production. The Savoy, a state-of-the-art theatre in
the City of Westminster, London, was the first public building in the world lit
entirely by electricity. Swan supplied about 1,200 incandescent lamps, powered
by an 88.3 kW generator on open land near the theatre. The builder of the
Savoy, Richard D'Oyly Carte, explained why he had introduced Swan's electric
light: "The greatest drawbacks to the enjoyment of the theatrical performances
are, undoubtedly, the foul air and heat which pervade all theatres. As everyone
knows, each gas-burner consumes as much oxygen as many people, and causes great
heat beside. The incandescent lamps consume no oxygen, and cause no
perceptible heat." The first generator proved too small to power the whole
building, and though the entire front-of-house was electrically lit, the
stage was lit by gas until 28 December 1881. At that performance, Carte stepped
onstage and broke a glowing lightbulb before the audience to demonstrate the
safety of Swan's new technology. On 29 December 1881, The Times described the
electric lighting as superior, visually, to gaslight.
The first private residence, other than the inventor's, lit by the new
incandescent lamp was that of his friend, Sir William Armstrong at
Cragside, near Rothbury, Northumberland. Swan personally supervised the
installation there in December 1880. Swan had formed 'The Swan Electric Light
Company Ltd' with a factory at Benwell, Newcastle, and had established the first
commercial manufacture of incandescent lightbulbs by the beginning of 1881.
The first ship to use Swan's invention was The City of Richmond, owned by the
'Inman Line'. She was fitted out with incandescent lamps in June 1881. The
Royal Navy also introduced them to their ships soon after with HMS Inflexible
having the new lamps installed in the same year.
Swan was one of the early developers of the electric safety lamp for miners,
exhibiting his first in Newcastle upon Tyne at the North of England Institute
of Mining Engineers on 14 May 1881. This required a wired supply so the following
year he presented one with a battery and other improved versions followed. By
1886 a lamp with better light output than a flame safety lamp was in
production by the Edison-Swan Company. However, it suffered from problems of
reliability and was not a success. It took development by others over the next
20 years or so before effective electric lamps were in common use.
Independent from Edison The common coupling of Swan's name with
that of Thomas Edison in connection with the incandescent electric lamp has often
led to the notion that Swan collaborated with Edison in this invention. That was
not so. Their work was completely independent, and although each knew the
other was working on the problem of devising a practical lamp, they had
neither met nor communicated with each other. The conjunction of their names
came about in 1883 when the two competing companies merged to exploit
both Swan's and Edison's inventions. In America, Edison had been working on
copies of the original light bulb patented by Swan, trying to make them
more efficient. Though Swan had beaten him to this goal, Edison obtained
patents in America for a fairly direct copy of the Swan light, and started an
advertising campaign that claimed that he was the real inventor. Swan, who was
less interested in making money from the invention, agreed that Edison could sell
the lights in America while he retained the rights in the United Kingdom.
While searching for a better filament for his light bulb, Swan inadvertently
made another advance. In 1881 he developed and patented a process for
squeezing nitro-cellulose through holes to form conducting fibres. His newly
established company used Swan's cellulose filaments in their bulbs. The
textile industry has also used this process.
Ediswan In 1883 the Edison & Swan United
Electric Light Company was established. Known commonly as Ediswan, the company
sold lamps made with a cellulose filament that Swan had invented in 1881.
Variations of the cellulose filament became an industry standard, except with
the Edison Company. Edison continued using bamboo filaments until the 1892
merger that created Edison General Electric, and that company then shifted
to cellulose. In 1886 Ediswan moved production to a
former jute mill at Ponders End, North London. In 1916 Ediswan set up the UK's
first radio thermionic valve factory at Ponders End. This area, with nearby
Brimsdown subsequently developed as a centre for the manufacture of thermionic
valves, cathode ray tubes, etc. and nearby parts of Enfield became an
important centre of the electronics industry for much of the 20th century.
Ediswan became part of British Thomson-Houston and Associated
Electrical Industries in the late 1920s. Photography
When working with wet photographic plates, Swan noticed that heat increased
the sensitivity of the silver bromide emulsion. By 1871 he had devised a
method of using dry plates and substituting nitro-cellulose plastic for
glass plates, thus initiating the age of convenience in photography. Eight years
later he patented bromide paper, developments of which are still used for
black-and-white photographic prints. In 1864, Swan patented the transfer
process for making carbon prints, a permanent photographic process. By
adding the transfer step, Swan was able to easily make photographs with a full
tonal range. Later life
In 1894 Swan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in September 1901 he
was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the University of
Durham. In 1904 he was knighted, awarded the Royal Society's Hughes Medal, and
made an honorary member of the Pharmaceutical Society. Swan died in
1914 at Warlingham in Surrey. In 1945 the London Power Company
commemorated Swan by naming a new 1,554 GRT coastal collier SS Sir Joseph Swan.
References ^ a b "The Savoy Theatre", The Times, 3
October 1881 ^ "Sir Joseph Swan". Royal
Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. Retrieved 11 January 2010. Swan made
groundbreaking discoveries in the fields of electric lighting and photography. He
had already received the Legion of Honour when he visited an international
exhibition in Paris in 1881. The exhibition included exhibits of his
inventions, and the city was lit with electric light, thanks to Swan's
invntion ^ a b Davidson, Michael W. and The
Florida State University. "Molecular expressionsTM. Science, optics and you.
Pioneers in optics. Joseph Swan." Last modification 26 February 2004. Retrieved
16 November 2009 ^ http:www.kstc.co.ukhome.html
^ Newton, Douglas New Scientist, 26 October 1978 Retrieved 30 December 2010
^ a b Electrical times, Volume 145 p. 220. Retrieved 30 December 2010
^ Lamp Inventors 1880–1940: Carbon Filament Incandescent
^ Swan K. R. Sir Joseph Swan and the Invention of the incandescent electric
lamp. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1946 pp. 21–25
^ Glover, Andrew. "Alexander Armstrong in appeal to save Lit and Phil". The
Journal. Retrieved 8 February 2011. The society's lecture theatre was the first
public room to be lit by electric light, during a lecture by Sir Joseph Swan on
October 20, 1880. ^ History in pictures – The Lit & Phil
BBC. Retrieved 8 August 2011 ^ Ideafinder.com, Light Bulb History,
accessed 17 July 2012 ^ Chirnside, R.C. Sir Joseph Wilson Swan
FRS Newcastle upon Tyne: Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon
Tyne 1979 ^ Burgess, Michael. "Richard D'Oyly
Carte", The Savoyard, January 1975, pp. 7–11
^ Gooday, Graeme. Domesticating electricity: technology, uncertainty and
gender, 1880–1914. Pickering & Chatto, 2008, p. 107, accessed 30 November 2010
^ "Richard D'Oyly Carte", at the Lyric Opera San Diego website, June 2009
^ Description of lightbulb experiment in The Times, 29 December 1881
^ a b c Sir Josepth Swan and the Invention of the Incandescent Electric
Lamp by Kenneth R. Swan 1948 ^ Swan. J.W. Swan's electric light
Transactions, North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers 30,
1881, 149–159 ^ Swan, J.W. On an electric safety lamp,
with portable secondary battery Transactions, North of England Institute
of Mining and Mechanical Engineers 31 1881-2, 117–9
^ Swan, J.W. On an improved electric safety lamp for miners Transactions,
North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers 36 1886-7, 3–11
^ Discussion on electric lamps Transactions, North of England Institute
of Mining and Mechanical Engineers 36 1886-7 55 – 59
^ Jones, A. V. and Tarkenter, R. P. Electrical technology in mining: the
dawn of a new age. London: Peter Peregrinus Ltd, 1993.
^ "Joseph Wilson Swan". Timmonetk. Retrieved 21 July 2010.
^ Pam, D.,The New Enfield: Stories of Enfield Edmonton and Southgate, a
Jubilee History, London Borough of Enfield Libraries, Arts & Entertainment
Dept ^ Lewis J.(2001), London's Lea Valley:
More Secrets Revealed, Phillimore, ISBN 1-86077-190-4
^ "Library and Archive Catalogue". Royal Society. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
^ "University intelligence" The Times. Monday, 30 September 1901., p. 4.
^ Anderson, James B. Sommerville, Iain, ed. "Ships built by the Burntisland
Shipbuilding Company Ltd: arranged by date of launch". Welcome to Burntisland.
Iain Sommerville. Retrieved 16 June 2011.
Further reading Clouth, D.E. Joseph Swan 1828–1914: A
pictorial account of a North Eastern scientist's life and work. Gateshead:
Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council Dept of Education, c1979
Swan, M.E. and Swan, K.R. Sir Joseph Wilson Swan FRS: inventor and scientist.
London: Ernest Benn, 1929. Reprinted with an appendix, Newcastle upon Tyne:
Oriel Press, 1968 External links
Tyne & Wear Archives Service Joseph Swan collection
"Swan, Sir Joseph Wilson". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911.
"Swan, Joseph Wilson". New International Encyclopedia. 1905.