MANKIND HAS BEEN using artificial light for millennia. Starting with campfires and torches in ancient times, lighting improved slowly but incrementally with the introduction of candles, oil lamps, kerosene lamps, and gas lighting.

Artificial lighting was lifted to another dimension by the invention of the electric light bulb, which effectively extended day into night at the switch of a button. However, electric light not merely prolonged the usable hours in a day: by illuminating homes, schools, factories, offices, shop windows, theaters, street corners and parks, it also improved conditions for learning and reading, furthered economic and commercial progress, created opportunities for leisure and night life, and brought about a sense of safety. It transformed the world.

Of course, electric light required a network of wires and power generators to bring electricity to the people, and this spurred the development of the electric power industry. As Thomas Edison explained in the New York Sun of 16 September 1878: “The same wire that brings the light will also bring power and heat.” The widespread use of electric light facilitated the invention of various electric home appliances and industrial equipment. Without electric lighting, everyday life would look completely different and contemporary concepts like the “24-hour economy,” or even the “city that never sleeps,” could not exist. And the story of the electric light bulb is one that relies on patent law, (outrageous) exercise of monopoly control, and a hefty serving of marketing brilliance.

Like many other famous inventions, the light bulb was not the result of a spark of genius of a sole inventor. While Thomas Edison or Joseph Swan are often credited as “the” inventors of the light bulb, the truth is that the concept of incandescent light existed long before they entered the scene. In 1802, Humphry Davy and Vasily Petrov simultaneously invented the arc lamp, by lighting an electric arc between carbon electrodes. Because arc lamps were too bright for indoor use and suitable only for large spaces, other 19th-century scientists experimented with a range of electrically heated wires or rods inside semi-vacuum glass tubes, trying out various combinations of iridium, platinum, carbon, and other materials. However, none of these early experimental bulbs were commercially attractive— they were too costly to produce, or they burnt out too quickly.