exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Go on, you said Edison. Almost everyone does.

Turns out a chemist from the North East of England called Joseph Swan had a working incandescent bulb glowing on his bench while Edison's name was nowhere near it. He'd been tinkering since 1850, and by 1878–79 he was publicly demonstrating a carbon-filament lamp in Newcastle — at one point to a crowd of over 700 people. His own house was the first in the world to be wired up with electric light bulbs.

Here's the kicker: Swan and Edison were both granted their lamp patents in 1880, working completely independently. So it wasn't a case of one nicking the idea off the other — plenty of others had a go before them too.

What Edison did brilliantly was turn it into a product. His lamp used a high-resistance filament that could run lots of bulbs in parallel off a single supply — designed for a whole electricity grid, not just a glowing wire on a bench. Swan's early bulbs were low resistance and needed daft thick copper wiring to feed them.

And Swan's British patents were so solid that rather than slug it out in court, the two of them simply merged — forming "Ediswan" in 1883.

So, who invented the lightbulb? Honestly... both of them. Edison just got it to market and made it stick.

Source: Joseph Swan (Wikipedia)

You've been watching too much QI :idea:

You know a lot of the stuff on there is as wrong as most AI answers on Google

Also you should qualify the question with "incandescent" light bulb as there are lots of different types. Chemical, fluorescent and LED these days

Ah, and there I was thinking it was me when I accidentality shorted out a low voltage power supply and the wire glowed, well, until the fuse popped!

Back in the days of Edison, Joseph Swan and plenty of others, there were developments in various places. As the speed of communication generally was how fast a ship could travel, and some of these inventors and experimentalists did not widely publish their efforts other than maybe locally, now we find out that who to credit as "being first" is more complex than we imagine.

Although often, some did use ideas from others.

For example, who invented the telephone? The most famous person was he who got the first U.S. patent. But others were also working on what we now call land line telephones...

Mark

I knew that in 1980.

Edison tried everything but couldn't get it to work until he got access to Swan's design.

Why was first to fly across the Atlantic non-stop ?

peters wrote: 26 Jun 2026 11:41 Why was first to fly across the Atlantic non-stop ?

They hadn't thought to land in Greenland and Iceland?

That wouldn't be non stop.

It was, of course, Alcock & Brown in 1919 from Lester's Field to Galway in Ireland.

A lot of people think it was Lindbergh but that was over a decade later.

Lindbergh gets credit for the first *solo* crossing of the Atlantic.

That's like Britain landing one guy on the Moon in 1981 and claiming the credit.

That wasn't mean to be "1 upmanship", nor a "US vs the Brits" kind of statement,
so apologies if it was taken that way. Just stating facts. Alcock and Brown were
absolutely first. Lindbergh was absolutely first solo. Lindbergh's flight became
more famous and well known for multiple reasons, summed up below. Thanks.