Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0516: Anti-trivia: History of indoor lighting

Episode Date: February 29, 2016

This “anti-trivia” episode lists a history of indoor lighting. (Edison was NOT the first person to invent an incandescent light bulb!) What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 516. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Today it's another anti-trivia episode, and here's the trivia fact that you may be told. James Bauman Lindsay invented an incandescent light bulb in 1835. Now that compares with Edison's invention in 1879 or 1880, so that's obviously a few decades earlier. Wow, what an interesting fact.

But how important is that really? I mean, Lindsay's invention didn't really come to anything. And actually, even Edison's invention, as monumental as it was, is only one event in a long history of indoor lighting, which spans several millennia. So indoor lighting has been around for thousands of years. And most of us know this, but we don't really think of the significance of that. So let's look at just a timeline of events in the history of indoor lighting. So we have a couple that go to BC. Oil lamps are known to have been around probably since about 4,000 to 5,000 BC, so those are pretty old. Candles are a little bit newer, and they date back to around 3,000 BC. These are means of bringing light inside your house and you can see during the night without having a, you know, open fire or a torch. Well, I guess an oil lamp or a

candle is arguably an open flame, but, you know, it's much more controlled and much more handy because you can just carry it around pretty safely. Our next date in the history of indoor lighting actually zooms way forward to 900 AD, and that's with the invention of kerosene lamps. If you didn't realize that kerosene lamps have been around since the year 900 AD, then you know that's pretty significant. But then our next event is 1792. So the Industrial Revolution, of course, brought a lot of inventions with it. And here we go, 1792 and everything after it. We have a whole bunch of dates here and interesting events. In 1792, William Murdoch began experimenting with gas lighting. So gas lamps become a huge thing

after 1792, starting with William Murdoch's experiments, basically. In 1835, as I mentioned as our trivia fact, we have the Lindsay bulb. So he invented an incandescent light bulb in 1835, but it didn't end up really coming to anything. And then 10 years later, John W. Starr also invented an incandescent light bulb, but it also didn't really come to anything. It wasn't commercially produced. Then very similarly, 1851, Alexander Logikhin, he was a Russian, and I don't know how you pronounce his name, but he invented a bulb as well. Then in the late 1870s, so quite a bit later, Joseph Swan invented a light bulb, and he was the first person in the world to make this succeed. And he even had really his own house lit by electric light.

He was the first person in the world for that to be the case. Now, Joseph Swan was really the first successful inventor of light bulbs. Edison was successful as well, and he was working around the same time. But Joseph Swan deserves really a lot of credit for this, and you'll see that. Now, Edison was working on his light bulb in 1878 to 1880. He ended up inventing his incandescent bulb and eventually came up with one that could produce about 1,200 hours of light before expiring. That's why his bulb was so efficient and so exceptional. That's why his bulb was, you know, so efficient and so exceptional. That's basically the equivalent of 50 days constantly on, although you don't, you obviously

don't have a light bulb constantly on, but that's a lot of light produced by that light bulb. But anyway, 1881, going back to Joseph Swan, who was working in the late 1870s on his light bulb. In 1881, the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity was the Savoy Theater in London, and that was lit entirely by Swan lights, you know, Joseph Swan's lights. So, you know, minimizing Edison a little bit that way, even though Edison's light bulb eventually won out. I mean, obviously, he's certainly the one that we credit with even though Edison's light bulb eventually won out. I mean, obviously, he's certainly the one that we credit with the invention of the light bulb, even though several people invented an incandescent light bulb before him. So yeah, light bulbs quickly became a big

thing. Electric light took over, and we replaced a lot of gas lamps and stuff with electric lights. And then a few decades later, we have 1926 with Edmund Germer patenting the fluorescent lamp. Now that has become much bigger in recent decades, but that dates back to 1926. Then going forward a bit, 1962, Nick Hollenyak Jr. developed the first practical LED with light that could be seen.

So it was light in the visible spectrum. So the first LED dates back to 1962. Although it wasn't really widely commercially available for lighting, that's where LEDs date back to. In 1991, the Dutch technology company Philips introduced a fluorescent bulb that lasts 60,000 hours. So that's a long time for a fluorescent bulb not to have to be replaced. That's like leaving it on constantly for seven years without replacing it. And again, you don't leave light bulbs on constantly.

So this thing lasts decades, probably. And our last event in this timeline is 1995 with the LED boom starting when Shuji Nakamura at Nichia Labs comes up with an LED that can produce white light. So yeah, Edison is just one little piece in this big timeline of the evolution of indoor lights. I would recommend, you know, getting in tune with these different events in the timeline of electric lights, and it kind of gives you some more historical perspective on the progression of modern technology and our ability really to create our own environment by producing light. Our next anti-trivia episode is going to be about the most spoken languages in the world,

not by native speakers, as we talked about five episodes ago, but by the number of people who are actually speaking the languages, even if it's a second language. Meanwhile, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question and I'll talk to you again soon.