Joseph swan invented the lightbulb

Biographical information on Sir Joseph Swan, including details of his early career and his experiments with the incandescent lamp. Sir Joseph Swan was a pioneer of the electric lighting industry, photographic processes, and a President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers.

Who invented the lightbulb

Swan was born 31 October in Sunderland. During this time, Swan developed two interests; electric light and photography. Mawson encouraged Swan to pursue his interests and introduced him to local chemical manufacturers. Swan also worked to develop the dry-plate photo-chemical process. Swan is best known in the photography and printing industry for his development of carbon printing techniques.

In , Swan patented the process, later selling the rights to various companies around the world. In the s carbon tissue, also known as pigment paper, was first used as the method of transferring an image to a copper plate for what became known as the photogravure process. It is the gelatine relief image which acts as an acid resist enabling the image to be etched into the copper plate.

The process is also the basis of rotary photogravure used in high-quality commercial printing. In Swan undertook some experiments of his own and succeeded in making carbon filaments for a lamp made out of carbonised strips of paper.

What is joseph swan famous for

In he mounted these in a glass bulb with most of the air pumped out. When an electrical current was passed through the filament, a brief electrical incandescence was achieved before the insides of the glass blackened. Swan recognised that this was due to the lack of a vacuum, but he was not able to improve upon this until when he used the newly invented Sprengel air pump.

In January Swan demonstrated some of his incandescent lamps in Newcastle, and in November he applied for a patent on his newly improved filaments.