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Once again we have two inventors who were working on the same thing but this time, after a brief period when one tried to sue the other, they became partners.
Electricity wasn't invented because it is all around us. Electricity was discovered and most people give credit to a man called Benjamin Franklin. He did a rather dangerous experiment with a kite and a key in a thunderstorm and proved that lightning is electrical. That was back in 1752 but after that many scientist began looking at ways electricity could be used.
There were two ways to make electricity to provide lighting. One was called an arc lamp where the electricity would be made by making it leap between a gap of possibly copper strips and the other was called an incandescent lamp where electricity is passed through something called a filament. A filament is a small piece of wire with a very high melting point which also lets an electric current pass along it, during which it lights up.
It was the incandescent lamp which won the battle to be the most practical. Joseph Swan, who lived in Sunderland, led the way in producing the best light bulb as they were, and still are, called. In 1880 Swan's light bulbs lit the first house in the world to have electric light. This was the home of Lord Armstrong at Craigside in Northumberland. The electricity was actually produced by water power from Armstrong's lakes.
In 1879 Swan provided the light bulbs to light a whole street. This was Mosely Street in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Meanwhile in the United States a man we have met before, Thomas Edison, had also invented the light bulb. Edison tried to sue Swan but failed and so they went into partnership. Mass produced electric light bulbs were born and soon electric lighting would be normal all over England.
However the old gas lighting didn't completely disappear and some streets were still lit by gas in the 1950s. I remember a little man, well he might have been quite big, walking down our street every night with a lighter on a long pole and igniting the gas in the glass lamp. In the morning he would return with a pole with a cap at one end, it might have been the same pole but the other end, put the cap over the light, block out the oxygen needed to make it burn and, hey presto, the light went out.
Forward to 1884AD
