Interesting facts about the light bulb. Light bulb: interesting facts from the history of the invention Incandescent lamp interesting facts

An incandescent lamp is an artificial light source in which light comes from an incandescent body that is heated by an electric current to a high temperature. As a heating body, a spiral made of refractory metal (most often tungsten) or a carbon filament is most often used. To prevent oxidation of the heating body upon contact with air, it is placed in an evacuated flask, or a flask filled with inert gases or halogen vapors.

Two centuries ago, in 1840, the Englishman Delarue produced the world's first incandescent lamp (then it was with a platinum spiral and was not distinguished by its practicality) ... As they say, the first pancake is lumpy .. but a start has been made ..

Almost 15 years later, in 1854, the German Heinrich Göbel developed the first "modern" lamp at that time: a charred bamboo thread in an evacuated vessel. It then took him another 5 years to develop what many today call the first practical lamp.

In 1860, the English chemist and physicist Joseph Wilson Swan demonstrated the first results of this lamp and received a patent, but difficulties in obtaining a vacuum led to the fact that Swan's lamp did not work long and inefficiently.

In July 1874, the now Russian engineer declared himself. Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin received a patent for a filament lamp. As a filament, he used a carbon rod placed in an evacuated vessel.+

A year later, Lodygin's lamp was improved. This was done by the scientist Didrichson, he evacuated the air from it and used several hairs in the lamp (in case one of them burned out, the next one turned on automatically).

In the same year, maybe a little later, the Russian electrical engineer Pavel Nikolaevich Yablochkov, working on the "electric candle", discovered that the kaolin, which he used to insulate the coals of the candle, was electrically conductive at high temperature. After which he created the "kaolin lamp", where the "filament" was made of kaolin. A feature of this lamp was that it did not require a vacuum, and the "filament" did not burn out in the open air. However, Yablochkov, with a Russian soul, believed that incandescent lamps were unpromising, and did not believe in the possibility of their use on a large scale.

Yablochkov's "kaolin lamp" was quickly forgotten, but later the German physicist Walter Nernst created a similar lamp, where the "filament" was made of magnesia. But these lamps were not destined to conquer our ceilings. The Nernst lamp also did not require a vacuum, but the essential feature of the "kaolin lamp" and the Nernst lamp is that the "filament" had to be heated to a high temperature in order for the lamp to light up. In the first lamps, the “filament” was heated by a match, later they began to use electric heaters, but this did not allow the lamps to hold out for a long time in the lead.

In 1878, English inventor Joseph Wilson Swan received a British patent for a carbon fiber lamp. In his lamps, the fiber was in a rarefied oxygen atmosphere, which made it possible to obtain very bright light. But this is not yet the lamp that humanity dreamed of.

In the second half of the 1870s, the American inventor Thomas Edison research work, in which he tries various metals as a filament. In 1879 he patents a platinum filament lamp.

In 1880, he returned to carbon fiber again and created a lamp with a lifetime of 40 hours - it was not even bad for that time, although negligible. Interestingly, in selecting the material for the thread, Edison conducted, just think about it, about 1500 tests of various materials, and then about 6000 more experiments on the carbonization of various plants. A kind of fan of his work.

By the way, at the same time, Thomas Edison invented the household rotary switch. The kind to say, after.

Still, despite such a short lifespan, Edison lamps are replacing the gas lighting used until then. For some time, the invention even bore the generalized name "Edison-Swan".

In the 1890s, Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin invented several types of lamps with filaments made of refractory metals. Lodygin suggested using tungsten filaments in lamps (these are the ones used today in light bulbs) and molybdenum and twisting the filament in the form of a spiral. He made the first attempts to pump air out of the lamps, which kept the thread from oxidizing and increased their service life many times over.

By the way, the first American commercial lamp with a tungsten filament was subsequently produced according to Lodygin's patent.

Lodygin also made gas-filled lamps (with carbon filament and nitrogen filling).

Since the late 1890s, lamps with incandescent filaments of magnesium oxide, thorium, zirconium and yttrium have appeared, and a filament of metallic osmium and tantalum has also been used.

At the beginning of the 20th century, in 1904, the Austro-Hungarian specialists Sandor Just and Franjo Hanaman received a patent for the use of tungsten filament in lamps. And in Hungary the first such lamps were produced, which entered the market through one Hungarian company in 1905.

In 1906, Lodygin sold a patent for a tungsten filament to General Electric. In the same 1906, in the USA, he built and put into operation a plant for the electrochemical production of tungsten, chromium and titanium. It must be said that due to high cost tungsten patent Ladygin finds only limited application.

As we know, progress did not stand still in the 20th century. And in a couple of years, William David Coolidge invents an improved method for the production of a tungsten filament, which subsequently displaces all other types of filaments. Thus, today's light bulb was born.

There remained only the problem with the rapid evaporation of the filament in a vacuum, but it was also solved by an American scientist, a well-known specialist in the field of vacuum technology, Irving Langmuir, who, working since 1909, at General Electric. Langmuir introduced into production the filling of lamp bulbs with inert, more precisely, heavy noble gases (in particular, argon), which significantly increased their operating time and increased light output.

I must say that today the light bulb familiar to us is gradually but surely going to become a thing of the past ..

Today, due to the need to save energy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, many countries have introduced or are planning to introduce a ban on the production, purchase and import of incandescent lamps in order to force them to be replaced with energy-saving ones.

In ordinary incandescent lamps, everything is simple: a bulb and a tungsten filament. The LED lamp is much more complicated and its quality depends on the quality of the LEDs, phosphor and electronics.
There are three important parameters that affect the quality of light that a lamp gives:
1. Pulsation of light. Many low-quality lamps have high level pulsation (flicker) of light. Such light is visually uncomfortable and a person quickly gets tired of it. When looking from one object to another, a stroboscopic effect is visible (as if several objects are visible instead of one). The human eye perceives a pulsation of more than 40%. There are two ways to check for the presence of light pulsation - a pencil test (we take an ordinary long pencil by the tip and begin to quickly and quickly move it in a semicircle back and forth. If the individual contours of the pencil are not visible, there is no flicker, but if “several pencils” are visible - light flickers) and checking with a smartphone camera (if you look at the light through a smartphone camera, as a rule, when the light flickers, stripes will go across the screen, and the brighter they are, the stronger the flicker). Lamps with visible pulsation must not be used in residential areas.
2. Color rendering index (CRI). The light spectrum of an LED lamp is different from the spectrum of sunlight and the light of a conventional incandescent lamp. Although the light looks white, there are more color components in it, and less in others. CRI shows how uniform the level of different color components is in the light. With a low CRI of light, shades are less visible. Such light is visually unpleasant, and it is very difficult to understand what is wrong in it. For incandescent and sun lamps CRI = 100, for conventional LED lamps it is more than 80, very good ones have more than 90. It is better not to use lamps with a CRI below 80 in residential areas.
3. Lighting angle. Pear-shaped LED lamps are of two types. For the former, the protective cap has the shape of a hemisphere, having the same diameter as the body. Such lamps do not shine back at all, and if they shine downwards in a chandelier, the ceiling will remain dark, which can be visually ugly. In the second type of lamps, the transparent cap has a diameter larger than the body and the lamp shines a little backwards. Lamps on LED filaments or transparent discs have the same wide angle of illumination as conventional incandescent lamps. Halogen spotlights give a narrow beam of light with an illumination angle of about 30 degrees, while most LED spotlights shine with diffused light at an angle of about 100 degrees. Such light bulbs false ceiling"blind" due to too wide an angle. Only some LED spotlights have lenses and the same narrow angle of illumination as halogen lamps.
And three more problems that can often be encountered with LED lamps:
1. Discrepancy between the luminous flux and the equivalent of the declared values. Unfortunately, often on the packaging of LED lamps they write inflated values ​​​​of luminous flux and equivalent. You can find lamps that indicate a luminous flux of 600 Lm and that the lamp replaces a 60-watt incandescent lamp, but in fact it only shines like a 40-watt lamp.
2. Inconsistency of the color temperature declared. Very often there are lamps whose color temperature of light differs from what the manufacturer promises. Instead of 2700K, you can find 3100K, and instead of 6000K, even 7200K.
3. Premature lamp failure. Manufacturers indicate the service life of LED lamps from 15,000 to 50,000 hours, in fact, the lamps sometimes break after a few months of operation.

To everyone who knew, but forgot, and to those
who wants to satisfy children's interest,
dedicated.

Remember how as a child they ran around the apartment to their parents with questions: what kind of thread in the lamp burned out? And in general, how can that burnt thread glow? Why is it that if you put a lamp in your mouth, you can't get it out without a doctor? Why is the lamp round like a pear? And whose lamp is it, which Ilyich?

And now we have grown up and forgot about all these questions. Let's try to figure it out without mournful scientific terms and super-boring theory.

You enter the store, eyes widen from the number of various lamps on the shelves. So who is the author of this invention? In fact, more than one generation of scientists have worked to create lighting in our homes.

In any historical facts, over time, inaccuracies appear, or they are deliberately turned over. Believe me, the creation of the lamp was no exception. Much is far-fetched, much is an attempt to pull the blanket over to one's side. I will not describe all those who at various times worked on the creation of the lamp. Let's dwell on the most basic milestones of development. Due to the discrepancy between the facts in the huge number of sources studied, I will indicate the time period somewhere in order to avoid mistakes.

It all started back in 1802, when experiments were carried out in the Russian Empire on such a physical phenomenon as an electric arc. Conducted these experiments scientist Vasily Petrov. The result was the creation of an arc lamp based on carbon electrodes.

By the beginning of the second decade of the nineteenth century, Humphrey Davy, an English scientist, had carried out very similar experiments. Later it turns out that both Petrov and Davy wrote science articles, which described the possibility of using electric current in lighting.

The next round is considered to be the creation of the lamp by the famous astronomer and corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences - Warren De La Rue. His lamp looked like a tube with a platinum coil. Air was evacuated from the tube as much as possible. Even then it was believed that in a vacuum, light diverges better, and the light source does not oxidize. The generally accepted version is that this lamp was introduced in 1820, but this is not so. Warren De La Rue was born in 1815, and it turns out that he invented the lamp at the age of 5. This is how facts get distorted over time. In fact, the lamp was created in 1840.

Next, we will try to lift the veil of secrecy over who first invented the image of a modern lamp - Lodygin or Edison? Actually Lodygin. But not everything is so clear. In 1872, the first sample of a lamp similar to the modern one appeared. It looked like a ball with evacuated air, in which a thread was placed between the conductors. Yes, you heard right, this was the progenitor of the incandescent lamp, although at that time the filament was carbon. The inventor received a patent number 1619 only two years later, on July 11, 1874. Then, for the first time, a filament incandescent lamp was patented, and the great Russian engineer Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin did it. About a year later, V. F. Didrikhson improved the lamp by adding a few more filaments to it, in the event of a burnout of one, the next one automatically turned on.

But then Thomas Edison came into play. He spent an astronomical sum of $100,000 at the time, and tried over six thousand thread materials before returning to charred bamboo fiber. He made not much more than two dozen lamps. But they were unrealistically expensive to manufacture. Later, he used a cotton-based thread placed between platinum electrodes. These were very short-lived and expensive lamps, but this did not prevent them from selling successfully for the next few decades.

Simultaneously with Edison's research, Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin continued to work on improving the lamp. Lodygin studied lamps with a thread of refractory materials for a long time. He received several more patents for lamps of various shapes and principles of operation. But events occurred that forced Alexander Nikolaevich to leave his homeland for as long as 23 years. In 1884, mass arrests and executions of people involved in the revolutionary movement began, including many friends of our engineer, and this was the reason for his departure. In the same year, in Paris, where he left, the production of lamps was organized. The inventor was worried that he would not be able to personally participate in the Third Electrical Exhibition in St. Petersburg, but he nevertheless sent a batch of lamps to the exhibition. In 1893, he began to produce lamps with a brightness of "100-400 candles", and a year later he opened a company for the production of lamps "Lodygin and de Lisle". In 1906, Lodygin sold the patent to a US company, General Electric. Alexander Nikolayevich himself moved to the USA and continued to study refractory metals, and in the same year he opened a titanium, chromium and tungsten processing plant in America, which became the main supplier of tungsten for incandescent lamps. By the way, there is another little-known fact: induction furnaces and resistance furnaces, which melted metal at his factory, he invented himself.

Since the sale of the patent to General Electric, it began to develop the production of lamps. After some time, the company's engineers made the lamp the way we see it today. In Russia, an incandescent lamp appeared in every house after the electrification of the entire country was carried out according to the plan of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Hence the name - Ilyich's Lamp.

The answer to the question: why is the lamp round, is actually simple. It's just that the flask is equidistant from the hot filament, so as not to overheat on one side and not burst. In addition, such a shape excludes as much as possible the precipitation of tungsten evaporation products on one side. The thread is very thin, so any sudden movement can break the thread. The flask is filled with an inert gas to minimize oxidation and filament breakage. There are 2 wires inside the base, one is the input of electricity from the base (from the thread), and the second is under the base, the current output from the lamp isolated from it. The base is of this shape simply because it is easier to replace the lamp.

The last question remains: why can't you get a lamp that a child (or maybe not a child) put in his mouth without a doctor? Actually it is elementary. It's just that the muscles of the oral cavity are arranged in such a way that the mouth can open to the maximum width only after it has been completely closed, in otherwise muscle spasm occurs. And here the doctors will either open the mouth to the end with a special device, or give a relaxing injection. Do not try to verify the validity of the statement on yourself, it can be dangerous.

I hope you had a good time, see you on the pages of our blog!

The report on the history of the incandescent lamp Grade 7 will briefly talk about when the incandescent lamp was invented and who is the author of this invention.

"The history of the incandescent lamp" report

Incandescent lamp history of invention begins in 1809. At that time, an Englishman named Delarue creates the world's first incandescent lamp, which was based on a platinum spiral. It was used until 1854, when the German explorer Heinrich Goebel made a similar invention. True, his lamp, unlike the Delarue lamp, which was far from its modern counterpart, was more perfect. In Goebel's idea, she appeared as a vacuum vessel with a charred bamboo thread inside. For the next 5 years, the scientist continues to work on improving the lamp.

In 1874, the inventor of the new lamp was Alexander Lodygin, who created a filament lamp and even received a patent for it. His filament lamp was a vacuum vessel, where a carbon rod played the role of a pricking thread.

A similar invention was again made in 1878 by the British scientist Joseph Wilson Swan. The British lamp was a vessel with a carbon filament. Thanks to him, the invention was distinguished from others by bright lighting. At the same time, the American researcher Thomas Edison was conducting similar research in this area. In the process, he learned how to create incandescent lamps from different materials. In 1879, by trial and error, an American invented a lamp with a platinum filament inside. A year later, Thomas Edison considered that his invention was not so successful and opted for a vessel based on carbon fiber. It was the first lamp in the world that could work for 40 minutes without going out. It is thanks to the American scientist that we owe the appearance of incandescent lamps in the form in which they illuminate our homes today, as well as the cartridge, base and switch.

With the advent of the Edison light bulb, the Russian scientist Lodygin invented several types of lamps a few years later, which were based on metal filaments. His most striking invention is a lamp with a tungsten filament. The scientist sold the patent for it to the well-known company General Electric. However, the high cost of the product led to the fact that it was practically not produced.

The last inventor to contribute to the development of lamp manufacturing is Irving Langmuir. Thanks to his efforts, the incandescent lamp acquired a modern look. The scientist took a vacuum flask as a basis, filled it with an inert gas and provided it with an improved tungsten filament. So the period of its validity has increased significantly and new lamps have become available to every person in view of reliability and low cost.

We hope that the "History of the Incandescent Lamp" short message helped you to prepare for the lesson. And you can shorten a short message on the topic “The History of the Incandescent Lamp” at your discretion.

An incandescent light bulb is an object familiar to everyone. Electricity and artificial light have long been an integral part of reality for us. But few people think about how the very first and familiar incandescent lamp appeared.

Our article will tell you what an incandescent lamp is, how it works and how it appeared in Russia and around the world.

What is

An incandescent lamp is an electrical version of a light source, the main part of which is a refractory conductor that plays the role of a filament body. The conductor is placed in a glass flask, which inside is pumped with an inert gas or completely devoid of air. Passing through refractory conductor type electricity, this lamp can emit luminous flux.

The glow of an incandescent lamp

The principle of operation is based on the fact that when an electric current flows through the filament body, this element begins to glow, heating the tungsten filament. As a result, the filament begins to emit radiation of the electromagnetic-thermal type (Planck's law). To create a glow, the temperature of the glow must be a couple of thousand degrees. As the temperature decreases, the glow spectrum will become more and more red.
All the disadvantages of an incandescent lamp lie in the incandescent temperature. The better the luminous flux is needed, the higher the temperature required. At the same time, the tungsten filament is characterized by a filament limit, above which this light source permanently fails.
Note! The temperature limit of heating for incandescent lamps is 3410 ° C.

Design features

Since the incandescent lamp is considered the very first light source, it is quite natural that its design should be quite simple. Especially when compared with current light sources, which are gradually pushing it out of the market.
In an incandescent lamp, the leading elements are:

• lamp bulb;
• glow body;
• current leads.

Note! The first such lamp had just such a structure.

Incandescent lamp design

To date, several variants of incandescent lamps have been developed, but such a structure is typical for the simplest and very first models.
In a standard incandescent bulb, in addition to the elements described above, there is a fuse, which is a link. It is made of ferronickel alloy. It is welded into the gap of one of the two current leads of the product. The link is located in the leg of the current lead. It is necessary in order to prevent the destruction of the glass bulb during the breakthrough of the filament. This is due to the fact that when a tungsten filament breaks through, an electric arc is created. It can melt the remnants of the thread. And its fragments can damage the glass flask and cause a fire.
The fuse destroys the electric arc. Such a ferronickel link is placed in a cavity where the pressure is equal to atmospheric. In this situation, the arc goes out.
Such a structure and principle of operation provided the incandescent lamp with wide distribution around the world, but due to their high energy consumption and short service life, they are now used much less frequently. This is due to the fact that more modern and efficient light sources have appeared.

Discovery history

Researchers from Russia and other countries of the world made their contribution to the creation of the incandescent lamp in the form in which it is known today.

Alexander Lodygin

Until the moment when the inventor Alexander Lodygin from Russia began to work on the development of incandescent lamps, some important events should be noted in its history:

• in 1809, the famous inventor Delarue from England created his first incandescent lamp equipped with a platinum spiral;
• almost 30 years later, in 1938, the Belgian inventor Jobar developed a carbon model of an incandescent lamp;
• Inventor Heinrich Goebel from Germany in 1854 already presented the first version of a working light source.

The German-style light bulb had a charred bamboo filament that was placed in an evacuated vessel. Over the next five years, Heinrich Goebel continued his developments and eventually came to the first prototype of a working incandescent light bulb.

First practical light bulb

Joseph Wilson Swan, the famous physicist and chemist from England, in 1860 showed the world his first successes in the development of a light source and was rewarded with a patent for his results. But some of the difficulties that arose with the creation of a vacuum showed the inefficient and not long-term operation of the Swan lamp.
In Russia, as noted above, Alexander Lodygin was engaged in research in the field of efficient light sources. In Russia, he was able to achieve a glow in a glass vessel of a carbon rod, from which the air had previously been pumped out. In Russia, the history of the discovery of the incandescent light bulb began in 1872. It was in this year that Alexander Lodygin succeeded in his experiments with a carbon rod. Two years later, in Russia, he receives a patent under the number 1619, which was issued to him for a filament type of lamp. He replaced the thread with a rod of coal, which was in a vacuum flask.
Exactly one year later, V. F. Didrikhson significantly improved the appearance of the incandescent lamp created in Russia by Lodygin. The improvement consisted in replacing the carbon rod with several hairs.

Note! In a situation where one of them burned out, there was automatic switch on another.

Joseph Wilson Swan, who continued his efforts to improve the existing light source model, receives a patent for light bulbs. Here as heating element carbon fibre. But here it was located already in a rarefied atmosphere of oxygen. Such an atmosphere made it possible to obtain very bright light.

Contribution of Thomas Edison

In the 1970s, an inventor from America, Thomas Edison, joined the inventive race to create a working model of an incandescent lamp.

Thomas Edison

He conducted research on the use of filaments made from various materials as an incandescent element. Edison in 1879 receives a patent for a light bulb equipped with a platinum filament. But a year later, he returns to the already proven carbon fiber and creates a light source with a lifespan of 40 hours.

Note! Simultaneously with the work on creating an efficient light source, Thomas Edison created a rotary type of household switch.

Despite the fact that Edison bulbs work only 40 hours, they began to actively force out the old version of gas lighting from the market.

The results of the work of Alexander Lodygin

While Thomas Edison was conducting his experiments on the other side of the world, Alexander Lodygin continued to do similar research in Russia. In the 90s of the 19th century, he invented several types of light bulbs at once, the threads of which were made of refractory metals.

Note! It was Lodygin who first decided to use a tungsten filament as an incandescent body.

Bulb Lodygin

In addition to tungsten, he also proposed using filaments made of molybdenum, as well as twisting them into a spiral shape. Lodygin placed such threads of his in flasks, from which all the air was pumped out. As a result of such actions, the threads were protected from oxygen oxidation, which made the service life of the products much longer.
The first type of commercial light bulb produced in America contained a tungsten filament and was made according to Lodygin's patent.
It is also worth noting that Lodygin developed gas-filled lamps containing carbon filaments and filled with nitrogen.
Thus, the authorship of the first incandescent light bulb sent into serial production belongs to the Russian researcher Alexander Lodygin.

Features of the Lodygin light bulb

Modern incandescent lamps, which are direct descendants of Alexander Lodygin's model, are characterized by:

• excellent luminous flux;
• excellent color reproduction;

Incandescent lamp color rendering

• low rate of convection and heat conduction;
• filament filament temperature - 3400 K;
• at the maximum level of the filament temperature indicator, the coefficient for useful action is 15%.

Besides given type The light source during its operation consumes a lot of electricity, compared to other modern light bulbs. Due to the design features, such lamps can operate for approximately 1000 hours.
But, despite the fact that, according to many evaluation criteria, these products are inferior to more advanced modern light sources, due to their low cost, they still remain relevant.

Conclusion

Inventors from different countries participated in the creation of an efficient incandescent lamp. But only the Russian scientist Alexander Lodygin was able to create the most best option which we, in fact, continue to use to this day.

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