Sir Joseph Wilson Swan FRS was born on October 31, 1828, and died on May 27, 1914. He was an English scientist and inventor who worked as a physicist and chemist. He is known for being one of the first people to create a working incandescent light bulb. He helped develop the first use of incandescent lights to light homes and public buildings, such as the Savoy Theatre in London, in 1881.
In 1904, Swan was given a special title by King Edward VII. He also received the Hughes Medal from the Royal Society and became an honorary member of the Pharmaceutical Society. During his visit to the 1881 International Exposition of Electricity in Paris, he was awarded the Legion of Honour, which is the most important honor in France. The exhibition displayed his inventions, and the city of Paris used his electric lighting system.
Early life
Joseph Wilson Swan was born in 1828 at Pallion Hall in Pallion, in the Parish of Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland, in County Durham. His parents were John Swan and Isabella Cameron.
Swan began a six-year apprenticeship with a Sunderland firm of pharmacists and druggists, Hudson and Osbaldiston. It is not clear if Swan finished his six-year apprenticeship because both partners later died. He was known for being curious even as a child. He learned more by being interested in his surroundings, the local industry, and reading at the Sunderland Library. He attended lectures at the Sunderland Atheneum.
Swan later joined Mawson's, a company of manufacturing chemists in Newcastle upon Tyne. John Mawson started the company in the same year Swan was born. John Mawson was married to Swan’s sister, Elizabeth Swan. In 1846, Swan was offered a partnership at Mawson's. The company later became Mawson, Swan, and Morgan and remained open until 1973. The store closed in 1986. The building was located on Grey Street in Newcastle upon Tyne, near Grey's Monument. The building is now home to a fashion store called END. and can be recognized by a row of Victorian-style electric street lamps in front of the store on Grey Street.
Swan lived in a large house called Underhill on Kells Lane North in Low Fell, Gateshead. He conducted most of his experiments in the large conservatory at the house. The house was later turned into Beaconsfield School, a private school that charges fees. Students there can still see some of Swan's original electrical fixtures.
Electric light
In 1850, Swan started working on a light bulb that used carbonized paper filaments inside an empty glass bulb. By 1860, he showed a working device, but the poor vacuum and weak electric source made the bulb inefficient and short-lived. In August 1863, Swan shared his design for a vacuum pump at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. His design used mercury flowing through a tube to remove air from the system. Swan’s pump was similar to the Sprengel pump and was created two years before Herman Sprengel’s research. Sprengel was in London and likely saw reports from the British Association. Later, Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison used the Sprengel pump to make their carbon filament lamps.
In 1875, Swan returned to improve the light bulb using a better vacuum and a carbonized thread as a filament. His improved lamp had little oxygen left in the vacuum, allowing the filament to glow almost white-hot without burning. However, the filament had low resistance, requiring thick copper wires to power it.
Swan first showed his incandescent carbon lamp at a lecture for the Newcastle upon Tyne Chemical Society on 18 December 1878. The lamp broke down after a few minutes due to too much current. On 17 January 1879, he repeated the demonstration successfully, solving the problem of incandescent lighting with a vacuum lamp. On 3 February 1879, he demonstrated a working lamp to over 700 people at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, with Sir William Armstrong presiding. Swan focused on improving the carbon filament and found a way to treat cotton to make "parchmentised thread," which he patented on 27 November 1880. From then, he began installing light bulbs in homes and landmarks in England.
Swan’s home, Underhill in Gateshead, was the first in the world with working light bulbs. The Lit & Phil Library in Newcastle was the first public room lit by electric light during a lecture on 20 October 1880. In 1881, Swan founded his own company, The Swan Electric Light Company, and started mass production.
The Savoy, a theatre in London, was the first public building fully lit by electricity. Swan provided about 1,200 incandescent lamps powered by an 88.3-kilowatt generator near the theatre. The theatre’s builder, Richard D'Oyly Carte, said electric lights improved performances by avoiding the heat and poor air quality of gaslight. At first, the generator was too small, so the stage remained gas-lit until 28 December 1881. Carte demonstrated the safety of Swan’s lamps by breaking a glowing bulb on stage. On 29 December 1881, The Times praised the electric lighting as better than gaslight.
The first private home, other than Swan’s, with electric lights was Sir William Armstrong’s house at Cragside. Swan supervised the installation there in December 1880. He had formed "The Swan Electric Light Company Ltd" with a factory in Benwell, Newcastle, and began commercial production of incandescent bulbs by 1881.
Swan’s carbon rod and filament lamps worked but had issues, such as needing expensive thick copper wiring and short lifespans. While searching for a better filament, Swan developed a process to make conducting fibers from nitrocellulose in 1881. His company later used these fibers in bulbs. The textile industry also adopted this method.
The first ship with Swan’s lamps was The City of Richmond, owned by the Inman Line, in June 1881. The Royal Navy soon used the lamps on its ships, including HMS Inflexible. Swan’s lamps were also used during the Severn Tunnel project, where 20-candlepower lamps were installed in temporary tunnels.
Swan helped develop electric safety lamps for miners. He showed his first design at the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers in Newcastle on 14 May 1881. Early models needed wires, but later versions used batteries. By 1886, the Edison-Swan Company produced lamps brighter than flame safety lamps, though they were unreliable. It took further development over 20 years before electric lamps became widely used.
Conjunction with Edison
Swan's incandescent electric lamp was developed at the same time that Thomas Edison worked on his own incandescent lamp. Both Swan's first successful lamp and Edison's lamp were patented in 1880. Edison aimed to create a long-lasting, high-resistance lamp that could be used in parallel with a large-scale electric-lighting system he was building. Swan's original lamp had low resistance and a short life span, making it unsuitable for this system. Swan's strong patents in Great Britain led to a merger between the two companies in 1883. This created the Edison & Swan United Electric Light Company, known as "Ediswan." The company produced lamps with a cellulose filament invented by Swan in 1881, while Edison's company used bamboo filaments outside of Britain. In 1892, General Electric (GE) began using Swan's patents to make cellulose filaments. These were replaced in 1904 with a new type of cellulose filament developed by GE.
In 1886, Ediswan moved its production to a former jute mill in Ponders End, North London. In 1916, Ediswan built the UK's first factory for making radio thermionic valves in Ponders End. This area, along with nearby Brimsdown, became a center for producing thermionic valves, cathode-ray tubes, and other electronic parts. Parts of Enfield became an important center for the electronics industry during much of the 20th century. Ediswan became part of British Thomson-Houston and Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) in the late 1920s.
Photography
In the 1800s, Swan discovered that heat made the silver bromide coating on wet photographic plates more sensitive. By 1871, he created a way to use dry plates and replace glass with nitrocellulose plastic, making photography easier and more convenient. In 1879, he patented bromide paper, a method still used today for black-and-white prints.
In 1864, Swan developed carbon tissue and patented a process to make carbon prints permanent. By adding a transfer step, he could create photographs with a wide range of shades and tones. In 1868, he sold his patents to the Autotype Company in London.
Honours
In 1904, Swan was given a knighthood, received the Royal Society's Hughes Medal, and became an honorary member of the Pharmaceutical Society. He had previously been honored with France's highest decoration, the Legion of Honour, for inventing the electric light bulb. This recognition followed his display of the invention at an exhibition in Paris in 1881. In 1906, he was awarded the Albert Medal by the Royal Society of Arts.
In 1894, Swan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). In 1898, he became president of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, a position he held while serving as one of its three honorary members, alongside Lord Kelvin and Henry Wilde. In 1901, he was granted an honorary Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) degree by Durham University. He also served as president of the Society of Chemical Industry from 1900 to 1901 and was chosen as the first president of the Faraday Society in 1903.
In 1945, the London Power Company honored Swan by naming a new 1,554 GRT coastal collier SS Sir Joseph Swan.
Personal life
Swan married Frances "Fanny" White, the third daughter of William White from Liverpool, at Camberwell Chapel in London on July 31, 1862. They had three children who survived into adulthood: Cameron, Mary Edmonds, and Joseph Henry. Frances died on January 9, 1868. Swan then married Hannah White, Frances's younger sister, in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on October 3, 1871. They had five children: Hilda, Frances Isobel, Kenneth Rayden, Percival, and Dorothy. Sir Kenneth Rayden Swan was a Queen's Counsel and a well-known expert on patent law. Frances Isobel was the mother of Christopher Morcom, who was a close friend of Alan Turing at Sherborne School. After her son died from complications of bovine tuberculosis in 1930, she and Turing began exchanging letters. Swan died in 1914 at his home in Overhill, Warlingham, Surrey. His funeral was held at All Saints' Church in Warlingham on May 30, 1914, with burial in the churchyard. Attendees included representatives from the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and the Royal Society.