History of lighting

In both historic and economic terms, human civilisation revolves around artificial light. Since its earliest incarnation as firelight to its most recent as electric light, artificial light has been at the core of human civilisation. It has freed us from the temporal and spatial constraints of daylight by allowing us to function equally well night and day, indoors and outdoors.

We can trace the history of lighting since the first primitive lamp, invented around 70,000 BC, passing through Greeks terra cotta lamps around the 7th century BC, arriving at the 18th century, when the central burner was invented, a major improvement in lamp design. In 1879, whit the invention of the light bulb by Thomas Alva Edison, the history of electric lighting begun.

The extract below provides a brief history of lighting as portrayed in the 1888 publication, Municipal Lighting and is direct insight into how it all began:

The history of the electric light is interesting. Notwithstanding the proverbial tendency of mankind to believe that the "olden time" showed many points of superiority to the present, the casual retrospective view will call to mind a list of modern improvements which are now considered indispensable adjuncts of civilization, but which have been introduced within the memory of thousands who are now living.