The age of kerosene lamps

Before the electric lamp, people used to use kerosene lamp or gas lamp, but this kind of lamp is not safe, and it can easily cause a fire. For many years, scientists try to develop a safe and convenient lamp.

Who intented the electric lamps

The lamp is a significant invention of humans to conquer the night. The person who really invented the electric lamp and made it world famous is Edison. He is the child of railman, and he earned his living by selling newspapers on the train without finishing primary school. Edison is a diligent kid who likes doing all kinds of experiments and making many machines. He is very interested in electric appliance, since farady invented the electric motor，electricity has spreaded to every houses, but how to convert electric energy to optical energy is still a question, so Edison makes up his mind to manufacture electric lamp to bring light to people.

Early 19th century, a British chemist manufacture the first arc lamp by 2000 batteries and two rods, but the light emitted by this lamp is too strong, so it just can be installed on the street or plaza. Countless scientists rack their brain to manufacture a cheap and fine lamp with long life span.

On October 21, 1879, With long-term repeated experiments, Edison finally lit the first electric lamp with practical value. From then on, his name, just like the electric lamp he invented, went into every houses.The electric lamp model invented by Edison is the incandescent lamp we use.

 Why we don't use incandescent lamp now?

First of all, the efficiency of incandescent lamp is low, because the way an incandescent lamp lights is by heating the filament that will cause much wastage in thermal energy. According to the research, the efficiency of incandescent lamp is only 5%, and most of the energy is lost as heat.

Secondly, incandescent lamp has very short using life. The temperature of filament can go up to 3000 degrees when it is working, so the lamp burns out very easily, and therefore, the average lifetime of incandescent lamp is only 1000 hours.

The advantage of LED lamp

More and more people prefer to choose LEDs nowaday. Compared with traditional lamp, LEDs have many advantages, such as the efficiency, the majority of LEDs can go up to more than 80% efficiency. LEDs also have a long life span which is very important for customers, people don't need to change the lamp very frequently.