Ask most people the question ‘Who invented the light bulbs?’ and you are likely to get the reply ‘Thomas Edison’. Whilst the question could be deemed to be a little ambiguous, you may get a tick or a cross depending on the questioners point of view.
It was Humphrey Davy, the English chemist who first attached wires to a battery and passed an electric current through a piece of carbon to create the first arc lamp back in 1809. The list of contributors between this humble beginning and Thomas Edisons’ filament light bulb in 1879 is quite a long one and any one of them could have the title bestowed on them.
Warren De la Rue in 1820 used platinum as the source of his arc. He did use an evacuated tube so this could be said to be the first attempt at a light bulb. The cost of the platinum however was too expensive to make this idea feasible for widespread use. In fact it was not until 1875 that Henry Woodward and Matthew Evans patented