The History of The Lightbulb

Above is a panel series, designed to show a timeline leading up to Edison's light bulb invention

Here on the right is my panel series, designed to show a timeline leading up to Edison’s invention of the lightbulb. This project from my first digital media class was to create a series of panels relating to my previous illustration of Edison. Each panel had to cover its own topic related to the invention. After researching the history of the events that led up to Edison and the time it took him to get to his final product, I realized the lightbulb was not invented out of the blue. It turned out that the history of artificial light experiments and patents went back a century before. By Edison’s time, it took him nearly ten years of testing over 1,000 different designs and fighting legal battles to hold ownership before his invention began distribution. I decided to focus on this intriguing timeline in my panels and crescendo from dark to light as Edison drew closer. Using mainly Photoshop and some Illustrator, I began designing images and stylizations, trying to develop a series of events that showed progress. It started in 1804 when coal miners invented the Davy Lamp to light their tunnels. I used the dark and smoky themes of coal miners to create a dark and somewhat hopeless tone to help emphasize the gradual but monumental change this invention would later have. The panels gradually get slightly brighter until they conclude at the brightest panel, ‘Ediswan’ 1883. It is here Swan, and Edison end up through copyright battles and end up having to share ownership and distribution rights. Finally, a bright yellow streetlamp shows the results of the inventions rolling out onto every street. A streetlamp, barely even noticeable today, yet having such a significant impact on the world.