Swans fading legacy
Date: 2003-12-09, Publication: The Journal
The Swan song is looming for the legacy left by one of the North-East's brightest leading scientific lights.
Joseph Swan played a pioneering role in the development of electric lighting and after decades of work came up with the filament bulb which has been a feature of millions of homes for more than a century.
But the inventor with the glowing reputation will have to be content with his place in the history books as his bulb is consigned to the shadows by the advance of the light-emitting diode.
A bright blue Christmas LED light is on the market this year and that, says Mike Czerniak of LED company BOC, is a sign of things to come.
LEDs have no filament to burn out and the cost of white and blue versions has just dropped to an affordable level.
It means time could soon be up for the bulb produced by Sunderland-born Swan, whose home in Kells Lane in Low Fell, Gateshead, still stands.
Quickening technological advances mean that LEDs could soon be lighting homes and shopping centres and their energy efficiency will cut power bills and climate change fossil fuel emissions. The light bulb, which ousted oil and gas lamps, could soon go the same way. Swan was born in Pallion in Sunderland and served a six-year apprenticeship with chemists Hudson and Osbaldson in the town.
But he made the switch to Tyneside at 18 to join chemist John Mawson in his business in Mosley Street in Newcastle.
Swan made several breakthroughs in photography, including bromide photographic paper and the dry plate which marked the beginning of picture-taking as a popular hobby.
But it was his search for a filament which would glow brightly for a long period without burning up that won him the fame which led to his knighthood in 1904 and the freedom of Newcastle in 1914 - the year he died aged 86.
In 1879, Swan gave a lecture on his light work at the Literary and Philosophical Society in Newcastle in front of an audience of 700 at a meeting chaired by his friend and fellow inventor Lord Armstrong - whose Cragside mansion in Northumberland was one of the first homes to be lit by bulbs.
A year later the Lit & Phil's lecture theatre in Westgate Road was the first public room to be lit by electric light.
"Swan turned off 70 gas jets in the theatre and then lit the darkness with 20 of his lamps. It must have been amazing," said Lit & Phil librarian Kay Easson. Newcastle Discovery Museum has an extensive collection of light bulbs which celebrate Swan's work and keeper of science and industry John Clayson said: "He is an extremely important figure of world renown and is in the North-East premier league of inventors. And in terms of the light bulb he has had a very good innings."
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