Luminaires, solar lamps, LED lighting

The first light sources created by humans were produced thousands of years ago in the Neolithic period by burning tree branches and dried grass to provide light in the nighttime darkness. People learned to fashion oil lamps by placing animal and vegetable oils in containers made of stone, clay and shell and then dipping wicks into the oil.

Finally, the discovery of electrical energy brought the introduction of electric lamps and bulbs and the age of electrical lighting supplanted the age of combustion lighting. The first electric light was created by Englishman Humphry Davey in 1802. Davey experimented with electricity and invented an electric battery.

Famous inventor Thomas Edison is often credited with creating the solution in 1879: the carbon filament light bulb. He used thin – and thus high-resistance – filaments to achieve the brightness, and delayed burnout by making them from high-melting-point metal sealed in a vacuum. Edison produced a bulb that could glow for over 1500 hours.

Incandescent bulbs would go on to dominate the world of lighting until fluorescent lights were introduced by Daniel McFarlan Moore circa 1904.

The 20th century was the century of high intensity discharge lights.