Joseph Swan (1828-1914) was a British physicist and chemist. In 1850, he began working with carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated glass bulb. By 1860, he was able to demonstrate a working device but the lack of a good vacuum and an adequate supply of electricity resulted in a short lifetime for the bulb and an inefficient source of light. By the mid-1870s better pumps had become available, and Swan returned to his experiments.[28]

With the help of Charles Stearn, an expert on vacuum pumps, in 1878, Swan developed a method of processing that avoided the early bulb blackening. This received a British Patent in 1880.[29] On 18 December 1878, a lamp using a slender carbon rod was shown at a meeting of the Newcastle Chemical Society, and Swan gave a working demonstration at their meeting on 17 January 1879. It was also shown to 700 who attended a meeting of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne on 3 February 1879.[30] These lamps used a carbon rod from an arc lamp rather than a slender filament. Thus they had low resistance and required very large conductors to supply the necessary current, so they were not commercially practical, although they did furnish a demonstration of the possibilities of incandescent lighting with relatively high vacuum, a carbon conductor, and platinum lead-in wires. This bulb lasted about 40 hours.[30] Swan then turned his attention to producing a better carbon filament and the means of attaching its ends. He devised a method of treating cotton to produce 'parchmentised thread' in the early 1880s and obtained British Patent 4933 that same year.[29] From this year he began installing light bulbs in homes and landmarks in England. His house, Underhill, Low Fell, Gateshead, was the first in the world to be lit by a lightbulb. In the early 1880s he had started his company.[31] In 1881, the Savoy Theatre in the City of Westminster, London was lit by Swan incandescent lightbulbs, which was the first theatre, and the first public building in the world, to be lit entirely by electricity.[32] The first street in the world to be lit by an incandescent lightbulb was Mosley Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. It was lit by Joseph Swan's incandescent lamp on 3 February 1879.[33][34]

Thomas Edison began serious research into developing a practical incandescent lamp in 1878. Edison filed his first patent application for "Improvement in Electric Lights" on 14 October 1878.[35] After many experiments, first with carbon in the early 1880s and then with platinum and other metals, in the end Edison returned to a carbon filament.[36] The first successful test was on 22 October 1879,[37][38] and lasted 13.5 hours. Edison continued to improve this design and by 4 November 1879, filed for a US patent for an electric lamp using "a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected ... to platina contact wires."[39] Although the patent described several ways of creating the carbon filament including using "cotton and linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways,"[39] Edison and his team later discovered that a carbonized bamboo filament could last more than 1200 hours.[40] In 1880, the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company steamer, Columbia, became the first application for Edison's incandescent electric lamps (it was also the first ship to use a dynamo).[41][42][43]