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The earliest ancestor of the fluorescent lamp is probably the device by Heinrich Geissler who obtained in 1856 a bluish glow from a gas sealed in a tube, excited with an induction coil. Though to be remembered as a physicist, it is interesting to note that Geissler was educated as a glassblower, which was certainly of some value for this earliest realization.
In 1857, French physicist Henri Becquerel had the idea of a tube encapsulating fluorescent gas while leading investigations on fluorescence, phosphorescencePhosphorescence is a radiative transition involving a change in the spin multiplicity of a molecule. Because of this change, the radiative transition is delayed, and the phosphorescent material glows a while after the incident illumination stops. Because and radioactivityRadioactive decay Radioactivity is the process by which unstable atomic nuclei decay. This process normally produces ionizing radiation with a relatively large amount of energy. This energy can be harnessed in the form of nuclear power, or it can be very.
In 1894Events January 8 A fire at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago causes a good deal of damage. January 9 New England Telephone and Telegraph installs the first battery-operated telephone switchboard ( Lexington, Massachusetts). February 15 04:51 GMT, D. McFarlane MooreDaniel McFarlan Moore was an American inventor who created in 1894 gas discharge lamps, known as Moore lamps, in much respects the precursor of today fluorescent lamps. First working for Edison, he departed from the scheme of incandescent lamps to investi created the Moore lamp, a commercial gas discharge lampAn arc lamp is a device that produces light by the sparking (or arcing, from voltaic arc) of a high current between two carbon rod electrodes. The rods are touched and then slowly drawn apart; as the rods separate the current is "struck" and arcs across t meant to compete with the incandescent light bulbThe incandescent light bulb uses a glowing wire filament heated to white-hot by electrical resistance, to generate light (a process known as thermal radiation). The bulb is the glass enclosure which keeps the filament in a vacuum or low- pressure noble ga of his former boss Thomas EdisonThomas Alva Edison ( February 11, 1847 October 18, 1931) was an inventor and businessman who developed many important devices. The Wizard of Menlo Park was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention.. The gas used were NitrogenNitrogen is the chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol N and atomic number 7. A common normally colorless, odorless, tasteless and mostly inert diatomic non-metal gas, nitrogen constitutes 78 percent of Earth's atmosphere and is a cons and Carbon dioxide emitting respectively pink and white light, and had moderate success.
In 1901, Peter Cooper Hewitt demonstrated the mercury-vapor lamp, which was emitting in the blue-green spectrum and thus was unfit for most practical purposes. It was, however, very close to the modern design, and had some applications in photography where color was not yet an issue, thanks to his much higher efficiency than incandescent lamps.
It remained to Edmund Germer and coworkers to propose in 1926 to coat the tube with fluorescent powder which converts ultraviolet light emitted by a rare gas into better spectrally distributed light (also bringing high pressure of the gas at the same time). Germer is today recognized as the inventor of fluorescent lamp.
General Electrics later bought Germer's patent and under the impulsion of George Inman brought the fluorescent lamp to wide commercial use in 1938.