A geneology of the light bulb Manufacturers

Swan

Sir Joseph Swan was a British physicist and chemist who created a light bulb that could be used commercially by 1880, focusing on carbonized filaments in a vacuum. 

Edison

Edison, who made a career of crowding in on other inventions and patents by making small improvements in them, created a commercially feasible carbon filament light bulb in America.  The two men came to an agreement to form a company known as "Edison and Swan electric light company" for its commercial exploitation when it became clear that an alliance was going to be more profitable than an extended legal battle.  

Neither man actually "invented" the light bulb since the ability to make light in a resisting filament in a vacuum had been demonstrated by Sir Humphrey Davy in 1802.   What Swan and Edison did do was create a light bulb efficient enough to actually be sold commercially. Edison often won these little tech wars since he had better lawyers. 

The first tungsten filament light bulb was patented in

Just and Hanaman

Hungary by Alexander Just and Franjo Hanaman in 1904.  This gave brighter light and longer life than carbon filaments.   Edison's General Electric company made improvements in the manufacture of the tungsten filaments in 1906 by sintering, and created ductile tungsten filaments by 1911.  Irving Langmuir in 1913 discovered that filling the light bulb with inert gas was better than attempting a vacuum. 

Edison General Electric was incorporated in New York in 1889, drawing together Edison's Electric Light Company, his electric dynamo manufacturing company, his electric sockets and lighting fixtures.  It merged with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company in 1892 to become General Electric Company.

Meanwhile George Westinghouse who developed the transformer, started an electric company based on the method of transporting electric power from the generating plant to the consumer.  Alternating current, where current changes direction at some frequency allows for the more efficient transport of energy at high voltages over long distances with less loss of power.  The stepping up and down of voltage can be accomplished by transformers, which is not possible with direct current.  He was awarded the contract to harness the hydroelectric power of the Niagara river at Niagara Falls and set up a transmission line to Buffalo, which was about 20 miles away.  This was accomplished in 1896. 

Westinghouse's first and most significant invention was the air brake, which made stopping locomotives easier and safer than before.  Apart from dynamos, home appliances, and other things they also manufactured light bulbs.

  In the 1930s they were trying to make a better filament for light bulbs by using uranium.  While this never panned out for light bulbs, it did turn out to be of use in developing processes for the refining of uranium for their use in nuclear weapons.  Westinghouse subsequently became involved in the development of nuclear energy.   

Sylvania was started as a company that refilled burned out light bulbs.    NILCO, Sylvania, and Hygrade lamp companies merged in 1931, forming the Hygrade Sylvania company. 

This company was responsible for the first linear fluorescent tubes, which originated in 1939.  They also made vacuum tubes and resistors, which were important in the early days of radio and TV manufacturing.  Hygrade Sylvania became Sylvania electric products in 1942.   In 1959 it merged with General Telephone to become GTE (aka General Telephone and Electronics).  Under the name GTE Sylvania it sold a lot of things including breakers, transformers,   In 1981 GTE decided to divest itself of its electrical distribution equipment manufacturing divisions. In 1993 GTE sold its lighting business, Sylvania but to get around restrictions on creating too large a company, the operation was split into two parts.  The part comprising the North American business was sold to Osram GmBH, a German firm to form Osram Sylvania.  The rest of the world's business became SLI Holdings LLC, which was sold to Havells India Ltd. to form Havells Sylvania in 2007.  Another fragment of the company went off to live in Australia and New Zealand.    

Before all this happened, Sylvania did invent some products which were breakthroughs at the time. 

The Flashcube which swiveled and allowed one to take 4 flash pictures without replacing the flash bulb was used in conjunction with Instamatic cameras.  In 1986 they were the first to produce the MR16 halogen lamps. In 1989 they developed the first integrated circuit ballasts, which allowed the miniaturization paving the way to the creation of the first compact fluorescent lamps.  

Osram got its start with the creation of a tungsten and Osmium light bulb in 1906.

  The name was a contraction of the two elements used to make light bulb filaments at the time, Osmium and tungsten, which in German is called Wolfram hence the name "Osram". The merger of three lighting companies in 1919: Auergesellschaft, Siemens and Halske, and Allgemein Elektrizitaets Gesellschaft (company) or AEG led to the company now part of Siemens and known at the time as the Osram light bulb company.   Just last year (2013) Osram was spun off from Siemens and acquired its own listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.  

Phillips was founded in 1891 by Gerard Philips in Eindhoven

in the Netherlands to manufacture carbon filament lamps.  From light bulbs they went on to manufacture other things such as vacuum tubes, electric shavers (Norelco), and radio sets.  Just prior to the invasion of the Netherlands by Germany in 1940, the company moved its capital base to North America with its quasi headquarters in the Netherlands Antilles.  

After the war Phillips reestablished itself in the Netherlands where it went into the business of manufacturing TV sets, and introduced the compact audio cassette,

which became a serious competitor with the then dominant medium the vinyl LP record.  It also made forays into video cassette recorders but was overshadowed in time by the VHS technology.  Later it went on to develop Laser disk technology for the creation of compact laser disks, DVD's or digital video disks and blue ray in collaboration with Sony.   

 

Phillips is today an enormous multinational conglomerate that manufactures many types of electrical consumer products. It was as of 2012 the largest manufacturer of lighting products in the world.