Sir Joseph Wilson Swan FRS - Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, UK
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dtrebilc
N 54° 58.168 W 001° 36.833
30U E 588732 N 6092272
This blue plaque celebrates the first public demonstration of an incandescent light bulb by inventor Joseph Swan in the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society building.
Waymark Code: WMNH0J
Location: North East England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 03/15/2015
Views: 6
The Literary & Philosophical Society
"The Literary & Philosophical Society (Lit & Phil) is the largest independent library outside London, housing over 150,000 books. A wide selection of current fiction and non-fiction can be found alongside historical collections covering every field of interest.
The Society was founded early in 1793 as a ‘conversation club’, with an annual subscription of one guinea. The subjects of the conversations - and the books that supported them - were wide-ranging, but religion and politics were prohibited."
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Sir Joseph Wilson Swan
"Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, D.Sc.h.c., FRS (31 October 1828 – 27 May 1914) was a British physicist and chemist. He is most famous for inventing an incandescent light bulb.
Swan first demonstrated the light bulb at a lecture in Newcastle upon Tyne on 18 December 1878, but he did not receive a patent until 27 November 1880 (patent No. 4933) after improvement to the original lamp. His house (in Gateshead, England) was the first in the world to be lit by lightbulb, and the world's first electric-light illumination in a public building was for a lecture Swan gave in 1880. In 1881, the Savoy Theatre in the City of Westminster, London, was lit by Swan incandescent lightbulbs, the first theatre and the first public building in the world to be lit entirely by electricity.[1]
In 1904 Swan was knighted by King Edward VII, awarded the Royal Society's Hughes Medal, and was made an honorary member of the Pharmaceutical Society. He had already received the highest decoration in France, the Légion d'honneur, when he visited an international exhibition in Paris in 1881. The exhibition included exhibits of his inventions, and the city was lit with electric light, thanks to Swan's invention. "
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The Blue Plaque
This blue plaque is one of two on the walls of The Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society building celebrating people with an association with the society.
This one is a Royal Society of Chemistry's National Chemical Landmark.
Chemical Landmarks are the Royal Society of Chemistry's official recognition of historical sites where important chemical breakthroughs have been made and are an RSC initiative to commemorate, emphasise and awaken public interest in historic developments in the chemical sciences.
Sites that are awarded Chemical Landmark status have either played a major part in the development of chemical science or have seen a development of chemical science that has made a significant contribution to the health, wealth or quality of life of the nation.
A maximum of four Chemical Landmarks plaques are awarded by the RSC per year.
RSCAdvancing the Chemical Sciennces
National Chemical Landmark
Sir Joseph Wilson Swan FRS
(1828 - 1914)
Chemist, physicist and inventor of the
Incandescent light bulb which he
first demonstrated at a public lecture here
on 3 February 1879.
Nearby Mosley Street was the first
street in the world to be lit by
such electric bulbs.
3 February 2009.