18th century
* 1780 Aimé Argand invents central draught fixed oil lamp
* 1792 William Murdoch starts experimenting with gas lighting.
19th century
* 1800 Bernard Guillaume Carcel overcomes the disadvantages of the Argand-type lamps with his clockwork fed Carcel lamp.
* 1802 William Murdoch illuminated the exterior of the Soho Foundry with gas.
* 1805 Phillips and Lee's Cotton Mill, Manchester was the first industrial factory to be fully lit by gas.
* 1813 National Heat and Light Company formed by Fredrich Winzer (Winsor).
* c. 1802 Humphry Davy demonstrates arc-lighting in free air.
* 1815 Humphry Davy invents the miner's safety lamp.
* 1835 James Bowman Lindsay demonstrates a light bulb based electric lighting system to the citizens of Dundee.
* 1840 modern kerosene lamps (oil lamps that burn fuel from petroleum)
* 1841 Arc-lighting used as experimental public lighting in Paris
* 1853 Ignacy Lukasiewicz invents kerosene lamp
* 1856 glassblower Heinrich Geissler confines the electric arc in a tube.
* 1867 A. E. Becquerel demonstrates the first fluorescent lamp
* 1875 Henry Woodward patents an electric light bulb.
* 1876 Pavel Yablochkov invents the Yablochkov candle, the first practical carbon arc lamp, for public street lighting in Paris.
* 1879 Thomas Edison and Joseph Wilson Swan patent the carbon-thread incandescent lamp. It lasted 40 hours.
* 1880 Edison produced a 16-watt lightbulb that lasts 1500 hours.
* 1889 Incandescent gas mantle invented, revolutionises gas lighting.
* 1893 Nikola Tesla uses cordless low pressure gas discharge lamps, powered by a high frequency electric field, to light his laboratory. He displays fluorescent lamps and gas discharge lamps at the World Columbian Exposition.
* 1894 D. McFarlane Moore creates the Moore tube, precursor of electric gas-discharge lamps.
* 1897 Walther Nernst invents and patents his incandescent lamp, based on solid...