Sir Joseph Wilson Swan FRS (31 October 1828 – 27 May 1914) was an English physicist, chemist, and inventor.

He had received the highest decoration in France, the Legion of Honour, when he visited the 1881 International Exposition of Electricity, Paris.

By 1860, he was able to demonstrate a working device, but the lack of a good vacuum, and of an adequate electric source, resulted in an inefficient light bulb with a short life.

[9] In August 1863 he presented his own design for a vacuum pump to a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Furthermore, it is notable that Sprengel conducted his research while visiting London,[11] and was probably aware of the annual reports of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.

Nonetheless, Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison are later reported to have used the Sprengel pump to evacuate their carbon filament lamps.

[12][13] In 1875, Swan returned to consider the problem of the light bulb with the aid of a better vacuum and a carbonised thread as a filament.

[14] Swan first publicly demonstrated his incandescent carbon lamp at a lecture for the Newcastle upon Tyne Chemical Society on 18 December 1878.

On 3 February 1879 he publicly demonstrated a working lamp to an audience of over seven hundred people in the lecture theatre of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, Sir William Armstrong of Cragside presiding.

He devised a method of treating cotton to produce "parchmentised thread", and obtained British Patent 4933 on 27 November 1880.

His house, Underhill, Low Fell, Gateshead, was the world's first to have working light bulbs installed.

[20] The Savoy, a state-of-the-art theatre in the City of Westminster, London, was the first public building in the world lit entirely by electricity.

[22][23] The builder of the Savoy, Richard D'Oyly Carte, explained why he had introduced Swan's electric light: "The greatest drawbacks to the enjoyment of the theatrical performances are, undoubtedly, the foul air and heat which pervade all theatres.

At that performance, Carte stepped on stage and broke a glowing lightbulb before the audience to demonstrate the safety of Swan's new technology.

[25] The first private residence, other than the inventor's, lit by the new incandescent lamp was that of his friend, Sir William Armstrong at Cragside, near Rothbury, Northumberland.

[29] Swan was one of the early developers of the electric safety lamp for miners, exhibiting his first in Newcastle upon Tyne at the North of England Institute of Mining and Mechanical Engineers on 14 May 1881.

[39] In 1916, Ediswan set up the UK's first radio thermionic valve factory at Ponders End.

[40] When working with wet photographic plates, Swan noticed that heat increased the sensitivity of the silver bromide emulsion.

By adding the transfer step, Swan was able to easily make photographs with a full tonal range.