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Concept
Joseph Swan
Summary
Sir Joseph Wilson Swan FRS (31 October 1828 – 27 May 1914) was an English physicist, chemist, and inventor. He is known as an independent early developer of a successful incandescent light bulb, and is the person responsible for developing and supplying the first incandescent lights used to illuminate homes and public buildings, including the Savoy Theatre, London, in 1881.
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 received the highest decoration in France, the Legion of Honour, when he visited the 1881 International Exposition of Electricity, Paris. The exhibition included displays of his inventions, and the city was lit with his electric lighting.
Joseph Wilson Swan was born in 1828 at Pallion Hall in Pallion, in the Parish of Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland, County Durham. His parents were John Swan and Isabella Cameron.
Swan was apprenticed for six years to a Sunderland firm of pharmacists/druggists, Hudson and Osbaldiston. However, it is not known whether Swan completed his six-year apprenticeship, as both partners subsequently died. He was said to have had an enquiring mind, even as a child. He augmented his education with a fascination for his surroundings, the industry of the area, and reading at Sunderland Library. He attended lectures at the Sunderland Atheneum.
Swan subsequently joined Mawson's, a firm of manufacturing chemists in Newcastle upon Tyne, started in the year of Swan's birth by John Mawson (9 September 1819 – 17 December 1867), the husband of his sister, Elizabeth Swan (22 November 1822 – 2 August 1905). In 1846, Swan was offered a partnership at Mawson's. This company subsequently existed as Mawson, Swan, and Morgan until 1973, formerly located on Grey Street in Newcastle upon Tyne, near Grey's Monument. The premises, now occupied by burger chain restaurant Byron, can be identified by a line of Victorian-style electric street lamps in front of the store on Grey Street.
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