Lighting · Recorded milestone

Mercury-vapour lamp

Recorded year1903

Peter Cooper Hewitt's glowing tube of mercury vapour gives bright blue-green light for factories and photo studios, the first gas-discharge lamp sold.

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Built on

No connections of this kind are recorded.

Led to

Neon lightingRecorded · 1910enables
Germicidal UV lampRecorded · 1936enables
Fluorescent tubeRecorded · 1938enables
Metal-halide lampRecorded · 1962enables

Sources & evidence

Additional source

Dataset updated 2026-10-18. This individual record has not been separately re-reviewed.