Artificial lighting technology began to be developed tens of thousands of years ago and continues to be refined in the present day.

• 125,000 BC Widespread control of fire by early humans.^[1]
• 17,500 BC oldest documented lamp, utilizing animal fat as fuel^[2]
• c. 4500 BC oil lamps
• c. 3000 BC candles are invented.

• 1780 Ami Argand invents the central draught fixed oil lamp.
• 1784 Argand adds glass chimney to central draught lamp.
• 1792 William Murdoch begins experimenting with gas lighting and probably produced the first gas light in this year.
• 1800 French watchmaker Bernard Guillaume Carcel overcomes the disadvantages of the Argand-type lamps with his clockwork fed Carcel lamp.

• 1800–1809 Humphry Davy invents the arc lamp when using Voltaic piles (battery) for his electrolysis experiments.
• 1802 William Murdoch illuminates the exterior of the Soho Foundry with gas.
• 1805 Philips and Lee's Cotton Mill, Manchester was the first industrial factory to be fully lit by gas.
• 1809 Humphry Davy publicly demonstrates first electric lamp over 10,000 lumens, at the Royal Society.^[3]
• 1813 National Heat and Light Company formed by Frederick Albert Winsor.
• 1815 Humphry Davy invents the miner's safety lamp.
• 1823 Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner invents the Döbereiner's lamp.
• 1835 James Bowman Lindsay demonstrates a light bulb based electric lighting system to the citizens of Dundee.
• 1841 Arc-lighting is used as experimental public lighting in Paris.
• 1853 Ignacy Łukasiewicz invents the modern kerosene lamp.
• 1856 glassblower Heinrich Geissler confines the electric arc in a Geissler tube.
• 1867 Edmond Becquerel demonstrates the first fluorescent lamp.^[4]
• 1874 Alexander Lodygin patents an incandescent light bulb.
• 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 (About Christmas time) Col. R. E. Crompton illuminated his home in Porchester Gardens, using a primary battery of Grove Cells, then a generator which was better. He gave special parties and illuminated his drawing room and dining room. Source: Practical Electrical Engineering, Newnes. Article entitled "The Development of Electric Lighting".
• 1879 Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan patent the carbon-thread incandescent lamp. It lasted 40 hours.
• 1880 Edison produced a 16-watt lightbulb that lasts 1500 hours.
• 1882 Introduction of large scale direct current based indoor incandescent lighting and lighting utility with Edison's first Pearl Street Station
• c. 1885 Incandescent gas mantle invented, revolutionises gas lighting.
• 1886 Great Barrington, Massachusetts demonstration project, a much more versatile (long-distance transmission) transformer based alternating current based indoor incandescent lighting system introduced by William Stanley, Jr. working for George Westinghouse.^[5] Stanley lit 23 businesses along a 4000 feet length of main street stepping a 500 AC volt current at the street down to 100 volts to power incandescent lamps at each location.^[6]
• 1893 GE introduces first commercial fully enclosed carbon arc lamp. Sealed in glass globes, it lasts 100h and therefore 10 times longer than hitherto carbon arc lamps ^[3][7]
• 1893 Nikola Tesla puts forward his ideas on high frequency and wireless electric lighting^[8][9] which included public demonstrations where he lit a Geissler tube wirelessly.
• 1894 Daniel McFarlan Moore creates the Moore tube, precursor of electric gas-discharge lamps.
• 1897 Walther Nernst invents and patents his incandescent lamp, based on solid state electrolytes.

• 1900 Frederick Baldwin patents a carbide lamp for use on bicycles.^[10] The invention builds on acetylene lamps from the 1890s.
• 1901 Peter Cooper Hewitt creates the first commercial mercury-vapor lamp.
• 1904 Alexander Just and Franjo Hanaman invent the tungsten filament for incandescent lightbulbs.
• 1910 Georges Claude demonstrates neon lighting at the Paris Motor Show.
• 1912 Charles P. Steinmetz invents the metal-halide lamp.^[11]
• 1913 Irving Langmuir discovers that inert gas could double the luminous efficacy of incandescent lightbulbs.
• 1917 Burnie Lee Benbow patents the coiled coil filament.
• 1920 Arthur Compton invents the sodium-vapor lamp.^[12]
• 1921 Junichi Miura creates the first incandescent lightbulb to utilize a coiled coil filament.
• 1925 Marvin Pipkin invents the first internal frosted lightbulb.
• 1926 Edmund Germer patents the modern fluorescent lamp.
• 1927 Oleg Losev creates the first LED (light-emitting diode).
• 1953 Elmer Fridrich invents the halogen lamp.^[13]
• 1953 André Bernanose and several colleagues observe electroluminescence in organic materials.^[14][15]
• 1960 Theodore H. Maiman creates the first laser.
• 1962 Nick Holonyak Jr. develops the first practical visible-spectrum (red) light-emitting diode.
• 1963 Kurt Schmidt invents the first high pressure sodium-vapor lamp.^[16]
• 1972 M. George Craford invents the first yellow light-emitting diode.
• 1972 Herbert Paul Maruska and Jacques Pankove create the first violet light-emitting diode.
• 1981 Philips sells their first Compact Fluorescent Energy Saving Lamps, with integrated conventional ballast.
• 1981 Thorn Lighting Group exhibits the ceramic metal-halide lamp.
• 1985 Osram answers with the first electronic Energy Saving Lamps to be very successful ^[3]
• 1987 Ching Wan Tang and Steven Van Slyke at Eastman Kodak create the first practical organic light-emitting diode (OLED).
• 1990 Michael Ury, Charles Wood, and several colleagues develop the sulfur lamp.
• 1991 Philips invents a fluorescent lightbulb that lasts 60,000 hours using magnetic induction.
• 1994 T5 lamps with cool tip are introduced to become the leading fluorescent lamps with up to 117 lm/W with good color rendering. These and almost all new fluorescent lamps are to be operated on electronic ballasts only.^[3]
• 1994 The first commercial sulfur lamp is sold by Fusion Lighting.
• 1995 Shuji Nakamura at Nichia labs invents the first practical blue and with additional phosphor, white LED, starting an LED boom.^[3]

• 2008 Ushio Lighting demonstrates the first LED filament.
• 2011 Philips wins L Prize for LED screw-in lamp equivalent to 60 W incandescent A-lamp for general use.