1828-1914

British chemist and inventor who invented a primitive electric lamp (1860) and the carbonfilament incandescent lightbulb (1880), which he developed independently of Thomas Alva Edison. Swan also experimented with photographic printing, patenting the carbon process of printing (1864) and inventing the dry photographic plate (1871) and bromide photographic paper (1879). In 1883 Swan patented the process of squeezing nitrocellulose through holes to generate fibers, thus creating the first feasible artificial silk.