The first electric light was made in 1800 by Humphry Davy, an English scientist. He experimented with electricity and invented an electric battery. When he connected wires to his battery and a piece of carbon, the carbon glowed, producing light.

Much later, in 1860, the English physicist Sir Joseph Wilson Swan (1828-1914) was determined to devise a practical, long-lasting electric light. He found that a carbon paper filament worked well, but burned up quickly. In 1878, he demonstrated his new electric lamps in Newcastle, England.

In 1877, the American Charles Francis Brush manufactured some carbon arcs to light a public square in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. These arcs were used on a few streets, in a few large office buildings, and even some stores. Electric lights were only used by a few people.

The inventor Thomas Alva Edison (in the USA) experimented with thousands of different filaments to find just the right materials to glow well and be long-lasting. In 1879, Edison discovered that a carbon filament in an oxygen-free bulb glowed but did not burn up for 40 hours. Edison eventually produced a bulb that could glow for over 1500 hours.

Lewis Howard Latimer (1848-1928) improved the bulb by inventing a carbon filament (patented in 1881); Latimer was a member of Edison's research team, which was called "Edison's Pioneers." In 1882, Latimer developed and patented a method of manufacturing his carbon filaments.

In 1903, Willis R. Whitney invented a treatment for the filament so that it wouldn't darken the inside of the bulb as it glowed.

In 1910, William David Coolidge (1873-1975) invented a tungsten filament which lasted even longer than the older filaments. The incandescent bulb revolutionized the world.

Edison was actually the inventor of the electric lighting system, complete with generators, distribution power lines, usage meters, and light bulbs. No previous light bulb inventor had put all those parts together needed to make a practicalbusiness using them.

Nikola Tesla and the innovator Thomas Edison worked together. Edison was credited with the invention, but it was actually partner Tesla who invented the first successful light bulb, and Edison developed it into the present one.

There is enough proof to say that the Egyptians came up with and used the light bulb.

People say that Edison invented the lightbulb...but they are wrong. It is Scottish inventor James Bowman Lindsay who made it in 1835 but didn't patent it.
You might think it was Thomas Edison, but it wasn't!

The first light bulb was made by an English scientist called Humphry Davy.

Then, the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla perfected the light bulb.

An incandescent light bulb takes just enough electric current to make a piece of metal glow brightly enough to give out visible light yet not get so hot that it melts and breaks. The piece of metal is called a tungsten filament.

Experiments were made with different materials to use as the filament, including natural fibres, pure metals and alloys of different metals, to find the material which had the longest life whilst glowing brightly enough to give out visible light. The metal Tungsten was found to be the best.

Also experiments were made trying a vacuum or different kinds of gas inside the glass bulb to find out which was the best. For many years Nitrogen gas was found to be the best but other gases or mixtures of gases may now be used. Fluorescent light bulbs electrically charge a gas (sometimes one of the inert gases like argon).

Whilst it is normal everyday talk to say that a light bulb or a lamp is "burning", that is not strictly accurate because, speaking strictly scientifically, the word "burning" has a very precise meaning. When something is said to be "burning" it means the material is combining with the element Oxygen to form a compound called an Oxide.

For example when Carbon is burnt it makes either Carbon Monoxide or Carbon Dioxide or a mixture of those two gases. How much of each is made depends on the actual conditions in which the Carbon is being burnt. That is why it is scientifically correct to say that a light bulb is "glowing" and not that it is "burning".

Modern light bulbs don't hold a vacuum. Instead they are filled with an inert (electrically nonconducting) gas such as Nitrogen. An inert gas is used to fill the bulb (instead of just pumping out almost all the air to leave a near vacuum) because the action of filling the bulb with an inert gas can be used to flush away ALL of the air. In addition the inert gas has the very useful physical property of helping to conduct heat from the glowing filament to the glass bulb. This allows the whole surface area of the glass bulb to radiate heat into the surrounding air.

It is important to understand that the inert gas does not allow the filament to "burn away", it just allows it to glow brightly. If some air were still present in the bulb - as sometimes happens if a light bulb gets knocked and gets even a tiny crack in its glass bulb - then the oxygen present in ordinary air will quickly make the filament burn away.

If the light bulb just held a vacuum (as was the case in the early days of electric lighting) the main way the heat from the hot glowing filament could get out was along the wires feeding current to the filament and also along the insulators which support the filament. (Relatively little heat passes through a vacuum compared with what can pass through an inert gas.) So the feed wires and insulators got very much hotter compared to the temperature they reach in modern light bulbs. This caused the old vacuum light bulbs, which glowed at a much higher temperature than radio tubes, to have a much shorter useful life compared to vacuum radio tubes.

An earlier answer was given saying the filament has to be made from a material that has a negative temperature coefficient (as temperature increases, resistance decreases) but, if that were correct, then the decreasing resistance would cause more and more current to be taken as the lamp heated up - and the temperature would get higher and higher in a runaway manner - until either the power supply's breaker would trip or (more likely) the light bulb's filament would simply explode!

In fact the filament has to be made from a material that has a positive temperature coefficient. (As temperature increases, resistance increases.) Then, as the bulb's temperature rises, its filament's increasing resistance causes less current to be taken than when it was cold. Quite quickly a stable "steady-state" temperature and "running" resistance is reached so that the bulb simply continues to give out a steady amount of light according to the current it is taking from the electricity supply.

A thread of metal, usually tungsten, is used as an electrical filament to convert electricity into light in incandescent light bulbs (as developed in 1878 by Joseph Wilson Swan, among others), and into heat in vacuum tube devices.

The first successful light bulb filaments were made of carbon (made from oxidized bamboo), later replaced with tungsten.

An electrical current travels through the filament and because of the electrical resistance of the filament makes it white-hot and generates light and heat. It is normally in a vacuum or a noble gas or inert gas inside a glass enclosure to stop oxidation. Small amounts of a halogen can be added to facilitate transport of evaporated tungsten atoms back to the filament, resulting in significantly prolonged lifetime when used at higher temperatures, which is exploited in halogen lamps. Electrical filaments are used in hot cathodes of various types of vacuum tubes and electron guns as sources of electrons.

You get light illumination from an incandescent lamp because current flowing through the filament, which has nonzero resistance, causes a voltage drop across the filament. That combination of voltage and current represents power. Power heats the filament to the point of incandescence, creating light. The bulb is evacuated of air, or filled with an inert gas, so that the filament does not burn up from the combination of heat and oxygen.

Other lights, such as fluorescent tubes and bulbs, contain argon gas and mercury vapor instead of a filament. When the electricity flows through the gas UV (ultraviolet) radiation is emitted. The UV radiation hits phosphors coated on the inside of the bulb, which then emit visible light.

A very technical explanation

A standard incandescent lamp will light up because when we energize it by turning it on, electric current flows through the filament in the lamp and heats it so hot that it reaches incandescence. That means that the atoms of the filament are being ionized by the heat. The outermost electrons, the valence electrons in the atoms of the filament, are absorbing energy and jumping out to higher energy levels, and then falling back with the emission of a photon - light. All those atoms are being ionized and all those electrons are jumping to higher energy levels and then falling back by emitting a photon. That's what incandescence is. And the lamp filament is being heated to white hot, to incandescence, by the electricity. That's why they light up.

Incandescent light bulbs work by heating a thin strand of tungsten to high temperatures, causing it to glow brightly. Tungsten has the highest melting point of any element and therefore is perfectly suited for this purpose.

In a lightbulb at the very tip is a thin wire made of a material called tungsten when electricity passes through it, it heats up and glows white hot, however if it is in contact with oxygen it will blow, therefore the glass is around it to keep nitrogen inside the bulb and keep oxygen out.
When electricity passes through a filament (the curly bit of wire in a light bulb) it takes more effort to go through because it's so thin, so it glows.

That will vary with the type (i.e. "color") of the LED: IR LEDs operate at the lowest voltage (1.2V), red LEDs operate at low voltages (1.8V), green LEDs operate at medium voltages (2.5V), blue LEDs operate at high voltages (3.3V), and UV LEDs operate at the highest voltages (4V). Intermediate color LEDs operate at correspondingly intermediate voltage between those given above. The reason an LED cannot produce light below these voltages is it takes more voltage drop to get the energy to produce higher energy photons and the different types of binary semiconductors needed to produce each color/energy of photon result in different junction forward bias voltages.

However LEDs are really current operated devices, not voltage operated devices, so they need a series resistor or a current source to limit the current through them. Simply applying a voltage source with the necessary "minimum operating voltage" across an LED will generally destroy it instead of lighting it.

Incandescent light bulbs have filaments which are made mainly from the element tungsten and/or alloys which include tungsten.

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Tungsten is the metal element used for the filaments in incandescent light bulbs.

Experiments were made with different materials to use as the filament, including natural fibres, pure metals and alloys of different metals, to find the material which had the longest life whilst glowing brightly enough to give out visible light. The metal Tungsten was found to be the best, because of its high melting point (almost 3700 K) and good resistance to electrical current.

For more information see the answer to the Related Question shown below.
Carbonized cotton was originally tried, and had moderate success. However, the material that finally worked the best was a filament made of tungsten, which shone brighter and lasted much longer.
It is made up of Tungsten which have an melting point of 3380 degree Celsius.

Humphrey Davy invented the light bulb in 1809, but it was not practical.

It is a matter of documented record that Swan obtained a UK patent covering a partial vacuum, carbon filament incandescent lamp in 1860.

Thomas Alva Edison patented his invention in December, 1879, almost 20 years later, the same year that Swan's bulbs were in domestic use in Britain.
Edison did not invent the first electric light bulb, but instead invented the first commercially practical incandescent light. He therefore just improved on other peoples work in 1879.
1879

Thomas Edison's greatest challenge was the development of a practical incandescent, electric light. Contrary to popular belief, he didn't "invent" the lightbulb, but rather he improved upon a 50-year-old idea. In 1879, using lower current electricity, a small carbonized filament, and an improved vacuum inside the globe, he was able to produce a reliable, long-lasting source of light. So he said. Tesla worked for Thomas Alva Edison for 1 year At that time, the most important "inventor" in the world was named Thomas Alva Edison-the so-called wizard of Menlo Park.... Edison was credited with the invention of the DC dynamo and the electric light bulb . . . but the only thing he really invented was the ELECTRIC CHAIR!!
1879
Thomas Edison invented the incandescent light bulb in the year 1879

Many other people had developed working light bulbs of various kinds before Edison.

A British inventor by the name of Joseph Swan received a patent for an identical bulb 1 year earlier than Edison.

Nikola Tesla actually had working light bulbs in his laboratory before Edison did, too. These bulbs were fluorescent, not incandescent. These are early versions of the compact fluorescent bulbs that we know today.

In a parallel circuit, more power is provided to the lights. Power = V2/R . The resultant resistance of the circuit is lower, and the potential difference is not divided as in a circuit in series. Thus, lights in parallel burn brighter.

When you take off the square plastic covers, the only bulb that you can access is for the backup lights. In order to get to the tail light, and turn signal bulbs you have to remove the assembly. Just unscrew the 4 nuts from behind the trim and very carefully pop out the assembly. If it is difficult to remove, you may have to loosen the screws that hold the spoiler. The 2057 bulb is the replacement. Hope this helps.

I will add this for the Dodge Stealth: Same as above to get behind the trim ... but you can not access the bulb sockets on the Stealth ... you must find the 2 10mm nuts that hold the tail light assembly on and remove them. Pull the assembly away from the rear of the car and then you can access the bulb sockets. The stop light bulb is a 2057 as indicated above.