James Bowman Lindsay and the 1835 Electric Light

James Bowman Lindsay was born on 8 September 1799 at Cotton of West Hills in the rural parish of Carmyllie, near Arbroath in Angus. He came from a poor family of four children; his father John was a farm worker and handloom weaver, his mother Elizabeth Bowman. Being of delicate health, young James was spared heavy farm labour and apprenticed to a local handloom weaver. The enduring image of him walking miles to Arbroath with a web of woven cloth strapped to his back — reading a book as he went — captures the autodidact perfectly.

His parents recognised his ability and saved to send him to the University of St Andrews, where he matriculated in 1821. He distinguished himself in mathematics and physics, completed studies in theology, and in 1829 returned to Dundee as Science and Mathematics Lecturer at the Watt Institution. From his single, modestly furnished room he conducted experiments in magnetism and electricity. In 1832 he demonstrated the principle of an electric telegraph to his students and recognised — by his own account — that electricity could serve three great ends: power, light and communication. He chose to pursue the light first.

His motivation was humane and practical: Dundee's booming jute and flax mills were notorious fire-traps, and Lindsay sought a source of illumination that would not ignite the combustible dust and fibres which made gas and naked flame so dangerous.

The single most important primary source is the report in the Dundee, Perth & Cupar Advertiser:

“Mr. Lindsay, a teacher in town, formerly lecturer to the Watt Institute, succeeded on the evening of Saturday, July 25, in obtaining a constant electric light. … The light in beauty surpasses all others, has no smell, emits no smoke, is incapable of explosion, and not requiring air for combustion can be kept in sealed glass jars. … It can be sent to any convenient distance, and the apparatus for producing it can be contained in a common chest.”

Lindsay's own letter, signed Dundee, 28 October 1835, is the closest thing to a technical description we have:

“The apparatus that I have at present is merely a small model. … I am writing this letter by means of it at 6 in. or 8 in. distant; and, at the present moment, can read a book at the distance of 1-1/2 feet. … I can make it burn in the open air, or in a glass tube without air, and neither wind nor water is capable of extinguishing it. … These are facts.”

The letter then soars into visionary prediction: that such light would banish mill fires, “stand side by side with the piano in the drawing-room”, be used “in lighthouses and for telegraphs”, and that “the present generation may yet have it burning in their houses and enlightening their streets”. Lindsay gave follow-up lectures with demonstrations at Thistle Hall in Dundee on 15 January 1836 and 21 April 1837.

Evidence note: no detailed description, drawing or surviving example of the apparatus exists. Everything rests on two 1835 newspaper items, Lindsay's own letters, and an autobiographical sketch deposited at Dundee Public Library in 1893.

This is where the popular story most often overreaches. The modern shorthand — that Lindsay built “a wire sealed in a vacuum”, essentially a light bulb — is an interpretation, not something the 1835 sources actually establish.

The best technical analysis is by lamp engineer and historian Edward J. Covington, whose work is preserved at the Museum of Electric Lamp Technology (lamptech.co.uk). His conclusion is careful:

“the continuous light obtained by Lindsay probably was not a steady state electric discharge but rather a crude incandescent source lighted by a voltaic battery.”

Covington's reasoning: Lindsay's battery was far too weak to sustain a Davy-style arc (which needs a high voltage to bridge an air gap). With plates “only one inch square”, the practical option was to heat a wire — probably platinum, which resists oxidation — until it glowed. The low brightness (reading at only 6–18 inches) is consistent with a dim incandescent source, not a brilliant arc.

The textual hints cut both ways. Phrases like “sealed glass jars” and “a glass tube without air” do suggest an enclosed, air-excluded glowing element. But Lindsay also says it could “burn in the open air”, and the whole framing is a fire-safety pitch for the mills, not a description of a sealed filament lamp in the modern engineering sense.

Bottom line: it was most likely a primitive incandescent (heated-wire) light, but it was not a sealed vacuum filament bulb of the kind Swan and Edison perfected. The evidence is too thin to be certain.

The invention of electric light was not a single eureka moment but a decades-long relay. Placing Lindsay honestly within it:

• Humphry Davy (1802 & c.1809) — Created the first electric light by passing current through a thin strip of platinum at the Royal Institution. By around 1809 he produced the dazzling carbon arc with a 2,000-cell battery. Predates Lindsay by a generation.
• James Bowman Lindsay (1835) — Demonstrated a “constant” electric light intended for practical illumination. Early and visionary, but a small experimental model never developed.
• Warren de la Rue (1840) — Enclosed a coiled platinum filament in a vacuum tube — workable but ruinously expensive.
• Frederick de Moleyns (1841) — Granted the first patent for an incandescent lamp.
• John W. Starr (1845) — Patented carbon-filament and platinum incandescent lamps; died of tuberculosis the next year, never commercialising them.
• Joseph Swan (1878–79) and Thomas Edison (1879) — Made the practical, commercially viable incandescent lamp.

As historians Robert Friedel and Paul Israel show in Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention, Edison's success depended on a combination of factors — effective filament material, a far higher vacuum (Sprengel pump), high resistance for distribution, and a complete integrated lighting system. Lindsay belongs on that long list of forerunners — a genuine early visionary — but not at the point where the problem was actually solved.

Joseph Swan first publicly demonstrated his incandescent carbon lamp to the Newcastle upon Tyne Chemical Society on 18 December 1878; it broke down quickly. On 17 January 1879 he repeated it successfully, and on 3 February 1879 he demonstrated a working lamp to an audience of more than 700 at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, lighting his own house and the Savoy Theatre.

Thomas Edison's team at Menlo Park achieved their breakthrough on 22 October 1879. Charles Batchelor's notebook records that a carbonised cotton-thread filament burned for more than 13½ hours. Edison filed for US Patent 223,898 on 4 November 1879 and demonstrated lamps publicly at Menlo Park on 31 December 1879. His decisive contribution was not the bulb alone but the entire system — generators, distribution, fittings — that made electric lighting a commercial reality.

The reason Swan and Edison are credited despite Lindsay predating them by over 40 years is straightforward: they produced practical, durable, reproducible lamps and the infrastructure to use them. Lindsay produced a dim experimental model, never patented or developed it, and left almost no technical record. Priority of a first glimmer is not the same as invention of a working technology.

Ironically, Lindsay's better-evidenced achievements are not in lighting at all. From the 1830s he worked on transmitting signals through water without insulated submarine cables. In 1843 he proposed a transatlantic telegraph; in 1845 he described an “autograph” telegraph and proposed welding cable joints by electricity. On 5 June 1854 he patented a method of transmitting messages “through and across a body or bodies of water”, and that year demonstrated transmission across the River Tay from Dundee to Woodhaven — nearly 2 miles — and at Portsmouth.

In 1859 he presented “On Telegraphing without Wires” to the British Association at Aberdeen, with experiments commended by Lord Rosse, Michael Faraday and the Astronomer Royal Sir George Airy. Richard Kerr later dubbed him a “Father of Wireless Telegraphy”, and Marconi acknowledged his early efforts — though his through-water system needed land lines as long as the water gap, making it impractical for an ocean.

From 1828 until his death Lindsay laboured on a vast comparative dictionary. Sources vary on its scope — commonly cited as covering around 50 languages, though some accounts say 53 or even up to 107 — which he hoped would illuminate the origins of humanity and corroborate scripture. He published a “Pentecontaglossal Paternoster” — the Lord's Prayer in fifty languages — in 1846.

In 1858 he published his “Chrono-Astrolabe” (astronomical tables for fixing historical dates) and was awarded a £100 annual Civil List pension by Queen Victoria, granted “in recognition of his great learning and extraordinary attainments”. He had earlier declined a post at the British Museum to care for his aged mother. He died on 29 June 1862, unmarried, and was buried in the Western Cemetery, Dundee, where an obelisk topped by a bronze hand clasping a lightning conductor was raised by public subscription in 1901 and unveiled by Postmaster General Sir William Preece. By an odd error, his tombstone records the year of death as 1863.

1. 8 Sep 1799Born at Cotton of West Hills, Carmyllie, Angus — a handloom weaver's son.
2. 1821Matriculates at the University of St Andrews; studies mathematics, physics and theology.
3. 1828Begins work on his comparative 'Pentecontaglossal' dictionary.
4. 1829Appointed Science and Mathematics Lecturer at the Watt Institution, Dundee.
5. 1832Demonstrates the principle of an electric telegraph to his students in the classroom.
6. 25 Jul 1835Obtains a 'constant electric light' in Dundee. Reported in the Dundee, Perth & Cupar Advertiser.
7. 28 Oct 1835Publishes his own letter describing the light, reading a book at 1½ feet by it.
8. 1836–1837Public demonstrations of the light at Thistle Hall, Dundee.
9. 1846Publishes the 'Pentecontaglossal Paternoster' — the Lord's Prayer in fifty languages.
10. 5 Jun 1854Patents through-water telegraphy; demonstrates across the Tay from Dundee to Woodhaven.
11. 1858Awarded a £100 Civil List pension by Queen Victoria on Lord Derby's recommendation.
12. 29 Jun 1862Dies in Dundee; buried at the Western Cemetery (his tombstone wrongly records 1863).
13. 1901Memorial obelisk, topped by a bronze hand gripping a lightning conductor, unveiled by Sir William Preece.

• Dundee, Perth & Cupar Advertiser, report of Lindsay's electric light demonstration, late July / early August 1835.
• James Bowman Lindsay, public letter dated Dundee, 28 October 1835.
• Edward J. Covington, technical analyses preserved at the Museum of Electric Lamp Technology (lamptech.co.uk).
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry on James Bowman Lindsay (“experimenter with electricity and writer on theology”).
• Robert Friedel & Paul Israel, Edison's Electric Light: Biography of an Invention.
• Leisure & Culture Dundee — James Bowman Lindsay archive materials.
• Lindsay autobiographical sketch (1893), Dundee Public Library / Local History Centre.
• Charles Batchelor's notebook, Thomas A. Edison Papers, Rutgers University.

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