A Brilliant Mind: Sir Joseph Wilson Swan

This exhibition celebrates the brilliant life and achievements of Sir Joseph Swan, a scientist and businessman from the North East whose inventions became part of everyday life.

The exhibition features one of the first incandescent filament lamps, or light bulbs, ever seen in public. Swan demostrated these at the Lit & Phil in Newcastle on 3 February 1879 and again at Gateshead Town Hall on 12 March 1879.

Swan died 100 years ago on 27 May 1914, but in 1908 he presented the historic bulb to the Science Museum in London who have taken care of it ever since. The Science Museum have lent this unique reminder to Swan's genius for display at Discovery Museum to mark the centenary of the inventor' death.