The Invention of Light

We take light as granted but we forget the long history in the evolution of light.

Before light bulbs, candles had been used for light and for more than 5,000 years, yet little is known about their origin.

Egyptians were using wicked candles in 3,000 B.C by dipping papyrus repeatedly in melted tallow or beeswax.

The ancient Romans are credited with developing the wicked candle to light homes. In Japan, the oil was extracted from Nuts and in India from Cinnamon.

Most early Western cultures relied primarily on candles rendered from animal fat (tallow). A major improvement came in the Middle Ages when beeswax candles were introduced in Europe. Beeswax was burned pure and cleanly but, it was so expensive that only the wealthy could afford it.

Most of the major developments occurred during the 19th century.

In the 1820s, French chemist Michel Eugene Chevreul discovered how to extract stearic acid from animal fatty acids. This led to the development of stearin wax, which was hard, durable and burned cleanly. Stearin candles remain popular today.

In 1834, inventor Joseph Morgan laid the grounds for the modern-day candle industry by developing a machine that allowed for the continuous production of moulded candles by using a cylinder with a movable piston to eject candles as they solidified. With the introduction of mechanized production, candles became an easily affordable commodity for the masses.

Paraffin wax was introduced in the 1850s after we learned how to efficiently separate the naturally-occurring waxy substance from petroleum and refine it. Odourless and bluish-white in colour, paraffin was a boon to candlemaking because it burned cleanly, consistently and was more economical to produce than any other candle fuel. Its only disadvantage was a low melting point. This was soon overcome by adding the harder stearic acid, which had become widely available.

With the introduction of the light bulb in 1879, candlemaking began to decline.

Edison is famous not only for his inventions but also his attitude toward failure. In his mind failure was simply another stepping stone on the road to success.

The famous story goes, Edison failed to refine the light bulb (one of the few creations he merely refined but did not invent) so many times it took him 10,000 attempts to perfect. However, rather than accepting failure 9,999 times he is quoted as answering questions on his failures as rather: ‘I have not failed. I have just found 9,999 ways that do not work’.

Since the development of the incandescent bulb, we have seen the development of other technologies such as fluorescent and CFD bulbs (use less energy), Halogen Bulbs (brighter) and today we are seeing a growth in LED lighting (cheaper, more energy efficient, longer life).

Format

This one day format consists of a mixture of lectures and a workshop.

You will be introduced to the main patterns across a range of industries, products and services which are actually common from products such as shaving, planes, services such as taxis, software, SaaS etc as well as a variety of brainstorming and creative techniques.

This will then be followed by an introduction to design thinking.

The group will then be broken in teams to develop a product including how to get customer and stakeholder feedback and design issues in production and cost reduction techniques so that you can tic-toc and pivot to develop a complete product route map from initial launch to mass market.

Who should attend:

• Leadership teams looking to improve their companies 
• Startup (Founder)  teams 
• Product Managers and their teams
• Project Managers and their teams
• Designers, Innovators and
• anyone interest in change and innovation