Since the invention of the first car by Karl Benz, people's lives have undergone tremendous changes.

Over more than a century of development, the craftsmanship, materials, and technology of automobiles have continuously improved, and lighting technology has also been updated accordingly.

Today, as headlights guide cars through the night, their performance is already sufficiently powerful. Mercedes-Benz has mastered LED headlight technology, while BMW and Audi continue to enhance the performance of automotive headlights. Technological advancements have allowed for the continuous iteration of headlight performance in automobiles.

What were historical lights like?

In the 19th century, with the increasing use of coal, it was discovered that coal tar could be distilled from coal. This refined coal oil had excellent combustion properties, strong light emission, and extremely stable light.

However, due to technological limitations, even with large-scale refining, the cost remained high, making burning coal oil initially a very luxurious activity.

It wasn't until 1859 when George Bissell discovered oil in Pennsylvania, USA, and drilled the first oil well. The oil extracted from the well was a viscous blue liquid that couldn't be used as fuel directly, so Bissell purified it. The early refined gasoline was released because it couldn't be stored.

Kerosene lamps refined from this oil were not only bright but also very cost-effective, much cheaper than kerosene extracted from coal. Therefore, within three months of Bissell's oil discovery, hundreds of drilling towers emerged in the oil-producing areas, attracting over 15,000 people. From Bissell's discovery of oil, in less than a year, the United States produced over 2,000 barrels of oil.

One drilling tower called the Drake Well even produced over 3,000 barrels in the second year. By 1861, the price per barrel of oil dropped from $10 to just 10 cents, which might have been good news for consumers, but it was a nightmare for producers.

The second revolution in lighting: electric lights. In the pursuit of illumination, humans were not satisfied. While using oil lamps for lighting, they were still searching for other lighting methods. Some people used large quantities of fireflies' glow for illumination, although impractical, it was a unique method in human lighting history.

As the era of human electrification arrived, fire completed its mission as a lighting tool and gradually exited human lighting history.

The advent of electricity propelled human productivity forward, and the emergence of incandescent lamps also marked the beginning of human history using electricity for lighting.

The earliest practical electric light was the incandescent lamp. But even before the incandescent lamp was invented, the British inventor Humphry Davy made an arc lamp using 2000 batteries and two carbon rods. However, this arc lamp was too bright, generated too much heat, and was not durable enough for general use.

In 1854, the German clockmaker Henry Goebel, who immigrated to the United States, made the first practical electric lamp using a carbonized bamboo filament placed in a vacuum glass bottle, which lasted for 400 hours, but he did not apply for a patent in time. In 1860, the British inventor Joseph Swan also made a carbon filament electric lamp, but he failed to create a good vacuum environment to keep the carbon filament working for a long time.

It wasn't until 1878 when vacuum technology in Britain had developed to the necessary level that he invented a bulb with a carbon filament under vacuum and obtained a British patent. Swan's own house was the first private residence in Britain to be illuminated with electricity. In 1874, two Canadian electrical technicians applied for a patent for an electric lamp: filling the glass bulb with nitrogen and using a carbon rod to produce light.

However, they did not have enough funds to continue perfecting this invention, so they sold the patent to Edison in 1875. After purchasing the patent, Edison attempted to improve the filament and finally manufactured a bamboo filament lamp that could last for 1200 hours in 1880.

Nowadays, with the use of electricity, people not only need to thank inventors such as Holmes, Galvani, and Faraday, but also thank business geniuses such as Rockefeller, Edison, and Insull. It is their continuous innovation in business strategies that has transformed technology from a luxury into a daily necessity, thereby enabling it to benefit households worldwide.