Switched on by Rishi's lightbulb moment

Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss responded by writing statements that protested how the regions were at the heart of everything they were planning to do.

READ MORE: THE TORY CONTENDERS' PLANS FOR THE NORTH EAST 

Mr Sunak, the Richmond MP, even said: “This country has a proud history of innovation, from the light switch in Newcastle to the covid vaccine in Oxford. We need to encourage companies to invest more in research and development across the whole country, and we need to make sure the UK continues to attract the best and the brightest. The next great innovation will come from the North.”

At first glance, we thought this was a dim-witted blunder. Surely Mr Sunak meant lightbulb – everyone knows that on December 18, 1878, inventor Joseph Swan (below) gave the first demonstration of the first incandescent lightbulb to the Newcastle Chemical Society.

On that occasion, Mr Swan’s bulb burned out within a few minutes, but on January 19, 1879, at the Athenaeum in Fawcett Street in his native Sunderland, Mr Swan gave a longer demonstration during a public lecture, and then on October 20, 1880, at the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society, he had the 70 gas jets turned down so he could turn up his 20 electric lightbulbs to illuminate the room to the same effect.

Amazing! This must have been what Mr Sunak was referring to. The lightbulb not light switch!

But there’s more…

Watching that demonstration at the Lit & Phil was a chap called John Henry Holmes, a Newcastle Quaker who had been educated at the Friends’ school in York and had become an apprentice at Head Wrightson, the engineers, in Stockton. There he worked with electrical equipment which led to him joining a Manchester firm that had the contract to fit out the City of Rome liner in 1881.

The City of Rome, built in Barrow, was supposed to be the largest and fastest liner on the North Atlantic, but she was so underpowered that she made only six voyages before long-lasting litigation set in.

However, she was also one of the first liners to be lit entirely by electricity: 16 arc lamps and 230 Swan lamps, which John Holmes helped to install. They did not disappoint.

Little wonder, then, that Mr Holmes was at Mr Swan’s lecture, and it sparked his enthusiasm to set up his own electrical company, JH Holmes, with his brother and father in 1883. They fitted out the family home in Jesmond so that it became the first in the city to have domestic electrical lighting.

Through using the lights, John realised they needed a fast and safe way to turn them on and off.

So in 1884, he patented the “quick break light switch”. In it, the contacts move so rapidly apart that the electricity does not arc between them. This was vital because arcing, sparking electricity had the potential to cause an explosion.

And this is the light switch that we have used ever since. Encased in metal, plastic or even Bakelite, billions and billions of Holmes’ light switches must be installed all around the world.

So Rishi was right. The light switch was invented by a Newcastle Quaker who died in 1935 and is buried in Old Jesmond Cemetery. Very illuminating…