born Oct. 31, 1828, Sunderland, Durham, Eng.
died May 27, 1914, Warlingham, Surrey
English physicist and chemist.
By 1871 he had invented the dry photographic plate, an important improvement in photography. He had already produced an early electric lightbulb (1860), and in 1880, independently of Thomas Alva Edison , he produced a carbon-filament incandescent electric lamp. He also patented a process for squeezing nitrocellulose through holes to form fibres, a process that became widely employed in the textile industry.