Joseph Wilson Swan was born in 1828. He served six years as an apprentice to a Sunderland firm of druggists, Hudson and Osbaldiston. However, both partners died, and Swan joined John Mawson, who had founded a pharmaceutical business in Newcastle upon Tyne in the year that Swan was born.

From an early age, Swan was keen to learn about new inventions. He used Sunderland library to read about Starr's electric lamp, patented in 1845, but unsuccessful because it blackened too quickly. He also learned about new photographic processes such as electrotyping and daguerreotypes.

Mawson encouraged Swan to pursue his scientific investigations, and introduced him to local chemical manufacturers. They built a small laboratory at the top of the house above the shop. As Swan was gaining interest in photography, he began to make collodion, which became a speciality of the company. "Mawson's Collodion" was launched in 1854. Mawson took Swan into partnership in 1846.

In July 1867, Mawson, then sheriff of Newcastle, was killed while supervising the disposal of a quantity of dumped nitroglycerin. Swan's wife died shortly after. Swan therefore had sole responsibility for the business and his three small children. He made Mawson's widow, his sister Elizabeth, a partner in the business, which continued as Mawson and Swan. He later remarried, even though a law to legalise second marriages had not yet been passed by Parliament. His second wife was his deceased wife's sister. In 1883, they moved to Bromley, Kent. He later lived in Kensington in London, but moved back to the country because of heart trouble, settling in Warlingham, Surrey.

Swan added a stationery and bookselling arm to the business in Newcastle, established an extensive trade in Dutch yeast, and set up an art gallery in the city centre. He also sold scientific apparatus. As a result of his inventions, he was also in demand as a lecturer, and he took students in electricity. He took on managers to help him run the business. One was George Weddell, who ran the pharmacy business from 1891, and became a partner in 1912. Mawson, Swan and Weddell were amalgamated with Proctor, Son and Clague, and traded under the name Mawson and Proctor.

Sir Joseph Swan died in 1914, aged 86.

Lighting

In the 1870s, electric arcs were used to produce large centres of light. However, there were no successful individual lighting units available. In 1877, Swan made use of the new equipment for producing a vacuum in a glass bulb, invented by a Charles Stearn. He then developed Starr's 1845 invention of an incandescent lamp, but placed a carbon filament in a vacuum to prevent the blacking that had affected Starr's lamp (we know it as a light bulb). Swan even made the cellulose for the early filaments himself.

The lamp was a massive breakthrough. Its demonstration at the Chemical Society in 1878 was the first time that a carbon filament lamp had been shown in the world. He exhibited it to an audience of 700 in a lecture theatre in Newcastle upon Tyne on 3 February 1879. The lamp burned for 40 hours. The American electricity pioneer, Thomas Edison did not exhibit his carbon filament lamp until 21 October of the same year. After a dispute about whom had invented the lamp first, Edison and Swan formed a joint company based in London.

In 1904, Swan was knighted, awarded the Royal Society's Hughes Medal, and was made an honorary member of the Pharmaceutical Society. He had already received the Legion of Honour when he visited an international exhibition in Paris in 1881. The exhibition included exhibits of his inventions, and the city was lit with electric light, thanks to Swan's invention.