To bring home lighting in practice to within one order of magnitude of 100% luminous efficiency is certainly deserving of the Nobel Prize. It was not so long a

To bring home lighting in practice to within one order of magnitude of 100% luminous efficiency is certainly deserving of the Nobel Prize. It was not so long ago that people had to make due with rush lights: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight I tried to find a graph of inflation adjusted lighting prices, but found some interesting links: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/25/306862378/episode-534-the-history-of-light http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/25/306862378/episode-... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_lighting_technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_lighting_technology http://phys.org/news202453100.html http://phys.org/news202453100.html